Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric
531 articlesJune 2020
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Abstract
I am not sure if this is a review of a book, the system, or myself. I am sure that more than a decade after it was written, Jean Harris’ Marking Time is still poignantly analogous to my life in prison. As the book makes unerringly clear, the biggest and most prevalent problem in prison… Continue reading Review of Making Time: Letters from Jean Harris to Shana Alexander by Dennis Sobczak
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In writing the original play The Return, I discovered abilities to organize, encourage, and direct, which I never knew I had. From the play’s origin inside of my 8×10 prison cell of solitary confinement, to its inception and encore performance, each and every person involved eventually became totally committed to its success. In this essay,… Continue reading The Return: On Writing a Play in Prison by Edwin James
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This essay describes the drama and metadrama of the final performance of Twelve Angry Men, produced in the spring of 2003 by and for inmates at the “Big House,” formally known as Sing Sing Correctional Facility in New York State. The play was produced by Rehabilitation through the Arts (RTA), an inmate-run theatre program that… Continue reading 500 Angry Men: Drama and Meta-drama at the “Big House” by Lorraine Moller
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It’s pretty fucking funny sometimes to see what goes on with these guys. I mean, this is a federal prison, in a district that is world famous for its hot and heavy drug action, so you’ve got to remember that the inmates here were players. Some dumpy looking little guy with a ponytail and bad… Continue reading A High Crime Area by Fred Berthoff
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Woke up this morning, had the Lewisburg Blues Went to breakfast this morning, French toast was cold Meat was greasy, they ran out of milk for my bowl I went to the Warden ’bout the way we get fed He said you lucky you ain’t getting’ water and bread I said Mr. Warden, that ain’t… Continue reading Lewisburg Blues (excerpt from “The Big House”) by A. LaMont Gainey
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I became a single mother at the age of 16 and had every reason to be the best mother in the world… Six weeks after giving birth I began to work, because I knew my goal of successful motherhood would be a long journey. Within three years, my life changed when my son’s father took… Continue reading Revolving Doors by Sabrina Smith
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Ahh, I remember it well. It was Wednesday afternoon, June 26, 2003. The air conditioner had been out of service for two days and there were damn near 200 inmates laboring away in the prison’s industry—or, should I say, withering away in the prison’s sweat shop. I mean that literally. It was 92 degrees outside… Continue reading Black Winged Stranger by Hector Gallegos
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This article reflects upon four years of exploring Augusto Boal’s Image and Forum Theatre techniques in prisons for youth in upstate New York with young men aged 14-20. These practices work for prisoners by respecting the “literacy” of survival inside prison and by putting prisoners in control of making meaning with their bodies. Examples show… Continue reading Rhythm of the Machine: Theater, Prison Community, and Social Change by Martin Mitchell
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When I think about my adolescence, subconsciously, I had already prepared myself for incarceration. During my teenage years, I was hanging out with the wrong crowd, using drugs, and coming in the house at all hours of the morning. My father was not really present, and when he did come around to see me, I… Continue reading Not a Rite of Passage by Lenzell Franklin
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In 1983 my associations with prisons began. Since then, I have seen many role models go in and out of the system. My earliest memories are of my real father, James W. Gray. He was incarcerated in the Montana State Prison system. It was at that institution that I had the first birthday I can… Continue reading Prison: A Way of Life by Derek E. Gray
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When I speak with people about the juvenile justice system and the youth caught up in it, many of them remind me of tourists browsing a whitewater rafting brochure. Media mantras like “teenage superpredator” and “gangbanger” rely on the ignorance of the reader every bit as much as does “experience nature in a thrill ride… Continue reading “Where I’m From” and Other Poems by Poets of The Nancy Jefferson Alternative School
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Editors’ Note: This photo essay, created by an undergraduate student at Howard University enrolled in a service learning class taught by Arvilla Payne-Johnson, preserves and documents the graffiti at the now closed Washington D.C. area Lorton Prison. The essay highlights a genre of hidden literacies claimed by inmates even in spaces of vast power differentials… Continue reading Excerpts from “Graffiti as a Sense of Place” by Jonathan Hayden and Arvilla Payne-Jackson
