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The Rhetoric of Religion in American University NEGOTIATING THE SACRED IN SECULAR WRITING SPACES: THE RHETORIC OF RELIGION IN AMERICAN UNIVERSITY COMPOSITION TEXTBOOKS by MYRA LEE SALCEDO Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Arlington in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON May 2014 Acknowledgements I thank my family for their perseverance and many sacrifices made during the six years that I lived away from them during this enlightening journey. I am especially grateful to my husband, Andre (Andy), for his reading and editing as well as moving several times to accommodate my on-campus residency. In a role reversal, my daughter, Amanda Salcedo has modeled teaching for me. I regret that my son, Daniel Ramon Salcedo, did not live to see me complete this work as he was a great supporter during some of my more challenging moments, especially during the last few months of his life. Dr. Tim Richardson, Dr. Jim Warren and Dr. Cedrick May fearlessly asked the provocative questions. At the University of Texas at Arlington I am indebted to Piper Davis, Jackie Gill, Lucinda Channon, Barbara Noyes, Joy Sterrantino and Gretchen Trkay for remaining steadfast way-showers. At UTPB, Dr. Sophia Andres is ever an inspiration and mentor. Dr. Sean Watson is an incredible educator who can make theory wondrous. Dr. Tom Deans threw me a lifeline of research that I built upon and Lynn Z. Bloom contacted me to provide that research. Russell T. McCutcheon, and other scholars, were kind enough to respond to my queries. March 03, 2014 ii Abstract NEGOTIATING THE SACRED IN SECULAR WRITING SPACES: THE RHETORIC OF RELIGION IN AMERICAN COMPOSITION TEXTBOOKS Myra Salcedo, PhD The University of Texas at Arlington, 2014 Supervising Professor: Tim Richardson This project demonstrates that religion comes into through the classroom door not only through the embodiment of students and instructors, but via the academy itself through the university composition textbook. Publishers provided lists of top-selling American textbooks that are inventoried and analyzed and mapped along a timeline to indicate the absenting and presenting of religion. A suggested negotiation for the intersections of writing and religion is to view religion as a discourse community as is described by Shannon Carter. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………..ii Abstract.......................................................................................................................iii Chapter 1 Religion is Already in the “Readers” (Textbooks)………………….…….1 1.1 Introduction……………………………………………………………….1 1.2 Setting religion apart from other discourses………………………..…….8 1.3 Negotiating with the concept of sacred texts……………...……….……12 1.4 Religion is present in university composition textbooks………………..22 1.5 Examining composition textbooks along a timeline………………….....33 1.6 Timeline: Context as an afterthought…………………………………...36 1.7 Addressing religion as a discourse……………………………………...51 1.8 The twenty-first century religion: Now You See It, Now You Don’t…..56 1.9 Conclusion……………………………………………………………....63 Chapter 2 Religion is Already in the Readers—Teachers and Students.………...…67 2.1 Introduction……………………………………………………………...67 2.2 Religion is not marginalized in composition textbooks………………...68 2.3 Textbook editors present readers through a Christian lens………….…..77 2.4 Religion is formulated in identity constructions………………….……..82 2.5 Instructors encourage inviting religion into the classroom……….……..91 2.6 Inquiry confronts affirmation in academic discussion of religion……..103 2.7 Some scholars announce their faith in their published works…….…...106 2.8 Conclusion……………………………………………………………..116 iv Chapter 3 The Call for Religious Literacy in the Classroom…..………………….127 3.1 Public media is tied to religion in textbooks, especially after 9-11…....127 3.2 Textbook editors include articles of religion from the public sphere….133 3.3 Scholars call for religious literacy in the university classroom………..140 3.4 Why religion is being addressed……………………………………….146 3.5 The classroom as public sphere………………………………………..149 3.6 Negotiating with religion………………………………………………151 3.7 Religion, treading lightly due to the United States Constitution………153 3.8 Conclusion……………………………………………………………..163 Chapter 4 Negotiating Religion in the Secular Writing Classroom……………….165 4.1 Introduction…….………………………………………………………165 4.2 Religious literacy as a social practice……………………….…………169 4.3 Negotiating with religious discourse…………………………………..171 4.4 Conclusion……………………………………………………………..199 Works Cited………………………………………………………………….…….207 Biographical Information…………………………………………………….….