Identifying as author: exploring the pedagogical basis for assisting diverse students to discover their identities through creatively defined literacy narratives

This thesis explores the current discourse surrounding the redefinition of concepts such as text and authorship in the field of composition studies. Drawing from scholarship on topics ranging from multi-modal composition to feminist historical-appropriation, the author builds a case for redefining these concepts to include a broader range of texts and author-voices from which instructors can draw for course readings. By focusing on the particular instance of selecting readings to teach a literacy narrative unit in a first year college composition course, the author shows how redefining and broadening concepts of text and authorship may allow for students to more easily identify with a literary heritage and identify themselves as authors whose literacy-related experiences have something significant to add to the academic conversation. The chapters present a review of literature, introduce methods and processes for teaching a literacy narrative unit in a freshman composition course, offer the reflections of the instructor on teaching the literacy narrative, and justify a process of selecting texts which aren\u27t necessarily identified as literacy narratives as models for student literacy narratives --Leaf iv