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Vershawn "Vay" Young is an artist, actor, diversity consultant and Professor, Joint Appointed, in Communications Arts and English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo where he has been the director of Waterloo's Black Studies program since its launch in 2022. His research in Black Studies focuses on masculinity, language and performance, and he is known for scholarship about "code-meshing" which was explored in his 2007 book Your Average Nigga Performing Race, Literacy, and Masculinity.
Young holds a JD law degree from Mitchell Hamline College of Law and a PhD from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Prior to his appointment at Waterloo, he was a faculty member at the University of Iowa and the University of Kentucky.
Since joining Waterloo, Young has been a founding member of Waterloo's Black Faculty Collective and, along with Kathy Hogarth and Christopher Taylor, was a member of the Black Studies implementation team whose work and phage 1 report led to the founding of a Black Studies program in 2022. Outside of academia, he has worked as a high school drama, English and speech teacher, an elementary school principle and a school board administrator. During Winter 2023 Young stared as Sir Robert Chiltern in a production of Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband at the Firehall Theatre in Niagara Falls, Ontario.
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Created February 2024 by DR.
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- Lumax, Victoria. "New Black Studies programs to begin in 2022". University Relations. November 16, 2021.
- Morales-Marenco, Lillian. "Vershawn Young, back to the stage after 10 years". Communications Arts. February 1, 2023.
- "Vershawn Young". English Language and Literature.