Hi Folks,
I’m pleased to share the news that another new book has been added to the WAC Clearinghouse (https://wac.colostate.edu). This book appears in the Landmark Publications in Writing book series.
A Community Text Arises: A Literate Text and a Literacy Tradition
in African-American Churches
By Beverly J. Moss
A Community Text Arises emerges from an ethnographic study of literacy in three African-American churches. The study illuminates the ways that the primary model of a literate text is shaped and used in African-American churches. In Chapter 1, Beverly J. Moss examines how the African-American church has operated as a community within larger African-American communities. In Chapter 2, Moss introduces, through ethnographic descriptions, the churches she studied. In Chapter 3, Moss highlights the features of the major literacy event and text in African-American churches—the sermon. Through close analysis of individual sermons, Moss illustrates how the sermon functions as a community text. Chapter 4 focuses solely on the sermons of one minister to highlight rhetorical strategies that are used to create and main community identity. The analysis in chapters 3 and 4 provides a view of a text that calls into question traditionally held notions of text inside and outside the community. In Chapter 5, Moss considers the implications of the study for how text is defined and for the relationships between oral and written texts.
You can find the book at https://wac.colostate.edu/books/landmarks/arises/. Thanks to Beverly for her decision to share it with us as an open-access publication. Thanks as well to the members of the editorial review board of the Landmarks series who reviewed it for inclusion in the series.
All the best,
Mike
Mike Palmquist
Publisher, The WAC Clearinghouse
Emeritus Professor, Associate Provost, and
University Distinguished Teaching Scholar
Colorado State University
Email: Mike.Palmquist
