Cherokee Literacy Scholar to Speak at the University of Arkansas

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FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Ellen Cushman, a noted scholar of Cherokee language and literacy will speak on “Cherokee Writing: Mediating Traditions, Codifying Nation” at 4 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 14, room 411 of Kimpel Hall.

“Cherokees have a long history of conceptualizing the use of media quite differently from the alphabetic norm in order to accommodate the Cherokee language and develop the nation as a sovereign entity,” said Cushman. “Cherokees use a unique, indigenous writing system to mediate our traditions, to pursue our cultural perseverance, and to maintain our linguistic heritage.”

Cushman will offer a brief overview of the history of this mediation, revealing how one tribe continues to mediate its tradition through writing and digital videos, games, and online language classes. Drawing on five years of ethnohistorical research, her talk will describe the evolution of the Cherokee writing system from script, to print, to digital forms and show how it continues to serve important linguistic, cultural, and historical functions for the modern Cherokee Nation, marking the nation’s civility and sovereignty at once.

Cushman is professor of writing, rhetoric, and American cultures and serves as co-director of the Center for Applied Inclusive Teaching and Learning in Arts and Humanities at Michigan State University. She is the author of The Struggle and the Tools: Oral and Literate Strategies in an Inner City Community and The Cherokee Syllabary: Writing the People’s Perseverance. Cushman is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and a former Cherokee Nation Sequoyah Commissioner.

The lecture is free and open to the public. Cushman’s visit is made possible by the Brown Chair in English Literacy in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. The Brown Chair is held by David A. Jolliffe, professor of English.