PDF version Abstract African writers need to publish their own books in their own home countries. The silencing of ideas and elimination of dominant narratives from Black authors was not something that was supposed to happen. Black writers in the Diaspora and those on the African Continent want to tell a new and different story.… Continue reading The Historical and Geographical Locations of Literature: What makes Western Literature Western and Superior and Non-Western literature Non-Western and Inferior

PDF version It’s an absolute honor to publish Volume 24.1 of Reflections, which features articles stemming from the 5th Annual HBCU Symposium on Composition and Rhetoric. This symposium was hosted at Jackson State University, and the theme of the conference was “Re-imagining Activism, Literacy, and Rhetoric in a ‘Woke’ White America.” I am incredibly grateful… Continue reading Editor’s Introduction: Writing, Rhetoric, and Community at Historically Black Colleges and Universities

PDF version Abstract Controversies generated by the subjugation of man by man do not come without questioning or challenges to such a drive that would transform one faction of the human race into beasts of burden as a result of the hue of the skin. Both the questioning of and challenges to that heinous system… Continue reading Early Quaker Practice and the Advocacy for Polyvocality Then, Now, and Beyond

PDF version Our lives are moving images and sounds. Shapes and textures. Rhythm and truths.I’ve always wondered what it would’ve been like to have an HBCU experience.Here, I can document my imaginings with photographs and pop cultural bounce.Y’all can tell me if I caught a bit of the spirit. – k(R)

PDF version Abstract In this article, we provide a reflection on a community storytelling project that took place at Kūtha Primary School, located in Kitui, Kenya in August of 2023. The project brought together faculty members at two Florida institutions in the U.S. with students and teachers at Kūtha Primary to develop and publish stories… Continue reading Writing Our Dreams: A Community Storytelling Project With Students and Teachers at Kūtha Primary School

PDF version Abstract Students are often clamoring for assignments that connect to real-life situations. This paper will highlight various projects assigned in my classes, including the midterm and minor writing submissions, which cover both modern and historical cases, student responses, and student feedback regarding the assignments, along with how and why I continue to incorporate… Continue reading Researching and Resisting: Incorporating Social Justice and Resistance in First-Year Writing Courses

PDF version Abstract VOICES is a digital, student-led publication at Morehouse College that showcases the rhetorical choices African American men in an HBCU setting make in communicating issues of importance to them. I believe that activism, like leadership, begins at home. For these Morehouse College students, activism and leadership begin at “The House,” inside the… Continue reading Language and Social Justice in First-Year Composition at Morehouse College

PDF version Abstract The origin of self-efficacy and academic self-efficacy are essential for self-identity and must be pioneered within the public education comprehensive curriculum to enhance academic success for Black male students. If our systems remain stagnant without the promotion of self-efficacy, the Cave Experience for African American males will continue to impact their social-emotional… Continue reading Eliminating the Cave Experience: Building the Bridge to Self-Efficacy for Black Males

PDF version In the fall of 2023, Jackson State University hosted the 5th annual HBCU Symposium on Composition and Rhetoric. The goal of this symposium is to center the research and scholarship occurring in HBCUs within the discipline of rhetoric and composition. This special issue of Reflections highlights the work of those scholars who presented… Continue reading Introduction to Special Collection: Papers from the 5th Annual HBCU Symposium on Composition and Rhetoric

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 COVID-19 has disproportionately affected Latinx/a/o communities as people face interlocking global pandemics: “COVID-19, economic recession, global warming, and structural racism” (Solorzano, 2021, xvi). While popular discussions have focused on how these systemic inequities have resulted in learning loss, we have found the focus on school-based learning loss also obscures experiential knowledge students… Continue reading Beyond Learning Loss: Testimonios of a Pandemic Education/Más Allá de la Pérdida: Testimonios de Una Educación Pandémica

PDF version Abstract This paper emphasizes the importance of mêtis—adaptable and responsive rhetorical action—in achieving responsible, sustainable, and access-based community action for social justice. It specifically connects this concept to disability and access, arguing that centering disability and the embodied material experiences of disabled people are central to sustainable, effective, and ethical civic engagement practices… Continue reading Engaging Mêtis as a Site of Disability Activist and Leadership Possibilities

