(Digital) Cultural Rhetoric & Pedagogy

Last night's article for my graduate class on digital cultural rhetoric discussed cultural rhetoric pedagogy. In a published conversation, Christina Cedillo and other university professors discuss the need and importance of creating classroom spaces that center diverse stories through cultural rhetoric pedagogy -- teaching methods and approaches that focus on the interplay between culture and rhetoric, emphasizing how cultural contexts, practices, and perspectives shape and are shaped by rhetorical communication. While I was reading the article (which you can find on the constellations website), I was consistently reminded of my experiences teaching, and various other intersecting pedagogies.

On page 5 of the article, Jessie Male describes the practice of cultural rhetoric as a process of considering "the spaces beyond the present, individual state [...] your own story, and how your position contributes to your understanding of that story." She goes on to elaborate that this process also "means to consider all the other stories that aren't being told, or aren't being heard, or aren't being heard by the majority." Her description reminded me of Chimamanda Ngozi Achide's TedTalk speech "The Danger of a Single Story" (video from TedTalk is linked below). In her speech, Achide Adichie shares a personal anecdote about her own experiences encountering Western literature that depicted only one type of narrative about Africa — impoverished, war-torn, and lacking diversity. She explains how this single story creates stereotypes and misunderstandings that limit our understanding of the full complexity of cultures and identities, and discusses the importance of telling and listening to stories that are not a part of the dominant narrative. Male's emphasis on considering untold stories resonates deeply with Adichie's critique of the single story because both highlight the dangers of reducing complex identities and experiences to a singular narrative. They advocate for the recognition and inclusion of diverse perspectives that challenge dominant, often oversimplified, narratives.

Another point the writers brought up in their conversation that particularly resonated with me was the discussion of how cultural rhetoric pedagogy is decolonization, and how this process "might reveal something about how the [educational] institution is embedded in colonial practices" (3). Western societies like to think of colonization as an old practice that no longer exists and one in which we are not participatory. The reality is that colonization doesn't always look like armies or boats of people going and taking over the territory and people of another society. Sometimes it is carried out through quieter means - spreading information, exporting goods, and establishing educational institutions. At international schools, I witnessed firsthand the imposition of a strictly American curriculum, the suppression of native languages, and the prioritization of certain cultural celebrations over others. These practices often marginalized students and undermined their cultural identities, a stark reminder of the ongoing influence of colonization through educational systems. It was very frustrating to see these practices in action, especially when many teachers did not make efforts to teach in a culturally responsive way.

I have always believed - and perhaps this is from my background in foreign language and ESL instruction - that a student's culture and language are important; that restricting or stifling these aspects of a student's identity is extremely damaging; that the curriculum should be reflective of the students in my classroom but also expose students to other ways of seeing the world. So, I did a lot of work to counter the narrative that I saw being perpetuated at some of the schools I worked at in South Korea. When we read texts with a very Western perspective or narrative, I asked my students to bring their backgrounds into our discussions, and I worked to diversify the texts we were reading. I remember very clearly one particular curricular decision.

The school where I was working had almost exclusively Korean students, except for a handful of Chinese students and one or two American students. The curriculum we had subscribed to required students to read Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Though including Indigenous authors and stories is needed in our American curriculum, I knew that the cultural context for my students would not be understood. At the time, I had a Chinese student who was repeating 10th grade due to language barrier issues (we had no ESL support at the school). He was often ostracized by his classmates, both for his ethnicity and for his lack of language skills. I saw an opening here to center the voices of my students instead. So, we read The Joy Luck Club. As we were reading, my repeat student visibly opened up; his face lit up; he read; and he excitedly shared about his identity with the class. The Korean students were able to see ways in which the two cultures connected, and the struggles of the Chinese-American daughters in the novel resonated with the feelings many of my students had attending an American school. I learned quickly the value of doing what Christina Cedillo calls teachers to do at the end of her article: "we also need to center those audiences who are often left out and backgrounded by a lot of the academic ways of telling story" (9).

There are many more thoughts, questions, and connections this article brought up for me, especially as I am working to build an Asian Literature course at my school and a more nuanced AP Language and Composition curriculum, as well as the intersections between cultural rhetoric pedagogy, culturally responsive teaching, critical race theory, and Paolo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed. However, I will leave those discussions for another time.