Cultural Studies Theory of Composition - Teaching Methods and Implications

Teaching Methods and Implications

Cultural studies composition instructors can use a variety of genres for students to work within and between. They include:
-- Production-based studies (emphasizes the producer; the "political organization of the conditions of production")
-- Text-based studies (i.e. literary criticism)
-- Studies of lived culture (ethnographic, historic, semiotic looks at how people are enculturated or contextualized)

Classroom methods include using pop culture and media studies into composition classrooms. Often these sources tend to allow students to write about what they know and to close-read and interpret texts about culture instead of literature. It helps students contextualize their own experiences. Teachers use multicultural texts that introduce and encourage discussions of multiple literacies, the implications of power, and the "contact zones" where cultures overlap and potentially collide.

When it comes to the personal essay, students from different multicultural backgrounds will bring different approaches, from the way the begin their stories to the information they choose to address. This means that workshopping the personal narrative (or, perhaps, any writing) in a classroom full of diversity can bring challenges, not just with understanding each other's words, but also with understanding meaning.