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Open 7!” The guard grunts to his fat companion sitting in the control booth of the cell block. With a flip of an unseen switch my cell door grinds open. “Welcome back, Ortiz,” the guard sneers with a crooked grin I want to kick down his throat. “Didn’t last too long, did ya?” Link to… Continue reading Looking Down to See Up: A Prison Epiphany by Adam Ortiz
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Do You Hear What I Hear? Voices from Prison Composition Classes by Phyllis G. Hastings with Jim Morrison ↗
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The article describes the dynamics of freshman composition classes for medium-security inmates at the Saginaw Correctional Facility which were linked to parallel classes at Saginaw Valley State University, supported by SVSU student-tutors, and enhanced by collaboratively produced publications of student writing. It presents excerpts from inmates’ essays that tell their stories, explore their relationships, and… Continue reading Do You Hear What I Hear? Voices from Prison Composition Classes by Phyllis G. Hastings with Jim Morrison
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They said… he was in the infirmary bein’ treated for a real bad heroin addiction. he was gettin’ the best care that they could ever give him. he was secure the last time the guard made his rounds. he was well when the nurse made her last rounds. Link to PDF
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I thought it would be easy to write about my experience as a convict, but it’s not. I have buried so many painful memories; digging them up is discomfitting. It’s hard to find a flow when you’re writing about a subject that really stirs your emotions. However, I will attempt this very feat… My experience… Continue reading From a Boy to a Man by William Roy Barfield
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Author’s note: I need you to know that there are angels on earth—people who knowingly and willingly donate their time, knowledge and resources even in the face of adversity. While I was in Redwood City County Jail awaiting a return to the prison system I so loathe, I encountered several of these special beings in… Continue reading Each One, Teach One: Starting a Poetry Class Behind the Walls by Leonard Gonzalez
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During the spring of 2003, I made three trips to the New Jersey State Prison to observe and participate in the prison literacy program run by the grassroots humanities group “People and Stories.” In the course of these visits, I bore witness to the power of short stories in bringing forth the emotions and personal… Continue reading What Lies Between US by Lauren Ehrlichman
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Who will watch the watchmen? Plato posed the question, but it is just as important today as it was 2,400 years ago. Power has to be kept in check, as the founders of our country knew when they designed a system of checks and balances in the United States Constitution. An agency that has the… Continue reading Who Will Watch the Watchmen? A Response to the Patriot Act by Robert Brown
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I remembered that when I was just a little boy I loved drawing anything I could get my hands on… Seeing and hearing the joy people would get out when I drew something for them gave me a natural high. Next thing you know I was experimenting with all sorts of media/ I became a… Continue reading Drawing by Ivan Hermosillo Ballines
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“Between Ivy and Razor Wire” describes a capstone senior seminar in rhetoric entitled Writing for Social Justice, Writing for Change, which included direct correspondence between students and inmates around the country. The essay explores some of the many pedagogical challenges of teaching and learning in the long, dark and highly charged shadow of law and… Continue reading Between Ivy and Razor Wire: A Case of Correctional Correspondence by Tom Kerr
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This essay examines the issue of learning disabilities among the incarcerated population. Studies show that approximately eleven percent of U.S. prison inmates self-report a learning disability, a rate nearly four times greater than that of the general U.S. population. The paper 1) addresses the obstacles in meeting this population’s needs, and 2) argues for the… Continue reading Learning Disabilities Among the Incarcerated by Terra White
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First Year Composition and Women in Prison: Service-based Writing and Community Action by Lisa Mastrangelo ↗
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This article discusses a service-learning project for an English Composition class, focusing on the theme of incarcerated women. Through class projects, which included a book drive and research for the group Prison Watch, the students and teacher learned to negotiate the tricky demands of audience and worked to develop a new model of successful service… Continue reading First Year Composition and Women in Prison: Service-based Writing and Community Action by Lisa Mastrangelo
