vershawn ashanti young
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Research Interests: Writing Program Administration, Writing Assessment, Feminist Pedagogy, Placement, First-Year Writing, The Profession
Profile from Vershawn Ashanti Young's University of Waterloo Profile Page
My academic work falls primarily in three areas of Black Studies (masculinity studies, language studies and performance studies). I am a multi-disciplinary artist, scholar, and teacher, I integrate these multiple areas into my published work and instruction, such as communication, composition and rhetoric, education, American literature, and theatre.
I am perhaps best known for advancing my educational and sociolinguistic concept “code-meshing,” which means allowing minoritized language users to blend their cultural and heritage languages within academic, professional and public writing and speaking.
As a professor, I have also served on faculty at University of Iowa and University of Kentucky. But I have done and do other stuff too: I have served as a high school drama/English/speech teacher, an elementary school principal, a supervisor of itinerant theater teachers in Los Angeles, and a school board administrator. I have a JD law degree and have served as a child protection mediator for the Ontario Ministry and a family mediator in Canada and the USA.
I often work as a diversity consultant to schools and organizations, conducting training on cultural competency, interpersonal and intercultural communication. I often conduct workshops with my colleague in the UW English Department, Frankie Condon.
I am also a solo performance artist and actor. I had the honor to be recognized for “best performance in a play,” for my portrayal of the brain-damaged Gabriel in August Wilson’s Fences. I also regularly tour my one-man show, Your Average Nigga, based on my first book of the same name. I am currently performing the lead male role—Robert Chiltern—in Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband.
Between 2020 and present, I have been awarded two (2) external and one (1) internal research support grants, published one (1) critical textbook that combines the study of language and culture with a study of interracial understanding after George Floyd, published three (3) single authored and one (1) co-authored research articles, four (4) research mobilization articles (short articles in the public press, such as scholarly op-eds, perspectives, and points of view), delivered twenty-one (21 or more) keynote addresses, facilitated twenty (20 or more) international and nationwide faculty development workshops on antiracist communication and code meshing, served as one (1) named visiting professor at a major research intensive university.
College/University Profile: Vershawn Ashanti Young's University of Waterloo Profile
Personal Website: Vershawn Ashanti Young
Twitter: @YoungVershawn
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