Foregrounding Ethical Awareness in Composition and English Studies

This collection of essays is the first sustained look at the emerging ethical concerns in composition and English studies. Unlike other works that may have used ethics as a way to set a particular code of conduct or to examine a particular area of study, this book describes a range of situations, obliging us to reevaluate the ethical systems that we have previously accepted.

Fontaine and Hunter have organized the essays into conceptual sections that focus on three of the many ways in which our current situations can be reconsidered. In the first section, "Reevaluating Contemporary Pedagogies," the authors identify ethical problems that arise within some of our most widely accepted pedagogical strategies and perspectives. "Competing Obligations" refers to the ethical problems that emerge as teachers and administrators find themselves faced with allegiances to more than one group and more than one vision in the academy. And the authors in "Professional Evolutions" consider ways in which developments and changes in the world outside the English department create ethical conflicts close to home.

Together, these essays provide ethical vantage points from which it is incumbent upon us to view our agency in our profession and in our classrooms. The book's wide range of voices and perspectives helps us begin to understand our own personal and professional ethical awareness and to anticipate the issues we all must face.