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You wouldn’t believe I’m doing time for a man who doesn’t even write me I’ve been hurt really bad by a man who didn’t even fight me Being harassed by people who already have me And still being cut by those who already stabbed me I’ve kept my place thinking, alone I can beat this… Continue reading Who I’m Is by DaVetta Penn
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I would like to start by introducing myself. My name is Shane Roy Hillman. I am 21 years of age. I have been an inmate at the Calgary Remand Centre since the beginning of April 2003. My experience as an inmate has been a process of learning and making choices. As an inmate, I enjoy… Continue reading Prison 101 by Shane R. Hillman
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This article explores a unique approach to becoming literate about prisons ––through a dialogical exchange between individuals on both sides of the wall. The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program offers a semester-long course through which college students and incarcerated men or women attend class together weekly inside a local correctional facility. Pivotal to this pedagogy is… Continue reading Disturbing Where We Are Comfortable: Notes from Behind the Walls by Lori Pompa
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Where Lifelines Converge: Voices from the Forest Correctional Creative Writing Group by Laura Rogers ↗
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This article is a teacher narrative examining the experiences of a teacher in a correctional facility writing workshop and how those experiences led her to understand that in order to effectively teach the workshop, she had to achieve a deeper understanding of the world of the prison as well as see that the success of… Continue reading Where Lifelines Converge: Voices from the Forest Correctional Creative Writing Group by Laura Rogers
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I’m just gonna let you know how it is’: Situating Writing and Literacy Education in Prison by Tobi Jacobi ↗
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“I’m not gonna sit and preach to anyone because I myself have been in and out of these doors 12 times. I’m just gonna let you know how it is” “To the Girls at the Audy” by Irene Sanchez (17) In ten-week creative writing workshops held at Chicago’s Cook County Jail, Irene Sanchez and other… Continue reading I’m just gonna let you know how it is’: Situating Writing and Literacy Education in Prison by Tobi Jacobi
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Stasis and the Reflective Practitioner: How Experienced Teacher-Scholars Sustain Community Pedagogy by Amy Rupiper Taggart and H. Brooke Hessler ↗
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Drawing on Donald Schön’s concept of the reflective practitioner and the classical rhetorical concept of stasis, this article observes the habits and tactics of experienced community engaged instructors of writing and rhetoric. It suggests that a complete reflective practice, combining reflection in and on action, contributes to sustaining effective programs and practices. In moments of… Continue reading Stasis and the Reflective Practitioner: How Experienced Teacher-Scholars Sustain Community Pedagogy by Amy Rupiper Taggart and H. Brooke Hessler
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The Service Learning Writing Project: Re-Writing the Humanities Through Service-Learning and Public Work by David Cooper and Eric Fretz ↗
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From its beginnings in 1992, the Service-Learning Writing Project at Michigan State University has viewed the composition classroom as a place where rhetorical processes and democratic practices naturally converge. A number of core democratic principles, pedagogical challenges, ongoing conversations, and shared convictions about education for democracy continue to animate and energize the Project’s faculty—including a… Continue reading The Service Learning Writing Project: Re-Writing the Humanities Through Service-Learning and Public Work by David Cooper and Eric Fretz
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In this essay, I explore the institutional and intellectual resources necessary to develop, revise, and sustain an outreach initiative involving new media composing with community organizations. A retrospective analysis of one course central to this initiative will be offered to illustrate what I term a praxis of new media. A praxis of new media unfolds… Continue reading Toward A Praxis of New Media: The Allotment Period in Cherokee History by Ellen Cushman
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In the five years of a newspaper project involving high school and university students that publishes an annual special edition exploring a diversity issue within the local community, several key pedagogical, political, and economic revisions have been made. Nevertheless, the bedrock principles of service-learning and civic journalism have remained constant. The project history shows that… Continue reading Get Me Rewrite! Five Years of the Student Newspaper Diversity Project by Sue Ellen Christian
