Graduate Program

English

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Semester of Degree Completion

2010

Thesis Director

Tim Taylor

Thesis Committee Member

Terri Fredrick

Thesis Committee Member

Chris Wixson

Abstract

Therapeutic writing, or writing as a method of emotional healing, seeks to facilitate psychological healing through self-discovery as a result of analyzing, interpreting, and making conclusions about challenging life experiences. Likewise, in composition theory, expressivist, feminist, and collaborative pedagogies advocate the empowerment of students through discovery and articulation of voice as a way to make meaning and develop as persons and students. Both approaches to writing foreground the use of personal experience as a way to process the external world through the emotional landscape of the writer, yet critics ofemotionally expressive writing decry its usefulness to composition pedagogy because of its subjective, relativistic nature. Additionally, opponents of personal and emotionally expressive writing express concerns about the ethical and practical issues associated with situating emotion in firs-year composition while questioning the tendency of these models to privilege students' texts over outside texts.

However, Laura Micciche suggests that emotion is "a category of analysis" through which the writer can think and ultimately, acquire knowledge (2). In that respect, this analytical process catalyzed by emotion can lead to improved writing in first-year composition and a life long desire to use writing for personal and professional advancement.

This thesis combines the research about therapeutic writing and the theories of expressivist, feminist, collaborative, and process pedagogies to argue for an emerging point of contact for emotionally expressive and personal writing. By mining the deficits found in the current literature in regard to the use of this type of writing in first-year Klein composition I have developed a pedagogy based on the notion that emotion can provide a resource through which students can gain entry into knowledge-generating discourse and argue that the use of emotion and personal writing can achieve the goals of the academy while promoting an environment where students will emerge as more engaged writers and critical thinkers.

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