Multiculturalism and Self Reflexivity

Mitchell, Danielle. (2008). I thought composition was about commas and quotes, not queers: diversity and campus change at a rural two-year college. Composition Studies, 36.2 23-50.

One of the important aspects of multicultural pedagogy is the ability of both professors and students to transcend the concerns of their own selves in order to locate themselves within the struggles of the marginalized. Danielle Mitchell’s composition pedagogy pays witness to the pain this removal of the self can cause. From her title “I Thought Composition was About Commas and Quotes not Queers”, we see that she has created a binary between the comfortable self and the unsavory other. In doing so, she urges her students to embark on a journey of self-assessment concerning their roles in perpetrating discrimination, in this case homophobia. While her focus is somewhat divergent from her peers who typically focus on race, the reasoning behind Mitchell’s pedagogy is similar in that she wishes for her composition class to be “both a site of writing instruction and a critical zone of cultural contact” (Mitchell 24).

Mitchell subsequently created an entire course fraught with cultural disturbances when she chose to specifically focus on LGBT diversity. In explaining her potentially polemic choice, she asserts that “college training in writing is more than learning punctuation and grammar” but must provide students a space to “practice on issues that are pertinent to their lives, votes, nation, campus” (Mitchell 28). In other words, composition students need to learn to write about issues that make them uncomfortable. Mitchell also ventures to argue that students should not only address socially taboo issues but also argue from viewpoints that are the very antitheses of their own.

While it is important for students to immerse themselves in cultural discomfort, teachers must be willing to embark on this journey as well. As in the case of the students, this move requires self effacing bravery. I think that Mitchell aptly demonstrates this courage and delicacy to locate herself, as a LGBT individual, into a very tense classroom setting without succumbing to fear or narcissism. Thus she becomes a true example to her class what true multicultural engagement truly looks like.