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Accountability Groups

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DEFINITION:  An “accountability group” is a small group of peers that meet informally on a regular basis to hold one another “accountable,” offer support, and all the other elements so vital for the hard work before us and so many aspects of our busy lives competing for our attention all at once. You decide when to meet. You decide how often. I recommend meeting at least a couple of times a month for at least 90 minutes each time, if at all possible. PREAMBLE (or “Why We Need an Accountability Group”).  Over the course of my life, I’ve been involved with multiple “accountability groups” both professionally and personally (family, fellow grad students, reading groups). As have you. However, the “organic” element of social discourse that brings such groups together can be difficult to replicate in situations like ours in times like these. Enter what I’ll call the “ Academics for Black Survival and Wellbeing ” version of that vital resource for this rallying point.  Thousand...
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A “Collective Agreement” or “Covenant”

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Skip to content Download collective agreement ( pdf ) WHY THIS COVENANT/COLLECTIVE AGREEMENT?  In the midst of absolutely the most difficult summer in at least a generation, about twenty of our incredible graduate students signed up for a course called Rhetoric and Race ( syllabus ). In other words, as the world erupted in a global uprising against police brutality in the wake of the brutal murder of George Floyd and Breanna Taylor, smack dab in the middle of an unprecedented a conversation about race and racism unlike anyone had ever seen . . . this group of dedicated MA and PhD students chose to take up the current moment through assigned books like  Critical Race Theory: An Introduction  and Ersula J. Ore’s  Lynching, Violence, Rhetoric and American Identit y (2019). It was an incredible, lively, challenging, powerful five weeks for all of us. I learned so much. The conversations we had together were difficult, yet the support and generosity and good will shown by...
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Week One Lecture (Part II of II): Welcome to Greenville . . .

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This is the rest of our Week One Lecture (part 2 of 2). If you haven’t already read the first part, please do that now. As you take up the following post, please continue to keep this week’s assigned readings in mind ( English 585: Assigned Readings ). “Welcome to Greenville: Blackest Land. Whitest People.” Installed to great fanfare on July 7, 1921. Quietly removed in 1965 in the wake of the Civl Rights Act of 1964 and purportedly at the direct urging of  Governor Connally  (39th governor of Texas, 1963-1969), . Do you know anything about this? From 1921 until 1965, this controversial sign hung over the main street leading into downtown Greenville, Texas: “Welcome to Greenville. Blackest Land. Whitest People” Ever heard of it?  Ever seen pictures of it? If so, in what context?  What stories do people tell about this sign and its meaning?  Who gets to control the narrative about what this sign does and does not mean? What does the sign mean?  Depends o...
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