Writing Center Faculty Book Club–Still time to sign up!
The TU Writing Center still has space in our Fall Faculty Book Club! Sign up now!
Talking College: Making Space for Black Language Practices in Higher Education shows that language is fundamental to Black and African American culture and that linguistic justice is crucial to advancing racial justice, both on college campuses and throughout society. Writing from a linguistics-informed, Black-centered educational framework, the authors draw extensively on Black college students’ lived experiences to present key ideas about African American English and Black language practices. The text presents a model of how Black students navigate the linguistic expectations of college. Grounded in real-world examples of Black undergraduates attending colleges and universities across the United States, the model illustrates the linguistic and cultural balancing acts that arise as Black students work to develop their full linguistic selves. Talking College provides Black students with the knowledge they need to make sense of anti-Black linguistic racism and to make decisions about their linguistic experiences in college. It also offers key insights to help college faculty and staff create the liberating and linguistically just educational community that Black students deserve.
Faculty participants who register for the book club will get a FREE copy of the book! Click here to register for the book club and other faculty support programs.
The Book Club meets on Friday, November 18 at 12:30 p.m. for a catered lunch and discussion with Dr. Christine Mallinson from UMBC and Dr. Antione Tomlin from Anne Arundel Community College.
Book Features:
- Weaves together information and approaches drawn from the authors’ extensive experience working with Black and other students of color in higher education.
- Provides an up-to-date discussion of Black language practices and their role in Black students’ college experiences.
- Discusses the racial politics of language, including anti-Black linguistic racism and the struggle for linguistic justice as part of racial justice.
- Offers a detailed model of Black college students’ diverse linguistic and racial identities.
- Outlines concrete steps toward racial and linguistic justice that students and faculty can take today.
- Accessible to students and faculty without a background in linguistics, while also engaging and informative for linguistics scholars.
Talking College captures the reader-friendly and engaged approach from Anne Charity Hudley and Christine Mallinson’s previous work explaining African-American language and culture to a broad K-12 educator audience, while also incorporating recent research by each of the three authors on the context of the Black student experience in higher education. When African-American students enter college, they must navigate new and often unclear linguistic and cultural norms of higher education. In Talking College, the authors emphasize how a focus on language and culture in college and university settings can be used to empower African-American students and transform their educational experience.
For more information, contact the Writing Center’s Assistant Director for Faculty Outreach, E. Mairin Barney, at ebarney@towson.edu.
Tags: Faculty, Writing CenterCategorised in: General
This post was written by Barney, E. Mairin