How Loving Allyship and Caring Accountability Design Access and Inclusion in the Writing Classroom

Abstract

Written during COVID-19, this dissertation takes the form of a three-article exploration of different ways that the first-year writing classroom can facilitate connection through purposeful design of self and classroom structures. In considering how we can make the classroom a more accessible and inclusive space, each article explores scholars in disability studies, black feminism, and activism work, who imagine and shape their communities through love, accountable allyship, care, and solidarity. Article 1, “Love and Accountable Allyship in the Classroom: An Intervention,” argues that the collapsed inner and outer spaces (home and work/education) revealed the importance of embracing a person-first pedagogy, valuing connection and humanization while being mindful of systems inside and outside the classroom. Article 2, “Rhetoric of Care: A Critical Pedagogy Framework for Solidarity in the Classroom,” argues that the Rhetoric and Composition canonized frameworks for care are missing crucial elements that are preventing truly caring relationships within classrooms, like addressing white supremacy, and it concludes that forming intimacy across difference can sustain all of us. Finally, in article 3, “Designing Love and Care in the Classroom,” I begin to examine how the intricacies of theory within the field of design can be applied to university structures (teaching persona, pedagogy, syllabi, course policies, course materials, curriculum, assessment) and start to reflect on how I have begun to think about rebuilding a healthier self and classroom system, specifically by simultaneously holding destruction of whiteness and space for equity. Overall, this dissertation contributes to the conversation around the re-humanization of those working within academic institutions.