PDF version Abstract This study examines strategies for emphasizing collaborative writing in a community engagement project. Doing so can enrich students’ experiences with ethical community engagement. Successful collaborative writing provides students with competencies—rhetorical knowledge, confidence, understanding of transfer, and appreciation for diverse perspectives—that are key building blocks in supporting students as they deepen their engagement… Continue reading The Group Project’s Potential: Emphasizing Collaborative Writing with Community Engagement

PDF version Abstract Drawing on their embodied experiences as queer disabled graduate students directing a student-founded, student-led community literacy program, this article foregrounds queercrip embodied experiences to reinterpret normative notions of failure in community literacy programs. Using our own experiences as queer disabled graduate students directing the community literacy program, queer and disability theory, and… Continue reading An Unglamorous Queercrip Account of Failure in the Writing Lincoln Initiative

PDF version Abstract Reciprocity often forms the ideological core of community engagement, and discussions around reciprocity have encouraged researchers to pursue ethical and mutually beneficial collaborations with community partners. This article suggests that current conversations around reciprocity often presume a tacit level of difference between researchers and communities that they partner with, and that this… Continue reading On (the Limits of) Reciprocity: Navigating Shared Identity and Difference in Community-Engaged Research

“ Editors’ Introduction: Finding Humanity and Community in Pandemic Scholarship ” | Jessica Pauszek & Steve Parks “Asian/American Movements Through the Pandemic and Through the Discipline Before, During, and After COVID-19” | Terese Guinsatao Monberg, Jennifer Sano-Franchini, and K. Hyoejin Yoon “Cultivating Empathy on the Eve of a Pandemic” | Caroline Gottschalk Druschke, Tamara Dean, Rachel Alsbury, Julia Buskirk, Margot Higgins, Eloise Johnson, Sharon Koretskov, Brad Steinmetz, Emma Waldinger, Samuel Wood, Carl Zuleger “Rerouting Place in Community-Engaged Teaching: Lessons from the Spatial Disruption of COVID-19” | Charles N. Lesh & Kevin G. Smith “COVID-19, International Partnerships, and the Possibility of Equity: Enhancing Digital Literacy in Rural Nepal amid a Pandemic” | Sweta Baniya, Kylie Call, Ashley Brein, Ravi Kumar “More Than Paper Islands: The Pandemic Circuitry of Quaranzines” | Jason Luther “Community Literacy as Justice Entrepreneurship: Envisioning the Progressive Potential of Entrepreneurship in a Post-Covid Field” | Paul Feigenbaum, Ben Lauren, & Dànielle Nicole Devoss “Embracing Disruption: A Framework for Trauma-informed Reflective Pedagogy “ | Jennifer Eidum “ISU Quarantine Journal Project: Reflective Writing, Public Memory, and Community Building in Extraordinary Times” | Lesley Erin Bartlett and Laura Michael Brown “Writing Historical Fiction Online: Community Digital Literacies in Regional Australia” | Sophie Masson, Lynette Aspey, Ariella Van Luyn “Inclusive and Meaningful Considerations of Failure: A Review of Failure Pedagogies: Learning and Unlearning What It Means to Fail edited by Allison D. Carr and Laura R. Micciche” | Whitney Jordan Adams “Review: Rewriting Partnerships: Community Perspectives on Community-Based Learning by Rachael W. Shah” | Megan McCool   Editorial Team Steve Parks & Jessica Pauszek | Co-Editors Heather Lang | Web Editor Trenton McKay Judson | Assistant Editor Romeo García | Book Review Editor Tori Scholz | Copy Editor

Abstract This article details a flood-focused, community-based writing course that was derailed by the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis to argue that despite major challenges, the course helped to prepare students to face some of the fear and uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, offered them a space through weekly reflection responses to process their… Continue reading Cultivating Empathy on the Eve of a Pandemic

Abstract Compositionists are committed to social justice in classrooms, in academia, and in our communities, but we must also respond creatively and strategically to the structural consequences of precarity capitalism, even more urgently so in the wake of Covid-19. Precarity has shaped both composition studies’ and community literacy’s histories, and compositionists have often had little… Continue reading Community Literacy as Justice Entrepreneurship: Envisioning the Progressive Potential of Entrepreneurship in a Post-Covid Field

