Arizona State University played a major role in the first-ever Summit on the Research and Teaching of Young Adult Literature, held at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, June 13-16. Ten participants from ASU — faculty, alumni and doctoral students — presented 11 of the 40 keynotes and were featured in programs for authors, K-12 teachers and university scholars and administrators in attendance.

The best minds and practitioners in adolescent education, literacy, and literature were invited to the conference, which centered on youth literature — known as "YA lit" — dealing with all manner of adversity faced by teens today, from LGBTQ discrimination to racial injustice, from abuse to school violence. As teen suicide rates climb and funding for schools and social services dissipates, the future might seem bleak. The YA Summit intended to demonstrate that through reading and working together, hope and help are on the horizon. ASU professor James Blasingame (center), a young adult literature expert, moderated a panel with authors Bill Konigsberg (left) and Chris Crutcher (right). Photo by Noah Schaffer Download Full Image

Keynote speaker and ASU English Professor James Blasingame summed up the value of quality reading experiences: “Reading good young adult literature not only saves lives, but it can also help kids become the best version of themselves, providing a map to navigate a world fraught with problems.” Blasingame is also executive director of the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of the National Council of Teachers of English. 

YA Summit 2018 conceiver and convener, Steven Bickmore, director of the UNLV Gayle A. Zeiter Literacy Development Center, envisioned a gathering to showcase methods, materials and motivation for providing literacy instruction that enable young readers to take charge of their own circumstances. Laughter, tears, and breaking voices were the standard for four days in Las Vegas during which well-known authors, dedicated K-12 teachers, devoted librarians, internationally renowned scholars, graduate students, and community organizations convened to address growing concerns about teenagers whose lives are in shambles, and the power of reading to save them.

Assistant Professor E. Sybil Durand presented with four ASU Department of English doctoral students.

"There was something really special about the YA Summit at UNLV," she said. "YA authors, teachers, graduate students, and university professors convened in the same space and shared their creative work, research, and teaching ideas, and YA literature was firmly at the center of these conversations. For the first time in a long time, I felt part of a field of study, one that brought together all the aspects of YA literature I explore in my own work — the books themselves, the authors, how students respond to these stories, and how current and future teachers can share these stories with their students and teach them in critical ways."

 
ASU creative writing alum Bill Konigsberg (seated), an award-winning YA author, signed copies of his books for convention-goers at the 2018 YA Summit. Photo by Noah Schaffer

Featured author Bill Konigsberg, an ASU creative writing alumnus, weighed in about tough teen issues in his presentation. Before publishing six award-winning young adult novels, Konigsberg was most famous as the first openly gay major league sportswriter.

Konigsberg had grown up in the Bronx, where he knew of no books in his school library with gay characters. Upon finally seeing a reference to homosexuality in an out-of-date medical text, he was disheartened to see this sexual orientation categorized as a mental disorder. Eventually, in high school he discovered texts with gay characters, including the "Tales of the City" books, first published as serials in the San Francisco Chronicle beginning in 1978. Konigsberg explained how, like so many authors, he writes the books he needed when he was a teen.

Aaron Levy, who earned his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees from ASU, is now director of academics for the Georgia Film Academy. Levy was on hand to discuss his award-winning book, "Blood Don’t Lie," as well as techniques to help young readers become writers. While Levy was presenting at the summit, news came  that the Georgia Writers Association had just named him author of the year in the young adult category.

In addition to authors and faculty, ASU alumni-turned-professors Alice Hays (PhD English education 2017), and Danielle Kachorsky (PhD education 2018) presented their research on books and readers. ASU doctoral students Stephanie Reid (Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College), Kristina Bybee (Department of English), Darby Simpson (Department of English) and Heather O’Loughlin (Department of English) presented to packed venues about literacy issues.

The summit had advertised the inclusion of an unscripted, organic, extemporaneous “unconference” component called the “EduCamp,” which attempted a level of professional work rarely aspired to at education conferences. By all accounts, the EduCamp experiment succeeded. Problems in the field and potential solutions were identified and discussed live. License was given to think out loud, bat down traditional thinking and toss around critical and new ideas.

