Vershawn Ashanti Young is a scholar in black studies, English language and writing, and communications. He specializes in three specific areas in Black studies that include masculinity, writing studies, and also performance studies. [1] Young is the co-author of many books and multiple articles about black studies and the importance of code-meshing. Young has taught at multiple universities, teaching Black studies, English language and literature, communication, and theater.
Young received a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Illinois Chicago and a Juris Doctor from the Mitchell Hamline School of Law. [2]
Young has taught at the University of Iowa, University of Kentucky and public schools. [3] [4] In 2024, he is currently teaching at the University of Waterloo.
Aside from being an educator, he is also a performer and an artist, most notably doing a one-man show tour called Your Average Nigga. [5] Young has written nine books, including Your Average Nigga, in which he discusses how black men have to give up their masculinity and way of speech to sound and act whiter to get an education. In his 2018 book Other People’s English, Young distinguishes between code-switching (dialect used at school versus dialect used at home or with friends) and code-meshing (a combination of both). He also researches masculinity in this book and compares Tyler Perry to former President Barack Obama to see what performances they needed to do to be as successful as they had become.
In 2020, he was the chair of the Conference on College Composition and Communication. [6] [7]
List of Young's articles published on The Conversation website
Misandry is the hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against men or boys.
Gloria Jean Watkins, better known by her pen name bell hooks, was an American author, theorist, educator, and social critic who was a Distinguished Professor in Residence at Berea College. She was best known for her writings on race, feminism, and class. She used the lower-case spelling of her name to decenter herself and draw attention to her work instead. The focus of hooks' writing was to explore the intersectionality of race, capitalism, and gender, and what she described as their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of oppression and class domination. She published around 40 books, including works that ranged from essays, poetry, and children's books. She published numerous scholarly articles, appeared in documentary films, and participated in public lectures. Her work addressed love, race, social class, gender, art, history, sexuality, mass media, and feminism.
In linguistics, code-switching or language alternation occurs when a speaker alternates between two or more languages, or language varieties, in the context of a single conversation or situation. These alternations are generally intended to influence the relationship between the speakers, for example, suggesting that they may share identities based on similar linguistic histories.
Masculinity is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles associated with men and boys. Masculinity can be theoretically understood as socially constructed, and there is also evidence that some behaviors considered masculine are influenced by both cultural factors and biological factors. To what extent masculinity is biologically or socially influenced is subject to debate. It is distinct from the definition of the biological male sex, as anyone can exhibit masculine traits. Standards of masculinity vary across different cultures and historical periods. It is traditionally contrasted with femininity.
Paulo Reglus Neves Freire was a Brazilian educator and philosopher who was a leading advocate of critical pedagogy. His influential work Pedagogy of the Oppressed is generally considered one of the foundational texts of the critical pedagogy movement, and was the third most cited book in the social sciences as of 2016 according to Google Scholar.
Computers and writing is a sub-field of college English studies about how computers and digital technologies affect literacy and the writing process. The range of inquiry in this field is broad including discussions on ethics when using computers in writing programs, how discourse can be produced through technologies, software development, and computer-aided literacy instruction. Some topics include hypertext theory, visual rhetoric, multimedia authoring, distance learning, digital rhetoric, usability studies, the patterns of online communities, how various media change reading and writing practices, textual conventions, and genres. Other topics examine social or critical issues in computer technology and literacy, such as the issues of the "digital divide", equitable access to computer-writing resources, and critical technological literacies. Many studies by scientists have shown that writing on computer is better than writing in a book
Digital rhetoric is communication that exists in the digital sphere. It can be expressed in many different forms, including text, images, videos, and software. Due to the increasingly mediated nature of contemporary society, distinctions between digital and non-digital environments are less clear. This has expanded the scope of digital rhetoric to account for the increased fluidity with which humans interact with technology.
Composition studies is the professional field of writing, research, and instruction, focusing especially on writing at the college level in the United States.
Basic writing, or developmental writing, is a subdiscipline of composition studies which focuses on the writing of students sometimes otherwise called "remedial" or "underprepared", usually freshman college students.
African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) is a nonstandard dialect of English deeply embedded in the culture of the United States, including popular culture. It has been the center of controversy about the education of African-American youths, the role AAVE should play in public schools and education, and its place in broader society. The linguistic and cultural history of African Americans has been fostered and maintained in part through the Black church, including some lexicon and the call and response style of linguistic engagement. Artistic and cultural movements originating with African Americans, such as jazz and hip-hop, have also significantly showcased, influenced, or sometimes mainstreamed elements of AAVE in the broader American culture and even on the global stage. The dialect is also seen and heard in advertising.
