Rhetoric and the Global Turn in Higher Education

Christopher Minnix

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9783319717241
• eBook ISBN: 9783319717258
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Educational Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book studies the role of rhetoric in the expansive movement for global higher education in U.S. colleges and universities. Drawing on an analysis of how discourses of security, economy, and ethics shape the rhetoric of global higher education, as well as that of its populist and nationalist critics, the author argues for an understanding of global higher education as a site of rhetorical conflict over visions of students as citizens. In doing so, the work advances the project of transnational rhetorical education, a theoretical and pedagogical project that can foster forms of rhetorical inquiry, performance, and ethics that equip students to pursue transnational forms of civic engagement, belonging, and resistance. This book will be of interest to scholars and students in the fields of rhetoric and composition studies, communication, and education, as well as to faculty and administrators working in global higher education or internationalization programs.

© The Author(s) 2018

Christopher MinnixRhetoric and the Global Turn in Higher EducationRhetoric, Politics and Societyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71725-8_1

Begin Abstract

1. Rhetorical Education and Global Higher Education in an Age of Precarity

Christopher Minnix¹

(1)

University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA

End Abstract

That higher education in America is a global phenomenon is not news. American colleges and universities were historically shaped by the German model of the research university and have, since the late nineteenth century, remained centers of international exchange through both international research and the beginnings of robust programs of international student recruitment. What is news is the growing movement among US colleges and universities to define the outcomes of their undergraduate curricula in global terms and to define their overarching goal as preparing students for global citizenship . The past 20 years have witnessed significant efforts on the part of American colleges and universities to redefine the civic goals of higher education in global terms. Higher education researcher Peter Stearns (2009) has recently summed up the scope of these initiatives, stating that “it would be hard to find an American community college, college, or university that has not devoted serious new thought, in recent years, to some aspect—often, to many aspects—of global education” (1). The influence Stearns notes can be easily observed in the copious references to global citizenship and global education in the mission statements of many colleges and universities, as well as in a growing number of global higher education initiatives and organizations.

Drawing on the strength of the civic education movement in American higher education, organizations like Campus Compact and the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) have launched well-funded and significant initiatives to shape integrated university curricula for global education . While traditional global higher education programs such as study abroad or student exchange have reached a small number of students, more recent initiatives have sought to integrate global knowledge and capacities throughout the entire undergraduate curriculum. In a 2015 news article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Fanta Aw, the president of NAFSA, the Association of International Educators, points to the problem of relying too heavily on traditional programs such as study abroad for global education, noting “even if we double the numbers, most students will not go abroad” (Fischer 2015). Instead, she argues, “the place where there is the opportunity to make the greatest inroads is the internationalization of the curriculum” (Fischer 2015). Aw references efforts often termed “comprehensive internationalization,” which a recent report for the NAFSA defines as “a commitment, confirmed through action, to infuse international and comparative perspectives throughout the teaching, research, and service missions of higher education” (Hudzik 2011).¹ The AAC&U project Shared Futures is one of the most significant examples of these programs. Shared Futures is made up of a partnership with 32 colleges and universities and works to develop curricular and assessment models that speak to outcomes such as “global knowledge, global engagement, intercultural knowledge, and intercultural competence” (Hovland 2006, vii) throughout the university curriculum.

Global education programs are not simply confined to colleges and universities, however. A wide range of initiatives from the US Department of Education, the Council on Foreign Relations, political think-tanks, and international education associations have argued for internationalizing K-12 curricula in order to prepare students for global citizenship . Producing students who can actively engage in global society has become an often-repeated goal throughout the American educational system. In the introduction to the 2010 Common Core State Standards, for example, we are told that a standard was included “only when the best available evidence indicated that its mastery was essential for college and career readiness in a twenty-first century, globally competitive society” (3). In addition to the rhetoric of global competitiveness, we also see wide range of recent efforts toward integrating global learning into the Common Core State Standards . A recent collaboratively authored report from the Council of Chief State School Officers (one of the chief sponsors of the Common Core State Standards ) and the Asia Society Partnership for Global Learning, for example, asks educators, “how can your school creatively use the Common Core State Standards or state standards to promote global competence in English language arts and mathematics?” (Boix Mansilla and Jackson 2011, 87). Though the curricular outcomes and civic goals of these programs and initiatives often vary, they reflect a sustained movement for internationalizing the curriculum of schools and universities and often a sustained commitment to ideals of global citizenship.

