National Expert on Community-Based Teaching and Learning to Visit U of A

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Paula Mathieu, expert on community-based teaching and learning

One of the leading U.S. experts on community-based teaching and learning, also known as service learning, will visit the University of Arkansas at 2:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 8, to give a public lecture.

Paula Mathieu, director of first-year writing and the Writing Fellows Program at Boston College, will speak on "What is Rhetorical Activism? And Why Is It Important in Community-Based Teaching and Learning?" in SCEN 405. Both the university community and the general public are welcome at this talk.

Mathieu is the author of Tactics of Hope: The Public Turn in English Composition (Heinemann, 2005), which is widely recognized as a vital text in support of extending teaching and learning beyond the walls of higher education.

Mathieu came to Boston College in 2001 after completing a doctoral degree in language, literacy and rhetoric at the University of Illinois in her hometown of Chicago. At Boston College, she teaches courses on homelessness and literature, nonfiction writing and rhetoric as cultural study. 

She is currently writing two projects: the first is about the connections between mindfulness and teaching; and the second is a study of Hobo News and the rhetorical power of dissident press. Mathieu began working with homeless writers in 1997 in Chicago, where she founded a writing group and learning center for homeless vendors of StreetWise newspaper.

Mathieu's visit is sponsored by the Brown Chair in English Literacy, a part of the university's J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences and its Department of English.