In spring 2017, composition instructors Brittanie Weatherbie-Greco and Dan Messier proposed the creation of a website that published composition student papers once a year. It was a brilliant idea. After gaining administrative approval and assembling a small team of interested instructors and working out some key details (What would we call it? Where would we publish it? How will we collect submissions? Who will review them? Should the essays be copyedited?), Brittanie, Dan, and a group of their colleagues shepherded the first issue of Undercurrents online in fall 2018.
This year, the 2022 Undercurrents marks the fifth anniversary of a brilliant idea. Among the now-40 student essays that the journal has published since 2018, the works in this issue again represent the wide range of interests, voices, and talents that UMass Boston students share with us each year.
Quinn Gabrielle Cantor (“Race and Rhetoric: Examining How the Audience’s Race Creates Rhetorical Constraints and Influences Rhetoric”), Ina Tolentino (“Breaking Free from Gender Norms: Adolescent Constructions of Femininity Through the Patriarchy and High School Musical”), and Emma Kennedy (“What’s In a Name?: A Discussion of the Nature of Bilingual Education in the United States”) contend with fundamental questions that motivate the very existence of English and composition programs: How do rhetorical and narrative choices impact possibilities of being in the real world? How might a rhetor’s racial identity limit what they can say, and how, and to whom? How might a seemingly benign piece of adolescent media limit how children may choose to express their gender identities? How might labels for educational practices—and the students whom those practices serve—constrain important debates about language and literacy education, particularly for the millions of multilingual students in U.S. schools?
Likewise tackling weighty questions of the human condition, this time from a philosophical perspective, Anna Krasnoslobodtseva (“Moral Punishment”) wonders whether moral punishment is possible, or merely an oxymoron. Considering the morality of incarceration and capital punishment in the U.S., Krasnoslobodtseva suggests that if our judicial system remains built on an “eye for an eye” approach, we may want to “invest in some protective goggles.”
Alex Der-Kazaryan (“Textism and the Shift in English Writing”), Vance Naftal (“Fake News’ Negotiation of a Useful Education”), and Jillian Steeves (“Rage Against the Machine: How Screen Time Is Impairing Our Intelligence and What Can We Do About It?”) consider the consequences of digital technologies for language, learning, and intellectual development. Texting, social media, and the internet have radically reshaped social life in the 21st century, but not without residual consequences on human lives. Collectively, these essays provide instructors and students with an important reminder to take a critical approach to the rhetorical, political, and social effects of our immersion in digital culture.
Finally, Karina Silva (“The Brain, the Block, the Bummed Writer”) and Kylie Medeiros (“Your Teachers Are Bullshitting You”) provide highly relevant commentary on experiences that are all-too-familiar to student writers struggling to get the job done. Both essays offer solutions that students may find useful: a range of theory-based strategies for overcoming writer’s block and a rationale for why, perhaps, “bullshit” may be more strategy than scourge.
While these students’ work rightfully claim center stage, I want to dedicate this 5th issue to the past and present volunteer composition instructors who have served as members of the Undercurrents editorial board. Like the mitochondrion that I once diagrammed in loving detail for my 8th grade biology project, the editorial board is the powerhouse of this organization. Over the years the board has reviewed hundreds of student essays, and each and every one is read by at least three board members. These independent reviews are then brought to the table (a literal one in pre-COVID days, usually holding French fries along with laptops) for lively board discussions, as members collaboratively review each pool of submissions in order to reach a general consensus on the year’s honorees. After these hours-long discussions result in the year’s list of finalists, the team gets to work on confirming with authors, editing, and finally publishing the issue. This work, which largely happens in the summer months, is done with love, care, and a collaborative spirit. Through this process, students’ work—even the submissions that are not ultimately selected for publication—are read in earnest by an audience beyond their own instructors and peers.
These five years of Undercurrents would not be possible without the innovation and leadership of Editorial Director Brittanie Weatherbie-Greco and Digital Editor Dan Messier. There is not one detail of the Undercurrents process that has not been championed by their efforts: from soliciting submissions, to organizing the board review process, to circulating print materials, to throwing celebratory receptions, Brittanie and Dan have made Undercurrents so much more than a “website that publishes student papers once a year”: it is an annual celebration of student writing, and a reminder of why the more than 60 instructors who teach composition at UMass Boston do what they do.
On behalf of the current editorial board—Brittanie Weatherbie-Greco, Dan Messier, Susan Field, Natalia Scarpetti, Itai Halevi, and Clarissa Eaton —we hope you will enjoy this issue and join us in celebrating five years of Undercurrents at UMass Boston.
-Lauren M. Bowen, Editor-in-Chief of Undercurrents and Director of the Composition Program