# data[].attributes.headline
Ch 1  The Trauma of Graduate Education:  graduate writers countering epistemic injustice and reclaiming epistemic rights

# data[].attributes.subject
Ch 1  The Trauma of Graduate Education:  graduate writers countering epistemic injustice and reclaiming epistemic rights

# data[].attributes.body
referenced in the chapter 👆  &  👇
*Praxis special issue "Graduate Writers and Equity"
*Presumed Incompetent (Gutiérrez y Muhs et al)
* Asserting the Right to Belong: Feminist CoMentoring Among Graduate Student Women( Godbee and Novotny)

terms: epistemology ~ ways of knowing, being, and acting(p 39)

The author discusses the trauma of graduate school on marginalized people by examining the issue of epistemic injustice through a series of stories.  The author then works to  identify epistemic rights.  This chapter is written with a feminist perspective and the solutions that are forwarded are bound in feminist ideology.

There is much discussion about the trauma that graduate school inflicts on students-including  "the condition of being “presumed incompetent” [which] often goes unnamed, making it more easily internalized by those who are marginalized and written off by those with privilege and power. " (p 38).  The author posits that the unconscious biases  that are pervasive in higher education cause us to continue prioritizing epistemologies that align with Western intellectual tradition and are heteronormative, white, middle and upper-middle class, male, and christian.  Epistemologies that place inordinate value on one type of knowing obviously leads to epistemic injustice. "While epistemic injustice hurts everyone and influences even large domains like the economy (e.g., when a smaller pool of collective resources and contributors limits new ideas, inventions, and their related economic gain), it also does direct, dehumanizing harm to those who experience it."  I think it is important to note that this is significant because it leads to perpetuating a particular type of knowledge and world view as the "right one" and thereby maintains status quo and systemic hegemony.  "When epistemic injustice is persistent and systematic, it cuts down a person based on their social identity (race, class, gender, and other intersecting identities), so it cuts down human dignity, respect, and even personhood."
The author "defines epistemic rights as   rights to knowledge, experience, or earned expertise."  Some ways that epistemic rights can be asserted and fostered are through writing groups, mentor relationships, writing partnerships, journaling, writing out our traumas and our push backs, sharing our stories, being aware of injustices we encounter and perpetuate, and ultimately rewriting and redefining epistemology.  These can lead to 'the work of countering epistemic injustice arises in relationship—in the educator affirming and the writer (re)claiming epistemic rights."(p 43).

"To invest in countering epistemic injustice, we must invest both in seeing the problem for ourselves and envisioning more just relations." (p 45).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Recovering from Graduate School: Rewriting the Trauma Narrative | Write Where It Hurts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Eric Anthony Grollman (@grollman) is a Black queer feminist sociologist and intellectual activist; they are an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Richmond. They are the founder and editor of the blog, Conditionally Accepted, which recently became a regular career advice column on…

# data[].attributes.body
In chapter 10, this quote really drove home for me the struggle of writing, is that writers feel the "need to write faultlessly from the beginning, and will delay until they can, which never happens" (160). That, and just getting started, for me, are the two big hurdles to writing (probably intertwined).  It also reminds me of when I started my thesis, my advisor was clear that I shouldn't take any of her edits or suggestions personally; those were to help improve my writing, and were not a critique of it.

To me, that is the other side of this coin, writing "faultlessly", is that critiques are personal, and they are not. For example, a coworker this week asked for my help to update her resume (it's 6-7 years old) and all I heard the rest of the day was comments about how terrible her resume was, because I marked it up with suggestions & edits. A part of me was irritated because she ASKED for my help, which was given, and there was nothing personal about it. But I feel like there was an assumption of faultlessness that I wasn't aware of. Critique is hard to accept, and it isn't personal.

In Chapter 11, the response table on page 182 was very interesting. That at least 40 of 45 responses, were consistently positive to the aspects of a 'writing boot camp' was fascinating, and no less surprising. I don't think that professional development days in schools get that kind of positive response. I would want to know more about this in terms of social norms and expectations, and how it could work digitally. I felt left to the winds whilst writing my thesis, with only my advisor to keep me on track. Having a group of peers to stay on track with, or to at least interact with, probably would have been helpful for me.

# data[].attributes.body
I enjoyed this whole article. I think one reason students struggle with writing, is that it is taught impersonally. We encourage connections between content and knowledge, over connections between content and self. Admittedly, writing about yourself is hard, especially in high school & middle school with the social pressures in overdrive.

