We live at a challenging time with respect to literacy and literacy studies. While a profusion of new literacies is proclaimed, from science, civic, and visual literacy, to media, information, and global literacy, the progress that distinct literacies represents is often lost in the clash of claims and counterclaims, and the persisting sense of crisis.

LiteracyStudies@OSU formed in 2004 as a working group with the goal of fostering a campus-wide conversation about literacy and the study of literacy. The group, made up of faculty, staff, and graduate students, began by initiating a continuing series of public programs, guest lectures, reading groups, seminars and other activities to raise awareness about all of approaches to literacy studies at Ohio State.

The Graduate interdisciplinary Specialization in Literacy Studies is an important outcome of these initiatives. The curriculum brings together historical, contextual, comparative, and critical perspectives and modes of understanding aimed at understanding the different uses of literacy and what they mean to participants and to the broader society.

The Graduate Student Interdisciplinary Seminar on Literacy Studies is another important outcome of the LiteracyStudies @ OSU initiative. Here, graduate students from more than twenty departmental disciplines meet monthly as a group to share research and relevant scholarship and discuss works-in-progress. An important initiative of the Graduate Student Seminar has been the development of an international, interdisciplinary graduate student conference in literacy studies. The conference, Expanding Literacy Studies, will be held at the Ohio State University April 3-5, 2009.

LiteracyStudies@OSU also maintains a database of literacy-related courses. Many of these courses serve as core or elective courses for the GIS in Literacy Studies.

If you would like Literacy Studies to list your literacy related course please contact literacystudies@osu.edu.