Content area
Abstract
This dissertation project considers the possibility of "translating" the constructed identity of two-year college English faculty collectively. Through the presentation and explication of professional identity narratives written by four community college English instructors, this project demonstrates how faculty position themselves within this context differently, and how they speak of that positioning in ways that authorize those positions. Without a specific professional script to follow, two-year college English instructors construct improvised professional roles and crafted responses to this shared context in ways that make sense, feel right, and project a sense of self to others in ways they are comfortable based on personal, professional, and institutional values and experiences. What appears on the surface as an absence of a collective "we" can be read as evidence of contextual maneuvering, as persuasive responses to a shared context that can be understood, "translated," collectively. The project closes with implications for two-year college English faculty, English graduate program faculty and advisors, and two-year college administrators in their roles toward recognizing and supporting the coexistence of individual personal, professional, and institutional constructions of a collective subject grounded in "connected inquiry" by reflective practioners.
