Community Literacy Journal
9 articlesOctober 2021
-
"An Art of Truth in Things": Confronting Hiphop Illiteracies in Writing Classrooms at Predominantly White Colleges and Universities ↗
Abstract
This article interrogates how hiphop composition pedagogies can interrupt what the author terms the "hiphop illiteracies" that circulate in predominantly white institutions (PWIs). An analysis of four college writing classrooms that integrate hiphop texts at one PWI reveals pervasive anti-Blackness in student attitudes, but also in the research and course design as well as in department-mandated course texts. The analysis demonstrates the need for writing pedagogies that name and teach Black language, writing, and meaning-making practices while also asking students, teachers, and administrators to reflexively examine their own identities' locations vis-a-vis those practices. The author advocates a reflexive pedagogy that asks students to locate themselves vis-a-vis power as a starting point for investigations of language and culture. The author concludes that hiphop pedagogies have significant critical social justice possibilities in institutionally white educational contexts, but these benefits are not automatic and demand pedagogies of reflexivity, sociolinguistics, and intersectional feminism.
April 2021
December 2020
-
Abstract
Frames—defined as mental structures built through language and symbols that categorize our thoughts and experiences—have a significant impact on partnerships, shaping how participants understand the nature of the collabo- ration. While scholars have explored how teachers might frame engagement partnerships for university students and administrators, the field has yet to deeply draw on framing theory to examine community partner frames. This article argues that framing theory can shed light on how intentional frames might foster healthier partnerships for community members, offering a ro- bust tour of framing theory and illustrating its impact through an analysis of how one community leader frames a high school-college writing partnership for local youth—ultimately suggesting that community partners may have much to teach the field of community writing about how to use frames rhe- torically in engagement contexts.
-
Abstract
e were newly appointed graduate WPAs at Ohio State. Both of us were interested in connecting Ohio State's First-Year Writing Program to the surrounding Columbus community, but neither of us were sure how to go about it-how to navigate the various institutional, social, and ethical issues involved in university-community engagement. We carried many of those uncertainties into a meeting with the Columbus Metropolitan Library's community engagement representative. During our first meeting, we learned that, for many students, the library serves as a 'third space' or a space where students spend the greatest amount of time between school and home. We didn't know it then, but this use of third space dovetails nicely with an academic theory of third space that has helped us work through the institutional, social, and ethical issues we have grappled with during our university-community collaboration.
January 2017
-
Abstract
s someone who regularly encourages students in my technical writing and first-year composition courses to participate in public writing projects, I have often turned to scholarship based in service learning-often not writing-course specific-to look for pedagogical direction and even evidence that these approaches to teaching are meaningful for students.Fortunately, as more and more rhetoric and composition specialists teach public-oriented writing courses, the emergence of related discipline-specific scholarship, conference presentations, and workshops provides necessary assistance for compositionists whose teaching and work conflate the borders between the
-
Abstract
usterity measures have affected many of us in education and non-profits.
January 2015
-
Abstract
This article proposes permaculture, an ecological alternative to industrial agriculture, as a way to design first-year composition and community literacy classes. First, the paper connects permaculture with post-humanism to describe ecological community literacies—the type of knowledge that ecological theorists say we need to navigate the end of the anthropocene. Next, it describes assignments that can lead college students to this knowledge, and finally, it describes actual community literacy projects where college students can lead elementary students through assignments to gain this knowledge.
-
Abstract
Strong in theory, rich in history, and farreaching in its implications, Producing Good Citizens will soon become a staple for scholars, activists, and pedagogues alike who are interested in the complicated intersections of literacy and citizenship. In this historicized work, Amy Wan explores three main sites of citizenship training during the 1910s and 1920s-federally-sponsored immigrant Americanization programs, unionsupported worker education training, and college-mandated first-year writing courses. Wan's book starts with a brief introduction to citizenship theory, moves into archival research of each training site, and concludes with applications of her methodology to present anxieties over citizenship, particularly in relation to the Patriot and DREAM Acts. Through her book, Wan complicates citizenship as a discursive construct and demonstrates the limits of what literacy-and citizenship-can do for students as well as "the limitations put upon students by not only the idea of citizenship, but also its legal, political, and cultural boundaries" (178). Wan's powerful, timely argument and her final challenge to educators and scholars alike should not be ignored. Together, Wan invites us to consider what is meant by the invocation of citizenship in the classroom, to analyze the habits of citizenship that are encouraged by our practices, and to connect our citizen-making processes to other more politically and materially situated notions of citizenship.
April 2014
-
Abstract
As a WPA and a service-learning director and practitioner, the author suggests connections between food studies, rhetoric and composition studies, and critical service-learning theory that involve mobilizing students to join in or help lead community efforts surrounding the local, organic food movement, food justice, and food literacy. The study is framed by questions of how composition instructors can create courses around issues related to the global food crisis to embed students in community-centered food literacy initiatives, and, more generally, how practitioners and WPAs can effectively promote and explain community-engaged pedagogies to higher-level administrators who question the value of the practice.