The Art of Revision

Prospectus submitted, prospectus returned. Looking at it now, I'm embarrassed at my hasty draft. However, a crappy draft, a detailed editorial review, and a healthy dose of shame to drive revision is really how I work best as a writer. Of course, there is already a snag. I initially wrote that critical pedagogy has lost popularity and credibility in the academic landscape. To prove this, my advisor suggested checking the critical pedagogy hits in College English and College Composition and Communication over the years to show a decrease of interest. However, there isn't a significant shift in the number of articles. I assume, though, that current articles are more critiques of critical pedagogy rather than pitches. I'm assuming because certainty would require a lot of sifting - 1500 articles worth of sifting to be exact. Instead, here is my current introduction (which looks to bypass that work for the moment):

Dissertation Prospectus - Critical Pedagogy 2.0: The Post-Fordist Classroom
When critical pedagogy rose to popularity in the 1980s, there was clear justification for its appeal. In a time where composition was looking to distinguish itself as more than a service industry, scholars and teachers seized the opportunity to bridge teaching composition with the theoretical work of the Frankfurt School, Antonio Gramsci, and Foucault, amongst others, to illustrate that the teaching of writing had always had larger and ethical and political implications than we traditionally acknowledged. It also helped rationalize the problems that arose after open admissions policies changed the socio-economic make up of college campuses, connecting student success and engagement with the students' ideologies, which were formed based on their economic and social status in society. By the end of the 80’s, although the diversity of sources and methodologies taken up by critical pedagogy continued to expand, it became an umbrella term that described the various ways educators work to critique the capitalistic institution of higher education and to empower those who have disenfranchised by the system.
Since the term critical pedagogy was coined by Henry Giroux in 1983, there have been dramatic changes in the economic and social landscape, mostly driven by the rise of the Internet. These changes raise questions about the effectiveness of standard critical pedagogy approaches and give cause for practitioners to consider new ways to achieve the same goals. In the words of Paulo Freire, "This pedagogy makes oppression and its cause objects of reflection by the oppressed, and from that reflection will come their necessary engagement in the struggle for their liberation. And in the struggle this pedagogy will be made and remade" (33). My dissertation will examine how critical pedagogy in composition classrooms was made and how it could be remade to address changes in labor and social modes of power. Could there be a critical pedagogy 2.0 that thrives and functions within new media ecologies and takes into consideration new forms of capitalism and modes of power? Throughout my diagnostic and prescriptive sections, I will be focusing on three key questions: How has labor changed? How have modes of social power changed? And how does our conception of critical literacy need to change?