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Grobman honored by NAACP

Dr. Laurie Grobman, Professor of English and Women's Studies at Penn State Berks, will be honored at the NAACP-Reading Branch banquet on Saturday, November 7 with the Appreciation for Outreach to the African American Community award. This award recognizes Grobman's work on the documentation of African American history in Berks County, resulting in the publication of a book titled Woven with Words.

This history book describes the rich-and previously untold-heritage from Berks County's eighteenth century inception to present day, and it was distributed in Berks County school districts. Woven with Words was written by Penn State Berks students and edited by Dr. Laurie Grobman, project coordinator, and Dr. Gary Kunkelman, Instructor in Professional Writing at Penn State Berks. A grant from the Department of Community and Economic Development to the NAACP-Reading Branch, as well as funding sources within Penn State, covered the project costs.

Grobman has continued to work with the local branch of the NAACP on other projects. Currently, she is working with students and Centro Hispano Daniel Torres on a similar publication documenting local Latino history.

In addition, Grobman has garnered a national reputation for her work in multiculturalism. Her first book, Teaching at the Crossroads: Cultures and Critical Perspectives in Literature by Women of Color (2001), offers a transformative model for teaching literature by women of color. Her more recent book, Multicultural Hybridity: Transforming American Literary Scholarship and Pedagogy (2006), examines and addresses the difference paradox in multicultural literary studies: how to acknowledge difference in multicultural literature, yet treat all texts equally as part of the broader category of American literature.