Voices From On High: Rhetorical Education in a Jewish Women's Writing Center

<p>This ethnographic dissertation looks at how the mission statement at one institution of higher education--Yeshiva University (YU)--establishes rhetorical education for its undergraduate students. The research site for this study of rhetorical education and institutional mission is the college writing center at YU's women's campus, Stern College for Women. This study defines rhetorical education as the way an institution authorizes written, spoken, and behavioral communication, with the goal of developing its students as civic beings, through its institutional mission. My findings demonstrate how undergraduate writing tutors disidentify with institutional rhetorical education to subvert, resist, and revise institutional rhetorical education, offering alternatives for their undergraduate peers. As an ethnographic study of undergraduate writing tutors, this dissertation looks at the work of young teachers outside of traditional classrooms for the rhetorical education they model for their students. The results of my ethnographic study reveal how undergraduate writing tutors disidentify with institutional rhetorical education predominantly through their civic engagement, but also within the writing center. A further finding of this study demonstrates that undergraduate writing center tutors at YU embody and perform multiculturalism, despite the institutional mission, which does not specify a commitment to multiculturalism. </p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Grantor

The Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York

Year dc:date.available

2015

Author dc:creator

• Efthymiou, Andrea Rosso

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Jessica Yood

• Curriculum and Instruction
• Educational Methods
• Higher Education Administration
• Higher Education and Teaching
• Rhetoric
• civic engagement
• ethnographic study
• institutional mission
• rhetorical education
• undergraduate tutors
• writing centers

Repository record dc:identifier

https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/552

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:academicworks.cuny.edu:gc_etds-1551