Dear UMBC Community,

If you haven’t already, be sure to stop by the UMBC Library Rotunda and see the exhibit of Catonsville Nine related artifacts and images—Including an original C9 Press Statement from May 1968.  

We’re just a week away!  Please join us on Friday, May 4th for a Catonsville Nine 50th Symposium at UMBC.  We have a packed afternoon and evening of speakers and discussions including Kathy Kelly, of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, and Margarita Melville, one of the two living members of the Catonsville Nine action…and many others who will share perspectives on the history and lessons of one of the most dramatic anti-war actions in U.S. history—which took place just down the road from UMBC.  I’m attaching the schedule below…join us for any or all!  

Many thanks to The Shriver Center, CAHSS, History, American Studies, and MCS Depts, to OIA Communications, and to Dresher Center for sponsorship and support.  We’re also grateful to the Catonsville Nine 50th Commemoration Committee for their tremendous planning effort  and, especially, to Maryland Humanities for a grant to support these commemorative events.

Please circulate and promote…All are invited.  Share on your myUMBC groups and other social media sites too!

All my best,

Joby 

Joby Taylor, PhD
Director, Shriver Peaceworker Fellows Program

Voices of Social Change: Empowered Communities for Health and Social Change

First International Conference on Literacy, Culture, and Language Education

The Department of Literacy, Culture, and Language Education in the School of Education at Indiana Bloomington invites proposals for panels, individual papers, round table discussions, interactive workshops and poster sessions to be presented at the First International Conference on Literacy, Culture, and Language Education (ICLCLE) on October 5-7, 2018 at Indiana University - Bloomington.  

This international conference includes research, pedagogy and practice about diverse issues in language, literacy and culture in education.  The participants will be involved in a local and global dialogue and exchange of ideas, research and experiences on the themes of the event.

Download the Call for Proposals.

Date and Location: 

April 18, 2018 at 12 p.m.

LLC Conference Room, 422 Sherman Hall

Title: Spitfire: Framing White Rage in Response to Black Rhetoric

On March 26, 2014, for the first time in intercollegiate competitive debate history, two

African American women won top honors and were named champions of the Cross Examination Debate Associations national tournament. Using this particular incident, this dissertation explores the press reports published about this historic moment. Through a collection of 18 artifacts, this dissertation offers an emblematic example of how American culture emboldens the white gaze to impose a culture of oppression, intellectual repression of Black thought while victimizing and silencing Black women. This rhetorical analysis considers the 2014 Cross Examination Debate Associations final tournament outcome to explore press reports as an exemplary case of how American cultural standardization edifies the white gaze and its rage in reaction to Black youth and Black rhetoric.

Pulling from Whiteness Studies, this dissertation presents a history of intercollegiate

competitive debate alongside a history of the development of American culture to frame

unmarked whiteness as problematic. Citing this historic moment, this incident demonstrates how whiteness operates culturally and rhetorically to maintain a system of intellectual repression of Black youth. This project uses exnomination, abstract liberalism, American Africanism, and cooptation to frame the rhetoric of whiteness as rage and demonstrates how this rage acts as a violent terror tactic that passively and aggressively coopted the Debater's strategic use of the "nword" to create symbolic dissension that elevates the Black male debaters while simultaneously silencing the Black women debaters. It is the goal of this project to demonstrate how whiteness

operates, to resist its violent terror tactics.

Dissertation Committee: Craig Saper, Chair

Beverly Bickel

Kimberly Moffitt

Lester Spence

Christel Temple

The public is welcome to observe.