Anecdotal evidence suggests that academics, especially those early in their career, are more attuned than ever to the importance of reaching beyond the ivory tower and engaging with a wider public.

This semester, the Writing Center is hosting a two-part speaker series featuring trained academics who write for a wider public. These events will follow an interview format and will open up to questions from the audience.

The first event, featuring Scott Poulson-Bryant, will take place on October 21 from 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM. To attend this Zoom session, you must first register here.

Scott Poulson-Bryant is Assistant Professor of Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor. He is a cultural historian and critic with areas of specialization in African American popular culture and Performance Studies. His teaching and research focuses on Hollywood film, black popular music, 20th and 21st century U.S. drama, genre fiction, gender and sexuality studies, and creative nonfiction writing. His research has appeared in The Journal of Popular Music Studies, American Studies, Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International, and Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, and he is currently finishing his monograph Everybody is a Star: Cultural Citizenships and the Glamour of Blackness in 1970s US Popular Culture.

He has also published articles in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, and The Village Voice, and other publications, and he was one of the founding editors of VIBE Magazine. His public-facing books include HUNG: A Meditation on the Measure of Black Men in America (Doubleday) and The VIPs: A Novel (Broadway/Random House).

The interview will conducted by Briallen Hopper, who teaches a new Professional Development course at the GC, “Public Writing for Academics.” Briallen is Assistant professor of English at Queens College, CUNY. She is the author of Hard to Love (Bloomsbury, 2019), a collection of essays about love and friendship. Her essays, reviews, op eds, profiles, listicles, and sermons have appeared in Avidly, Beliefnet, Black Business Now, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Columbia Journal, The Conversation, Crosscurrents, Document Journal, HuffPost, KtB, Los Angeles Review of Books, The New Inquiry, The New Republic, Newsweek, New York Magazine/The Cut, Not Coming to a Theater Near You, Religion & Politics, Sacred Matters, The Seattle Star, The Stranger, Take Part, and Talking Points Memo. She is the editor of the online literary magazine KtB ​and an associate editor at the UK-based independent press And Other Stories.

 

Sponsored by the GC Writing Center