past newsletters
The OSU Literacy Studies Working Group of
The Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities
Autumn 2006 Newsletter
Welcome! Looking toward the third year of the
Literacy Studies Working Group and
Literacy Studies @ OSU is a bit paradoxical, or so it feels to me. On the one hand, we've been in existence for a very short time, barely two full years. On the other hand, with extraordinary wells of cooperation and good fortune, we've accomplished far more than any one—including me—had imagined: initiating new activities and reinvigorating some older ones, working together across campus, forming connections at all levels from the individual to the institutional.
The agenda and calendar for 2006-2007 emphasizes all of these dimensions, from economist John Murray's
Ohio-based Literacy Researchers Series presentation on intergenerational transmission of literacy in nineteenth-century America to considerations of "civic literacy" on the eve of unusually important mid-term elections.
We are also pleased to cosponsor a public lecture by the eminent linguistic
William Labov, continuing our practice of joint ventures with others at OSU.
Also reflecting collaborative efforts and interests, we are proud to say that the
Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization (GIS) in Literacy Studies—a campus-wide interdisciplinary minor—with possible concentrations in Reading; Writing & Digital; Language and Culture; Social, Cultural, and Historical Studies; Science, Technology, Health and Medicine; and Visual, Spatial, Arts and Performance, in addition to self-defined programs--is under final review. We are especially gratified by the many strong statements of support and appreciation of our activities and accomplishments made as part of the concurrence process for the Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization in Literacy Studies.
There's more: Our Web site, via our home base in the Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities, will launch in October. The University Council on Literacy Studies begins its work soon. Our very successful campus-wide graduate student Interdisciplinary Seminar and History of the Book faculty and graduate student group begin their second years. And we anticipate a constructive, invigorating year that includes co-sponsoring Scott McCloud's presentation on "Comics and Storytelling" in April and a major guest in May.
Stay tuned.
Harvey J. Graff
September 2006
Snapshot of Upcoming Events:
Thursday, September 28::
JOHN MURRAY, Department of Economics, University of Toledo, "The Role of Parents in Literacy Acquisition: Historical Evidence." An Ohio-based Literacy Researchers lecture series event. 4:00 - 5:30 p.m.
Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities at the George Wells Knight House 104 E. 15th Avenue. REFRESHMENTS WILL BE SERVED. RSVP to Elizabeth Lantz at
lantz.38@osu.edu.
Friday, September 29::
FOR GRADUATE STUDENTS:
Interdisciplinary Seminar on Literacy Studies. [Tent.] OSU graduate students
ROB DAY, Science Education, and VICKI DAIELLO, Art Education, will lead a discussion on "Visual Literacy, Cognition, and Reading." 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities at the George Wells Knight House 104 E. 15th Avenue. LUNCH IS PROVIDED. For more information, contact Kate White at
white.1142@osu.edu.
:
"Civic Literacy," tentatively with
SUSAN METROS, Professor of Design;
PETER SHANE, Professor of Law and Director, Center for Interdisciplinary Law and Policy Studies; and
LEWIS ULMAN, Assistant Dean, College of Humanities and English. Organized and moderated by
ANNE FIELDS, OSU Libraries. 4:00 - 5:30 p.m. at the
Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities at the George Wells Knight House, 104 E. 15th Avenue. REFRESHMENTS WILL BE SERVED. RSVP to Elizabeth Lantz at
lantz.38@osu.edu.
Friday, October 27::
FOR GRADUATE STUDENTS:
Interdisciplinary Seminar on Literacy Studies. Graduate students interested in literacy will meet for lunch and to talk about Civic Literacy. 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities at the George Wells Knight House 104 E. 15th Avenue. LUNCH IS PROVIDED. For more information, contact Kate White at
white.1142@osu.edu.
:
WILLIAM LABOV, University of Pennsylvania, "Sociolinguistics and Literacy Education." Cosponsored by LSWG.
Wednesday, November 17::
FOR GRADUATE STUDENTS:
Interdisciplinary Seminar on Literacy Studies. Graduate students interested in literacy will meet for lunch and to talk about Teaching Writing Across the University. 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities at the George Wells Knight House 104 E. 15th Avenue. LUNCH IS PROVIDED. For more information, contact Kate White at
white.1142@osu.edu.
According to OSU doctoral graduate JOHN E. MURRAY, both school and family factors influence when and how children acquire literacy. In the past, because the availability of schooling was much more limited and not every child learned literacy, the particular effects of family structure are more clearly visible.
The ability to read and write in historical studies is often estimated by an individual's ability to sign his or her name, which is often referred to as signature literacy. Murray's previous work on signature literacy among children in New York state (
Journal of Interdisciplinary History 1997) and Charleston, South Carolina, (
Journal of Economic History 2004) found that a mother who could sign was more likely to have a child who signed than a father who could sign.