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This article describes the development of a community writing and publishing program, the DiverseCity Writing Series, from 1998 to 2005. Starting as a one-time workshop between a community college English service-learning course and a local women’s advocacy organization, the DiverseCity Writing Series has grown into a year-round partnership between the SLCC Community Writing Center and… Continue reading When the Community Writes: Re-envisioning the SLCC DiverseCity Writing Series by Tiffany Rousculp
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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
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Ethics and Expectations: Developing a Workable Balance Between Academic Goals and Ethical Behavior by Catherine Gabor ↗
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This article traces the development of a sophomore composition service-learning course, using data gathered from a formal qualitative study as well as subsequent teacher reflection. Course redesign has been guided by the need to balance the initial emphasis on and measurement of academic outcomes with exploration of the ethics of service. The author shares her… Continue reading Ethics and Expectations: Developing a Workable Balance Between Academic Goals and Ethical Behavior by Catherine Gabor
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This article chronicles changes in the author’s service-learning pedagogy, concentrating on his recent attention to genre and its consequences for course design. The cumulative influences of rhetoric, discourse community theory, collaborative assignments, and genre theory are traced. The core claim, however, is that instructors should help students grasp the concept of genre as social action.… Continue reading Genre Analysis and the Community Writing Course by Thomas Deans
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Our goal for this special issue was to gathersome of the most experienced teacher-scholars of community-engaged writing and rhetoric and ask them how they tend and refine their courses in order to keep them meaningful, relevant, and sustainable. In a sense we view this volume as a way to maintain the momentum created by such… Continue reading Introduction: Why We Revise by H. Brooke Hessler and Amy Rupiper Taggart
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Review of The Measure of Service Learning Research Scales to Assess Student Experience, eds. Robert G. Bringle, Mindy A. Phillips, and Michael Hudson reviewed by Billie Hara and Matthew Levy ↗
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The Measure of Service Learning offers a compilation of psychometric scales that, while not all designed specifically for service-learning, should provide useful ways to measure different aspects of students’ experience with and attitudes toward community-engaged learning. The authors group these scales under six headings: motives and values, moral development, self and self-concept, student development, attitudes,… Continue reading Review of The Measure of Service Learning Research Scales to Assess Student Experience, eds. Robert G. Bringle, Mindy A. Phillips, and Michael Hudson reviewed by Billie Hara and Matthew Levy
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The Art of Knowing Your Place: White Service Learning Students and Urban Community Organizations by Steve Zimmer ↗
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Meaningful change through service learning can only occur If service learning ladder, build “embedded” relationships with community organizations. The paradox is that the more engaged the relationship, the more intense the issues of race, class and power. Institutional racism tempts white activists to assume they know what Is best for a community. If they give… Continue reading The Art of Knowing Your Place: White Service Learning Students and Urban Community Organizations by Steve Zimmer
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This special issue opens a dialogue among scholars from across the disciplines who are grappling with the theoretical, ethical and practical issues inherent in negotiating difference when interacting with the “Other” in their work in community-based literacy programs. The contributors to this issue help shape a conversation long overdue in service-learning. Given its intentionally interdisciplinary… Continue reading Introduction by Adrian J. Wurr
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Over the last several years, service-learning has become a burgeoning area in technical and professional communication studies. In addition to offering pedagogical strategies and theoretical approaches, the scholarship in this area to date points to several concerns for the continuing growth of high-quality service-learning in our field: 1) building reciprocal, sustained community partnerships, 2) developing… Continue reading Taking Root: Seminal Essays in Service- Learning and Professional Communication by J. Blake Scott
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Cultivating Democratic Sensibility by Working with For-Profit Organizations: An Alternative Perspective on Service-Learning by Sean D. Williams and C. Renee Love ↗
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Drawing on the work of experiential learning experts such as John Dewey to show that one of the foundational objectives of service-learning is to encourage civic engagement, this article argues that students who undertake work in a business environment can develop a strong sense of their roles as citizens. It offers a case study of… Continue reading Cultivating Democratic Sensibility by Working with For-Profit Organizations: An Alternative Perspective on Service-Learning by Sean D. Williams and C. Renee Love
