| Summary: | The purpose of Paley's dissertation is to break down false binaries between social constructionist and expressivist pedagogy and between the political and the personal in the field of composition and rhetoric. She maintains that the family is an important site of political consciousness that is dismissed by social constructionists and marxists. Paley critiques the way theorists Lester Faigley, Susan Miller, and James Berlin represent so-called expressivism. Their representations are based on published texts and involve no classroom observation. She complicates Faigley's criticism of "authentic voice," arguing that voice is the basis of ethos and ethos is essentially the logos of personal narrative. The assessment of expressivist pedagogy by Miller and Berlin, that it encourages the solipsistic endeavor, are found to be unsubstantiated. Drawing on an ethnographic study by Kathleen Cassity, Paley brings the reader inside Peter Elbow's classroom at the University of Hawaii as he challenges his students' racism and homophobia.
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