Murray will discuss historical aspects of child literacy acquisition and introduce a new sample of children in antebellum Ohio in which the importance of the mother also is evident on Thursday, September 28 at 4:00 p.m. at
The Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities, George Wells Knight House at 104 East 15th Avenue. REFRESHMENTS WILL BE PROVIDED. Send your RSVP to Elizabeth Lantz at
lantz.38@osu.edu.
History of the Book Reading Group:
The History of the Book Reading Group has been meeting monthly since last year. If you are interested in participating, contact Cynthia Brokaw, Department of History,
brokaw.22@osu.edu.
INTERDISCIPLINARY SEMINAR ON LITERACY STUDIES
Graduate students from two universities, ten colleges, and twenty-odd departmental disciplines have been meeting monthly since 2005 to talk about literacy from a range of perspectives.
The Graduate Student Interdisciplinary Seminar on Literacy Studies is supported by the Literacy Studies Working Group of the Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities and the College of the Humanities.
An Invitation to all Graduate Students...
If you are interested in literacy, from virtually any perspective, you are invited to take advantage of the opportunity to discuss research, exchange ideas, and develop connections with your peers at the
Graduate Student Interdisciplinary Seminar on Literacy Studies. LUNCH IS PROVIDED. For more information or to express interest, contact contact Kate White at
white.1142@osu.edu.
Other News
Outreach Scholarship 2006 Conference,
October 8-10 in Columbus, Ohio. This annual conference is sponsored by The Ohio State University, The Pennsylvania State University, University of Wisconsin-Extension, and The University of Georgia. This year's agenda offers an impressive array of leaders in university/community partnerships, including:
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Ohio State president Karen Holbrook will moderate a panel that includes Roy Church, president of Lorain County Community College in Ohio; Melvin Johnson, president of Tennessee State University; and Ronald Thomas, president of the University of Puget Sound.
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David Chesebrough, president and CEO of COSI Columbus (a science museum), and Tom Rieland, general manager of WOSU Public Media, will showcase the innovative partnership between their two organizations.
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Lee Todd, president of the University of Kentucky, will address Creating a Region's Economic Engine through the Disciplines
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Bruce A. McPheron, associate dean of Research and Graduate Education and director of the Pennsylvania Agricultural Experiment Station at Penn State, will talk about Supporting a Scientifically Literate Society.
See the entire agenda and register online at
outreachscholarship.org.
October 13, 2006: Education for Citizenship: Service-Learning at Ohio State
IRA HARKAVY, founding director and associate vice president of the Center for Community Partnerships at University of Pennsylvania, will give a public lecture at OSU on October 13, 2006, addressing the development and strengthening of community-university partnerships as part of the academic mission of a public university, in particular, how to integrate the intellectual work of the classroom with service in the community.
An historian with extensive experience building university-community-school partnerships, Harkavy has helped to develop service learning and academically based community service courses as well as participatory action research projects that involve faculty and students from across the university.
This event is open to the campus community and is sponsored by the Office of the Executive Dean of the Colleges of the Arts and Sciences, the Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities, the Department of History's Public History Program, and OSU's Service-Learning Initiative.
November 9 - 12: NEW WAYS OF ANALYZING VARIATION
The 35th Sociolinguistics Annual Conference, "New Ways of Analyzing Variation," is hosted this year by OSU. November 9-12, 2006 at the Hyatt on Capitol Square.
To kick off the 35th Sociolinguistics Annual Conference, WILLIAM LABOV, one of the
founders of Sociolinguistics, will give a talk on the OSU campus on Wednesday, November 8 entitled "Sociolinguistics and Literacy Education." This talk is sponsored jointly by the Gladys Foster Anderson Fund and the Literacy Studies Working Group. More details will be announced in early fall quarter.
"Ethnolinguistic Diversity and Literacy Education" is the theme of two NWAV panels on Saturday, November 11. Panelists will discuss crucial issues at the intersection of language diversity and literacy education, including the role of vernacular dialects, Creole languages, and bilingualism / biliteracy in the schooling of language minorities. Panelists include Walt Wolfram, John & Angela Rickford, H. Samy Alim, John Baugh, Amy Oswalt, Lily Wong Fillmore, Theresa McCarty, Ofelia Garcia, and Terrence Wiley. These panels are sponsored by the Gladys
Foster Anderson Fund of the School of Teaching and Learning. Faculty, graduate students, and area teachers are urged to attend. See below.
Saturday, November 11: Ethnolinguistic Diversity and Literacy Education
These two panels address crucial issues that emerge at the intersection of language and literacy education. In recent decades, the linguistic and cultural diversity of school populations in the U.S. and other industrialized countries has rapidly increased along with globalization processes. At the same time, schooling as is it currently constituted continues to be ineffective for large numbers of students, especially those who speak vernacular dialects and/or non-English languages. The recent increase in diversity, then, only exacerbates a long-standing problem. Since its inception as an academic field, Sociolinguistics has included studies intended to improve schooling for such students. Some of this research has been directed at changing negative public opinion, and therefore teacher attitudes, toward language diversity and variation, since teacher expectations have been shown to predict student achievement. Other research has more directly suggested pedagogical strategies and approaches based on both linguistic and cultural resources from particular student populations. In these two panels we attempt to bring the state of such research up to date, dividing content in a somewhat arbitrary way, since issues are similar across panels and since boundaries between vernacular varieties, Creoles, and non-English languages are more permeable than finite. Ultimately, we argue the application of such research-based knowledge to the dire situation (as measured by school failure and drop out rates) of many ethnolinguistic populations in U.S. schools.
