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More About the 2017 Hiphop Literacies/ Hiphop Justice Conference Coordinators
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The Fifth Element: Social Justice Pedagogy Through Spoken Word Poetry explores spoken word poetry as a tool for social justice, critical feminist pedagogy, and new ways of teaching and learning. Crystal Leigh is an internationally renowned spoken word artist. Recognized by Cosmopolitan Magazine as a “Fun, Fearless Female,” Crystal Leigh is both performer and professor, and works to serve her community as an artist, activist, and academic. Her most recent scholarship-activism focuses on how spoken word poetry and performance can connect girls globally, impact their communities, and inform government policy. Since 2015 Crystal Leigh has directed the creative performance of spoken word at the United Nations for International Day of the Girl in October. She was also a featured performer for the closing of the 61st United Nations Commission on the Status of Women – Youth Forum in March 2017. Watch her TEDx talk at the left.
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Elaine "Dr. E" Richardson |
Cleveland, Ohio native, Dr. Elaine Richardson, PH.D. is currently Professor of Literacy Studies at The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, where she teaches in the Department of Teaching and Learning. Her research interests include the liberation and critical literacy education of people of the Black African Diaspora. Her books
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include African American Literacies, (2003, Routledge), focusing on teaching writing from the point of view of African American Language and Literacy traditions; Hiphop Literacies (2006 Routledge) is a study of Hiphop language use as an extension of Black folk traditions. Her urban education memoir, PHD (Po H# on Dope) to PhD: How Education Saved My Life, (2013, New City Community Press) chronicles her life from drugs and the streetlife to the award-winning scholar and university professor, art activist: Richardson has also co-edited two volumes on African American rhetorical theory, Understanding African American Rhetoric: Classical Origins to Contemporary Innovations (2003, Routledge) and African American Rhetoric(s): Interdisciplinary Perspectives (2004, Southern Illinois University Press), and one volume on Hiphop Feminism--Home Girls Make Some Noise (2007, Parker Publishing). Among her many awards, in 2004, she was Fulbright lecturing/researcher in the department of Literatures in English at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica; Who’s Who Black Columbus 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016; National Council of Negro Women, Community Service Award, 2012; Outstanding Woman of Columbus, 2011; Cleveland State University Distinguished Alumni, 2007, and more. Richardson’s professional memberships include the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), The Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), Rhetoric Society of America, as well as Committee of Linguists of African Descent (CLAD).
She is Director of The Ohio State University Hiphop Literacies Conference, as well as the nascent non-profit Education Foundation for Freedom, focusing on educational empowerment of women and girls. Richardson, aka Dr. E is also a recording artist and performer, using her performance to reach souls on a deeper level. Of her urban education memoir, PHD to Ph.D.: How Education Saved My Life, Professor Ted Lardner writes: “If Zora Neale Hurston had a god-daughter, she could be Elaine Richardson: on so many paths, she comes to these pages a deep student of life--the one who studies it up close, unguarded, and, with a musician's ear for the song that lives in all of her experience, brings home its truths in their fearsome and freeing power. This book, like the life it describes, is a work of spirit Richardson records for us, another way to talk to, and talk about, God.” Her forthcoming book is tentatively titled “Our Hiphop Feminist Literacies Matter: Reading the World with Black Girls.”
She is Director of The Ohio State University Hiphop Literacies Conference, as well as the nascent non-profit Education Foundation for Freedom, focusing on educational empowerment of women and girls. Richardson, aka Dr. E is also a recording artist and performer, using her performance to reach souls on a deeper level. Of her urban education memoir, PHD to Ph.D.: How Education Saved My Life, Professor Ted Lardner writes: “If Zora Neale Hurston had a god-daughter, she could be Elaine Richardson: on so many paths, she comes to these pages a deep student of life--the one who studies it up close, unguarded, and, with a musician's ear for the song that lives in all of her experience, brings home its truths in their fearsome and freeing power. This book, like the life it describes, is a work of spirit Richardson records for us, another way to talk to, and talk about, God.” Her forthcoming book is tentatively titled “Our Hiphop Feminist Literacies Matter: Reading the World with Black Girls.”
Dr. Carmen Kynard |
Dr. Carmen Kynard, Ph.D. is associate professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY) where she interrogates race and the politics of writing instruction. She has taught high school with the New York City public schools/Coalition of Essential Schools, served as a writing program administrator, and worked as a teacher educator. She has led numerous professional development projects on
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language, literacy, and learning and has published in Harvard Educational Review, Changing English, College Composition and Communication, College English, Computers and Composition, Reading Research Quarterly, Literacy and Composition Studies and more. Her first book, Vernacular Insurrections: Race, Black Protest, and the New Century in Composition-Literacy Studies won the 2015 James Britton Award and makes Black Freedom a 21st century literacy movement. Her article, “Teaching While Black: Racial Violence and the Landscapes of Disciplinary Whiteness” was chosen as a best article for The Best of Independent Composition and Rhetoric Journals of 2015. Her current projects focus on Black female college students’ literacies, Black feminist digital vernaculars, and AfroDigital Humanities learning. Carmen traces her research and teaching at her website, “Education, Liberation, and Black Radical Traditions” (http://carmenkynard.org) and is currently grindin it out in a writing-thinking-being-intensive classroom with her undergraduate John Jay students in a course called "'Until I am Free, You Are Not Free Either': Introduction to Gender Studies" (click here to see that course).