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

At The Ohio State University at Columbus, Jacqueline Jones Royster is Professor of English and Ann Marie Mann Simpkins is Assistant Professor of English. Royster is the author of Traces of a Stream: Literacy and Social Change among African American Women and Critical Inquiries: Readings on Culture and Community.

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 this type of work both professionally and personally, especially in light of the ways in which we are all raced, gendered, and acculturated.