Rhetorics of Overcoming - by Allison Harper Hitt (Paperback)

About the Book

"Addresses the in/accessibility of writing classroom and writing center practices for disabled and nondisabled student writers, arguing that rewriting rhetorics of overcoming--the idea that disabled students must overcome their disabilities in order to be successful--as narratives of coming over is one way to overcome ableist pedagogical standards"--

Book Synopsis

Rhetorics of Overcoming addresses the in/accessibility of writing classroom and writing center practices for disabled and nondisabled student writers, exploring how rhetorics of overcoming--the idea that disabled students must overcome their disabilities in order to be successful--manifest in writing studies scholarship and practices.

Allison Harper Hitt argues that rewriting rhetorics of overcoming as narratives of "coming over" is one way to overcome ableist pedagogical standards. Whereas rhetorics of overcoming rely on medical-model processes of diagnosis, disclosure, cure, and overcoming for individual students, coming over involves valuing disability and difference and challenging systemic issues of physical and pedagogical inaccessibility.

Hitt calls for developing understandings of disability and difference that move beyond accommodation models in which students are diagnosed and remediated, instead working collaboratively--with instructors, administrators, consultants, and students themselves--to craft multimodal, universally designed writing pedagogies that meet students' access needs.

About the CCCC Studies in Writing & Rhetoric (SWR) Series:
In this series, the methods of studies vary from the critical to historical to linguistic to ethnographic, and their authors draw on work in various fields that inform composition--including rhetoric, communication, education, discourse analysis, psychology, cultural studies, and literature. Their focuses are similarly diverse--ranging from individual writers and teachers, to classrooms and communities and curricula, to analyses of the social, political, and material contexts of writing and its teaching.

Review Quotes

In this accessible, thoughtful, engaging text, Allison Hitt enacts a pedagogy of disclosure, inviting all of us to come over together to reconsider the harms and barriers regularly raised by rhetorics of overcoming in writing studies. Taking up theories from multimodal composing and universal design to individual pedagogies and programmatic practices, Hitt brilliantly teaches us what it might mean to come over rather than overcome, and consequently, to participate in creating more socially just institutions and fields. --Stephanie Kerschbaum, University of Washington