Dissertation
Entitled Disabling Composition: Toward a 21st-Century, Synaesthetic Theory of Writing, my dissertation examines the ways in which composition pedagogies have, both in theory and in practice, systematically worked to exclude individuals with disabilities. As Patricia Dunn and Brenda Brueggemann have both noted, persisting in composition studies is the ideological belief that traditional writing and intelligence are somehow inherently linked, that traditional literacy is central to defining one’s intellectual worth. My dissertation suggests that studies in digital media and disability give us reason to think otherwise. It suggests that we disable composition studies—what we think we know about composers, composing, and composition(s). This privileging of composing as print-based, I contend, masks the notion that writing is simply one among many systems of making and conveying meaning, that among our readers are those who cannot always access the messages delivered within print-based texts.
