On the latest episode of The Liberal Arts Endeavor, a podcast by Michigan State University’s College of Arts & Letters, host Dean Christopher P. Long discusses the importance of being an engaged scholar within communities with Tamara Butler, Assistant Professor of English and African American and African Studies, and student China Gross, Social Relations and Policy ’20. 

Butler focuses on 20th- and 21st-century Black women’s narratives, Black Girl Literacies, and Black women’s activism connected to land and environment. Her current book project, Rooted Literacies: Black Women’s Placemaking and Memory Work, is a study of place-based Black feminist storytelling practices emerging from the Gullah-Geechee Corridor. Through a case study of Johns Island, the project documents Black women’s stories as sites of future imaginings of Black rural places.   

Butler is a member of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Standing Committee on Research, and a member of the Womxn of Color Initiatives Project at Michigan State, which was founded in the spring of 2016 by Professor Yomaira Figueroa.

Learn more about Dr. Butler on her website tamaratbutler.com and keep up with her on Twitter @DefyanTam.

Photo from left to right: Dean Christopher P. Long, Dr. Tamara Butler, and China Gross.