Tobi Jacobi is a composition and literacy specialist in the CSU English Department and the current director of the Center for Community Literacy. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in public writing, composition and literacy theory, critical pedagogy, and prison writing.

Her recent research focuses on understanding the complexities of moving adult literacy beyond the GED, the ethics of community-university relationships, and incarcerated women writers as activists. In addition to co-editing a special issue of Reflections: A Journal for Writing, Service Learning, and Community Literacy on prison literacy, she has published essays on community service learning and activism in the writing classroom and on the ethics of university-community collaborations. She is currently co-editing a collection of essays entitled, Word by Word: Women, Writing, and Incarceration with DePaul University Professor, Ann Folwell Stanford and completing a series of articles on prison literacies.

For her, work with the Center for Community Literacy interns and community writers represents literacy in action, a concrete way to enact a commitment to challenging the uneven power relations that attempt to 'fix' the life experiences of some people through limited access to education. Like bell hooks, Adrienne Rich, and Gloria Anzaldua before her, she believes that language has the power to cause ruptures, pain, joy, and hope-and that our work at the Center can contribute to moving literacy beyond pages with red marks.

Tobi's Blog
Home: Meet the Staff