Writing Democracy

Shannon Carter is Professor of English at Texas A&M-Commerce, where she teaches courses in community writing and digital storytelling. Her publications include articles in College English, CCC, and Community Literacy Journal, and The Way Literacy Lives: Rhetorical Dexterity and the "Basic" Writer (SUNY Press, 2008). With Deborah Mutnick in 2012, she edited a special issue of Community Literacy Journal emerging from the first Writing Democracy conference in 2011, which won the 2012 Best Public Intellectual Special Issue from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals. Her current book project project traces the history of community writing alternatively designed to reify and resist racial injustice in her conservative, relatively isolated university town, which is also the subject of a digital humanities project funded, in part, by NEH.Deborah Mutnick is Professor of English at Long Island University Brooklyn and author of Writing in an Alien World: Basic Writing and the Struggle for Equality in Higher Education. Other publications appear in a range of journals and edited collections. She is currently researching Richard Wright’s relevance and political, intellectual, and literacy development.Steve Parks is author of Class Politics: The Movement for a Students Right go Their Own Language and Gravyland: Writing Beyond the Curriculum in the City of Brotherly Love, as well as a textbook, Writing Communities. He is founder of New City Community Press; Co-Founder/Board Chair of Syrians for Truth and Justice; and Editor of Studies in Writing and Rhetoric as well as Working and Writing for Change, Parlor Press.Jessica Pauszek is Assistant Professor of English and Director of Writing at Texas A&M University-Commerce. Her work has appeared in CCC, Community Literacy Journal, Literacy in Composition Studies, and Reflections. She is the co-editor of Best of the Journals in Rhetoric and Composition and Writing and Working for Change series. Her current book project explores working-class community literacy practices of the Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers as well as examines an archival curation project alongside community members in the context of precarity.

• Chapter One: Introduction: "What Does Democracy Look Like?" Part I: Mapping the Political Turn Chapter Two: Composition’s Left and the Struggle for Revolutionary Consciousness Chapter Three: Organize as If It Were Possible to Create a Movement That Will Change the World": An Interview with Angela Davis Chapter Four: Marxist Ethics for Uncertain Times Chapter Five: A Pedagogy for the Political Turn Part II: Variations on the Political Turn Chapter Six: "I'd Like to Overthrow Capitalism, But Meanwhile, I would Like the Nazis to be Completely Demoralized": An Interview with Dana L. Cloud Chapter Seven: Audience Addressed? Audience Invoked? Audience Organized! Chapter Eight: Legibility, Failure, and Political Turning Chapter Nine: Nudging Ourselves Toward a Political Turn Chapter Ten: Sustainable Audiences/Renewable Products: Penn State’s Student Farm, Business Writing, and Community Outreach Chapter Eleven: The Political Turn and the Two-Year College: Equity-Centred Partnerships and the Opportunities of Democratic Reform Part III: Taking the Political Turn Chapter Twelve: How Does it Feel to be a Problem at the 9/11 Museum? Chapter Thirteen: Dismantling the Wall: Analysing the Rhetorics of Shock and Writing Political Transformation Chapter Fourteen: Pass the Baton: Lessons from Historic Examples of the Political Turn, 1967-68 Chapter Fifteen: The Visa Labyrinths: Writing Our Way Through the U.S.-Columbian Border Chapter Sixteen: Conclusion: Further Notes on the Political Turn

The chapters in this collection provide reality checks, an ethical foundation, inspiration, and practical routes to action that can help us each be brave in taking our own political turn.Sarah Moon for the Community Literacy Journal, 2021Writing Democracy: The Political Turn in and Beyond the Trump Era gives students, instructors, and activists a life preserver of practical thought, sage advice, and instantly-usable pedagogical tools to push back against the tide of neoliberalism and all that it has broken. Far from just a critique of the moment, this book is a field manual in the battle against political ideologies and economic movements that still haven’t destroyed us, at a time when (hopefully) the field of Rhetoric and Composition is ready for it.Brian McShane for Reflections, 2020