S119. The Creation of Word Thug and the Intricacies of Cross-Community, Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration

Room 1, Tampa Convention Center, First Floor
Saturday, March 10, 2018
9:00 am to 10:15 am

 

In an era of ideological conservatism and spending cuts, how might writers, artists, and teachers work to facilitate creative expression in communities? Panelists discuss the intricacies of cross-community, cross-disciplinary collaboration during the creation and pilot of Word Thug, a critical multimedia space for community artists and writers whose works challenge dominant language and culture. How do we collaborate to support projects on climate change, hip hop culture, and youths in politics?


Participants

Moderator:

Rossina Zamora Liu is a clinical assistant professor of education at the University of Iowa. She is a faculty fellow in the Provost’s Office of Outreach and Engagement, and director of the College of Education Writing Resource. She has a PhD in literacy studies and an MFA in nonfiction from Iowa.

Jeremy Swanston is a graphic designer whose research interests pertain to the utilization of graphic design in visualizing data in an accessible and meaningful way. He is passionate about the impact social design can have in an academic environment as well as the community.

Bernadette Esposito is an adjunct assistant professor of writing at Maine College of Art. Her work has appeared in Best American Essays, Conjunctions, The Iowa Review, The Normal School, and others. She has taught writing for fifteen years, and she holds an MFA in nonfiction from the University of Iowa.

Meg Jacobs served as an assistant professor of education at Cornell College from 2013–2017 after working with youth writers throughout her fifteen-year elementary teaching career. Meg is a three-year research fellow at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Steve McNutt (MFA, nonfiction; PhD, language, literacy, and culture) has taught writing to some of the most diverse undergraduate communities at the University of Iowa. Research interests include ways of teaching writing as a liberating act and the interplay between identity and pedagogy.

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