Multimembership and Identity in Writing Centers and in Industry: Examining the Work of Reconciliation in the Michigan Tech Multiliteracies Center and at Kimberly-Clark Corporation

Writing center scholarship and practice have approached how issues of identity influence communication but have not fully considered ways of making identity a key feature of writing center research or practice. This dissertation suggests a new way to view identity -- through an experience of "multimembership" or the consideration that each identity is constructed based on the numerous community memberships that make up that identity. Etienne Wenger (1998) proposes that a fully formed identity is ultimately impossible, but it is through the work of reconciling memberships that important individual and community transformations can occur. Since Wenger also argues that reconciliation "is the most significant challenge" for those moving into new communities of practice (or, "engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor" (4)), yet this challenge often remains tacit, this dissertation examines and makes explicit how this important work is done at two different research sites - a university writing center (the Michigan Tech Multiliteracies Center) and at a multinational corporation (Kimberly-Clark Corporation). Drawing extensively on qualitative ethnographic methods including interview transcriptions, observations, and case studies, as well as work from scholars in writing center studies (Grimm, Denney, Severino), literacy studies (New London Group, Street, Gee), composition (Horner and Trimbur, Canagarajah, Lu), rhetoric (Crowley), and identity studies (Anzaldua, Pratt), I argue that, based on evidence from the two sites, writing centers need to educate tutors to not only take identity into consideration, but to also make individuals' reconciliation work more visible, as it will continue once students and tutors leave the university. Further, as my research at the Michigan Tech Multiliteracies Center and Kimberly-Clark will show, communities can (and should) change their practices in ways that account for reconciliation work as identity, communication, and learning are inextricably bound up with one another.

Michigan Tech Lode Pictorial

Vol 2 No 3; 8 February 1964. Land of the Sandman.

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Under the Crimson Flag: Fahle Burman's Two Trips to the Michigan Supreme Court

Erick Fahle Burman. a Swedish-born, Finnish-speaking labor and political activist, twice had cases argued on his behalf before the Michigan Supreme Court. In People vs. Burman, Burman, along with nine other defendants, had his conviction affirmed by the court and all ten were forced to pay a fine of $25 each for disturbing the peace. In People vs. Immonen, Burman and his co-defendant, Unto Immonen, had their convictions overturned because of improper evidence being admitted in their lower court trial. Though the conviction was overturned, the two men had already spent several months as prisoners at hard labor in Marquette State Prison located in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Over twenty-five years separate Burman's two trips to Michigan's high court. On the first occasion, his arrest came less than five years after his arrival as an immigrant to the U. S. On the second occasion, his arrest came less than two years after his return to the state after being away for nearly two decades. On both occasions, Burman was arrested for his involvement with red flags. Though separated by decades, these cases, taken together, are important indicators of the state of Finnish-American radicalism in the years surrounding the red flag incidents and provide interesting insights into the delicacies of political suppression. Examination of these cases within the larger career of Fahle Burman points up his overlooked importance in the history of Finnish-American socialism and communism.

Työmies and Pappi: A Critical Look at the Finnish Socialist Federation and the Suomi Synod in Early 20th Century Michigan

At the dawn of the 20th century, the burgeoning influence of the Finnish immigrant socialist-unionist movement collided with the authoritative, conservative nature of the Suomi Synod. While the Synod, headquartered in Hancock, Michigan, was attempting to recreate the Finnish state church in America, the quickly radicalizing immigrant socialist-unionist movement was attempting to convert the masses to a materialist message of class struggle manifested by then current conditions in Michigan’s Copper Country and industrial America. The most persuasive voice of class struggle for immigrant Finns at this time was the Finnish-language newspaper Työmies (The Workingman) published in Hancock. Caustic editorials on religion, critical examinations of Christian orthodoxy in translations of Marx and Kropotkin, and ribald cartoons lampooning members of the Synod clergy and laity all demonstrated the overwrought interactions between Työmies and the Synod. This paper will highlight these tense interactions through analysis of doctrine, ideology, and imagery by delving into the primary historical record to reveal the vast gulf between two of the major institutions in early 20th century Finnish immigrant social life.

Father Dietz, the Catholic Church and the 1913 Michigan Copper Strike

Labor Historian Marc Karson has singled out “labor priest” Peter E. Dietz as one of the strongest proponents for the active implementation of the Catholic Church’s 1890’s labor encyclical Rerum Novarum in the daily practice of American Catholics. Biographer Sister Mary Harrita Fox pointed out that in his work, Dietz “was particularly concerned over the role of the church in the copper strike in Upper Michigan.” This “particular concern” should be noted since the 1913 strike was one of the only disputes where Dietz went out of his way to visit and become actively involved. Why the keen interest? This presentation will review the impetus for the huge effort which brought Peter E. Dietz to the Copper Country and solely to that dispute alone, the resulting visit and report that he made concerning the strike, the important role he believed this visit and stance in the Copper Strike had in the future of the Church’s relationship to the US labor movement. The presentation will look at both what Dietz thought would occur as a result of his 1913 trip to the Keweenaw and what actually happened in this pivotal pre-World War One era event. The paper will put Father Peter E. Dietz and the Catholic Church into the larger frame of how religion has been viewed within the history of the Strike.

Exhibit: "Michigan-I-O": Alan Lomax and the 1938 Library of Congress Folk-Song Expedition"

In 1938, a young folk music collector named Alan Lomax—destined to become one of the legendary folklorists of the 20th century recorded Michigan’s richly varied folk music traditions for the Archive of American Folk-Song at the Library of Congress. Michigan in the 1930s was experiencing a golden age of folksong collecting, as local folklorists mined the trove of ballads remembered by aging lumbermen and Great Lakes schoonermen. In addition to the ballads of these north woods singers, Lomax recorded a vibrant mix of ethnic music from Detroit to the western Upper Peninsula. The multimedia performance event Folksongs from Michigan-i-o combines live performance with historic images, color movie footage, and recorded sound from the Great Depression. Some of these materials haven’t been heard or seen by the general public for more than seven decades. The traveling exhibition Michigan Folksong Legacy: Grand Discoveries from the Great Depression brings Alan Lomax’s 1938 field trip to life through words, song lyrics, photographs, and sound recordings. Ten interpretive banners explore themes and each panel contains a QR code that links to related sound recordings from the Alan Lomax Collection at the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress.

Exhibit: "Michigan-I-O": Alan Lomax and the 1938 Library of Congress Folk-Song Expedition"

In 1938, a young folk music collector named Alan Lomax—destined to become one of the legendary folklorists of the 20th century recorded Michigan’s richly varied folk music traditions for the Archive of American Folk-Song at the Library of Congress. Michigan in the 1930s was experiencing a golden age of folksong collecting, as local folklorists mined the trove of ballads remembered by aging lumbermen and Great Lakes schoonermen. In addition to the ballads of these north woods singers, Lomax recorded a vibrant mix of ethnic music from Detroit to the western Upper Peninsula. The multimedia performance event Folksongs from Michigan-i-o combines live performance with historic images, color movie footage, and recorded sound from the Great Depression. Some of these materials haven’t been heard or seen by the general public for more than seven decades. The traveling exhibition Michigan Folksong Legacy: Grand Discoveries from the Great Depression brings Alan Lomax’s 1938 field trip to life through words, song lyrics, photographs, and sound recordings. Ten interpretive banners explore themes and each panel contains a QR code that links to related sound recordings from the Alan Lomax Collection at the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress.