top of page

GWRJ Issue 15.2

Spring 2025

Jazmine Cruz

Being a Chicana with a Translanguaging Power

​

Jazmine Cruz discusses her translanguaging experiences growing up as a first-generation
Chicana. Cruz explores her identity as a speaker and writer across multiple languages, as well as the challenges she faces as a Chicana in a familiar society.

Amaka Chime

Heads Up: Hair Braiding as a Literate Activity

​

Amaka Chime describes hair braiding as an intricate literate activity with so many components to learn. Tracing some of their learning and braiding experience, Chime uses literate activity as a framework to generate—and answer—questions about hair braiding.

Kate Carlock

Sincerely, The Things I Could Never Say Out Loud: Poetry as a Personal Activity System

​

Kate Carlock writes about poetry as a personal activity system that she has used to  transform pain. She values poetry as a cathartic genre but also explains how even  writing that comes from strong, personal emotions can be revisited and revised, becoming a companion that evolves alongside her in her journey as a writer and as a person.

Tianran Chen

My Musical Digital Literacy Transformation from China to the US

​

Tianran Chen shares her music app transition from China to the US and discusses music  app transformation as a literate activity. Chen talks about how we can use different tools  in different social and cultural contexts to enjoy music as a multimodal embodied  activity.

Jacob Taylor

A Dump for My Thoughts

 

In this Picturing Literate Activity piece, Jacob Taylor shows the often invisible parts of  doing research: the digital spaces where we dump our sources, links, and early thoughts.

Ethan Sakata

It's a Bird... It's a Plane... It's a Genre!

​

Ethan Sakata investigates the complex genres of airplane tickets and boarding passes.  Though plane tickets and boarding passes don’t always catch people’s attention, they are still important and complicated texts. Sakata weaves through the ins and outs of both  genres, examining every aspect of these tools for flight travel, to discover what makes  them so fascinating.

Kristy Hume

Marathon Training as Literate Activity

​

In this Picturing Literate Activity piece, Kristy Hume shares a collage of screenshots from her phone that show the complexities of the literate activity of training for a marathon.

Rachel Gramer

The Literate Activity of Being an Adult Really Piles Up

 

Rachel Gramer describes their experiences with making piles as a literate activity.  Gramer unpacks all the things we can see, know, think about, and feel when we analyze  our piling practices and notice what we are piling up every day.

Daniel McFarland

Skateboarding as a Literate Activity I Learned

 

Daniel McFarland discusses skateboarding as a literate activity, explaining how they  became situated in this literacy through introduction to the lingo, artwork, and  expressions, as well as through learning physical skills and interacting with spaces and  tools that are part of this activity. Skateboarding contains many activities that, considered all together, work to create an identity for those who participate.

Kate Fortner

A Picture of Organized Chaos

​

In this Picturing Literate Activity piece, Kate Fortner explores the way her multitasking  mindset manifests in her workspace while she practices uptake for her writing research  on fanfiction.

Shawna Sheperd

Is It More Than Morbid Fascination? The Empowering Effect of True Crime Podcasts

 

Shawna Sheperd explores true crime as an activity system and true crime podcasts as a  subgenre, addressing issues of ethical communication, civic engagement, and discourse communities. Sheperd asks, how do true crime podcasts interact with the real world?  What do we gain from listening to sometimes horrific tales? Is it more than just morbid  fascination?

Shawna Sheperd & Edcel Javier Cintron-Gonazalez

Why Are You Obsessed? A Conversation About Ethics and Community in a GWRJ Article

​

In this interview transcribed from an episode of the “Conversations with GWRJ Authors”  podcast series, Shawna Sheperd talks with Edcel Javier Cintron-Gonzalez about how they  transformed their love of podcasts and multimodality into their GWRJ article “Is It  More Than Morbid Fascination? The Empowering Effect of True Crime Podcasts.” Sheperd  shares the power of discourse communities and the ethics behind enjoying true crime.

Jia Zuo

Something Old, Something New: Chinese Restaurants in the US as a Genre

​

Jia Zuo explores the emergence and evolution of Chinese restaurants in the US. Blending Chinese traditions and innovations, this new genre of restaurants captivates customers  with delicious food, rich cultural elements, and a community people share and cherish.

Brolan Springman

Who Wants You? Genre Research into Propaganda Posters

​

Brolan Springman looks at how World War II propaganda posters worked as a genre in  the world, using both genre and content research. Springman asks: What is propaganda?  Why was it so effective? Why does Uncle Sam have such a condescending  demeanor?

© 2024 by ISU Writing Program

bottom of page