Author Description

In this thesis, I argue for the inclusion of antiracist pedagogies in undergraduate general education writing courses. Antiracist pedagogies grow out of critical theory, and they are used to understand and address the persistence and impact of racism. They focus on connecting the individual classroom with personal and institutional contexts. in the USA, the non-white class is hardly thought to be co-creators of knowledge. As such, a pedagogy that includes them and their experience could very well be the first of many steps to bring them back within academia and, specifically, within undergraduate writing classrooms. Therefore, such classrooms need to adopt non-white languages and representation if they truly want to reflect a pedagogy of love, inclusion, and co-creating of knowledge. Having critical and liberating dialogue coupled with reflective action can have a powerful impact on learning, it should be imperative to challenge and unlearn the White Supremacist notion of language and pedagogy. While academic discourse, based on White Mainstream English, has been the norm in college writing classes in the United States for decades, it is time for a change. And to embrace the diversity that our students bring to the basic writing classroom, an antiracist pedagogy should be implemented that questions the deep-rooted standards of academic discourse, ultimately subverting the racially homogenous expectations of language used. Rather than forcing students to abide by the rules of "academic/standard language", we can celebrate their diversity, using it as a tool to allow them to reach a deeper level of understanding in the work they are being asked to complete. I try to encompass methods that can help the successful implementation of antiracist pedagogy in First Year Writing (FYW) and Technical and Professional Writing (TPW) classes.