PDF version Abstract The Youth Research Council (YRC) is a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) project in which high school students, undergraduate and graduate students, and university-affiliated professors and administrators collaborate on consequential, justice- oriented research projects in their community. In this article, twelve members of the YRC reflect on our reasons for joining and… Continue reading What Brought Us Here, What Keeps Us Here: Multiple Perspectives on Building and Sustaining a Community-Engaged Youth Research Partnership

PDF version Abstract This article interrogates the political contexts leading up to the University of Arizona’s designation as a land grant and Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI). As a white settler teacher, I reflect on how researching this history helped me confront how increasing access to the university was met by exclusionary gatekeeping mechanisms that function… Continue reading Past and Present Contradictions in Land-Grant and Hispanic Serving Institutions: A Historical Case Study of the University of Arizona

PDF version Abstract This paper examines the written, spoken, and performed texts at The Alamo to quantify and analyze the white narratives that are presented. Through the use of a content and discourse analysis, we evaluate the rhetorical strategies The Alamo uses as it communicates Texas history to visitors. Our findings indicate that Anglo/white people… Continue reading “Our Beloved Alamo”: Racism and Texas Exceptionalism in Public Memory Systems

PDF version Articles in the Spring 2024 issue of Reflections engage with the concepts of positionality and collaboration. The authors in this issue recognize their own positionalities as researchers, and they also interrogate the interactions between their own positionalities and those of their respective institutions and communities. As community-engaged researchers, we should consistently recognize how… Continue reading Introduction: Positionality and Collaboration in Community-Engaged Research

PDF version Abstract This article focuses on the lived experiences of multilingual writing teachers and presents what we, the authors, call “A Rhetoric of Accent Fear,” which introduces accent fear as a form of linguistic racism. Through this framework, we reflect on our stories of accent fear as multilingual writing teachers; we practice forming relational… Continue reading A Rhetoric of Accent Fear and the Experiences of Multilingual Teachers of Writing

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 In this article, I chart my efforts in teaching a first-year writing class centered around mutual aid at a predominantly white institution. After contextualizing mutual aid and explaining my local institutional context, I describe the course I taught, “Rhetorics and Literacies of Mutual Aid.” In particular, I detail the Mini Solidarity Campaign,… Continue reading Teaching Mutual Aid in First-Year Writing

PDF version For Reflections readers, the lines between “teaching,” “research,” and “service” have always been fluid. The community-engaged work that some consider “service” is central to the research identity and trajectory of many Reflections readers. In the same way, Reflections readers also understand that  “teaching,” and pedagogy more broadly, takes place in many areas beyond… Continue reading Introduction: Community-Engagement Pedagogies in Practice

PDF version Abstract In our changing educational environment, understanding the way students experience community-engaged writing pedagogy has become more important than ever. Following a semester-long qualitative study examining the reflective writing of students and conducting interviews with those students about their experiences, three students were invited to elaborate on their experiences with a critical community-engaged… Continue reading A Window Into Community-Engaged Writing: Three Student CEW Reflections

PDF version Since joining Reflections as Editor in December of 2022, I’ve been learning first-hand how much work and collaboration goes into producing an academic journal. As a community-engaged researcher and practitioner, I approach editorial work as a community-sustained endeavor. Every piece of writing you engage with in this issue was made possible by a… Continue reading Editor’s Introduction

PDF Version Abstract We offer an in-depth look at how a Black-led nonprofit, Life Pieces To Masterpieces (Washington, DC), stepped up to the challenges of 2020 – the devastation of the pandemic and of yet another wave of anti- Black violence. We place this story alongside scholarship about democratic education and the value of generative… Continue reading Black Leadership and Shared Humanity: A Profile of Generative Reciprocity for Racial Equity

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

PDF Version Abstract In this paper, two African American administrators share their experiences navigating and negotiating the White patriarchal dominance at two large, Southern, predominately White institutions (PWIs). Analyzing and trying to make sense of their shared experiences led us to discover that their challenges navigating the patriarchal society stemmed from failing to adhere to… Continue reading “Are you going to get in line?”: Black Administrators Navigating and Negotiating White Cultural Norms

PDF version Abstract I reflect on my year-long experience as a South Korean researcher conducting a community-based oral history of North Korean migration during my master’s degree. Against an historical backdrop of two warring countries and numerous divides between my interlocutors, the academic establishment, and me, I explore the methodological significance and challenges of conducting… Continue reading Reflections on North Korean Community- Based Research