Panel 1: Varieties of English and Literacy Education focuses on literacy education for speakers of vernacular dialects and Creoles of English. Wolfram presents a Dialect Awareness program that addresses the disparity between sociolinguistic knowledge and popular beliefs about language diversity. Building on public curiosity about language differences, he shows how the North Carolina Language and Life Project uses a range of public education venues to effectively challenge standard language ideologies that denigrate vernacular speech. Oswalt, a teacher with a B.A. in Linguistics, discusses the disproportionate number of AAVE speakers in Special Education classes, owing largely to lack of teacher knowledge about the origin and structure of this variety and its impact on literacy education. Alim and Baugh also focus on this population, presenting approaches to language and literacy development that utilize contemporary expressive youth culture (namely, Hip Hop culture), as well as students' individual histories and experiences. They report on the use of such approaches in two school districts, arguing that the attention to locally produced cultural and linguistic practices has global implications for the schooling of marginalized populations everywhere. Finally, Rickford and Rickford review both the insights and the limits of sociolinguistic knowledge for solving problems in the teaching and learning of literacy. They argue the necessity of combining sociolinguistic knowledge with research from reading, rhetoric, writing, and effective teaching to improve literacy education for vernacular and Creole speakers, citing their own work in a number of school-based projects.
Panel 2: Bilingualism and Literacy Education focuses on literacy education in (potentially) bilingual contexts. Wong Fillmore illustrates the pitfalls for English Language Learners (ELLs) in the increasingly mandated high stakes testing. Focusing on uses of English in the tests that such learners may not yet understand, she argues that such students should not be included in the testing until they are more competent speakers of English. Wiley provides an overview of language diversity and (bi)literacy in the U.S. in the context of common myths about such diversity and of mandates for high stakes testing. Discussing the limits of current approaches, he suggests research-based implications for teacher and administrator preparation and for ongoing professional development. García argues that globalization processes urge us to integrate currently-separate aspects of Spanish teaching in U.S. schools: foreign language teaching, heritage language teaching, and bilingual education. Dual language programs that integrate these components advance notions of bilingualism beyond the elite ones of foreign language education and the minoritized ones of transitional bilingual education. Finally, McCarty discusses the urgent situation of Native students who increasingly speak only a nativized variety of English, rather than their indigenous heritage languages, but who are still largely classified as "limited English proficient." She examines Native youth discourses of both pride and shame as resources for supporting the simultaneous development of heritage languages and academic English, developing the broader implications of this research for literacy education in multilingual, multiethnic contexts.
For more information, contact Marcia Farr at
farr.18@osu.edu
A preview of other upcoming events
Winter Quarter:
"Writing Across Disciplines and Across Campus: Writing Between Campus and Community," organized by Beverly Moss and Mindy Wright.
"The History of the Book," organized by Cynthia Brokaw and the History of the Book Group.
Spring Quarter:
SCOTT McCLOUD, "Comics and Storytelling," Wednesday, April 4, 2007: Wexner Center auditorium.
MICHAEL COLE, University of California at San Diego, co-author with Sylvia Scriber of the landmark The Psychology of Literacy (1980), and author of Cultural Psychology (1998) has been invited. Tentatively, May, 2007.
Literacy Studies at OSU: A New Initiative
We are developing a Literacy Studies Working Group, with the aim of fostering a sense of collaboration among different disciplinary clusters and their constituents, from the social and natural sciences to the arts and humanities, education, medicine, and law.
The Literacy Studies Working Group intends to foster a critical, cross-campus conversation and investigation into the nature of literacy, bringing historical, contextual, comparative, and critical perspectives and modes of understanding together to stimulate new institutional and intellectual relationships.
LSWG Executive Committee
Harvey J. Graff, English & History
Steve Acker, TELR & Communications/Journalism
Mollie Blackburn, Education
Marcia Farr, Education & English
Anne Fields, Library
Henry Fields, Dentistry & prof. schools liaison
Susan Fisher, Biology
Carolina Gill, Ind., Intr., & Visual Comm. Design
Kay Halasek, English
Kay Bea Jones, Architecture
Alan Kalish, Teaching & Learning Center
Beverly Moss, English & CSTW
Amy Pope-Harman, Pulmonary & Critical Care
Cindy Selfe, English
Amy Shuman, English & Folklore
Lewis Ulman, English & College of Humanities
Mindy Wright, Director, Writing Workshop
Susan Hanson, PhD Candidate, English
Edward Adelson
Randy Smith
Chris Zacher
The
Literacy Studies Working Group is supported by The Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities, College of Humanities, Department of English, and Arts and Science Colleges.