This article describes a case study of an inclusive Summer Lunch Program, focused on nutrition, community engagement, and literacy programming. The Summer Food Service Program is a federally-funded, state-administered program designed to meet the needs of children from lowincome families who qualify for free and reduced lunches during the school year. Link to PDF

The unique perspective that adult learners have on writing and its instruction in low or no-cost education programs offers valuable information to both instructors of written components in these courses and to scholars exploring how writing in adult education functions as community literacy. After conducting interviews with instructors and students at six adult education programs,… Continue reading A Curriculum of the Self: Students’ Experiences with Prescriptive Writing in Low and No-Cost Adult Education Programs by Alison Turner

Since its inception in 2000, Reflections has functioned as a site of synthesis for community-based writing pedagogy, service-learning, public rhetoric, and community-engaged research. Such a diverse range of influences leads to the formation of a journal that is ever shifting in its identity, scope, and mission. Link to PDF

This article celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Reflections Journal, as a premier publication in service learning, public writing, rhetoric, community literacy, and activism. The author applauds Reflections as a space that nurtures emerging voices and professional development, even prior to the printing of individual volumes and issues. Link to PDF

Reflections offers a plethora of stories, strategies, and applicable content for community-based writing projects as well as considerations for our pedagogy within institutional walls. In this piece, I, a first-time contributor, reflect on a few of my own endeavors in communityengaged work over the last decade alongside a reading of this journal and its continued… Continue reading Community Engagement for the Graduate Student Soul: Ruminations on Reflections by Ashanka Kumari

The research in the area of community literacy has flourished along the lines of activist and curricular work. The field explores these lines in journals such as Reflections and Community Literacy Journal, a bi-annual conference The Conference on Community Writing, and with the formation of a non-profit professional society The Coalition of Community Writing. It… Continue reading Intersectional Community Thinking: New Possibilities for Thinking About Community by Abbie Levesque DeCamp & Ellen Cushman

This interview is not the first in Reflections for Tom Deans, a Professor of English and Director of the Writing Center at the University of Connecticut. His first interview appeared in issue 1.1 of Reflections and focused on his work as chair of the recently created CCCC national service-learning committee dedicated to creating “disciplinary momentum”… Continue reading ‘You’re Not Alone’: An Interview with Tom Deans about Supporting Community Engagement by Eric Mason

Editors’ Note: With this interview, we inaugurate a regular feature of the journal focused on interviews and articles about community-based writing projects unaffiliated with higher education. Discovering the genesis, evolution, and meaningfulness of such projects illuminates theories and practices of writing as a potentially transformative social activity that fosters creativity, communication, equity, and justice. It… Continue reading Everyone is a Writer: The Story of the New York Writers Coalition by Aaron Zimmerman

Megan Faver Hartline: I am the director of community learning at Trinity College, a small liberal arts college in Hartford, Connecticut, where I work to create and strengthen institutional structures for community engagement by designing opportunities for students, faculty, and community partners to build relationships and work together. This work builds on my research examining… Continue reading Early Career Scholars’ Encounters, Transitions, and Futures: A Conversation on Community Engagement by Jessica Pauszek, Charles Lesh, Megan Faver Hartline, & Vani Kannan

With increased interest in communityengaged course design, instructors across the United States are looking for ways to encourage their students to become more connected with their local contexts and the larger communities surrounding their university’s walls. Moving beyond a “feel good” approach to making college courses more meaningful, I think it is crucial that educators… Continue reading Community-Based Writing with Latinx Rhetorics in Milwaukee by Rachel Bloom-Pojar, Julia Anderson, & Storm Pilloff

This article suggests that the framework of prison abolition in prison literacy studies should be developed through the relational potential of queer community literacy practices among incarcerated writers. To that end, the author presents findings from a critical discourse analysis of a newspaper by incarcerated LGBTQ+ writers. Three primary forms of audience address and rhetorical… Continue reading (Anti)Prison Literacy: Queering Community Writing through an Abolitionist Stance by Rachel Lewis

April 15, 2013 started out as a beautiful spring day in Boston. It was Patriots Day, a local holiday and a day reserved for the world’s oldest marathon. I was at my mom’s house, an hour away from the finish line, when a friend messaged me about explosions. The message came with a link to… Continue reading #BostonStrong/BostonStrong?: A Personal Essay on Digital Community Engagement by Kristi Girdharry

