Continuing Iowa State’s Speaker Series, Stephanie P. Jones is coming to present “Curriculum Violence: Antiblackness as Academic Rigor.”

Continuing with the Writing and Media Center’s Speaker Series, this year is centered on language and communication justice. Encapsulating the idea at large, the speaker for the event, Jones, will discuss how specific language used in academic curriculums can be violent towards Black and brown students.

“How can we make sure that our practices really honor and respect than any language and forms of communication that exists within our community?” said Vivian Cook, graduate assistant director for the Writing Media Center. “We not only want to improve on and really recognize in our own work at the Writing and Media Center, but hopefully encourage more people across the ISU and Ames community… how it can impact their own work.”

Tackling the concept of standard academic language and hoping to create a dialogue around it in how it negatively affects students from diverse backgrounds, the Writing and Media Center aims to empower students and positively affect how standards surrounding academic English are treated.

“I think we’ll have a more sympathetic and empathetic approach to the writing and the communication that students bring in,” said Joseph Cheatle, director of the Writing and Media Center. “It’ll also help, I think, to position these conversations about academic standard English within the academic departments on campus.”

Academic standard English is a concept surrounded on focusing applicable writing and communication styles for various standard content areas in academia. Noting how standard academic English creates an unreal standard for real life in communication, Cheatle hopes that it will encourage academic departments on campus to take a different look on language expectations in courses.

Offering two different events on Oct. 19, the Writing and Media Center will have the larger event as advertised and a more intimate event with Jones earlier in the day where attendees can engage in discussion and ask questions surrounding the topic at hand.

Jones will be on campus for the events Oct. 19. The smaller event will take place from 1:30p.m. to 3 at the Sloss House, pre-registration is required. The Speaker Series event will take place at 4 p.m. in the Campanile Room in the Memorial Union. The event will also be streamed on the Writing and Media Center’s YouTube page.