English Professor Selected for 2015 Community Research Award

University Relations

Elías Domínguez Barajas

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Elías Domínguez Barajas, associate professor of English and director of the Program in Rhetoric and Composition, was awarded the 2015 Community Research Award by the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. With this $10,000 grant, he will conduct a study on literacy practices within the local Latino community.

This competitive research stipend is offered to assist faculty, regardless of field, who are actively involved in community-focused research. The annual award for up to $10,000 is supported by the Bernice Jones Chair in Community and the Community and Family Institute.

The award will support Domínguez Barajas' ethnographic study of extracurricular learning environments in Northwest Arkansas. This study aims to gather data on the extracurricular literacy practices of members of the Latino community in the Rogers and Springdale area. Domínguez Barajas hopes to determine how members of this community establish and manage their own learning environments outside of academic institutions.

"What I seek to find out are the actual activities and behaviors involving all forms of reading and writing among Latino communities in the Rogers-Lowell-Springdale corridor just north of the UA campus," said Domínguez Barajas. "I would like to know if members of these communities read monolingual and/or bilingual print texts - such as newspapers, magazines, community newsletters, religious pamphlets - or any other texts that serve a particular social and community-building function. I'm also interested in finding out to what extent other forms of literacy, such as digital literacy, have an impact in the lived-experience of Latinos in this area."

"I honestly cannot think of a person better suited, in temperament or academic background, than professor Dominguez Barajas to conduct this important study," said Patrick Slattery, associate chair of the Department of English. "His previous ethnographic research on discursive practices that fall outside of the linguistic mainstream positions him perfectly to study the extracurricular learning environments in Northwest Arkansas."

Domínguez Barajas has served as director of the Program in Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Arkansas since 2011. His research focuses on exploration of relationships between discursive, cultural and educational factors affecting language-minority populations.