While so many aspects of my job as director of the UMass Boston Composition Program are invigorating and rewarding, reviewing the outstanding work of our students for this inaugural issue of Undercurrents has been, without question, one of the most pleasurable. This journal represents UMass Boston Composition students as they truly are, including their brilliance, their eloquence, their struggles, and their growth. Whether you are reading this journal as a fellow or prospective student, as a teacher of writing, or as a curious visitor, our hope in this and in all future issues is to present an honest celebration of the diverse voices of English 101: Composition I and English 102: Composition II. In this inaugural issue, I am struck by the fact that these students’ excellent work, as selected from a large pool of outstanding nominees, collectively represent the depth and breadth of the work our students do every semester.
Opening the issue with a dynamic pair of literacy narratives from English 101, Yasmim Alves da Silva and Mark Ballou draw on experiential knowledge to demonstrate that literacy development is deeply contextual, occurring within specific personal, social, and cultural conditions. Such reflective accounts are commonly used in college writing courses because they provide opportunities for students to develop awareness of their own learning, including what led to their arrival at the university, what choices they might make in the present, and what might help them on the road ahead.
Equally courageous in her willingness to write about her own personal experiences and deep-seated beliefs, Kamla Javier offers a critical examination of religion as a basis of morality. By considering a blend of sources, including statistical data and personal interviews, Javier’s essay illustrates that research can do more than simply “report”: it can make good on first-year composition’s ambition to help students to learn to argue logically, ethically, and generously.
Elizabeth Lefrancois’ and Ana Radonjic Sabbagh’s research essays demonstrate the program’s efforts to help students recognize writing, literacy, and language as subjects of study in their own right. In their respective studies of profanity and slang, both writers illustrate the powerful ways that language of all kinds reflects and mediates human relationships and identities.
Closing out the issue, Eileen Riley’s feminist rhetorical analysis of the Maidenform company’s “I dreamed…” print advertising campaign offers two important reminders: first, through her close study of images, that composing involves forms or modes of communication beyond the written word; and second, that rhetorical analysis can do much more than document and describe—it can also provide a critical lens for considering how everyday texts can shape beliefs about who we are, and what we might become.
Naturally, there is much more outstanding work that our students have done and continue to do in the program that is not represented in this issue. For this reason, I am eagerly looking forward to many more issues to come, in which our students will doubtlessly continue to impress, surprise, and inspire us.
-Lauren M. Bowen, Editor-in-Chief of Undercurrents and Director of the Composition Program