We live at a challenging time with respect to both literacy and literacy studies. On the one hand, many different literacies are proclaimed, from cyber to health and emotional literacy, mathematical to aesthetic literacy. The potential advance that this profusion might represent, however, is lost in the confusing clash of claims and counter-claims, and the persisting sense of doom due to fears of the decline of literacy skills and the consequent defeat of civilization as we have known it. A sense of crisis and despair contradictorily accompanies the assertion of many literacies. Talking clearly, knowledgeably, and critically about literacy is an inescapable need today. As we clarify our usage and our reflections about literacy(ies), we not only hold the potential to improve our communications and abilities to collaborate but we also have a rare opportunity to reinvigorate teaching and learning.

We are looking for faculty, staff, and students who are seriously interested in the definition, conceptualization, and critique of literacy and literacies; developing comparative and historical perspectives on literacy; engaging in critiques and potential reconstructions of their own positions as well as others; beginning to re-conceptualize literacy within a collegial peer environment; who recognize the twenty-first-century imperative to integrate but also to go beyond the humanities, education, and social sciences to embrace the arts, sciences, engineering, technology, law, medicine, and more.

Our institutional affiliations at the Ohio State University include the Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities, The College of Humanities, and the Department of English.