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

“What is a zine? ⭐︎ My definition: For me a zine is not just a self-made and self-published booklet but it is also situated within DIY culture. This means it is non-profit, non-commercial, low-budget, and non-competitive. Topics and style can vary but it’s important that zines remain accessible … (everyone can afford them) and to… Continue reading More Than Paper Islands: The Pandemic Circuitry of Quaranzines

When teaching first-year composition, I noticed how uncomfortable students became at the prospect of talking about politics in the classroom. The science majors were vocal in proclaiming the importance of limiting the use of plastic bags, and the nursing students vehemently argued for the necessity of vaccinations. These impassioned voices, though, quieted when faced with… Continue reading Book Review: From Thought to Action: Developing a Social Justice Orientation by Amy Aldridge Sanford

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

In this essay, the authors describe a collaborative, community-engaged graduate seminar in which students and incarcerated writers worked together to write promotional brochures for WordsUncaged, a prison writing program. Drawing on reflective writing from graduate students and incarcerated writers, the authors apply a hospitality framework to articulate participants’ learning and growth. The public nature of… Continue reading Our Amalgamated Voices Speak: Graduate Students and Incarcerated Writers Collaborate for a Common Purpose by Katheryn Perry & Bidhan Roy

Mass incarceration in the United States is deeply entrenched into the political and economic makeup of modern America. In a time of political upheaval and radical change, prison and criminal justice reform activists are turning the public’s attention towards the problem of America’s prisons and shining a light on the forgotten voices of the incarcerated.… Continue reading Review: The Named and the Nameless: 2018 PEN Prison Writing Awards Anthology by Jenny Albright, Kalyn Bonn, Matt Getty, Zach Marburger, Brooks Mitchell, Jake Quinter, & Shivon Pontious

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

During the Summer 2019 semester, Writing & Rhetoric students at Florida International University, a public Hispanic-Serving Institution in Miami, Florida, engaged with Muted Group Theory to both understand and challenge the silencing of immigrant voices. Specifically, the FIU students, the majority of whom identified as Hispanic, created video messages for a local third grade class… Continue reading The Muted Group Video Project: Amplifying the Voices of Latinx Immigrant Students by Christine Martorana

 “I’m just gonna let you know how it is’: Situating Writing and Literacy Education in Prison” | Tobi Jacobi “Where Lifelines Converge: Voices from the Forest Correctional Creative Writing Group” | Laura Rogers “Disturbing Where We Are Comfortable: Notes from Behind the Walls” | Lori Pompa “Prison 101” | Shane R. Hillman “Telephone Conversation with… Continue reading Volume 4, Number 1, Winter 2004

A Professor of Rhetoric at Carnegie Mellon University, Linda Flower pioneered the study of cognitive processes in writing. Motivated by the need for a more integrated socialcognitive approach to writing, her recent research has focused on how writers construct negotiated meaning in the midst of conflicting internal and social voices. Flower is Director of Carnegie… Continue reading The Evolution of ‘Intercultural Inquiry’ by Linda Flower

The explosive growth in the U.S. prison and jail population over the past two decades, recently exceeding two million, has earned our country the highest imprisonment rate in the world. This increase is due in part to changes made in U.S. sentencing policy in the eighties and nineties during the height of the “War on… Continue reading Review of Inner Lives: Voices of African American Voices in Prison by Candice S. Rai

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

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

How can we nurture children’s creative ability as writers outside the academic context, celebrating their unique voices, teaching them to trust their ears and value the creative process? It can be set up simply: A group of young students in an after school center. Some adults acting as mentors to help them do creative writing.… Continue reading Merging Voices: University Students Writing with Children in a Public Housing Project by Michael John Martin

Warrior Writers: A Collection of Writing & Artwork By Veterans offers a voice for soldiers speaking their truths and a rare glimpse inside their hearts and minds for the civilians who remain homeside, creating an open channel to the lesser known, (and rarely discussed), personal details of warfare through poetry, creative nonfiction, and photography. Editors… Continue reading Review: Warrior Writers: A Collection of Writing & Artwork Veterans by Aleashia Walton Valentin

Dear Jessica, Thank you for the opportunity to read and talk to you about “Absent Voices: Rethinking ‘Writing Women Safe.”‘ One of the things I love most about your piece is how it takes the title of the journal and demonstrates reflection as a strong and extended verb / action. Link to PDF

My experiences teaching a service-learning composition class entitled Writing Women Safe that dealt with sexual violence against women point to a missing link between course content and community-based activism. Students in my all-female class wrote about and discussed the reality of rape, sometimes in the context of their own lives. However, for all the real talk… Continue reading Absent Voices: Rethinking Writing Women Safe by Jessica Restaino

In Green Voices: Defending Nature and the Environment in American Civic Discourse, editors Richard D. Besel and Bernard K. Duffy attempt to address the oversight that most modern rhetorical scholarship focuses on the written works of environmentalists rather than their spoken words. To redress this paucity, the editors collect a series of analyses focused only… Continue reading Review: Green Voices: Defending Nature and the Environment in American Civic Discourse by Garrett Stack

A few years ago in 2009 when Steve Parks was editor, Reflections came out with a special issue entitled Democracia, ¿pero para quien?, Democracy, but for whom?. Many scholars and teachers were inspired to use a number of articles in future research projects. That issue offered much needed research, voices, and hope for Latin@s, especially… Continue reading Editors’ Introduction by Isabel Baca & Cristina Kirklighter

