Black Linguistic Justice
This is an MLK Signature/UTHRIVE event open to all CLA students, faculty, and staff.
Description
Anti-Black Linguistic Racism is a term coined by Dr. April Baker-Bell. Join us as she discusses topics from her award-winning book, Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy, and takes audience questions during a Q&A segment. The book brings together theory, research, and practice to point the way toward dismantling white linguistic supremacy. As Dr. Baker-Bell tells stories of how Black students navigate and negotiate their linguistic and racial identities across multiple contexts in our current social and political climate, she reveals the urgent need for teaching antiracist language.
About the Speaker
Dr. April Baker-Bell is a transdisciplinary teacher-researcher-activist and Associate Professor of Language, Literacy, and English Education in the Department of English and Department of African American and African Studies at Michigan State University. A national leader in conversations on Black Language education, her research interrogates the intersections of Black language and literacies, anti-Black racism, and antiracist pedagogies, and is concerned with antiracist writing, critical media literacies, Black feminist-womanist storytelling, and self-preservation for Black women in academia, with an emphasis on early career Black women.
Baker-Bell is the recipient of many awards and fellowships, including the 2021 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s New Directions Fellowship, the 2021 Michigan State University’s Community Engagement Scholarship Award and the 2021 Distinguished Partnership Award for Community-Engaged Creative Activity, the 2020 NCTE George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language, the 2019 Michigan State University Alumni Award for Innovation & Leadership in Teaching and Learning, and the 2018 AERA Language and Social Processes Early Career Scholar Award.
Event Sponsors
CLA Undergraduate Education
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Program
CLA President’s Emerging Scholars Program
CLA Office of Student Experience
CLA Indigenous Staff and Staff of Color Community