Born in Long Beach, California, Maria T. Accardi grew up in an Italian-American family--Sicilian, to be specific. Having immigrant family members and hearing a language other than English spoken at the dinner table was the norm for her. It wasn't until she was much older that Maria realized not everyone ate pasta with every meal. As a child, Maria spent a lot of time with her grandmother and great-grandmother, where where she learned about baking, cooking, and how to be an Italian-American housewife.
While her parents claimed that Maria began reading at age 2, her older sister insisted that she merely had the book memorized. In any case, Maria was an early reader and dreamed of being a writer someday. When she was around 11 or 12 years old, she volunteered at the El Dorado Library in Long Beach, CA where she assisted with the summer reading program. Her job entailed listening to other kids describe the books they read, stamping their reading log, and giving out the designated prizes for number of books read. Her first real job at age 16 was at the Boone Country Public Library in Florence, KY, where she worked as a library page shelving books.
Maria grew up Catholic and attended Catholic schools from kindergarten to high school graduation, and she attributes her interest in social justice, in part, to the values she was taught there. The nuns who taught her in parochial school in southern California, then later in northern Kentucky, were strongly interested in liberation theology and consciousness-raising about the atrocities happening in Central America (mid to late 1980s to early 1990s). Maria vividly recalls 7th grade teacher Sr. Stacy showing a made-for-TV film about missionary nuns who were murdered in El Salvador, and then Sr. Mary Carol in the 8th and 9th grade having the class learn the words to Peter, Paul & Mary's song about El Salvador showing pictures of the corpses of murdered priests--in music class!
Maria grew up to become a librarian, writer, scholar, and teacher whose work has been informed by social justice. Maria has worked in higher education for nearly two decades. She is the author of Feminist Pedagogy for Library Instruction (2013), for which she was awarded the 2014 Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Women and Gender Studies Section (WGSS) Award for Significant Achievement in Women's Studies Librarianship. She is also co-editor of Critical Library Instruction: Theories and Methods (2010), and editor of The Feminist Reference Desk: Concepts, Critiques, and Conversations (2017). She is the Coordinator of Instruction and Assessment at Indiana University Southeast in New Albany, Indiana.
Maria holds a BA in English from Northern Kentucky University, an MA in English from the University of Louisville, and an MLIS from the University of Pittsburgh. Her Primary research and writing interests address the intersections of information literacy, reference work, social justice, and feminist and other critical pedagogies. Prior to entering the field of librarianship, she taught first year college composition, served as a university writing center consultant, and held editorial positions in various publishing companies. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky where she is President of Bringing Justice Home, a food justice nonprofit that she co-founded with her wife, Constance Merritt.
Comments
Post a Comment