This essay considers how a male evangelical Christian in a first-year writing (FYW) course at a state university negotiates his identity in his academic writing for a non-Christian audience. It focuses on how "Austin" casuistically stretches a biblical text to accommodate his audience's pluralistic perspective. Austin's writing thus provides a…

In 1837, Margaret Prior became the first female missionary for the American Female Moral Reform Society. She traveled throughout the poorest neighborhoods in New York City--entering barrooms, brothels, and sickrooms. Based on an analysis of Prior's missionary reports, published in the society's periodical and included in her memoir, this essay…

In 1992, more than 20 artists showcased their work in a traveling exhibit, "Chicano Codex: Encountering Art of the Americas." Each piece creatively resembled Mesoamerican amoxtli, the pictographic "codex books" that were destroyed by European combatants as a strategy for subjugating indigenous minds. Spain's campaign of…

Study of the weekly Methodist newspaper "Christian Advocate," from its inception in 1826 to 1832, reveals that Methodist women came to assume important, public, and rarely acknowledged rhetorical roles. More precisely, women moved beyond the confines of the newspaper's "Ladies' Department," the back-page space to which "women's concerns" were…

When evangelical Christian students enter the academy, they often find that its tenets and values conflict with their reliance on the Bible as a source of truth and evidence. In this essay, the author attempts to articulate the ways in which rhetorical dexterity might enable students to use literacies they already possess (like deep knowledge of…

In this essay, the author argues that the potential for achieving the goals of critical pedagogy would be enriched if teachers had a fuller understanding of the ties between critical pedagogy and Christian liberation theology. While many are familiar with Paulo Freire's roots in Marxism, the fact that his vision of praxis and conscientization…

Recognizing that many of us teach the medieval English women mystics Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich in survey courses, this essay attempts to put these writers in context for teachers who may have only a passing familiarity with the period. Focusing on passages of their writings found in the Longman and Norton anthologies of British…

Considers how in the classroom, dealing with conservative Christian belief, progressive writing instructors confront "problems of meaning" just as perplexing and urgent as those that trouble evangelical students. Offers some stories that show how the author analyzed her own recurring "problems of meaning," some theoretical (and…