This profile examines “Writing for Advocacy,” a pair of Spring 2018 courses designed around community engagement and project-based learning. Supported by a grant from Conexión Américas and the Tennessee Educational Equity Coalition (TEEC), Christian Brothers University (CBU), a regional leader for educating undocumented students, provided a fertile space for a course that leveraged student voices… Continue reading Writing for Advocacy: DREAMers, Agency, and Meaningful Community Engaged Writing (Course Profile) by Jeffrey Gross & Alison A. Lukowski

Over the last roughly twenty years, or between 2000 and 2019, scholarship on community writing has built upon a focus on service-learning composition courses to include the roles of writing and rhetoric in community engagement more generally, including necessary inquiry into the ethics of community engagement altogether. In this time, the longer-term effects of service-learning… Continue reading The Long-Term Effects of Service-Learning on Composition Students by Chris Iverson

This article examines the implications of service-learning educators’ commitments to community literacy for professional development in higher education. It places stories of professional development in composition studies within the context of community literacy needs and of broader debates about tenure and promotion practices. The article proposes a set of questions that challenge compositionists to draw… Continue reading Faculty Development, Service-Learning and Composition: A Communal Approach to Professional Development by Nancy C. DeJoy

One of the more popular approaches to community-based writing asks students to compose workplace documents like reports, manuals or brochures for community organizations. After doing this for the first time, students and teachers alike often register their surprise about how dramatically writing in academic courses differs from writing in nonacademic organizations. They also come to… Continue reading Review of Worlds Apart: Acting and Writing in Academic and Workplace Contexts Patrick Dias, Aviva Freedman, Peter Medway, and Anthony Paré Mahwah by Tom Deans

This essay explores the many benefits of adding a community-based writing component to the first year composition course. It looks closely at the self-selected projects of 25 freshmen at a large suburban university to show how service-learning creates a context in which students can gain greater control over their own literacy and learn more about self… Continue reading Surprised By Service: Creating Connections Through Community-Based Writing by Linda Cullum

This article connects the author’s practice, Fulkerson’s “map” of composition studies, and insights from critical race studies, specifically whiteness studies, to argue that even though many or even most community-based writing courses fit into a critical/cultural studies-type philosophy, such an orientation is limited. The article argues for “community-engaged procedural rhetorical,” in which students would learn… Continue reading Between Civility and Conflict: Toward a Community Engaged Procedural Rhetoric by Hannah Ashley

In the past few years, many English departments have welcomed the burgeoning area of service-learning into their curriculums, a development which Adler-Kassner, Cooks and Watters consider a “microrevolution” in the area of college-level composition (1). While compositionists have become increasingly thoughtful about different models for community-based writing – in Tom Deans’ schema, writing for, about… Continue reading Broadening the Community: Service-Learning Connections to the Writing Classroom by Risa P. Gorelick,

This essay describes a series of assignments that I have used in Writing and Social Issues, a first-year writing course that features service-learning. These assignments should prove useful to those interested in the relationship between community-based writing instruction and first-year courses that focus on the student’s transition from high school to college. Link to Full… Continue reading Community-Based Writing Instruction and the First-Year Experience by Mary Vermillion

Community is a tricky word: although it often connotes an inclusive and harmonious collaborative space, too often it signifies a site of struggle and negotiation, an attempt to find a common framework for conflicting and seemingly contradictory impulses. One of the marks of those active in “community literacy studies,” “service-learning” and ‘”engaged scholarship” is the… Continue reading Reflections: Defining Community/Building Theories by Steve Parks

This article underscores the importance of examining community-based writing in practice. It traces the evolution of an “International Connections” service-learning project from a well-intentioned add-on to a thoughtful and critical component of a writing course. Distilling best practices from recent service-learning literature, the article concludes with a call for 1) integration of the service-learning project… Continue reading Tapping the Potential of Service-Learning Guiding: Principles for Redesigning Our Composition Courses by Cheryl Hofstetter Duffy

Community Literacy and the Rhetoric of Local Publics is the sixth book in the Reference Guides to Rhetoric and Composition series, whose editor, Charles Bazerman, has set out to provide “compact, comprehensive, and convenient surveys of what has been learned through research and practice” on a single topic. The topic here is community literacy, and… Continue reading Review of Community Literacy and the Rhetoric of Local Publics by Elenore Long by David Coogan

