2010 Social Justice Research Paper Awards Winners

2010 First Place: John Vance (Rhetoric and Composition), “From Meshing to Inventing: Toward a Pedagogy of Discursive (Re) Constructiva”

Abstract: This paper analyzes “code-meshing,” a strategy in which first-year composition students blend “Standard English” and “non-standard” vernaculars in their academic writing in an effort to contest the arbitrary political privileging of the former over the latter. After arguing that code-meshing, for all its good intentions, relies on racializing (and ultimately racist) social/linguistic categories, it suggests that students should confront these unjust hierarchies by “inventing” their own, individually empowering categories.

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Undergraduate Winner: Joelle Robinson (Biology), “If You Don’t Sit, You’ll Stand For Anything”

Abstract: The paper is a comprehensive analysis of the sit in movement of the 1960s, classifying the roles of its activists, hecklers and supporters.