79: Reading Is Listening: (Di)Versifying My Voice Through Feminist Theory Literature

This project examines the confluence of college-level text selection and personal voice by exploring a specific set of the author’s inter/actions with exclusion and inclusion in the graduate school setting. Theory, poetry, and narrative combine to show how exposure to written text (i.e., the literature) at the postsecondary level informs and shapes the thinking and actions that guide the curriculum choices we make as college educators; purposeful and unintended text selection strategies lie at the center of students’ shifting moments of integration, separation, and alienation. As the culture of high stakes accountability continues to grow for colleges and universities, a commitment from scholars to communicate the spherical connection (viz., between text and voice) in a policy context is needed. Creative and critical documentation of how differing literatures have influenced the development of personal voice is a means for meeting this goal. Ultimately, this project serves as a framework for such an account.