Translanguaging is a term that can refer to different aspects of multilingualism. It can describe the way bilinguals and multilinguals use their linguistic resources to make sense of and interact with the world around them. It can also refer to a pedagogical approach that utilizes more than one language within a classroom lesson. The term "translanguaging" was coined in the 1980s by Cen Williams in his unpublished thesis titled “An Evaluation of Teaching and Learning Methods in the Context of Bilingual Secondary Education.” Williams used the term to describe the practice of using two languages in the same lesson, which differed from many previous methods of bilingual education that tried to separate languages by class, time, or day. In addition, Vogel and Garcia argued that translanguaging theory posits that rather than possessing two or more autonomous language systems, as previously thought when scholars described bilingual or multilingual speakers, bilinguals and multilingual speakers select and deploy their languages from a unitary linguistic repertoire. However, the dissemination of the term, and of the related concept, gained traction decades later due in part to published research by Ofelia García, among others. In this context, translanguaging is an extension of the concept of languaging, the discursive practices of language speakers, but with the additional feature of using multiple languages, often simultaneously. It is a dynamic process in which multilingual speakers navigate complex social and cognitive demands through strategic employment of multiple languages.
Ronald L. Jackson II is an American academic and author. He is Past President of the National Communication Association and a professor of communication, culture, and media, and a former dean of the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Cincinnati.
Feminist rhetoric emphasizes the narratives of all demographics, including women and other marginalized groups, into the consideration or practice of rhetoric. Feminist rhetoric does not focus exclusively on the rhetoric of women or feminists but instead prioritizes the feminist principles of inclusivity, community, and equality over the classic, patriarchal model of persuasion that ultimately separates people from their own experience. Seen as the act of producing or the study of feminist discourses, feminist rhetoric emphasizes and supports the lived experiences and histories of all human beings in all manner of experiences. It also redefines traditional delivery sites to include non-traditional locations such as demonstrations, letter writing, and digital processes, and alternative practices such as rhetorical listening and productive silence. In her book, Rhetorical Feminism and This Thing Called Hope (2018), Cheryl Glenn describes rhetorical feminism as, "a set of tactics that multiplies rhetorical opportunities in terms of who counts as a rhetor, who can inhabit an audience, and what those audiences can do." Rhetorical feminism is a strategy that counters traditional forms of rhetoric, favoring dialogue over monologue and seeking to redefine the way audiences view rhetorical appeals.
Gordon David Houston was Professor of English at Howard University, one of the first African-American educators to teach Old English literature and the first African-American from Cambridge to graduate from Harvard University.
Abolitionist teaching, also known as abolitionist pedagogy, is a set of practices and approaches to teaching that emphasize abolishing educational practices considered by its proponents to be inherently problematic and oppressive. The term was coined by education professor and critical theorist Bettina Love.
Black male studies (BMS), also known as Black men's studies, Black masculinist studies, African-American male studies, and African-American men's studies, is an area of study within the interdisciplinary field of Black studies that primarily focuses on the study of Black men and boys. Its research focus includes the study of Black manhood and Black masculinity, and it draws from disciplines such as history, philosophy, and sociology.
Jacqueline Jones Royster is an American academic, author, and scholar of rhetoric, literacy, and cultural studies. She is a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the former Dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.
Multimodal pedagogy is an approach to the teaching of writing that implements different modes of communication. Multimodality refers to the use of visual, aural, linguistic, spatial, and gestural modes in differing pieces of media, each necessary to properly convey the information it presents.
M. Remi Yergeau is an American academic in the fields of rhetoric and writing studies, digital studies, queer rhetoric, disability studies, and theories of mind. As of 2024, Yergeau is an Arthur F. Thurnau associate professor of Digital Studies and English at the University of Michigan.
Carmen Kynard is the Lillian Radford Chair in Rhetoric and Composition and a Professor of English at Texas Christian University. Before that, she worked at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her research focuses on race, Black feminisms, AfroDigital/Black languages and cultures, and schooling dynamics, particularly in composition, rhetoric, and literacy studies. Carmen has taught in New York City's public schools, worked in writing program administration, and in teacher education. She has led initiatives for professional development in language, literacy, and learning. Her research appears in Harvard Educational Review, College Composition and Communication, and Literacy and Composition Studies. Kynard is the author of Vernacular Insurrections: Race, Black Protest, and the New Century in Composition-Literacy Studies, which won the 2015 James N. Britton Award presented by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). In 2023, Kynard was also honored with the Richard C. Ohmann Outstanding Article Award for scholarship published in the academic journal College English.