The Difficult Conversations Social Justice Book Club is a series of three conversations about a social-justice focused book across the semester. The conversations are led by undergraduate and graduate consultants on the UWC’s Language and Cultural Diversity Committee. The conversations are open to all IUPUI undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and staff. The program’s purpose is to bring IUPUI community members together to discuss complex issues relating to social justice, writing, literacy, and education and supports our mission of promoting a broad understanding of writing, language, and literacy.
Spring 2022: Kathryn Oleson’s Promoting Inclusive Classroom Dynamics in Higher Education. This text is available as an ebook through IUPUI’s University Library. If you are having trouble with the link, please search for the book on the University Library homepage.
Conversations begin with an overview of the main ideas and arguments of relevant book chapters. Facilitators then pose discussion questions and facilitate a semi-structured conversation about the chapters and their relevance to our campus, teaching, and learning.
We are offering both in-person and virtual versions of the event. For more information about the event, or to receive calendar reminders, please contact us at uwc@iupui.edu. Be sure to include the words “Difficult Conversations” in the email subject line.
Each in-person conversation will take place in Cavanaugh 427.
Each virtual conversation will take place via Zoom: https://iu.zoom.us/s/82773213318
Fall 2021: Margaret Price’s Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life
Spring 2021: Asao Inoue’s Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing Writing for a Socially Just Future
Fall 2020: April Baker-Bell’s Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy
*Spring 2020: Power Structures and Marginalized Groups of Writers
*Fall 2019: Gatekeeping and Cancel Culture; Personality and Writing; History of Politics in the Writing Center
*Spring 2019: Gender Binaries in Writing; Multilingual Writers and Avoiding Appropriation; Kindness and Why it Matters
*Fall 2018: Disclosing Mental Illness
*Prior to Fall 2020, the Difficult Conversations Series focused on article-length texts.
