As a site where academic culture is replicated in the writing of students, the composition classroom is a site of struggle over class, cultural, ethnic, and racial differences. So, in my dissertation I focus on the issue of race and writing pedagogy. I do so by researching the history of writing instruction at a traditionally black university and investigating how the theory and praxis of teaching writing has evolved. My research in the areas of critical race theory, literacy theories and practices, histories of theories of writing instruction, and Black higher education in the United States prepared me for this research by giving me a theoretical, cultural, and historical base from which to begin.

The history of writing instruction and current pedagogy gives me a base from which to examine how the traditional pedagogical techniques differ from those that have been used at historically black universities and how they have been adapted to fit the ever-changing student populace. Texts such as James A. Berlin's Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in the American Colleges, 1900-1985 will be used to examine the history of traditional approaches to the teaching of writing. Moreover, texts such as Donald P. Macedo's Literacies of Power: What Americans Are not Allowed to Know and Geneva Smitherman's Talkin' and Testifyin': The Language of Black America can be used to interrogate why it is imperative for Composition pedagogy to keep pace with the increasing diversity of the student population.

Critical race theory offers me insight into both current and historical theory. These theories can be used to critically inform pedagogical theory. Theories such as those presented in Charlotte K. Brooks' edited Tapping Potential: English and Language Arts for the Black Learner offer an insight into how vernacular affects students ability to write and how pedagogical techniques can be adapted to help vernacular speakers, while Warren Crichlow and Cameron McCarthy's edited Race, Identity, and Representation in Education discusses the cultural costs of being a racial minority in the academic world and being an educational minority in minority culture based discourse community.

Instructional materials on culture, intellect, and education for people of color offer a historical base for theories and philosophies that have historically dictated what should be taught to minority students in order to make them productive members of society. The seminal non-fiction texts in this section will range from Marcus Garvey's The Course on African Philosophy in the early 1900's to Victor Villanueva's Bootstraps: From An American Academic of Color in the 1990's and offer a broad historical base for my dissertation research.