Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation
 

Fostering Authority in Readers and Writers

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  • As a reader and as a teacher of introductory reading and writing courses, I am persuaded by the concept of a genuine authority in which all readers both value and seek to examine their early readings of texts. What I have come to regard as a pretended authority or mastery, on the other hand, is troubling to me as a teacher and reader. This more traditional way of reading and writing, in which readers seek to "find" an author's "meaning" and to communicate this meaning with an assured and knowing voice, has seemed in my experience as both an instructor and student to ignore or brush over the real complexity in both written texts and in the texts of students' and others' lives. In spite of my belief in the importance and efficacy of a questioning rather than a masterful authority, I sometimes, in my teaching and reading and writing, still search for and value what I perceive as author's meanings. I have encountered this tendency in many of my students, as well, and in many of my own past reading and writing teachers; tradition has deeply lodged in us the looming image of the Great Author, and the notion that we must master this author's meanings to be successful readers of their texts. Perhaps one of the most powerful dilemmas facing instructors of reading and writing courses--a dilemma which helps to shape this thesis--is that of fostering an authority based on self-valuing, self-conscious reading while at the same time communicating to readers that the texts we are reading can be as complex as the meanings we make of them. While the formal, institutionalized authority of authors must be challenged by all readers, these authors' genuine authority as writers--as makers of meaning like ourselves and our students--must be respected as we respect our own developing and individual authority.
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