Eight English graduate students and a professor reflect on their semesterlong exploration of community literacy studies. The students, some in a MFA Creative Writing program and some doing doctoral work in literature, rhetoric, or English Education, discuss how the community literacies lens unsettled their relationship to English Studies.

This article examines the poetry, prose, and rap lyrics written by nine low-income, African American and Latino urban youths. The study is based on a 3-year research project using ethnographic methods including field observations, informal interviews, and collection of written artifacts. Part of a larger study of these youths’ writing practices, this article focuses on the ways that they use writing to negotiate gendered and sexual identities in complicated, sometimes conflicting, ways. The article is grounded in the field of new literacy studies, and the author argues that educators and other youth workers can find, in the writing of youths like those in the study, an entrèe into sometimes uncomfortable yet vitally important conversations about gender and sexuality. Through analysis of the writers’ texts and conversations, the author models ways of drawing useful insights from such texts.

Review Article| October 01 2005 We Are English: Looking for Practical Relevance in Practitioners' Relevance Susan Weinstein Susan Weinstein Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Pedagogy (2005) 5 (3): 483–487. https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-5-3-483 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Susan Weinstein; We Are English: Looking for Practical Relevance in Practitioners' Relevance. Pedagogy 1 October 2005; 5 (3): 483–487. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-5-3-483 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsPedagogy Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2005 Duke University Press2005 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.