CLC News

The Brown Chair in English Literacy Initiative is happy to announce the launch of a new center, the Community Literacies Collaboratory, which took place on May 6. The international virtual event introduced members of the university and the public to different programs that the CLC has already begun offering and will continue to offer in the future.

The event also introduced attendees to the CLC’s website, which explains the organization’s mission: “The Community Literacies Collaboratory (CLC) facilitates and supports a variety of literacy partnerships — ranging from scholarly research and educational and policy initiatives to community programming centered on various aspects of empowerment and advocacy in Arkansas and nationally. The CLC does this work through a vision centered on an ethics of justice, imagination, community accountability and love.”

The Community Literacies Collaboratory defines literacy as a “practice beyond reading and writing, into realms of communication using shared cultural dialects and symbols. This is shown through the clothes we wear and the diversity of community dialects that we honor and embrace.” This definition allows the organization to support a broad spectrum of initiatives, consistent with inclusive, equitable and justice-oriented approaches to literacy learning, development and practices.

Read full article at UARK.edu

Beth Godbee welcoming participants to the first “Contemplative Writing Workshop” meeting on Oct. 5th.

As it concludes a busy fall semester, the Brown Chair in English Literacy Initiative is now looking ahead to an exciting start to 2022.

After co-sponsoring a popular workshop this past summer, “Planning Writing Projects,” led by Beth Godbee, the Brown Chair in English Literacy Initiative and the Fayetteville Public Library collaborated again in October to sponsor a virtual “Contemplative Writing Workshop,” also led by Godbee.

Godbee, who has written for Inside Higher Ed about her decision to leave a tenured position at Marquette University in 2018, now regularly publishes pieces on contemplative writing through her blog at Heart-Head-Hands.com.

Her research focuses upon “social, racial, and environmental justice; power, agency, and rights; and relational communication.”

Read full article at UARK.edu

The Gender Studies Program at the U of A will host a virtual lecture by KJ Rawson, a renowned author and professor of transgender history at Northeastern University. Rawson’s lecture, titled “Archival Reckonings: Asserting Queer and Trans Power in Information Environments,” will occur at 6 p.m. CST on Tuesday, Sept. 28, via Zoom.

Rawson’s lecture will address racial disparities in existing trans-related historical collections, with a focus on how scholars are currently addressing the overrepresentation of white people and erasure of trans people of color in trans archives.

Rawson is the founder and director of the Digital Transgender Archive, an award-winning online repository of trans-related historical materials. His scholarship lies at the intersections of digital humanities and rhetoric, LGBTQ+, and feminist studies. Focusing on archives as key sites of cultural power, he studies the rhetorical work of queer and transgender archival collections in both brick-and-mortar and digital spaces.

Read full article at UARK.edu

The Department of English welcomes professor Eric Darnell Pritchard as a new member of its faculty and as the new Brown Chair in English Literacy for the University of Arkansas.

The position of Brown Chair was previously held by professor emeritus in English David Jolliffe.

Pritchard received their B.A. in English-Liberal Arts from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, an M.A. in Afro-American Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a Ph.D. in English also from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Pritchard comes to the University of Arkansas from the Department of English at the University at Buffalo (SUNY).

Read full article at UARK.edu