ABSTRACT
For years I had created composition courses that explored a particular area of content, based on the conviction that language was best acquired in the context of using it to make sense of rich and complex subject matter. As I planned these courses, I had repeatedly returned to considering content that would deal more explicitly with the situations of my particular students, students who had shared with me the difficulties they had experienced as a result of their minority status, their inability to use English as well as their native speaker counterparts, their sense that they were invisible both at UMass/Boston and within the larger society. My thinking about this was informed by the same conviction that shaped my decisions about other thematically based courses I had created: if students’ language and writing are promoted as a result of their engagement with issues they view as intriguing, illuminating, and authentic, then a course that places their realities at the center rather than on the margins would be all the more dramatic in its impact. Yet I continued to shy away from the idea of such a curriculum, afraid of what might happen if we overtly addressed these issues, afraid that this material was far too disturbing, too risky. In retrospect, I realize that this fear stemmed not just from how I thought my students would react to this material but from a concern with how I might be drawn into the center of a course that focused on issues inextricably connected to my life.
