Date of Award

Summer 8-12-2014

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

First Advisor

Susan Talburt

Second Advisor

Megan Sinnott

Third Advisor

Julie Kubala

Abstract

In my critical discourse analysis of The Intown Academy's (TIA) various documents and media—including the school's charter petition, charter, Parent-Student Handbook, and website—I articulate the school's subjectifying narratives and analyze how these narratives function to (re)produce particular subjects according to tropes of threat/crisis, opportunity, corporate/non-profit benevolence, and personal responsibility. Identifying these subjects, I analyze how they are effected/affected by the practice of education at TIA. To this end, I examine the various practices of school discipline codified in the Parent and Student Contracts in TIA's 2012-2013 Parent Student Handbook, including mandates for the wearing of school uniforms, volunteer labor, and reorientations of the family and the private space of the home. I conclude that TIA discursively produces indebted subjects whose educational and economic survival depends on the reorientation of their lives in service to the school.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.57709/5813869

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