In spring 2007, I began working with a fellow graduate student in Purdue’s Rhet/Comp program on a community engagement project that would become the basis for both our dissertations. Allen and I agreed to work together because of our mutual interests in community engagement and public rhetorics, as well as our complementary interests in professional… Continue reading One Grad Student’s Reflections by Jaclyn M. Wells

Although conventional academic wisdom discourages young scholars from becoming involved in community-based work, the growing interest in service-learning and community literacy reflected in contemporary scholarship in composition and within the larger academy suggests that these are now viable paths to pursue throughout the trajectory of a scholarly career. Link to PDF

Exploring options from community literacy research for addressing this contradiction, the paper commends a problem-based pedagogy focused on collaborative inquiry and knowledge building designed to represent the agency and expertise of others. The paper dramatizes this model of rhetorical education through the work of a pre-professional ID named Hillary who interned at a shelter for women… Continue reading Educating Future Public Workers: can We Make Inquiry Professional by Elenore Long

While community literacy and service-learning are now established areas within the larger field of Composition and Rhetoric, I have been in the field long enough to remember when these were new areas – a not so long ago period where what counted as “scholarship” and “appropriate sources” was still very much in flux. During this… Continue reading Reflections: Bridging the Gap (Editorial) by Steve Parks

What makes racial segregation in the United States especially harsh is that it robs most people of the means they need to bring it down. These include mutual knowledge, trust, and, most of all, a language of engagement that can keep people talking past the negativity, hurt, and hopelessness. In Community Literacy and the Rhetoric… Continue reading Review of Community Literacy and the Rhetoric of Public Engagement by Linda Flower, reviewed by Deborah Brandt

This paper draws on two sources to theorize gender literacy. First, it examines several influential theories of social change embedded in community literacy scholarship. Next, it uses two of these theories to analyze qualitative data from an after-school program. In this program, university students mentored Latina middle-school students to promote both gender literacy and academic… Continue reading Views of Girls, Views of Change: The Role of Theory in Helping Us Understand Gender Literacy and Gender Equity by Gwen Gorzelsky, Frances J Ranney, & Hillary Anne Ward

Rhetoric and composition now has a history of teaching, research, and engagement with communities. We also have a number of terms for describing this work, each with its own history: community literacy and service learning are but the two most common. The historical roots that led to community literacy have also yielded shoots of growth… Continue reading Writing Theories / Changing Communities: Introduction by Jeffrey T. Grabill & Ellen Cushman

As the Editor of this journal, I am delighted to have interviewed Dr. Cassandra Simon, founding editor of the Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship. Some of you who were at the Conference of Community Writing may have heard me enthusiastically talk about this journal as I showed you a copy of an issue. Some… Continue reading Interview with Cassandra Simon, Founding Editor of Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship by Cristina Kirklighter

This paper draws on our time working together in a community literacy organization in New York, NY. In it, we describe the strengths of the program while also detailing our questions about how our “mentor/mentee” relationship was represented in the organization’s mission statement and fundraising rhetoric: specifically, the term “at-risk,” which was applied to the… Continue reading At-Risk’ of What? Rewriting a Prescribed Relationship in a Community Literacy Nonprofit Organization: A Dialogue by Cherish Smith and Vani Kannen

Community literacy workers and publicly engaged teachers of writing have long been concerned with questions not only of learning and writing, but also of social change, equity, and justice. Whether we trace roots through Myles Horton’s Highlander School to critical pedagogy and activism (Branch) or through more institutionally focused efforts of land-grant colleges and organizations… Continue reading Review: Democracies to Come: Rhetorical Action, Neoliberalism, and Communities of Resistance by Moira Ozias

Service-learning courses have typically encouraged students to write for or about communities. Such courses rarely involve students writing with the communities they serve, despite the growing number of opportunities for collaboration afforded by digital media. Scholarship on collaborative writing with communities in service-learning courses is scarce; research on collaboration using digital, multimodal texts is more… Continue reading Composing With Communities: Digital Collaboration in Community Engagements by Stacy Nall & Kathryn Trauth Taylor

