The Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities will present “Talking Back to the Book: Critical Digital Literacies in African American Rhetorical Traditions,” a lecture by Adam Banks, professor of writing rhetoric and digital studies at University of Kentucky.
In this talk, Banks will consider Stevie Wonder’s exploration of technologies in his pursuit of artistic independence from Motown in the early 1970s as an invocation and deployment of Talking Book, a trope of literacy for freedom emerging from black oral traditions. He will argue that Talking Book offers educators and community builders a framework for a critical digital literacy that helps us understand contemporary African-American engagements with technologies such as Twitter and can inform work with technologies in schools and community spaces.
The event—which is free and open to the public—will take place Wednesday, April 1, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. in Clark Hall, Room 309.