In this study, I re-theorize identity and self-positioning as central focuses of feminist composition pedagogy by building a theory of ethos as epistemology within writing studies. My study moves ethos beyond a mere rhetorical strategy by posing it as a way of knowing. Thus, I analyze the concept of ethos as a feminist way of teaching and ultimately present a fuller theory of feminist ethos that draws on ecological and epistemic frameworks to re-conceptualize how the ancient concept could be employed as a teachable habit within TA preparation programs and within the feminist composition classroom. This study contributes to conversations in composition studies, first-year composition, feminist rhetorics, and multiculturalism, and in doing so, it seeks to foreground the importance of rhetorical knowledge and epistemic diversity within composition pedagogy. While the first three chapters of my study present a revitalized theory of ethos as epistemology, in the concluding chapters, the project gathers information about how Florida State University composition instructors understand and implement two things in their college composition classrooms: (1) feminist rhetorical principles; and (2) the concept of ethos –understood in pragmatic terms as "tone," "voice," "personal appeal," "credibility," but more recently considered in feminist rhetorical theory as an embodied dimension of selfhood that reflects the changing subject positions and locations from which all rhetors speak and compose. In short, my project enacts a combination of empirical and theoretical methods: first I build a theoretical model of ethos as epistemology within writing studies by situating the concept within the following theoretical conversations: feminist pedagogy, epistemology, critical race theory, intersectionality, and multiculturalism. As I theorize ethos alongside these theoretical conversations, I attend to the ways that identity is flattened, especially within studies of multiculturalism and intersectionality. Then I collect and analyze instructors' responses to questions about their major epistemological leanings in pedagogy and patterns of practice in order to make speculative conclusions about how the theoretical model could potentially be taken up within new instructor preparation programs. In addition to surveying current FSU composition instructors to trace patterns in their understandings of feminist pedagogy, I collect and analyze sets of classroom teaching materials (syllabi, assignment sheets, classroom activities) in order to consider how instructors create opportunities for students to craft ethos within the curricula they build. My study begins from the guiding premise that teachers are learners (especially within the learning site of TA preparation), and that premise guides my theorizing. From that theorizing, I aim to consider how this model of ethos as epistemology could be used within TA preparation specifically to shape those perceptions and misperceptions of TAs. Therefore, my interest in teacher perceptions is a motivating interest and a potential useful outcome for creating a model of ethos as epistemology within writing studies. Considering the implications of this theory-building on TA preparation also interrogates the idea of liminality, as pre-service TA preparation is a site of convergence for these co-existing identities of teacher and student.
