Bizzell, Patricia. “‘Contact Zones’ and English Studies.” Cross-Talk in Comp Theory, edited by Victor Villanueva and Kristin L. Arola, National Council of Teachers of English, 2011, pp. 459-466.

In the article “‘Contact Zones’ and English Studies,” Patricia Bizzell proposes that in light of multiculturalism, “we need a radically new system to organize English studies . . . [and to] develop it in response to the materials with which we are now working” (460). Bizzell supports her proposal by referencing other pedagogical theories, especially Mary Louise Pratt’s theory of the “contact zone”. Her purpose is to urge English departments to restructure literary studies in order to accommodate multiculturalism and, in her words, “stimulate scholarship and give vitally needed guidance to graduate and undergraduate curricula . . . also lead us, in the multicultural literary archives, to stories of hope that can lend us all spiritual sustenance as we renew effort to make the United States a multicultural democracy” (466). She directs her proposal to teachers, especially English teachers. As a student and possible future teacher, I found Bizzell’s argument to be strong, although I would be concerned about the possibility that in her vision of reorganized studies, that historically marginalized voices could still be fainter than those of the ones in power when studying a particular “contact zone”, although this would probably be dependent upon individual classes, and not her proposal as a whole.