Regular Reflections readers will notice, among other things, a change in the journal’s subtitle. We are now “A Journal of Public Rhetoric, Civic Writing, and Service Learning,” having shifted from “A Journal of Writing, Service Learning and Community Literacy.” Title changes – even subtitle changes – are no small things, so we begin with a… Continue reading Editors’ Introduction by Diana George, Cristina Kirklighter, & Paula Mathieu

This essay shares stories and valorizes concepts related to sexualized identities, highlighting details and reflections about exotic dancing, and Bernadette Barton’s Stripped. Further, the essay contends that potentially powerful and profound pedagogy exists in exploring these, identities, and that explorations leading to developed awareness of sexually stigmatized individuals and groups may encourage student writers to… Continue reading A Stripped Classroom: Exotic Dancers, Sexuality, University Teaching, and Community Engagement by Carrie Jo Coaplen-Anderson

African American community literacy (AACL) originates with the belief that collective social interactions frequently provide the best chance for individuals to develop—through dialogue, personal interactions, and storytelling—into critical citizens. Community, although often taken for granted, figures into the learning of all students as a primary influence on their language and reading habits, and as a… Continue reading The Community Classroom and African American Contributions to Community Literacy: Moving Forward while Looking Back by David Green

This article examines an African American urban debate league in order to understand the types of literacy training youth in these leagues undergo. As the author notes, debate leagues are important sites of community literacy that are often overshadowed by the popular views of these leagues as highly competitive, predominantly white, and for the socially… Continue reading African American Community Literacy and Urban Debate by Susan Cridland-Hughes

For several decades now, the scholarship of rhetoric and composition studies has shown an increased interest in community literacy and community-based pedagogy. Many point to the emergence of the Ethnography of Literacy (see studies by Heath, Barton, Cushman) and New Literacy Studies (Gee, Street, among others) as an origin for this initial focus on community… Continue reading Rewriting a Master Narrative: HBCUs and Community Literacy Partnerships, Introduction by Reva E. Sias and Beverly J. Moss

This essay argues that African American church founder Richard Allen (1760-1831) developed a rhetorical pedagogy that prefigures the community literacy partnerships of later Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). While Allen did not enjoy the material opportunities of institutionalized higher learning, we can interpret passages from his autobiography as a rhetorical pedagogy that affirms the… Continue reading Richard Allen and the Prehistory of Engaged Community Learning at HBCUs by Elizabeth Kimball

This article investigates service-learning practices and pedagogy at Jackson State University (JSU), a Historically Black University, founded in 1877 to educate underserved and underrepresented African Americans in Mississippi. As a reflection of the university’s motto, “Challenging Minds and Changing Lives,” this research highlights JSU’s concerted efforts to foster students’ participation in school community literacy partnerships.… Continue reading African American Students Learn by Serving the African American Community: A Jackson State University Example of ‘Challenging Minds and Changing Lives by Preselfannie E. Whitfield McDaniels, Kashelia J. Harrion, Rochelle Smith Glenn, and Gisele Nicole Gentry

This article presents The Kamp Katrina Project, a community literacy partnership with Kamp Katrina residents in New Orleans. Kamp Katrina is a colony for displaced artists, musicians, and low-wage earners. In this article, Kamp Katrina residents relate their stories about life in post-Katrina New Orleans after the levee failures devastated the city (now exacerbated by… Continue reading We need your minds, not your money. Come to my home’: An Invitation to Community Literacy from Kamp Katrina by Carla Maroudas, Denis Crlenjak, and Dawn M. Forno

In 2008, I attended a symposium that highlighted our university’s outreach and community engagement initiatives. Sessions and exhibits ranged from promoting pesticide safety programs in Africa to local community design assistance projects. The symposium was very satisfying, but my conversations with participants often began the same way, with questions arising from my “Rhetoric and Writing”… Continue reading Review of Active Voices: Composing a Rhetoric of Social Movements edited by Sharon Mckenzie Stevens and Patricia M. Malesh by Megan O’Neill Fisher

This essay establishes a context for discussing how community literacy pedagogy can benefit from critical engagement with the rhetorical actions of a grassroots social movement. Drawing from ongoing community literacy work in Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, I detail the prospects of speaking truth to power in relation to composition studies’ ongoing skepticism of rhetorics of social… Continue reading Engaging Community Literacy through the Rhetorical Work of a Social Movement by Christopher Wilkey