Location: Toronto & Montreal, Canada

Program Type: Faculty-directed

Semester: Spring Post-Term

This program is brought to you by The Writing Center in collaboration with the College of Arts and Letters at MSU. The course, WRA495: Community Literacies and Engagement Across Borders, introduces the theories, research, and pedagogies of community literacy in a global context for students to understand in a complex way what community literacy is and how it is evolving particularly during and following the pandemic. To do this, we will work closely with university and community partners in East Lansing, Michigan, and Toronto and Montreal, Canada. These partnerships will begin virtually during the spring of 2022, continue on the ground in May of 2022, and hopefully evolve beyond the confines of the course into reciprocal partnerships.   

This post-term program will build upon decades of community engagement and community engaged scholarship extending this work across borders to collaborate with Canadian literacy centers and programs housed both within higher education organizations and writing centers and within local communities. 

In Canada, the cities and communities will become the sites for learning, and time spent with partners leading workshops will be considered classroom time as well. We will also participate in multicultural excursions to relevant cultural and historical sites and will interact with guest lecturers on site as well. Students will submit multiple reflections and smaller low-stakes writing projects throughout the course and will collaborate on a final project due several weeks following the trip.