Date of Award

August 2020

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

English

First Advisor

Shevaun Watson

Committee Members

Charles Schuster, Rachel Bloom-Pojar, Anna Mansson McGinty, Stephanie Kerschbaum

Keywords

ableism, access, advocacy, composition pedagogy, disability studies, multimodality

Abstract

ABSTRACT

A PEDAGOGY OF ACCESS ADVOCACY

by

Molly E. Ubbesen

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2020

Under the Supervision of Professor Shevaun Watson

I propose “a pedagogy of access advocacy” for students and teachers based on practices developed in the first-year composition classroom. A pedagogy of access advocacy aims to destigmatize the access needs of students and teachers by inviting them to share and support each other’s needs and to center and celebrate the creation of collective access. This dissertation brings together theories and methodologies from composition, rhetoric, disability studies, teacher action research, and critical discourse analysis to examine student reflections on how my designing and assigning the course theme “Accessibility and Advocacy” combined with the “Accessible Multimodal Advocacy Project” engaged students in collective access and led to deeper understandings of their own rhetorical situations. I argue that we need to orient to access pedagogically and rhetorically, and I provide strategies, curriculum, and student examples for more effective teaching, learning, and communication in first-year composition and teacher development.

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