In 2009, Jennifer Hitchcock and her husband, Vernon Hall, traveled to Israel and the West Bank with a $600 Canon camera to find and capture the voices of Israeli and Palestinian nonviolence advocates and activists. Their objective was to challenge the dominant narratives of violence, terrorism, and oppression perpetuated by the mainstream U.S. media, and… Continue reading When the Rhetorical Situation Calls Us Out: Documenting Voices of Resistance and the Making of Dreams Deferred by Jennifer Hitchcock

Our mission is to provide opportunities for local communities to represent themselves by telling their stories in their own words. We document stories of local communities because we believe their voices matter in addressing issues of national and global significance. We value these stories as a way for communities to reflect upon and analyze their… Continue reading The Goals of Grassroots Publishing In the Aftermath of the Arab Spring: Updates on a Work in Progress by Stephen J. Parks

Contemporary nonprofit and governmental organizations actively mediate relationships through and compose representations of literacy initiatives and their participants’ literate abilities for multiple national and transnational audiences. Connecting Deborah Brandt’s theory of literacy sponsorship and New Literacy Studies scholars’ conceptions of literacy mediation to Bourdieu’s idea of the cultural intermediary, this article identifies critical processes of… Continue reading Literacy Intermediaries and the ‘Voices of Women’ South African National Quilt Project by Martha Webber

Using the work of Keith Gilyard (Voices of The Self) and Victor Villanueva (Bootstraps) as models for interrogating his own development as a writer of color, Cagnolatti explores the way HipHop influenced his rhetorical education in the urban and militant environment of a Los Angeles magnet high school. Through his detailed analysis of the E.M.E.R.G.E.… Continue reading Battling to be Heard by Damon Cagnolatti

This article investigates the parameters of civic engagement through digital writing. Specifically, it examines the differences between slacktivism and activism against changing citizenship styles and definitions of civic action. With the goal of rethinking the relationship between civics, digital technology, and slacktivism, it outlines a digital writing project that uses social networking technologies to enact… Continue reading Reshaping Slacktivist Rhetoric: Social Networking for Social Change by Joannah Portman-Daley

In 2009, Reflections sponsored a panel titled “De-centering Dewey,” at the Conference on College Composition and Communication. The following statements reflect the comments of the program participants, Ellen Cushman, Juan Guerra, and Steve Parks. A question and answer period followed these remarks, which is also reproduced below. Speaker comments have been edited for clarity. Link… Continue reading De-centering Dewey: A Dialogue by Ellen Cushman, Juan Guerra, and Steve Parks

Organized into ten chapters and an epilogue, the book focuses on recurrent themes that the research uncovered: organizations’ motivations for taking part in service learning partnerships, issues of timing, fit, management, communication and diversity. Chapters One, Ten, and the Epilogue are written by the editors, while the individual chapters are authored by the graduate students… Continue reading Review of The Unheard Voices: Community Organizations and Service Learning by Randy Stoecker and Elizabeth A. Tryon reviewed by Paula Mathieu

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 article addresses the “problem of speaking for others” in a joint community-based research project between the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Reading, Pennsylvania branch and Penn State Berks to uncover, document, and disseminate to the public African American history in Berks County, Pennsylvania. Integrating community partners’ and students’ voices with… Continue reading Speaking With One Another’ in Community-Based Research: (Re)Writing African American History in Berks County, Pennsylvania by Laurie Grobman

In much traditional discourse on success, there is an undercurrent of objectivism. Pseudo-empirical conceptions of economic success, which grant economics an undue status as an objective metric by which to measure cultural superiority, tell the comfortable, the wealthy, and the privileged that some cultures are just better by virtue of their production. This false objectivity… Continue reading Review: Octavio Pimentel. Historias de Éxito within Mexican Communities: Silenced Voices, reviewed by Shane Teague

“Walk out, dance, rise up, and demand an end to violence,” serves as a prompt for One Billion Rising, Eve Ensler’s Global V-Day: Stop Violence Against Women Movement. One Billion Rising asks women and those who love them to gather in dance, protest, and voice in a globally staged effort to demand an end to… Continue reading One Billion Rising: Theorizing Bodies, Resistance, and Engagement in a Campus Stop Violence Against Women Movement by Barbara LeSavoy

This study examines the intersection of the “bootstraps” American Dream and the América envisioned by four first-generation U.S. Latinx sixth graders in an urban English Language Learners class. The students participated in a joint Photovoice writing and photography project about the American Dream with students from a liberal arts college and articulated the importance of… Continue reading Writing our own América: Latinx middle school students imagine their American Dreams through Photovoice by Zak K. Montgomery & Serena B. O’Neil

A team from the University of Dayton, consisting of undergraduate students, a faculty facilitator, and practitioner partners, conducted an innovative oral history project documenting the experiences of ordinary people who lived through the unrest following Michael Brown’s death in 2014. The Moral Courage Project, as it was called, sought to investigate the spectrum of stories… Continue reading Listening to Ferguson Voices, Finding the Courage to Resist by Joel R. Pruce

Activists and change agents have long used all of the tools and resources available to them to accomplish their goals: they’ve used their voices (rallies, canvassing, lobbying politicians, even talking with friends about causes near to their heart); the written word (letters to the editor, posters, flyers, and community newspapers/zines); their bodies (strikes, marches, sit-ins,… Continue reading Teaching with Vision, Teaching Social Action: An Interview with Dr. Kristie Fleckenstein by Lauri B. Goodling

Scholarship in community writing and service-learning has called attention to the lack of community partner voices in the assessments of writing partnerships. This article foregrounds those missing perspectives by reporting on the consequences of a community literacy program, Writing for Change, from the perspective of the high school youth involved. Analysis of high school student… Continue reading What Changes When We “Write for Change?”: Considering the Consequences of a High School-University Writing Partnership by Heather Lindemann & Justin Lohr