PDF Version Abstract This article discusses the program and goals that were instituted at our new community-based medical school to increase the representation of underrepresented minorities (URM) as faculty. We rely heavily on mentorship of the students for their research, and also employ community physicians for teaching and to serve as role models for the… Continue reading Removing Barriers to Academic Medicine for Underrepresented Minorities

PDF Version Abstract This article argues that latrinalia is an important and potentially beneficial source of public writing deserving of educators’ and researchers’ attention. I start by comprehensively reviewing the research record of latrinalia in order to demonstrate its status as a legitimate academic field while surfacing the major trends, questions, and fault lines of… Continue reading Mere Graffiti: The Pedagogical Implications—and Potential—of Latrinalia Research

PDF version Knight, Aimée. Community Is the Way: Engaged Writing and Designing for Transformative Change. The WAC Clearinghouse, 2022; 125 pp.: 9781646423149, $19.95 (pbk) Universities have increasingly demonstrated a desire to develop collaborative relationships with members of their local community. The question becomes how to ethically develop these community partnerships in a way that is mutually beneficial… Continue reading Review: Community Is the Way: Engaged Writing and Designing for Transformative ChangeReview:

Introduction to the Special Issue: Language, Access, and Power in Technical Communication | Khirsten L. Scott, Ann Shivers-McNair, and Laura Gonzales ATTW 2020 President’s Welcome | Angela M. Haas Rethinking Access to Data and Tools for Community Partners in Research | Maria Barker and Rachel Bloom-Pojar A Counter-Narrative of Academic Job-Seeking International Scholars: Keynote Address… Continue reading Issue 22.1: Special Issue: Language, Access, and Power in Technical Communication

PDF version Abstract In this article, we document how Twitter is embedded within the U.S.-Mexico border and used to reorganize the oppressive conditions perpetuated by the border’s sociopolitical history. We do so through a mixed-methods case-study of three polarized, yet tangled, activist movements on Twitter, each of which responded to Trump’s border wall plans and… Continue reading Building an Infrastructural Praxis: Understanding Twitter’s Embeddedness in the U.S.-Mexico Border

PDF version Abstract Small-scale fishers comprise nearly all capture fishery jobs, bring known benefits to biodiversity management, and, until recently, have provided humanity with the large majority of its seafood. Despite these well-documented benefits, small-scale fishers face increasingly intense displacement because of the marine closure pathway for biodiversity repair that is forwarded in the first… Continue reading Extracted and Conflated Research Foci in the Global Displacement of Small-Scale Fishers: A Comparative Analysis of Context Rhetoric in UN Marine Biodiversity Policy Development

Abstract: In this article, we describe how technical communication students explored user advocacy and coalitional action by creating trauma-informed, intimate partner violence (IPV) awareness campaigns for our campus. The nature of this project required us to develop a trauma-informed approach to teaching at the undergraduate level. To create a supportive community of practice for instructors… Continue reading From Awareness to Advocacy: Using Intimate Partner Violence Awareness Campaigns to Teach User Advocacy and Empathy in a Trauma-Informed Technical Communication Course

PDF version Abstract This article intersects the US government’s imperialistic attitude with its ambivalent and sluggish behavior towards helping the island of Puerto Rico achieve disaster preparedness and recovery from hurricane events. To learn how Puerto Rican residents employed self-reliance and resiliency in the context of disaster to shift and extend past definitions of tactical… Continue reading “We Were Cut Off From the Rest of the World . . . and From Each Other”: Advocating for the “Whos” After Hurricane María

PDF version Abstract The paper, titled “Wikis as Third Space for Diversifying Access for Technical Communication,” introspects the process of building a wiki site that represents the translanguaging practice of the author who is a translingual—uses Bangla and English simultaneously. In response to recent calls for a social justice approach for the field of technical… Continue reading Wikis as “Third Space”—Diversifying “Access” for Technical Communication

PDF version Abstract GitHub provides a project hosting platform and Git-based version control system for individuals and teams looking to develop and manage software and documentation online. Technical writers have long played an important role in this process, contributing the documentation infrastructure that organizes and sustains project development. As GitHub continues to grow in popularity,… Continue reading Writing Infrastructures: GitHub in the Technical and Professional Communications Classroom

PDF version Abstract: In this article, we describe how technical communication students explored user advocacy and coalitional action by creating trauma-informed, intimate partner violence (IPV) awareness campaigns for our campus. The nature of this project required us to develop a trauma-informed approach to teaching at the undergraduate level. To create a supportive community of practice… Continue reading From Awareness to Advocacy: Using Intimate Partner Violence Awareness Campaigns to Teach User Advocacy and Empathy in a Trauma-Informed Technical Communication Course

