With New Books, Writing Center Commits to ‘Linguistic Justice’
To celebrate the 45th anniversary of the Charlotte Orr Hotaling Writing Center, James Cochran, director of the Writing Competency Program and Writing Center, went ahead and got a gift.
“Our goal was to update the Writing Center’s resource library,” he said. “We’re buying books that focus on linguistic justice, multilingual writers, and other ways of thinking about how we can write and tutor inclusively.”
Working with Brynn Illie ‘25, Cochran secured a $2,500 “Seed and Growth” grant through the Community Literacies Collaboratory, funded by the Brown Chair in English Literacy at the University of Arkansas, to purchase more than 50 anti-racist and equity-focused books for the Writing Center’s resource library.
“One of our focuses this year is ‘Linguistic Justice,’ recognizing that people use language in a variety of different ways,” he said. “We want people to understand that particular dialects and modes of writing aren’t indications of someone being unintelligent.”
Now students will be able to look through and borrow copies of Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy, Writing Across Cultures and How Scholars Write.
