Aralee Strange Lecture: Vaughn Watson

“On Elder Avenue: Envisioning Rightful Literary Presence as Traveling With”

Dr. Vaughn W.M. Watson, associate professor in the department of teacher education at Michigan State University, will give the fifth annual Aralee Strange Lecture for Art and Poetry. Watson directs the Diasporas, a participatory literacy collaboration with Black African immigrant youth and university and community educators. In “On Elder Avenue: Envisioning Rightful Literary Presence as Traveling With,” Vaughn draws across geographies of research, teaching and teacher education in the global African Diaspora to conceptualize Rightful Literary Presence as necessary stancetaking toward justice. Rightful Literary Presence involves affirming, contextualizing, historicizing and designing approaches to research and teaching that render visible the range of creative and artistic literacy, language and learning practices of youth within and across contexts of schools and communities.

The Aralee Strange Lecture series features scholars and scholarship focused on the intersections of visual art, poetry, literacy, equity and justice in education. This program is presented in collaboration with the department of language and literacy at the University of Georgia’s Mary Frances Early College of Education and funded by the Aralee Strange Fund for Art and Poetry.