Relocating Authority
Japanese Americans Writing to Redress Mass Incarceration
Winner of the 2012 CCCC Research Impact Award
"With a rapidly increasing number of international students attending universities in North America, Diverse by Design certainly provides a scholarly and pedagogically accessible way to talk about their experiences, struggles, and challenges throughout their academic careers, as well as ways instructors can provide support to facilitate their transition into American colleges. . . . It models the kinds of composition research that ought to be occurring. [The book presents an] important, timely topic for our field, a topic that needs grappling with not just by those who are 'interested' but by everyone. . . . Diverse by Design makes a powerful contribution to the field."
—CCCC Research Impact Award Committee
"Chris Schroeder is so obviously correct in recognizing that our hearts and our pedagogies are not as one. The case he provides is compelling. We have to move away from the kind of ethnocentric and fatalistic discourse that continues to dominate our discussions."
—Victor Villanueva
Diversity, despite what we say, disturbs us. We debate linguistic rights, the need for an official language, and educational policies for language minority students. We believe in the rights of individuals, including the right to one’s own language, yet we still sponsor a single common language, monolingual and standard, for full participation and communication in both the academy and in U.S. society.
These conflicts are central to Diverse by Design, an institutional case study of an Hispanic-Serving Institution—in fact, the most ethnically diverse university in the midwest—situated within a metropolitan area shaped by immigration and migration. Christopher Schroeder examines the interactions of the institution and individuals, highlighting a cohort of Latino students enrolled in a special admissions program. He analyzes the ways that institutional language policies and literacy philosophies shape student experience within this institution, where ethnolinguistic diversity is framed as an educational obstacle to overcome rather than an intellectual opportunity to exploit.
Diverse by Design argues that linguistic ideologies are ever more critical within increasingly globalized societies. While diversity might disturb us, its challenges can be overcome through a more expansive sense of social identity, placing literacy and education at the forefront of debates about educational equity and human lives.
