Reva Sias Co-Edits Issue of Reflections

Composition and Cultural Rhetoric doctoral student Reva Sias, along with Beverly Moss, of Ohio State University, recently edited a special issue of Reflections: A Journal of Writing, Service-Learning, and Community Literacy focused on the work of Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

When asked to frame the purpose for the journal, they wrote:

While many scholars believe that rhetoric and composition's attention to community-based pedagogy is reminiscent of the theories of John Dewey and his call for experiential learning, we, the editors of this special issue of Reflections, want to bring to bear other discourses, texts, and exigencies beyond Deweyan principles. These other discourses, texts, and exigencies, reveal the close, even "seamless" historical, political, and cultural relationship of African American literacy practices and African American community partnerships. For this, we look to our Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU's) as overlook sites in scholarship on service-learning and university-community literacy partnerships in rhetoric and composition studies....

While these articles and interviews offer only a hint of the depth, breadth, and wealth of HBCU-community literacy partnerships, we see them as making a significant contribution to rewriting the master narratives that have, in the past, left HBCUs out of the story. IN that sense, this special issue, as Royster and Williams call for, writes in some of the spaces left and, in doing so, brings attention to the long history of service-learning and community-based literacy partnerships rooted in Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

Reva recently presented a featured session at the annual Conference on College Composition and Communication in Atlanta titled "Writing and Publishing Community Literacy: HBCUs and African American Community Literacy Partnerships," where she spoke about the work that she and Moss did to make this issue happen.

We hope you will take a moment to explore copies of the issue, available in the CCR program office.