The Virginia Community Writing Collaborative

By Emily Sok, Published December 1, 2023

An Interview with Tyler Martinez

Why are community and/or public writing important? 

Individualism is a symptom of the contemporary global geopolitical state. A lot of my energy has gone into thinking about new ways to relate to each other, and I think community writing carves a disciplinary space for that work. Whether it’s radically student-centered pedagogies or reaching into the political and cultural communities that we are already implicated in, it is important work in an age when we’re being forced to reconcile our values not only with human interests but with the interests of the environment.

What have you been researching? 

I’ve done a lot of work in food literacy. My recent article in Community Literacy Journal is about food access, specifically ways that nutritionists talk about food literacy and disability. I’ve been researching how food information circulates on TikTok and YouTube. And I did a deep dive into the history of Cajun food cultures that was enlightening–I learned a lot of things I would not have been taught growing up Cajun.

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Take a look at Tyler’s article in Community Literacy Journal:

“Everything You Need to Eat: Food, Access Community” 

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Can you tell us about your research? 

Because I worked in food service for so long, I have this connection to the subject. When I’m not researching words I’m researching food. And I find it really useful to apply a lot of the ideas that are floating around in rhetoric in competition and community literacy community writing through food studies because food is just so unique as a topic, a topoi. Everyone needs it, and it’s material and symbolic and rhetorical and cultural, and it feeds into identity. I think it is a really interesting sort of point of coalescence for these big conversations about the power of storytelling and material, embodied rhetorics, and our responsibilities to each other and the environment.

What do you plan or hope to do with community new writing in the future? Or what broad changes do you would you like to see increasingly writing in the future? 

I want to be part of the field’s advancement. I really hope to be able to land a faculty position in community writing or rhetoric, specifically a position that lets me do community writing work. Something I’ve sort of shifted away from that I would like to get back to is writing center work. Classrooms are great, but writing centers are this really unique, sort of radical pedagogical space and writing center scholars have shown that there are so many opportunities for community-engaged projects from that space. 

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Collaborate with Tyler!

Get in touch with Tyler: tmartinez42@icloud.com

If there were something you wanted to collaborate with others on, what might that be?

I think there is a lot of work to be done toward investigating how literacy can make a difference in food systems. A multi-institution study of students’ interactions with campus food pantries and other campus-based food access resources would be an interesting place to start. Scholars of nutrition, food systems, writing, and communication could collaborate to collect the stories of students and contingent faculty who experience food insecurity as the result of poverty.

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Key Terms: 

• Tenure 
• Food literacy 
• Food rhetoric 
• Access 
• Writing center 
• Writing centers 
• Departmentalization 
• Collaboration 
• Rhetoric 
• Rhetoric society of America  
• RSA 
• Community Literacy Journal 

Resources: 

• Everything You Need to Eat: Food, Access Community 
• RSA Student Chapter at GMU 
• Tyler’s Website