Working Theory: Critical Composition Studies for Students and Teachers

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Description

Goleman investigates the relationship between critical theory and composition pedagogy in extensive and methodical ways. The philosophical insights of Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, and Mikhail Bakhtin are transformed into methodologies for critical work in composition. The book rests on the premise that critical approaches to the relationship between language and ideology should not be the preserve of teachers alone, but should be seen as ways of writing and analyzing language that students can master. Critical theory provides students with an understanding of language and self, truth and knowledge that allows for intellectual insight and fluency among the discourses of their multileveled, often complex and conflict-ridden lives.

Reviews

"Judith Goleman's book Working Theory: Critical Composition Studies for Students and Teachers is not only timely, but it also unveils the ideology that informs the false dichotomy between theory and practice. Working Theory is must reading for all Reading and Writing teachers who want to transcend the technicism of their own field."- Lilia Bartolome Harvard University
"What can critical educators hope to accomplish Goleman approaches this question carefully and thoroughly, exploring the work of major theorists such as Freire, Bakhtin, and Fish, and articulating a concept of specific discursive analysis that offers cautious promise to empower students and teachers together as critical subjects of history."- Patricia Bizzell College of the Holy Cross
"Working Theory is a very impressive piece of work. As a profession, we don't know how to read student essays, for example, to make them interesting, notable, complex - even though they represent a massive cultural project, the organized production of hundreds of thousands of readers and writers, all in the name of English. In this context, Goleman's book will be a powerful and useful intervention in Composition Studies. Working Theory is an impressive and, for its use of classroom materials, original work."-David Bartholomae University of Pittsburgh
"Working Theory speaks directly to the ever-present hidden theory in practice by effectively showing how to unveil practice in the sense of acquiring knowledge or recognizing in it the theory that is minimally or not yet perceived. Judith Goleman also challenges us to think about practice or theoretical task or theoretical practice."- Paulo Freire Pontificia Universidade Catolica Sao Paulo, Brazil

Author Bio

JUDITH GOLEMAN is Associate Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, where she directs the Freshman English Program and the Graduate Intern Program in composition.