Calling Cards: Theory and Practice in the Study of Race, Gender, and Culture

by Jacqueline Jones Royster, ANN MARIE SIMPKINS

In recent decades, the concepts of race, gender, and culture have come to function as "calling cards," the terms by which we announce ourselves as professionals and negotiate acceptance and/or rejection in the academic marketplace. In this volume, contributors from composition, literature, rhetoric, literacy, and cultural studies share their experiences and insights as researchers, scholars, and teachers who centralize these concepts in their work. Reflecting deliberately on their own research and classroom practices, the contributors share theoretical frameworks, processes, and methodologies; consider the quality of the knowledge and the understanding that their theoretical approaches generate; and address various challenges related to what it actually means to perform this type of work both professionally and personally, especially in light of the ways in which we are all raced, gendered, and acculturated.

318 pages, Hardcover

First published March 3, 2005

Reviews

[André Habet · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had to fly through this book more quickly than I would have liked to, but wanted to ensure that its praises were sung in my screech. A fantastic collection of work on race, gender and culture by some of the most thoughtful scholars I have had the pleasure to read.

They've zapped out the cynicism out of me for another day, and I feel like I can rely on it to do so on many others. Valerie Babb ends the final section of this book with the potent quote "Our work [as academics outside the mainstream] will never be done, that we are means to an end and not the end" (Babb 263-264). I am ok with this.