Visions of global higher education manifest themselves in different ways across various institutions, but throughout the vast literature on global higher education and comprehensive internationalization, we find a central, recurring relationship between students’ capabilities as global communicators and their roles as national and global citizens. At this time, however, no study has placed the global turn in rhetorical scholarship in dialogue with the broader global higher education movement. Rhetoric and the Global Turn in Higher Education argues that while there are compelling reasons for rhetorical educators and writing teachers to contribute to global higher education, there are also compelling reasons to critique and strategically resist the project of global higher education. Rhetoric and the Global Turn in Higher Education thus takes up both the possibilities of the “global turn” in rhetoric and composition studies and communication outlined by Hesford (2006, 787), while also paying specific attention to the “global cautions” (787) she outlines. The global turn, as Hesford describes it, “necessitates new collaborations and frameworks, broader notions of composing practices, critical literacies that are linked to global citizenship, a reexamination of existing protocols and divisions, and the formation of new critical frameworks in light of a changing world” (796). At the same time, however, she cautions that in taking up the interdisciplinary project of the global turn, “we also need to consider the links between education and empire, the impact of security policies on the humanities, and the degree to which our colleges and universities, including the humanities, are being coopted by the global war on terror and national security initiatives” (796). As I will illustrate in the next chapter, these cautions are not simply potential, but play a significant role in the history of global higher education from the Cold War period to our current moment.

For now, however, I want to simply note the necessity of proceeding with caution as we take up the global turn in higher education and continue to explore the global turn in rhetoric . In the introduction to their recent special issue of Composition Studies on “Composition’s Global Turn,” Brian Ray and Connie Kendall Theado (2016) suggest that the global turn described by Hesford “seems inevitable” for scholars in composition studies to engage because, the “discourse about higher education” is becoming “more fully immersed in and responsive to global flows of individuals and cultures” (10). Important work in composition studies has focused on both transnational composition and on issues of globalization, postcolonialism, and translingualism. Christine Donahue’s (2009) survey of “internationalization” in composition studies has pointed to important pedagogical work, international writing research, and consulting projects as indications of the growing global reach of research on composition and rhetoric (213). A growing body of research has also addressed writing programs around the world, as the contributors to Thaiss et al.’s (2012) recent collection Writing Programs Worldwide and David S. Martins’s (2015) collection Transnational Writing Program Administration illustrate. In addition, work on transnational rhetoric, such as Rebecca Dingo’s (2012) Networking Arguments: Transnational Feminism and Public Policy Writing has explicated how global networks of power shape identity and agency . Research in critical literacy and World Englishes, code-meshing, and translingualism is also challenging our understanding of the politics of academic literacy and their ability to silence student voices and gloss over issues of political difference (Villanueva 1997; Guerra 2004, 2016; Canagarajah 2006, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Rhetorical Education and Global Higher Education in an Age of Precarity
• 2. Global Higher Education and the Production of Global Citizenships
• 3. Making Room for Rhetorical Education in the Global Curriculum
• 4. Seeing Precarity: Rhetorical Citizenship, Global Images, and Rhetorical Ethics in the Global Classroom
• 5. Dwelling in the Global: Rhetorical Education, Transnational Rhetorical Ecologies, and the Locations of the Global
• 6. Conclusion: Rhetorical Education and the Local Production of Global Higher Education
• Back Matter