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Selling Peace in a Time of War: The Rhetorical and Ethical Challenges of a Graduate-Level Service-Learning Course by Kathryn Rentz and Ashley Mattingly ↗
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This article describes a service-learning-based capstone course for MA students in Professional Writing and Editing at the University of Cincinnati and illuminates the potential advantages of service-learning on an advanced level. Of particular benefit are the rhetorical and ethical challenges that partnerships with nonprofits can raise, requiring students to draw not only on their writing… Continue reading Selling Peace in a Time of War: The Rhetorical and Ethical Challenges of a Graduate-Level Service-Learning Course by Kathryn Rentz and Ashley Mattingly
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Early, theoretically informed program assessment can be particularly beneficial for professional and technical writing programs that seek to incorporate and sustain service-learning approaches. This article adapts Burkean pentadic analysis for use as a form of institutional critique and illustrates the power of this method through a case study of its application at one state university.… Continue reading Pentadic Critique for Assessing and Sustaining Service-Learning Programs by Amy Rupiper Taggart
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Reflecting upon current research and my own pedagogical practices when teaching and administering client-consultant projects in business and technical writing courses, I outline how critical stakeholder theory can help to establish an ethic of care among the participants in client-consultant projects and connect students’ professional and civic lives. Link to PDF
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Good Intentions Aren’t Enough: Insights from Activity Theory for Linking Service and Learning by Virginia Chappell ↗
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Insights from activity theory—specifically, David Russell’s synthesis of activity theory with genre theory—suggest ways to understand and ease problems of clashing expectations encountered in professional writing classes that use a client-based assignment model for service-learning. Link to PDF
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Technical Communication, Participatory Action Research, and Global Civic Engagement: A Teaching, Research, and Social Action Collaboration in Kenya by Robbin D. Crabtree and David Alan Sapp ↗
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In response to recent calls for internationalization and greater social relevance in professional communication teaching and research, this article links service-learning pedagogy with participatory action research (PAR) methods. A multi-year collaborative project in Kenya illustrates both the challenges and the positive outcomes of international partnerships, which include increased intercultural communication skills, significant contributions to the… Continue reading Technical Communication, Participatory Action Research, and Global Civic Engagement: A Teaching, Research, and Social Action Collaboration in Kenya by Robbin D. Crabtree and David Alan Sapp
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In a recent study of Harvard University students, Richard Light documents that for the over 400 students he interviewed the “most important and memorable academic learning [occurs] . . . outside of classes.” His findings are not surprising. Evidence is mounting that courses and activities that link service and learning in some kind of reciprocal… Continue reading Introduction: Service-Learning and Professional Communication by Jim Dubinsky and Melody Bowdon
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Review of Tactics of Hope: The Public Turn in English Composition by Paula Mathieu reviewed by Eileen Schell ↗
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The “street” occupies a literal and figurative place in contemporary composition pedagogies. Increasingly, teachers of college writing ask their students to “take to the streets,” providing learning opportunities that range beyond the boundaries of the college classroom. The call for compositionists to engage with the “streets” is not a new one. In fact, the 2002… Continue reading Review of Tactics of Hope: The Public Turn in English Composition by Paula Mathieu reviewed by Eileen Schell
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Review of Who Says? Working-Class Rhetoric. Class Consciousness. and Community edited by William DeGenaro by Tom Deans ↗
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Little did I know how fascinating a group of workers pouring concrete could be. Yet Dale Cyphert’s rhetorical analysis of the practice makes it so. Really. Her interpretation of the “dance of decision-making” that workers perform as they shovel, pour and level reveals a cultural logic of cooperation that stands in sharp contrast to middle-class… Continue reading Review of Who Says? Working-Class Rhetoric. Class Consciousness. and Community edited by William DeGenaro by Tom Deans