…222 v Chapter 1 Religion is Already in the “Readers” (Textbooks) 1.1 Introduction “How typical of our times to regard ‘values’ as universal and belief as contingent. We’d better hope there is no God!” (Lunsford and Ruszkiewicz 1997 191). Are values universal? And is belief contingent? Does this commentary questioning a correlation with an existence in God belong in a secular university? And does implying that the questioning of values and belief indeed make one a non-believer in God? Is the writer stating that we better hope there is no God to admonish our questioning? And do any of these questions belong in a secular first-year university writing classroom? Editorializing about an essay on non-belief in an American writing textbook to the point of exclaiming “We better hope there is no God!” is a strong implication. It might not be surprising to hear such statements made in a religious studies course, or in a theology classroom. However, these statements are directed to the university first-year writing student in a textbook destined for all universities across the country, not just those institutions that are affiliated with religion. The aforementioned questions were asked in two editions of a textbook on composition (not literature) in an editorial annotation with the signature of John J. Ruszkiewicz in The Presence of Others: Voices and Images That Call for Response (Lunsford and Ruszkiewicz 1997, 2004). In fact, the questions were written as an editorial note alerting students to the fact that a reading in a textbook was non- 1 affirming of belief. Only two articles in The Presence of Others in a chapter on religion that were non-affirming of belief in a deity were annotated with similar remarks by the textbook editors. Readings that did affirm belief in a religion were devoid of annotations of the paragraph-by-paragraph editorializing. In the 1997 edition of The Presence of Others (second edition) is the full chapter “What We Believe,” with eleven articles addressing religion. Nine of the “readers” express an affirmation of belief, including a reading endorsing the Pope, a Hasidic tale, and excerpts from texts perceived as “sacred,” such as the Qur’an and the Bible. That a writing textbook would declare support of faith and belief in any religion might be unexpected in a secular classroom. In addition, religion is included in the top sixteen composition textbooks selected by publishers as best-selling from 1990 to 2012. The Presence of Others is one of these titles. The top sixteen titles (in all of their editions) comprise a potential of one-hundred-and-seventeen books (if all editions of each textbook are examined from the 1970s to 2012). The fifty-nine books analyzed in this project (spanning the earliest and most recent editions of each title in this group—with a concentration from 1990-2012) contain five-hundred-and- two texts and images that address religion. Only sixty-six (thirteen percent) of the essays with a focus on religion address perspectives on doubt, non-belief, or secular stances. Yet these books are all intended for the secular university writing classroom. How is it that the allegedly secular textbooks include issues involving the religious realm for writing classroom engagement to the point of asking students to narrate an 2 experience with prayer as a writing exercise (Lunsford The Presence of Others Readings for Critical Thinking and Writing 1994 207)? In 1999, Lynn Z. Bloom estimated that there were 2.2 million first-year college students reading anthologies in composition textbooks that she referred to as a “teaching canon” (“The Essay Canon” 401). Bloom analyzes a database compiled from the half-century of composition textbooks that were developed following World War II, noting that “the empirically defined canon” was “formed by diverse post-World War II composition teachers, acting independently or in collaboration with publishers” (402). She examines a database of anthologies catalogued over the fifty-year period from 1946-1996 (407) and states the importance of Readers (capitalized to denote texts in the books and to distinguish from those who read them). She especially focuses on essays in the writing classroom, and states “Students in the nation’s three thousand or so colleges and universities, even those who never meet a literature anthology, are almost sure to encounter essays in their required composition courses—most likely in Readers” (404). Bloom defines “essay” loosely, and allows that it is often a catch-all term for “selections, pieces, readings, materials, prose models” (405 emphasis hers). In some cases, Readers that I have examined include prayers, oral histories, speeches, poems, sermons, and excerpts from texts deemed sacred. My research indicates that readers are likely to encounter religion in the textbooks through the various
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