Guest Talk: Your Song Sets Me Free: Literacy in the Groove & Off the Grid, with Emery Petchauer

This lecture traces the patterns of encounter that reroute expression, togetherness, and performance in intergenerational community spaces where people write songs, make beats, play instruments, and make a lot of noise. Specifically, I explore the form and formlessness of these encounters: critical connections that supersede critical mass, ephemera that inspire young writers toward liberation, and the abolitionist impulse to continually remake the formations through which study, expression, and performance take place. What new relations emerge between the living forms we think we know? This talk will be of interest to English education and literacy scholars/educators; music producers and music educators, community-based artists who work with youth, and everyday people who believe another world is possible.

Emery Petchauer is a professor in the Department of English and Department of Teacher Education at Michigan State University, where he coordinated the English education concentration from 2016 to 2022. He is interested in the ways educators, artists, and youth connect their assets to bring about the world they wish to experience, even for a short period of time. He is most at home in intergenerational art, expression, and learning spaces where people make things together — especially beats, sounds, songs, and lots of noise. Emery is the author or editor of four books and over 40 peer reviewed articles, chapters, and editorials. His scholarship and community work have been supported by the Spencer Foundation, the Office of Research and Innovation at MSU, and partnerships with Ableton and Koala Sampler.

This in-person event is co-sponsored by the Teachers College Racial Literacy Project / Lecture Series.  Moderating discussion is Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, Program Director and Associate Professor of English Education.

Please rsvp by Monday, November 14th to assure a seat.

Where: 305 Russell