ASU Assistant Professor of English E. Sybil Durand presented on the value of teaching how to evaluate young adult literature with a postcolonial lens. Photo by Noah Schaffer

"One of my favorite parts was the Educamp portion of the conference, where participants had spontaneous conversations about the issues we still needed to address as a field," Durand said. "These ranged from discussing issues of diversity in YA texts and research to the potential of YA literature for engaging in social activism, and raised questions that went beyond typical conference transactions. It was generative, and I’m still unpacking all the ideas I collected over the weekend."

"As the conference took on its 'unconference' format, the summit also presented participants with the opportunity to envision the future of the field and to start formulating steps towards those imagined possibilities," Reid said. "I left the summit inspired, ready to read even more young adult literature and eager to start journeying along new research pathways."

Hays was a longtime high school teacher in Gilbert, Arizona, and is now assistant professor at California State University, Bakersfield. She said she found the event, sessions and collaboration empowering.

“Every person at the summit was there because they care about young adults and their growth," Hays said. “I feel privileged to have been a part of this historic event in which authors, teacher educators and classroom professionals were able to speak freely, get new ideas and walk away inspired by one another."

The recent launch of the partnership between Arizona State University's Herberger Institute and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art — to support the training of a new diverse generation of museum professionals — made national headlines. For the last three years, a hometown collaboration between ASU’s American Indian Student Support Services and Phoenix’s Heard Museum has been contributing to a similar goal. 

The Heard Museum Guild Internship Program, first piloted in spring semester of 2015, offers ASU American Indian students the opportunity to contribute to, and gain a firsthand understanding of, the many moving parts involved in sustaining this internationally renowned institution. “I’m kind of on a roll with cataloging,” noted ASU alumna and Mellon Fellow Kayannon George, as she neared completion of cataloging the Norman L. Sandfield collection of bolo ties. Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now Download Full Image

“ASU interns are an integral part of the imagination and creativity we hold dear here,” said Marcus Monenerkit, Heard Museum director of community engagement. A 2011 graduate of ASU’s Master of Nonprofit Studies program, Monenerkit has frequently collaborated with ASU faculty, staff and students in his 20-year career with the Heard Museum. But it’s clear that over the last three years, bringing guild interns into every dimension of the work in his area has become organic.

“They get to know our 11 galleries and we look for their input on new projects from the conceptualization phase forward.” Monenerkit explained. “We’ll go to other museums to see new ways of handling the spaces. They’ll work with artists who exhibit and conduct demonstrations and workshops here. They also get involved as we collaborate with other museums and private collectors to put together innovative exhibitions that connect art across time and cultures.”

Heard Museum membership coordinator Christina Harris, who comes from a family of artists from Zuni Pueblo, the Hopi Tribe and the Tohono O’odham Nation, said of the internship program that continuing to bring additional Native voices into the work of the museum “will make the institution even more knowledgeable and the art world, in general, more sensitive to art connected with deep meaning and ceremonial and religious significance."

“The Heard is a partner in bringing voice to that as well as to a greater understanding that, while some things in Native communities are being done the same way they have been since time immemorial, these are living, breathing communities where artists are also on the cutting edge, making art that is powerful politically, environmentally, socially,” said Harris, an alumna of ASU’s American Indian studies bachelor’s degree program. “I love that the Heard not only reflects the past but is contemporary.” 

“Over the last three years we’ve seen the internship program grow in terms of the number of departments sponsoring interns and in strengthening the depth of the experience for students,” said American Indian Student Support Services Associate Director Laura Gonzales-Macias, who was part of the original team to lay the groundwork for the partnership. “Our Heard partners very much have the same ideas we at ASU do about wanting students to be able to apply and develop career-related skills and grow their professional network.”

The internships, which carry a stipend and the potential for academic credit, are funded by the work of the Heard Museum Guild, the museum’s cohort of committed community volunteers.

“Matching students with placements also involves the American Indian Student Support Services coordinators at each ASU campus, who help in pre-screening candidates,” Gonzales-Macias said.      

To date, 25 intern positions have been filled with 18 (seven returning) ASU students in the program, assisting in areas from curation, education and community engagement to fundraising, development and finance.  

Recently, several Heard Museum Guild interns — past and present — and their supervisors sat down with ASU Now to talk about the internships and their reverberations.     

After completing a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a long list of research projects by age 19, Alisha Menon will head off to the University of California, Berkeley this fall as one of 2,000 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellows.

