Critical Latticework: A Theory of Identifications in Writing and Community Spaces

In this book project, I examine ethnographic observations, semi-structured interviews with youth slam poets in Tucson and LGBTQIA+ college students from rural Kansas, personal narratives, and youth slam poetry in conversation with theories of identification to demonstrate how writers perform, inhabit, and develop a consciousness indicative of coalition and critical inquiry. Research participants demonstrate evidence of what I propose as critical latticework, which is a way to imagine and practice the fluidity of identification and engage with ethos and agency in rhetorical, social, and writing contexts. I aim to illustrate the value of critical latticework as a perspective that can contribute to altering our perceptions of youth as developing in one direction, with one sense of healthy progression to adulthood. This shift in perspective is significant for the ways in which we approach the teaching of writing in myriad contexts. An understanding of critical latticework is transferrable to writing classrooms as well as writing centers and offers a practical metaphor with which students of writing can imagine and move with fluidity to generate meaningful discourse and expand their perspectives on identity and writing.