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akademiskacademic quarterkvarterVolume 03. Fall 2011 • on the webTeaching against the TideTransgressing Norms in the American CollegeComposition ClassroomCamille AlexanderEnglish professor at San Jacinto Community College and a writing instructorat the University of Houston – Clear Lake. Her work has appearedin Akademisk Kvarter (2011 & 2012), Hyphen (2011), and Transportal(2011). Her areas of research are Caribbean literature, gender, postcolonialtheory, composition, and rhetoric. She has presented at conferences inthe U.S. and the Caribbean. She holds B.A.s in English and Psychologyand an M.A. in Literature.After observing a school of fish swim in unison, the difficulty, if notimpossibility, of compelling one fish to act individually does notescape notice. Such an endeavor is pointless as fish swim in schoolsfor protection; unity is necessary for their survival. As a result oftheir collective thinking, schools of fish instinctively know not toswim against the tide, working with their environment rather thanagainst it. College and university composition instructors are expectedto act collectively while in their individual classrooms, workingto meet the basic course requirements identified by their departments.However, we are still individuals whose pedagogicalapproaches are influenced by our personal and professional experiencesand our scholarly interests. We should be encouraged tochallenge our students, not only to think critically and to activelyengage with texts, but also to explore readings outside of the literarycanon, which is often accused of being comprised of the worksof dead Euro-American men. As instructors, we learn to “swim”against the academic tide, challenging ourselves, our students, andour pedagogies by transgressing composition text-selection norms.In this essay, I address some of the texts and topics instructors canintegrate into American composition courses to present studentswith unique points of view. By straying from the canon and assigninga variety of texts, instructors provide students with compellingVolume03 66