| This dissertation reconsiders the rhetoric of online education as a solely beneficial enterprise. Specifically, I argue that by framing online education as a positive technological advancement for populations who might otherwise be unable to earn a degree in the mainstream classroom, online programs simultaneously marginalize these populations (women, working-class citizens, persons with disabilities, contingent faculty) by preventing them from coming onto that mainstream campus. This marginalization, however, is masked by the belief that online writing education is a positive solution to the panoply of difficulties that marginalized populations experience in mainstream educational contexts. Thus, in framing online writing education as a solution to the "problems" that marginalized populations experience, marginalized bodies are framed as problems to be solved. In turn, framing "non-normal" bodies as problems to be solved intensifies feelings of shame, which generates highly charged emotional exchanges in online writing courses. Though rather than confront these emotionally charged exchanges with a pedagogy that works through the struggle, online education is consistently articulated in terms of nurturance, which thereby problematically frames both online students and instructors. Thus, I argue that we must not only revise how we culturally construct online education, but revise how we deal with the "outlaw emotions" that result from cultural marginalization and pedagogical misrecognition. |
