Making Relationships: Gender in the Forming of an Academic Community

Abstract

Making Relationships: Gender in the Forming of Academic Community presents two case studies of student-teacher writing conferences to make visible what is usually invisible in academe: the personal. It shows that successful academic community may be most easily achieved by students and teachers who create relationships marked by masculine themes and values - and that this may be true even when the teacher is a feminist woman. If change is to occur, the author argues, compositionists must rethink both contemporary composition and gender theories and develop new ways of representing narrative and other expressive discourses.