PDF version Abstract In this collaboratively composed article, we both theorize and dramatize the act of paying attention to scalar dynamics. In particular, we draw on the concept of transacting scales in order to complicate how “ethics” materialize in technical and professional communication (TPC). Because ethics materialize in relation to particular contexts and events, in… Continue reading Scalar Transactions and Ethical Actions in TPC

PDF version Authors’ note: Please note that all authors contributed equally to this article; we simply chose to go in reverse alphabetical order. Abstract Although we had not shared ideas before the 2021 ATTW conference, we noticed during our panel that we had considerable overlaps in our pedagogical approaches and goals for encouraging students’ social… Continue reading Encouraging Student Advocacy in Social Justice Classrooms

PDF version Abstract This article reports on the three sessions of the 2021 ATTW Virtual Conference including the Keynote Address and connects them to three other sessions through the lens of social justice to navigate the intersections of language, access, material ecologies, and social infrastructures. Echoing the conference theme, I suggest that those sessions attend… Continue reading Languages, Infrastructures, and Ecologies: Toward Rematerializing Activisms

PDF version Abstract This article weaves narrative, tweets, relevant literature, and conference session summaries from the 2021 ATTW Virtual Conference. Topics include discussion of power, language, and a short guide for graduate students (predominantly first-generation) to assist with navigating virtual conferences. The article includes questions and ideas that scholars in technical communication may be interested… Continue reading What’s in a Tweet? A Graduate Student Rumination of the 2021 ATTW Virtual Conference

PDF version Abstract This article interrogates the complexities of immigration encountered by international scholars working in higher education. Drawing on life history and lived experience, the article examines issues of marginalization, inequality, and discrimination. It draws from Black Feminist Care ethics to channel ideas for how to build resilience in the face of unrelenting restrictive… Continue reading A Counter-Narrative of Academic Job-Seeking International Scholars: Keynote Address to ATTW, June 2021

PDF version Abstract This article builds on the authors’ 2021 ATTW keynote, “The Power of Language in Building Confianza with Communities.” It emphasizes the importance of maintaining confianza (trust/confidence) over time and encourages researchers to share results in accessible and usable ways for community members who participated in their projects. Drawing from their work with… Continue reading Rethinking Access to Data and Tools for Community Partners in Research

PDF version Welcome to the 23rd ATTW Conference—ATTW’s first virtual conference! And thank you for joining us today, especially given the collective and personal trauma you’ve experienced over the past year. We appreciate you making and holding space for the important work happening in our community. Originally planned for Milwaukee, WI, the pandemic postponement of… Continue reading ATTW 2021 President’s Welcome

PDF version This special issue contains articles, reflections, and discussions stemming from the 2021 Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW) Virtual Conference, which was themed “Language, Access, and Power in Technical Communication.” This theme was originally set for the 2020 ATTW Conference. When the conference co-chairs Ann Shivers-McNair and Laura Gonzales originally developed the… Continue reading Introduction to the Special Issue: Language, Access, and Power in Technical Communication

“ 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

Academic scholarship can often seem an indulgence. Often focused on a particular aspect of a particular debate within an even more specialized sub-disciplinary area, such scholarship seems distant from the actual concerns of the day. While this perhaps has always been somewhat true, the COVID pandemic has led to significant public questioning of the value… Continue reading Editors’ Introduction: Finding Humanity and Community in Pandemic Scholarship

Abstract This essay tracks Asian/American movements through the COVID-19 pandemic and through the discipline over time. Using a listing methodology with attention to space and place, we historicize how discourses of disease, contagion, and infection have been used to fuel yellow peril rhetorics in the service of anti-Asian racism since at least the 1850s, drawing… Continue reading Asian/American Movements Through the Pandemic and Through the Discipline Before, During, and After COVID-19

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

Route, n. 1.a. A way or course taken in moving from a starting point to a destination; a regular line of travel or passage; the course of a river, stream, etc. Also: a means of passage; a way in or out. (“Route”) Introduction On March 12th, 2020, faculty, staff, and students at Auburn University (AU)… Continue reading Rerouting Place in Community-Engaged Teaching: Lessons from the Spatial Disruption of COVID-19