Please join us for this year's annual Walker Gibson lecture, titled, "Steps Toward Justice: From Syracuse to Syria" with Professor Steve Parks of University of Virginia.
Abstract:
What does it mean for scholars in English Studies to work for justice? What is our role as faculty, as teachers, and as students to respond to local and global violations of human rights? And if we take on such work, how can we move beyond frameworks steeped in a history of coloniality towards models which allow new forms of collaboration and community to emerge? How might such a stance change what we typically mean by the “politics of language”? Parks will address these questions through a discussion of his most recent university-based projects, the Westside Residents Coalition, an anti-gentrification campaign in Syracuse, New York and Syrians for Truth and Justice, a human rights organization in Istanbul, Turkey.
Parks is author of Class Politics: The Movement for a Students Right go Their Own Language and Gravyland: Writing Beyond the Curriculum in the City of Brotherly Love, as well as a textbook, Writing Communities. His work has appeared in College English; Journal of College Composition, and Communication; Literacy in Composition Studies; and Community Literacy Journal. He is founder of New City Community Press; Co-Founder/Board Chair of Syrians for Truth and Justice; Président de l’association Centre Vérité et Justice pour le Moyen-Orient; and Editor of Studies in Writing and Rhetoric as well as Working and Writing for Change, Parlor Press. His current projects include, The Twiza Project, an alliance of Middle East/North African universities focused on human-rights based human rights community partnerships, as well as the book manuscript, Syria, Truth, Justice: The Rhetorical and Material Practices of Human Rights.
Please visit Parks' website to learn more about him or his work.
Last week, Steve Parks, Associate Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Virginia, delivered the annual Walker Gibson lecture. His talk, titled, “Steps Toward Justice: From Syracuse to Syria" addressed how scholars within English Studies can work toward justice. He described his own experiences with the Westside Residents Coalition, an anti-gentrification campaign in Syracuse, New York and Syrians for Truth and Justice, a human rights organization in Istanbul, Turkey.
During his visit, Parks met with graduate students in Composition and Rhetoric, offering mentorship, advice, and insight about developing as scholars within the field. Graduate student Ashley Canter says, "Speaking with Steve Parks about his community literacy work was inspiring! He had valuable and guiding insights for those of us who are interested in being involved in that work." Later, during a meet and greet session, Parks chatted with PhD students Jenny Krichevsky and Kyle Piscioniere about New City Community Press, a community publishing company that he founded and directs.
Before Parks's lecture, Canter was recognized as this year's winner of the Walker Gibson Prize. The Walker Gibson Prize is awarded annually to the best graduate student essay on a topic in composition and rhetoric written in an English Department seminar during the preceding year. She received the prize for her paper, “Affect and Hope: Tracing and Subverting a Neoliberal Rhetoric of Personal Responsibility," which was composed in professor Donna LeCourt's course, Political Economy and Writing, in Spring 2018.