“Because I Said So: Negotiating Power/lessness and the Politics of Silence in a Writing Program,” Stella Apostolidis, Roseanne Gatto, Tom Philipose, T

“Because I Said So: Negotiating Power/lessness and the Politics of Silence in a Writing Program,” Stella Apostolidis, Roseanne Gatto, Tom Philipose, Tara Roeder

As professors who must negotiate multiple roles in the academy (graduate students, full-time contract faculty, administrators), we are invested in exploring the way our emotions can be mobilized to empower us (and our students), and the ways in which they are often repressed by institutional ideology. The questions we seek to address are: How can we negotiate our “double roles” in order to overcome the anxiety, pressure, and selfconsciousness we feel when dealing with the academic institution and its representatives, and how/why do we “mask” these anxieties in the classroom? How do we deal with the “silencing” tactics of a Catholic, conservative
administration, and the widespread pressure to abandon expressivist classroom practice? How do we use our anger, and the anger of our students, in constructive ways in the writing classroom?