Abstract
This article examines how neoliberal orders of discourse shape the dispositions to academic literacies of an international graduate student in entomology. As this ideology of market logic consolidates its hegemony in universities of excellence and US culture at large, academic socialization and disciplinary activities increasingly aim to create scholarly dispositions and subjectivities that align with it. Such processes are further complicated by the backgrounds of international graduate students—an ever-larger proportion of graduate students in STEM who often hail from educational cultures significantly different from the U.S. Our analysis of an international graduate student’s literacy practices in terms of motivations and outcomes shows that his literacies echo the dispositions pushed by neoliberal ideologies, but are not over-determined by them. Rather, as our case study illustrates, his socialization is a layered process, with ambiguous implications and strategic calculations making up literacies and disciplinary outcomes. We believe closely mapping such tensions in literacies and socialization processes increases humanities scholars’ awareness both of the potential contradictions of educating international graduate students into the neoliberal model and of how the university can still be used to develop the dispositions needed to renegotiate the neoliberal order of discourse for more ethical and empowering purposes.
Highlights
Dispositions are receiving increasing attention in studies of academic socialization, especially those related to academic literacies in US universities (Canagarajah 2013a; Leonard 2014; Lee and Jenks 2016)
As the mobility of scholars and texts intensifies and literate practices and genres are renegotiated in relation to changing conventions and contexts, literacy scholars have begun focusing on language awareness, literacy strategies, and rhetorical sensibilities that students—especially those with histories of mobility—treat as generative dispositions
In terms of outcomes, these practices are layered with ambiguous implications, which supports our argument that neoliberalism is not necessarily over-determining the socialization process, and humanities scholars can work with the affordances of the culture of the university of excellence to foster critical dispositions in this process
Summary
Dispositions are receiving increasing attention in studies of academic socialization, especially those related to academic literacies in US universities (Canagarajah 2013a; Leonard 2014; Lee and Jenks 2016). In line with much of the work on the academic literacies model (see Street 2009), we see reading and writing, and the activities they are a part of, as social practices This approach links elements of the disciplinary and writing situations (what some rhetorical genre scholars call the “context of situation” or “rhetorical situation”) within which students are processed with the “context of the culture.”. Our case study provides a snapshot of the socialization of an international graduate student by situating his literacy practices in terms of a generative disposition that negotiates the structure of the neoliberal culture of his discipline and US higher education in general. The subject whose literacies we report below claims to have been socialized into dispositions of caring for others, developing a healthy work ethic, and moral values such as honesty and progressiveness While these dispositions from different contexts can contradict the neoliberal status quo, certain others have ambivalent effects. In terms of outcomes, these practices are layered with ambiguous implications, which supports our argument that neoliberalism is not necessarily over-determining the socialization process, and humanities scholars can work with the affordances of the culture of the university of excellence to foster critical dispositions in this process
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