Be Not Deceived: Looking at Historians' and Compositionists' Views of Multiculturalism in Freshman Composition Courses

Abstract

Situated between disciplines, multiculturalism is a topic spoken about by historians, compositionists, literary critics, social scientists, anthropologists, and those in other fields. While consistent with postmodern principles that break down disciplinary boundaries, multiculturalism as a curricular phenomenon 1 depends on but also suffers from its interdisciplinary nature. In fact, a number of debates on both the right and left point to problems resulting from the pedagogical pursuit of multiculturalism. Louise Phelps, for example, argues that the teaching of multiculturalism too often serves as an agenda for instigating social and cultural change. This type of pedagogy elevates the political agenda of the faculty over their students’ own agendas. Others point out that multiculturalism as a topic elicits student writing that is oversimplified, stereotypical, or superficial (see, for example, Stockton). While many have cited reasons to help promote or discourage the use of this theme for pedagogical pursuits, little, if any, work has documented the ways students’ writing about multiculturalism is filtered through their different disciplinary backgrounds. Since multiculturalism as the theme for compositions is used, quite often, in freshman core courses and/or in freshman compostition courses taught by faculty from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, it is important to understand how faculty make their expectations explicit within their various disciplinary viewpoints. We know that different disciplines express arguments differently, raise different questions, and utilize different rhetorical styles. Thus, if we knew more about how faculty of different disciplines teach a core course’s common texts, we would be better able to help students address in their writing complex sets of stylistic and rhetorical expectations from different disciplines.