It’s an absolute honor to publish Volume 24.1 of Reflections, which features articles stemming from the 5th Annual HBCU Symposium on Composition and Rhetoric. This symposium was hosted at Jackson State University, and the theme of the conference was “Re-imagining Activism, Literacy, and Rhetoric in a ‘Woke’ White America.” I am incredibly grateful to Dr. Wonderful Faison, Director of the Richard Wright Center for Writing, Rhetoric, and Research at Jackson State University, who served as editor of this special issue.
Dr. Faison’s issue reflects the dynamic, important work produced by scholar educators at various HBCUs across the country. These articles illustrate the wide ranging interests of symposium participants, who write about topics including self-efficacy and activism, language and literacy, representation and literature, community activism, and much more. I’m grateful to all the contributors and symposium organizers who made this special issue possible. I’m also grateful to Kenya (Robinson), LLC, who designed the video cover for this issue and truly brought the work to life.
In addition to the special issue, this volume of Reflections also features a community-engagement project profile: “Writing Our Dreams: A Community Storytelling Project With Students and Teachers at Kūtha Primary School” by Esther Milū, Victor Del Hierro, and Laura Gonzales. This article documents a storytelling project that took place in Kitui, Kenya, where students from Kenya worked with teachers in Kenya and the US to write and publish a book of stories detailing their dreams and aspirations.
Each issue of Reflections is a labor of love and collaboration. In particular, this issue highlights what collaboration can and should look like as we highlight the important work taking place at HBCUs and in transnational contexts. Community engagement praxis has always been rooted in Black literacies, languages, and knowledges, and I am grateful to the scholars and educators who chose to share their work with the Reflections community.
Laura Gonzales researches the connections between language diversity, community engagement, and technology design. Her award-winning books include Sites of Translation: What Multilinguals Can Teach Us About Digital Writing and Rhetoric (University of Michigan Press, 2018) and Designing Multilingual Experiences in Technical Communication (Utah State University Press, 2022). Dr. Gonzales is also President of the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW) and editor-in-chief of Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric.