NEO•GRIOT

African American Contributions to Service Learning and Community Literacy

full name / name of organization: 

Reflections: A Journal of Writing, Community Literacy, and Service-Learning

contact email: 

dfg126@psu.edu

cfp categories: 

african-american

cultural_studies_and_historical_approaches

ethnicity_and_national_identity

interdisciplinary

popular_culture

rhetoric_and_composition

 

The Community Classroom: Literacy Training in the Black Public Sphere will focus on literacy practices and institutions in Black American communities. There is a long and rich tradition of community sponsored literacy training projects in Black American culture that has for years sought to complement or supplement formal academic education. We are looking for submissions that discuss from historical, ethnographic, or pedagogical perspectives different forms of literacy training in community-based projects or cultural centers. The editors also invite submissions of community-based writing itself—the pamphlets, testimonies, artwork, and memoirs that often emerge from such locations. With this issue we hope to contribute to a broader discussion of community literacy development of Black Americans and the social activism that has historically been a by-product of it. Such traditions provide invaluable models for more recent community literacy projects and broaden the intellectual discussion of community literacy in general.

Editors: David Frank Green, Penn State University; Ersula Ore, Penn State University

Historically Black Colleges and Universities and African American Literacy Partnerships will focus on literacy partnerships between historically black colleges and universities (HBCU) and community organizations and institutions. From their inception to the present, HBCUs have partnered with the communities that they serve to promote literacy in African American communities. Whether it was African American churches offering their physical space to begin a college in the 1800s or an HBCU partnering with a community center to promote digital literacy in the 21st Century, these literacy partnerships are sites of rich literacy practices and activities. We invite submissions that discuss HBCU partnerships situated within a historical and or/contemporary setting and from diverse scholarly perspectives (ethnography, case study, social policy, historiography, theoretical, and so on). We welcome scholarly articles that include visual elements. With this issue, we hope to turn a scholarly gaze toward the research practices and sites situated at the intersection of HBCUs and their community constituents. More specifically, we seek to highlight the community-school literacy partnerships that expand our understanding of collaborative literacy practices, that demonstrate complex collaborative relationships built around literacy, that model school-community literacy partnerships, and most importantly, that contribute new voices to current scholarly conversations on African American literacy practices.

Editors: Beverly Moss, Ohio State University; Reva Evonne Sias, Syracuse University

We invite you to contribute to this special series. Manuscripts should be between 5000 and 6000 words and should be sent as electronic submissions to David Green (dfg126@psu.edu). Please indicate for which issue you are submitting your piece. Submissions should conform to MLA guidelines. Please provide a brief abstract (300 words) with your submissions. Attach the manuscript as a Word or Word-compatible document to an email. All manuscripts must be submitted before 12 a.m., September 17, 2010.