This article is from a talk that was given on April 16, 2021, as the author's contribution for the anti-racism panel "Undoing BIPOC Erasure in the Academy: A Conversation about Race and Anti-Racism." The panel was hosted by the University of California Merced. Minor edits for print and publication have been made to the article for…

In this article, Paula Mathieu shares a few lessons about what she now sees as the contemplative call of community writing, which is at once personal, political, historical, and pedagogical. If people are going to do community-based work ethically and, mindful of past and present racial and other political wounds, they need to do their work…

In this reflection, using the work of Ellen Cushman and Paula Mathieu as a framework from which to extend, I explore how my positionality as a graduate student affected my experience wading into community-engaged literacy work. Specifically, I reflect on my time with a nonprofit organization that provides no-cost legal support and safety planning…

This conversation/article resituates the concept of reciprocity, as it has been theorized and enacted in rhetoric, composition, and literacy studies, within a larger framework of social justice, one that recognizes legacies of struggle, survival and perseverance. When situated within the Filipinx indigenous notion of "kapwa," reciprocity…

During a sabbatical semester in Fall 2018, "Community Literacy Journal (CLJ)" co-editor Paul Feigenbaum volunteered as a "Scholar-in-Residence" at Youth Enrichment Services (YES), a nonprofit established in 1994 that is based in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Guided by its mission "to create hope out of…

In this article, author Veronica House interviews David Joliffe, who retired from the Brown Chair of English Literacy at the University of Arkansas in 2018. The two discuss how to find funding and support for community-engaged projects.

Zines, or small, self-published magazines, have emerged from counterculture origins to gain popularity in recent years as a tool for democratizing writing in the classroom and community. This essay shares reflections on a campus-community zinemaking project at the University of Central Arkansas called the CitiZINE Project, which focused on…

Jennifer Hitchcock interviews community activist and director of Syracuse University's Composition and Cultural Rhetoric doctoral program, Steve Parks. They discuss Parks's working-class background, career path, influences, and activism. Parks also considers the direction of the field of composition and rhetoric and expresses optimism for the…

Our dialogue explores the development of community/university publishing partnerships in the United States through the dual lens of the U.S-based "Students' Right To Their Own Language" and the U.K.-based Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers, a national alliance of working-class writing groups. At the conclusion of the…

This article revisits the debate between cultural and critical literacy through ethnography challenging popular academic views in education and literacy. Set in a preschool classroom at the inception of the "No Child Left Behind" initiative, this essay focuses on teaching assistant Marylou Anderson. Her experiences growing up in…