Circulating Communities

The Tactics and Strategies of Community Publishing

Edited by Paula Mathieu, Steven J. Parks, Tiffany Rousculp

Hardback - £94.00

Publication date:

23 December 2011

Length of book:

230 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9780739167106

Circulating Communities: The Tactics and Strategies of Community Publishing, edited by Paula Mathieu, Steve Parks, and Tiffany Rousculp, represents the first attempt to gather the myriad of community and college publishing projects, providing not only history and analysis but extended samples of the community writing produced. Rather than feature only the voices of academic scholars, this collection features also the words of writing group participants, community organizers, literacy instructors, librarians, and stay-at-home parents as well.

In libraries, community centers, prisons, and homeless shelters across the US and around the world, people not traditionally understood as writers regularly come together to write, offer feedback, revise, publish—and most importantly circulate—their words. The vast amount of literature that these community-publishing projects create has historically been overlooked by scholars of literature, journalism, and literacy. Over the past decade, however, higher education has moved outward, off campus and into the streets. Many of these efforts build from writing and publication projects that extend back over decades, are grassroots in nature, and are independent of college efforts. Circulating Communities offers a unique glimpse into how neighbor and scholar, teacher and activist, are using writing and publishing to improve the daily lives on the streets they call home.
Circulating Communities introduces a much needed, new area of scholarship: community publishing. It tackles a question largely ignored by most scholarship on public writing: How do groups—especially marginalized groups—publish and distribute their work? Best of all, it provides clear-eyed analyses of marginalized communities as they struggle to speak publicly and on their own terms. This new focus on circulation and community publishing is a must read for any program that studies or teaches public writing.