Composition Forum 32 - Fall 2015 - Anecdotal Relations: On Orienting to Disability in the Composition Classroom

Oct 15, 2026

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Attention to stories compositionists tell about teaching and learning reveals how teachers orient to disability in the classroom. The article argues that “anecdotal relations”—narratives shared about disability—can frustrate productive negotiations with disability. It examines two problematic orientations: disability as personal and disability as threatening, showing how they can create barriers that prevent open engagement. Recasting these narratives may support writing classrooms that welcome disability.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages15

Reading Time38 min

AccessFree to download

Anecdotal Relations: On Orienting to Disability in the Composition Classroom

Abstract

Identifying and Analyzing Anecdotal Relations

Anecdotal Relations with Disability

Current Issue From the Editors Weblog Editorial Board Editorial Policy Submissions Archives Accessibility Search Composition Forum 32, Fall 2015 Anecdotal Relations: On Orienting to Disability in the Composition Classroom Stephanie L. Kerschbaum Abstract: Attention to stories compositionists tell about teaching and learning reveals some of the ways that teachers orient to disability in the classroom. This article argues that these “anecdotal relations”—relations that are created and disseminated through narratives people share about disability—can frustrate productive negotiations with disability in the classroom. Two anecdotal relations receive particular attention in this article: disability as personal and disability as threatening. Critically recasting these anecdotal relations may offer potential for creating writing classroom spaces that welcome disability. By returning to how we commonly speak of disability, we find the invitational possibility of developing new relations to it. --Tanya Titchkosky (A Question of Access 56) Stories about disability have a way of emerging, sometimes in surprising places, across composition and rhetoric scholarship. This essay explores the work that such stories do for teachers vis-à-vis disability, even when those stories sometimes may not—on the surface—seem to be about disability. These stories constitute what I am calling “anecdotal relations”—relations to disability that are created and disseminated through the narratives people share about disability. More specifically, I suggest that embedded in these stories are two problematic orientationsto disability that can frustrate rather than open up possibilities for new relations with disability. In what follows, I first outline my approach to identifying and analyzing anecdotes of disability in composition research. I then use three narrative examples to illustrate the anecdotal relations of disability as personal and of disability as threatening. These anecdotal relations are problematic because, rather than inviting disability into the classroom, they enact barriers that prevent teachers and students from openly engaging with one another. In urging teachers to build relationships with disability, I further suggest that such relationships are needed in order to address problems that arise when disability is largely an imagined or hypothetical presence, and I conclude by outlining how orienting to uncertainty may open up some moves that welcome disability in the composition classroom. Identifying and Analyzing Anecdotal Relations Over the last ten years, as I’ve attended disability-related presentations at the Conference on College Composition and Communication and read and engaged with a wide range of disability rhetoric scholarship, I’ve come to notice some of the ways that—as Tanya Titchkosky puts it,“we commonly speak of disability” (56) . These stories construct disability and relationships to disability in particular ways that I have heard echoed again and again as I’ve delivered workshops on disability and teaching, talked with local and national colleagues about disability and composition, and worked to cultivate general disability awareness on my own campus. I use the term“anecdotal relations” to refer to the ways that stories create, portray, and foster relationships between the narrator of the story (who is often also a character in the story) and those who are represented in the story. Some of the stories I identified seemed to prevent such relationship-building between teachers and students. I unpack two anecdotal relations that resist relationship-building with disability in the hopes of inviting readers to join me in“developing new relations to” disability (Titchkosky 56) . I focus on these two anecdotal relations—of disability as personal and disability as threatening—because they also underscore a key challenge that teachers face as they design and implement composition pedagogy: that of buil

FAQs

What are “anecdotal relations” in this article?

They are relations created and disseminated through narratives people share about disability, including how stories create, portray, and foster relationships between the narrator and those represented in the story.

Which two orientations to disability are examined as particularly problematic?

The article focuses on disability as personal and disability as threatening, arguing these orientations can frustrate productive negotiations with disability in the classroom.

How do the article’s narrative examples connect to classroom teaching and learning?

They illustrate how teachers’ imagined relationships to disability can enact barriers, rather than inviting disability into the classroom, and how re-narrating these stories could make space for more welcoming pedagogical moves.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by awa