| This study examines the emergence of publications focusing on identity categories of race/ethnicity, gender, class, sexual orientation, and dislability within the scholarly journals College Composition and Communication (CCC) and College English (CE) from 1939 until 2004. Using a historical method outlined by Connors (1992), this study classifies articles according to identity variables, assessing constructions of identity within the texts by a comparative analysis of national and disciplinary political movements. The analysis indicates that identity has served increasingly as a focus in these journals, particularly after 1990. In addition, the data suggests that over time, categories of identity are constructed in more complex and varied rhetorical ways. Such occurrences do not exist in a vacuum, however. Peaks in identity variable data are shown to coincide with struggles of representation happening both within the discipline of rhetoric and composition studies as well as in the national political arena, such as the Vietnam War, the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, and the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. These findings about identity publications suggest that they have helped the field address the oppression of minority groups and their struggles for representation, that they construct and sustain the professional identity of scholar-as-activist, and that they uphold the privileging of discursive theories of identity. |
