Blog Post: Casanave and Writing Across Borders

The woman in the Writing Across Borders made a profound statement about how there are clashes between her cultural background and some of the philosophies that make up large aspects of the American education testing/analysis structures. For example, she said that in her home country, Malawi, she grew up in a society that did not allow open critique of the government and its structures without there being some form of consequence. Therefore, in her American university, it makes sense that in an assignment which asked her to critique something may be more burdensome, or at the very least, it may feel like they have a negative association with the assignments requirements.

This brought to mind the Casanave chapter because when considering intercultural rhetoric, I realize I need to consider the students from other countries as I design something like a rhetorical analysis, especially one that has social or political themes within their topics. If a student is from a restricted country with high security or fundamentalist socialist/communist media regulations, I need to take extra time to walk students through the open doors the assignment hold to freely critique the government, society, etc. These sorts of inclusion sensitivities can also be unfolded in more private or one on one environments, such as a writing center appointment or an office hour.

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