Menon said she feels “so honored” to receive the fellowship because it recognizes the work she did while earning her bachelor’s degree in the Arizona State University Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, and it has made her excited about starting her doctoral studies. Alisha Menon was selected as one of six ASU engineering National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellows. The program supports outstanding students considered to be potential leaders in science, technology, engineering and math. These students are contributing to the high-impact research, teaching and innovation needed to maintain the nation’s technological strength, security and economic vitality. Download Full Image

Menon is one of six NSF fellowship awardees from the Fulton Schools; a total of 16 fellowships were awarded to ASU students.

“I can really just focus on the research that I want to do and that I’m passionate about,” said Menon, who was chosen out of 12,000 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship applicants. “I’m truly honored by the award — and encouraged.”

As an NSF Graduate Research Fellow, she will receive three years of support, including a stipend of $34,000 and a cost-of-education allowance of $12,000 per year granted to UC Berkeley.

Menon was prolific in her undergraduate research, including work on neuromorphic, or brain-inspired, computing she did with Fulton Schools electrical engineering Assistant Professor Hugh Barnaby; contributions to an implanted electromyography, or EMG, sensor with University of Washington Professor Joshua Smith; and research on an implanted neuromodulation system that interacts with the brain for prosthetics and brain biosignal processing research with UC Berkeley Donald O. Pederson Distinguished Professor Jan Rabaey.

“I had some really wonderful research experiences and was honored to have had the opportunity to work with and meet people who are conducting truly incredible research in neural engineering,” Menon said.

She credits Barnaby for getting her interested in neuromorphic computing when she took his analog-digital circuits class at ASU, and Rabaey’s lab for showing her the inclusive, collaborative research team she could be a part of for her graduate studies.

As she prepares to embark on her graduate school journey, Menon's interests include three areas of neural engineering. The first is neuromodulation systems, which sit inside and interact with the brain through stimulation and recording. The second is machine learning and neural networks, the algorithms that process the signals recorded from the brain. The last is neuromorphic computing, involving hardware designed to function like the human brain. Whether she explores one of these areas or a combination of all three, it’s an exciting field to be involved in.

“There’s a lot of room for innovation in these areas. I am really looking forward to exploring, learning, discovering and contributing over the coming years,” she said.

Before Menon starts her fellowship at UC Berkeley, she’s across the country in New York City working at a startup called CTRLLabs, which is developing an EMG-based neural interface.

“Given that neural engineering technology is at a point where it can complete a task with a brain-computer interface, I’m really excited about where it could go — prosthetics, deep brain stimulation, virtual reality, as an interface technology in general,” Menon said. “It’s really cool, and I’m thrilled to be a part of it.”

More about the 2018 NSF Graduate Fellow from the Fulton Schools of Engineering:

Logan Mathesen engineering solutions to big data challenges

Brendon Colbert combats cancer with math

Lexi Bounds aims to improve lives with synthetic biology

Scott Freitas wants to use computer science to solve society's toughest problems

Benigno Canze smiles and extends his hand as a woman approaches his table at a welcome reception held June 22 at the Maricopa County Security Building ballroom in downtown Phoenix.

Dressed in a periwinkle blue suit over a vivid orange and navy blue shirt, the Mozambique medical administrator is one of 25 professionals from 17 sub-Saharan African countries attending a six-week training program hosted by Arizona State University’s College of Public Service and Community Solutions. They’re part of a U.S. Department of State leadership program called the Young African Leaders Initiative or YALI. It was created by former President Barack Obama to help educate the next generation of leaders in Africa. This is the fifth year ASU is hosting YALI fellows. Mandela Washington Fellows Janet Leparteleg (far left) and Daniel Mbonzo (far right) at a reception hosted by the College of Public Service and Community Solutions. Download Full Image

Canze started a nonprofit in Mozambique named Kumbatiro that helps pregnant women and young children receive the medical information and attention they need. He’s hoping to learn what it takes to expand his program to serve more mothers and small children.

“It's painful for me when I see that these small kids are condemned,” Canze said. “Some of them are born HIV-positive because their mothers are not receiving medical assistance. So, I would like to change this.”

A couple tables away Janet Leparteleg and fellow Kenyan Daniel Mbonzo discuss their goals as Mandela Washington Fellows. Mbonzo, a registered nurse, created a program to help people who are in poor health or suffer chronic illness receive proper diagnoses and treatment. Leparteleg, a financial cybersecurity specialist, began computer clubs at high schools in the northern Kenyan town of Maralal to encourage more young women to study science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM.

