Basic writing without basic writers

In this dissertation, I address Basic Writing’s legacy of ascribing deficient identities to students. I argue that there is no such thing as a “basic writer” and that the term is an unwanted inheritance of a historically inequitable system of higher education. This argument begins with a critique of the term’s usage in the disciplinary literature. Then, I examine the historical circulation of deficit models of students-as-writers through archival materials from the University of Illinois, first in the early 1940s and then the late 1960s and early 1970s. Though much of the historical data pre-dates the disciplinary origins of Basic Writing as a subfield of composition studies, it reveals an epistemological continuity of deficit orientation to students and their writing, which continues to operate in Basic Writing scholarship and practice, despite the subfield’s dedication to educational equity. Finally, I present data from interviews with current and former basic writing students, whose resourceful literate practices defy the logics of reductive institutional categorization. Ultimately, I argue that Basic Writing needs to re-dedicate itself to its pursuit of educational equity, but without recourse to the conveniences of typology. In direct contradiction of any deficit model of students and their writing, I contend that students are anti-tropes, always eluding and exceeding our reductive attempts to categorize them. The dissertation finally presents the beginnings of a resource model of students-as-writers, as a necessary step for Basic Writing to take toward its equitable aims.U of I OnlyAuthor requested U of Illinois access only (OA after 2yrs) in Vireo ETD syste