Recent Projects
Cuentos de Confianza is a bilingual (Spanish-English) community writing project that highlights the experiences of promotores de salud (health promoters) on the path toward reproductive justice. This site uses both Spanish and English to speak to multiple audiences and to recognize language as part of reproductive justice. Each story was written by a health promoter based on their lived experiences to educate community members about the important work they do for sexual and reproductive health within Latinx neighborhoods across Wisconsin. Part of larger coalitional work, Cuentos de Confianza is a collaborative and bilingual digital storytelling project with a primary use of supplementing the sexual and reproductive health education that the health promoters do in their own Latinx communities.
My role in this digital storytelling project, supervised by Dr. Rachel Bloom-Pojar (Director of Confianza Collective), has been to design the site, curate the content surrounding the stories, and work with local translators to develop the site in both languages. We have worked closely with the promotores along the way to provide a deliverable for their target audience: their own communities. We encourage anyone who visits the site to recognize and honor the vulnerability attached to sharing stories in digital spaces by handling these stories with care.
Screen shot of the Cuentos Homepage
Reproductive Justice Collaboratory is a collective of scholars across disciplines, including faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who seek to support and advance community centered reproductive justice initiatives in Milwaukee, WI.
The collaboratory aims to "create a space where researchers at UWM and reproductive justice community advocates in Milwaukee can work together to address systemic injustices disproportionately affecting Black, Latinx, and other women and trans people of color. In working together, we hope to develop a project that helps bring attention to reproductive injustices in Milwaukee but also that acts as a resource for making substantial changes to improve the conditions within which individuals can exercise their 'human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities' (SisterSong)" (From UWM Collaboratory page).
Flyer for one of the collaboratory's events in Milwaukee, WI. This storytelling event brought together scholars, organization directors, and community leaders to have conversation and to build relationships in efforts to advance reproductive justice locally.
Writing & Rhetoric MKE is "a digital archive of blog posts and resources published on the website of the same name between 2018-2022. The website was designed and edited by graduate students in UW-Milwaukee English Department’s Public Rhetorics and Community Engagement program. This collection includes content published on the website between February 2018 and November 2021 on topics including, but not limited to, community engagement, community literacies, composition pedagogy, social justice, digital humanities, linguistic diversity, public writing, qualitative research, and rhetoric" (from the archive page).
As co-editor of Writing and Rhetoric MKE from 2018-2020, I helped this project grow into an entity of its own. Writers have contributed to our blog from across universities, though we were committed to amplifying rhetoric outside of academia as well. The goal had always been to highlight the public rhetorics happening in communities around Milwaukee, WI. With shifting social concerns came shifts for the site as well. We added a social justice tab, antiracist resources, and protest art from around the city in response to the recent deaths of Black Americans in the summer of 2020. While the site is now archived, it still holds value for local audiences, contributing writers, and our editorial team.
Milwaukee activist mural on the corner of N. 14th St. and W. Vliet St. in Milwaukee, WI. From left to right: Vaun Mayes, Markasa Tucker, Tommy Franecki, Elle Halo, Jeremiah Thomas, Khalil Coleman, Sam Alford, & Frank Nitty. Photo by Madison Williams.