Literacies In Community

Welcome to the Writing & Literacies SIG podcast series "Scholarship Spotlight"! In this episode we interview Christopher R. Rogers, Dr. Tracey Flores, and Dr. Rae L. Oviatt about their work with literacies and communities. Christopher R. Rogers (he/him/his) was born and raised in Chester, PA and is now a Ph.D student within the Reading/Writing/Literacy program at PennGSE. His current research interrogates the intersections of race, space, and place in community literacy efforts, relating how intergenerational place stories may cultivate neighborhood preservation and social action. Dr. Tracey T. Flores is an assistant professor of Language and Literacy at the University of Texas at Austin where she teaches Language Arts Methods and Community Literacies in the K-5 teacher education program. Dr. Flores is a former English Language Development (ELD) and English Language Arts (ELA) teacher, working for eight years alongside culturally and linguistically diverse students, families and communities in K-8 schools throughout Glendale and Phoenix, Arizona - where she was born and raised. Her research focuses on Latina mothers and daughters language and literacy practices, the teaching of young writers in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms, and family and community literacies. Dr. Flores is the founder of Somos Escritoras/We Are Writers, a creative space for Latina girls (grades 6-12) that invites them to share and perform stories from their lived experiences using art, theater and writing as a tool for reflection, examination and critique of their worlds. Dr. Rae L. Oviatt is assistant teaching faculty of Multicultural Education at Wichita State University and a high school English teacher. Dr. Oviatt is a former middle school English Language Arts (ELA) teacher and English Language Development (ELD) teacher for emergent bilingual and multilingual youth. For the last fifteen years, Rae has learned and taught in solidarity alongside linguistically and culturally diverse youth and their communities across urban centers in Atlanta (GA), Bangkok (Thailand), Indianapolis (IN), and Lansing (MI). Her research focuses on the intersections of multimodal literacies and community coalition building with BIPOC adolescent youth and undergraduates of Color, and white preservice teachers’ dispositions of anti-racist solidarity in and out of high school English classrooms. Rae is the founder of Lansing Teen Voices, a community coalition youth participatory action research project, which works with and alongside QTBIPOC communities in and across Lansing, Michigan for systems change. This episode's music was composed and preformed by Jack Walbridge. https://alphabuddha.bandcamp.com/