I think that our students are like the academics who "are not willing to trust in confusion--their entire careers, and even their lives, have been built on the quest for knowledge and certainty" (171). Especially with "google brain", as I like to call it, our students are hyper-focused on certainty; everything to be learned is a couple clicks and a search away. As a group, they seem very uncomfortable or uninterested in making connections between any content and themselves; there's no algorithm for that. I don't think pandemic-learning has helped that, although I think it presents a great opportunity to make more personal connections.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Personal Story in Academic Spaces~diving into our "quintessentially human"(p 170) experience  (ch 11)

# data[].attributes.subject
The Personal Story in Academic Spaces~diving into our "quintessentially human"(p 170) experience  (ch 11)

# data[].attributes.body
I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to have had educational experiences that encouraged the inclusion of of personal narrative as a valid and often vital component of one's writing.  My first thesis attempt was an emergent, embedded research project designed around a collaborative community endeavor to design, build, and implement a school garden into our local elementary school.  An entire section of the methodology was dedicated to addressing my personal ontology(linked here) and acknowledging that no writing, research, or academic endeavor is truly objective- the mystical objective void that education has strived to be, is now and always has been.  I really appreciate the move toward more acknowledgement and encouragement of resituating ourselves into our academic writing and into academic spaces as more holistic, multi-dimensional beings.

This quote really resonated with me:
"Lynn Z. Bloom ...'All writing is personal, whether it sounds that way or not, if the writer has a stake in the work'(1)"(Writing Spaces, p 164).

As a teacher scholar I am always searching for the applicable aspects of our readings. This week some key take aways were:
* Looking at how the story weaves through the writing to support the research and to determine the balance and interdependent relationship-  "Marking your essay the same way can help you see if you have the right balance between the personal and the more traditionally academic portions of your paper." (p 166)
* Posing the  "Passover question: Why is this night different from all other nights?"(p 167) as a question to guide writers to . "If this night, this football game, isn’t special in any way, then it isn’t the story to use in your essay."(p 167) to help our students critically analyze why they include the stories they choose.
* The key questions~
"• What percentage of your essay is personal experience, and how does that match up with the nature of the assignment?
• Have you included only the personal stories that directly relate to your topic, your attitude towards your topic, or your controlling idea?
• Are your selvages tight? Do the moves you make between personal story and research and analysis make sense, or is the fabric of your essay likely to unravel?" (p 171-72)

This chapter provided some excellent guidance on how to integrate our own stories and encourage our students to weave their storied into their writing. The guidance about when and how that can be done was very instructive and can easily be used to directly help student writers understand how and why stories are used.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Greenway Youth Garden. 152 likes. A modest garden contains, for those who know how to look and to wait, more instruction than a library. Henri Frederic Amiel

# data[].attributes.headline
Mi Testimonio: Crossing Borders in the Academy

# data[].attributes.subject
Mi Testimonio: Crossing Borders in the Academy

# data[].attributes.body
This chapter is about Cuellar, a Spanish-speaking Chicana in a PhD program at a predominately white institution (PWI) in the Midwest. She explains that her first language is Spanglish, and she worries that one day she will lose this because of having to code switch. Cuellar recognizes that by gaining fluency in academic discourse, like people in the PWI seem to want, she risks being driven further away from her home community.

As a graduate student, writing has been challenging for her because she must figure out herself how to change her writing to fit the academic voice her professors expect. Cuellar said that she lacked a supportive writing community and speculates that being a Spanish-speaking Chicana may have contributed to this. This changed when she was invited to join the Calmecac Collective (the CC). It became clear that she was not alone in feeling like an outsider or having a toxic graduate school experience. Cuellar realized that her own experience at university was unbearable at times because she had not found a community to be a part of.

Cuellar started meeting with another doctoral student for writing sessions. Through sharing their testimonies, they recognize the hostility doctoral students of color face is a result of the way the academy is structured. They have their own version of academic kinship now. Cuellar ends by saying that stories are powerful enough to change the system, and they need others to help implement structural changes to support diverse experiences.

# data[].attributes.headline
Race, Retention, Language, and Literacy: The Hidden Curriculum of the Writing Center

# data[].attributes.subject
Race, Retention, Language, and Literacy: The Hidden Curriculum of the Writing Center

# data[].attributes.body
Faison and Treviño wrote this piece together to show that Writing Centers are not the comfortable, inclusive, and anti-institutional spaces they are intended to be. Through their own stories and voices, they show that not all POC/WOC are the same.

Treviño is an asexual, Mexican American, working-class, first-generation college student. She began by explaining that her first-year composition instructor required students to get their papers checked and validated at the writing center. If they did not, they were penalized with lower grades. After completing a master’s degree, she worked as a teaching assistant while in a PhD program as a predominately white institution (PWI). She taught two sections of first-year composition. During her first semester, she was also offered a job as a tutor in the writing center, but she rejected the offer because of the personal beliefs she held of writing centers. Throughout her first year teaching, she really struggled with being a woman of color in a PWI. Her struggles were with students, the beliefs surrounding what a composition class is, the curriculum, and her own identity. During her second semester, she decided to accept the position at the writing center. She is the only Mexican American writing tutor there. She has students who are required, like she was, to come in and have their papers checked. She notices that their highest concern is grammar because that’s what their professors mark off the most for. As a writing tutor, she listens to students’ experiences and often understands those experiences because the same things happened to her. Treviño tries to improve the experience for people of color in the writing center and disrupt it being a place of standard English and hegemony.