“I started training the girls for careers in STEM because there's a huge gap for women in technology for sure, and where I come from girls rarely go to school,” Leparteleg said. “And if they get to school they don't get to go through the mainstream careers. The option they're given is either teaching on nursing.”

Jonathan Koppell, dean of the ASU College of Public Service and Community Solutions, formally welcomed the fellows and community members to the reception.

“Every year, we are blown away by the talent that is brought to us by the Mandela Washington Program,” he said.

Benigno Canze of Mozambique talks to Jonathan Koppell, dean of the College of Public Service and Community Solutions, at a reception held for the 2018 Mandela Washington Fellows in downtown Phoenix.

Koppell explained that while the young African leaders travel to Arizona to learn, those who come in contact with them end up learning quite a bit from the fellows.

“When we tell people about this program, we always want to make clear that this isn't a group of visiting students,” Koppell said. “These are highly accomplished professionals who have done things in circumstances that we would view as an impossible set of challenges and need to be recognized as such.”

The event is the first opportunity for the 25 young African leaders to meet local professionals, college staff and instructors from the Bob Ramsey Executive Education program in the School of Public Affairs. Over the next six weeks, the fellows will learn how to be effective public managers and leaders through a series of lectures, workshops and visits to governmental and nonprofit organizations throughout the state. Mandela Washington Fellows are assigned community mentors to advise them and are introduced to people in their field who can help them succeed.

Martin Muganzi was in the first class of fellows to study at ASU in the summer of 2014. He had started an organization in Uganda to address his country’s alarming school dropout rate. Seven in 10 children stop going to school. Muganzi knew what he wanted to do — create vocational and career training — but didn’t know how to accomplish it.

“When I was here I met a number of young Africans very much doing the same thing in their home countries, and they shared a lot of their experiences,” Muganzi said. “And then we met a number of organizations and faculty who had the same kind of experience with the ideas we're trying to implement back in Uganda.”

Martin Muganzi of Uganda came to Arizona State University in 2014 as a Mandela Washington Fellow.

He left Arizona confident he could get primary school dropouts to learn a vocational trade and improve their lives. What started as a two-person organization operating out of one center quickly grew after his return.

“Now we have about 30 staff in the space of four years, and we just keep growing,” Muganzi said. ”This opportunity — being a Mandela Washington Fellow — was like a confirmation that you can do this.”

Before they leave, each fellow will develop and present a plan identifying the community need they are addressing and how they plan to tackle it. Before they return home they will spend a week in Washington, D.C., with 700 other fellows who are studying at different American universities.

"Africa has a lot of potential, and I just love the fact that the U.S. is sponsoring this,” Leparteleg said. “It gives us an opportunity to come out of our shells and be the leaders that we want to see our continent get to the next level.”

Allan Colbern, assistant professor in the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences in the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University has been awarded a Russell Sage Foundation Presidential Authority Grant for his upcoming book project on immigration and immigrant integration. 

The Russell Sage Foundation is the principal American foundation devoted exclusively to research in the social sciences. The foundation serves as a research center for academics and journalists, a funding source for studies by scholars at other academic and research institutions, and an active member of the nation’s social science community. The foundation also publishes books and a journal that derive from the work of its grantees and visiting scholars. Download Full Image

RSF funds research projects in four principal programs — Behavioral Economics; the Future of Work; Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration; and Social Inequality — and in a number of special initiatives. Allan will work on a book project that examines the history of sanctuary policies in the United States. 

Question: What is your are of expertise? What got you into this field?

Answer: My expertise is in American political development and the intersections between federal and subnational (state and local) immigration policies, immigrant and civil rights, social movements, federalism and citizenship. I hold a PhD in political science and employ interdisciplinary research methods to examine how American institutions and policies develop over large spans of time, how different levels of government expand or contract the rights of varying classes of people, and the role social movements and political actors play in shaping these developments.

During my PhD program and living close to the San Diego border, I saw how cities took different approaches to engaging their immigrant residents and my neighbors. I was given the opportunity to assist Professor Karthick Ramakrishnan in conducting research on restrictive city policies and local police department policies towards undocumented immigrants in Southern California, prior to national headlines over Arizona’s SB 1070 being enacted in 2010. As I immersed myself in the immigration scholarship, I noticed that states and cities were doing much more around the country, some even passing welcoming laws like granting undocumented immigrants access to state driver’s licenses and city ID cards. This solidified my research agenda around connecting immigration policy to civil rights history.

