As this is an honors section of English 2089, students participated in activities/projects that are more intense than we’d experience in a standard section of English 2089. In this class, we studied the historical and ongoing struggle for housing justice in Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood. This study was completed by examining archival materials, listening to talks given by representatives/organizers from the Greater Cincinnati Homeless Coalition, reading over recent Issue 24 campaign materials, and by taking a People’s Movement virtual walking tour of the O-T-R neighborhood. We then synthesized these experiences with readings by scholars like James Paul Gee, Steve Parks, Paula Mathieu, and Chris Wilkey to create drafts of texts to appear in Street Vibes, an independent street newspaper sold and distributed here in Cincinnati. While not all drafts will be accepted for publication, the corpus of student research—as well as our drafts—have been stored in this open-access wiki to be used by future sections of English 2089 doing similar work. Through these projects, we examined Gee’s concept of Discourse (capital “d” intended) and discourse, noting how primary and nondominant secondary Discourses are actively utilized to create the literary practices necessary for neighborhood residents to participate in the dominate Discourse of Cincinnati politics.

Left: ENGL 2089 students after our last in-person class together; pictured with Prof. Bailie