Faison is a black, lesbian, working-class, disabled woman studying in and working at a PWI. She talks about the aesthetics of writing centers – sofas, refrigerators, coffee pots, aloe plants, pastel colors, soft lighting, Eurocentric art – and how the dominant culture and its upper middle-class, white ideologies are apparent in them. Faison explains how she heard other tutors speak negatively of international students’ English and refer to racism as misunderstandings. She had white tutors challenge her when she told students that the academy does not respect their home language because it prefers they write like a white man with as little narrative as possible. She also had tutees assume that she was a receptionist or was bringing coffee for them; white tutors often dismissed these incidents and did not acknowledge the racism taking place. Furthermore, when working at a community college in the Midwest, it was said that they had so many sofas because the students going to the writing center “deserve nice things too.” Faison calls out the racist and classicist undertones in this response. She says that the writing center where she works serves few black students, and black tutors are not retained. Faison questions if the homelike atmosphere that writing centers try to create creates racialized spaces that exclude people of color. Faison explains how she does not find white middle-class spaces to be comforting to her. She felt feelings of isolation and disillusionment working in the writing center.

In the end, Treviño and Faison stay the writing center in order to use the experiences of marginalized people to create braver spaces.

# data[].attributes.body
This chain of stories helps us make sense of our experiences by validating their importance – not just in our personal lives but in our work as well. I was reminded of old jobs, church growing up, and suicides. The personal stories often make the reading “easier” and more interesting. They also help you connect more with the text and to remember it in the future.

I do not remember a time when I wanted to share a personal story in a writing project but wasn’t allowed. However, I do remember being told repeatedly in compulsory schooling to not use first person in academic writing. I think that instructors were just passing on the “knowledge” they had been taught. I believe they were trying to help us, but like most things in life, ideas of what is considered right change, and it is okay – even advisable – to change with them. I think writers should choose to share stories that are relevant and help them fulfil their overarching purpose.

Disciplinary writing may get wrapped up in the lore of being impersonal because by “removing” the person writing it, some people believe that what is being said is more credible. It’s like they think it’s possible to make some people forget that there is a real person behind the writing.

# data[].attributes.body
Stories are so powerful.  Since the beginning of time, humans have been storytellers, using stories to make sense of the world, to pass on knowledge, to pass on history, to entertain, to teach, and for so many other purposes.  I love that Steward legitimizes the use of the personal experience in her article and that the two chapters from Madden et al demonstrate how this can be done.

Like Stewart claims, my mind is a filing cabinet of stories. Some are my own, some are those of people I know, and some are those I have read, but each is stored for a purpose. Stories help up connect to each other and help us connect our experiences. I love the use of stories or personal experiences in academic writing because it helps me connect with that writer and that writing a bit more than I would have otherwise.  It breaks up what can be dry and boring and engages me as a reader.

I can't remember a time I was specifically told not to include a personal story in my writing, but I do know I've always been taught to keep it impersonal and professional. It wasn't until the world of graduate school that I discovered that writers used personal experiences or stories in their academic writing and I love it. I'm so glad this is a rule to be broken!  It deepens my understanding of the topic and helps me feel more connected with both the topic and the writer.

There can be a story for almost any subject. Some might be harder to tell, but I think that gives added weight and power. We have to be careful and think things through, but there is power in sharing even our hard stories.  As I teach rhetoric and rhetorical strategies to my students, I share a rather personal story about a time these skills became crucial for something I needed to write. In 2018, my then 10-year-old son was a victim of voyeurism in an airport bathroom and we became involved in a court process. I had to write a victim statement for my son, telling the judge what I wanted to see happen to the perpetrator. I weave this story into my teaching of rhetoric and rhetorical strategies, describing the hours I put into this letter, as well as pointing out the strategies I used to ensure every word was just right. I find my students pay rapt attention because it's no longer just a bunch of terms or examples. They see the real-world application and understand how critical it was to me that the letter was as rhetorically perfect as it could be so I could convince the judge to do what I wanted. They realize these are real-world skills and that knowing how to harness the power of rhetoric (as well as understanding how it is used on them) is important. Since I've started weaving this story in, my students learning in this unit have rocketed off the charts.  That is the power of story, both in academic writing and in teaching.

The chapters from Madden et al demonstrate the power of stories as well. I will never know what it is like to experience certain things. I will never know what it is like being a black person in graduate school. But through Kirsten Edwards writing and in "Voices from the Hill," I gain empathy and understanding. I can gain the knowledge I need in order to take a stand for other people in similar situations.  I can be aware of my own behavior and examine my own actions to see if I contribute to the negative experiences these authors describe.  Hearing statistics and impersonal facts would not connect me with the subjects the way these personal stories did.  That is the power of stories, especially in academic writing.