Q: Tell us about the book you're currently working on. What is it about? What inspired you to write it? When can we expect to read it?

A: Over the past few years, and accelerating under President Trump’s administration, sanctuary laws that shield undocumented immigrants from federal law have been cast into national spotlight. President Trump’s administration has called sanctuary policies an “unlawful nullification of Federal law in an attempt to erase our borders.” While increased attention have emerged over sanctuary policies, they remain widely misunderstood, poorly defined, and under-theorized. My second book, "Today’s Runaway Slaves: Unauthorized Immigrants in a Federalist Framework," places sanctuary policies into broader historical perspective, draws connections between immigrant rights and civil rights, and reframes sanctuary policies as cornerstones of American civil rights policy.

When we talk about immigration and the rights of immigrants, we often forget that Constitutional rights protect everyone — not just citizens. Immigration law conflicts with this, and it is designed to deny rights from being extended to undocumented immigrants in contexts of immigration enforcement, court proceedings and detainment — all areas where having rights matter the most. I illustrate this historical tension and trace court rulings in slavery, alienage and immigration law to show how evolving Constitutional arrangements have made sanctuary policies an enduring feature of American federalism. The book then turns to tracing the passage of sanctuary laws protecting runaway slaves (1780–1860), Central American asylum seekers (1980–1997), and undocumented immigrants today (2000–2018), to advance and test a theory of how politics on the ground explain where and when sanctuary policies emerge and proliferate. I was awarded the Russell Sage Foundation’s Presidential Award for 2018–2010, co-funded with the Carnegie Corporation, to support my book project. Over the next year, I will be expanding archival research of the antebellum period and conducting extensive interviews of national, state and local officials in government agencies and advocacy organizations from the 1980s and post-2000 sanctuary movements. I plan to complete the book manuscript in early Spring 2020 to submit to the Russell Sage Foundation for publication.

Q: This is your second book. What is your first book? 

A: My forthcoming first book with Karthick Ramakrishnan is "Progressive State Citizenship" with Cambridge University Press. We argue that the United States is entering a new era of what we call progressive state citizenship, with California leading the way. Since 2005, we have seen a major increase in state and local laws that facilitate and restrict the lives of undocumented immigrants, beyond what is prescribed under federal law. California has gone the furthest in this regard, passing a range of laws expanding immigrant rights on five key dimensions: 1. the right to free movement; 2. right to due process and legal protection; 3. right to develop human capital; 4. right to participate and be represented; and 5. right to identify and belong. Packaged together, these five dimensions of rights form a robust form of progressive state citizenship that operates in parallel to national citizenship.

The understanding that citizenship is exclusive to national governments is unreflective of how federalism shapes citizenship and entirely misses how states hold significant power over a panoply of rights. In our book, we place recent immigrant policies into larger historical and theoretical context by exploring what it means for states to expand or contract the rights of immigrants, blacks, LGBTQ communities and people with disabilities. We develop a conceptual framework of federated citizenship as a parallel set of rights across levels of government — national, state and local — all with the same five key dimensions of rights. As we show, state citizenship operates in parallel to national citizenship, and in some important ways, exceeds the standards of national citizenship.

We also lay out important differences between progressive citizenship, where states expand rights beyond those provided at the national level, regressive citizenship, where states detract rights available at the national level, and restrictive citizenship, where states reinforce federal restrictions on rights at the state level. Our primary argument is that the spread and timing of state citizenship regimes is explained by conflicts between federal and state governments, combined with conditions of party strength and social movement infrastructure within states.

Q: What does it mean to you to be given the Russell Sage Foundation Presidential Award? 

A: The Russell Sage Foundation has a strong reputation for rigorous scholarship and has been actively engaged in producing and supporting research on race, ethnicity and immigration. "Today’s Runaway Slaves" has already benefitted tremendously from the review process for the award, with generous feedback and suggestions on how to improve the conceptual and theoretical advancements I aim to make. Being selected for their presidential award is a great honor. I am deeply humbled to be placed alongside scholars that admire and to have my work shared with a broad audience of people interested in these issues and working toward solutions.