Bodily Discourses is based upon a study that draws from twenty-five student essays, as well as interviews and ethnographic fieldwork. It is the first book to move beyond teachers' typical concerns about how to respond and grade such "personal essays" to ask instead: Why are students writing about these subjects? How are they writing about them? What assumptions inform teachers' responses? What larger cultural contexts shape how such experiences are represented and understood by students and teachers? With each chapter, readers reexamine their own responses to these texts, discover a better way of reading and responding to them, and come to understand how students' writing about bodily violence challenges current debates about ideology, identity, and the teaching of writing.