past newsletters

Risking clichés, I want to say that this is an excellent moment for Literacy Studies @ OSU. We are nearing the end of our third year of developing new programs and activities. Not only do we look toward an exciting Spring Quarter, with lectures from Scott McCloud and Deborah Brandt, a full round of monthly meetings of the university-wide Graduate Students Interdisciplinary Seminar on Literacy Studies, and a resumption of regular meetings of the History of the Book Group. For the first time, we asked about literacy studies related courses and circulated descriptions for Spring 2007. And we also look toward a promising future.

To update you on continuing efforts, I am pleased to report that the Council on Research and Graduate Education approved the proposal for the Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization (GIS) in Literacy Studies in February. It comes before the Council on Academic Affairs for final approval very soon, perhaps before you read this note. The approval process has been delayed by impending changes in the governing structures and processes of the Graduate School in the wake of the Freeman and especially the Beck Committee Recommendations. We still plan to begin the program in Autumn, 2007. Please direct any questions to Marcia Farr and/or me.

The newly authorized University Council on Literacy Studies (UCLS) soon begins its efforts to foster communication, coordination, and cooperation on issues relating to literacy and literacy studies across programs, colleges, schools, and across the OSU campus. Associate Provost Randy Smith is the founding chair, with representatives from Education, English, and other active sectors of the university community. Committee members will rotate in the interest of best serving different campus constituencies and concerns.

We are engaged in planning for 2007-08. I expect that the Graduate Student Interdisciplinary Seminar will continue to meet through the summer as it did in 2006. Our successful activities--public programs, graduate student interdisciplinary seminar on literacy studies (in numbers and spirit perhaps the most successful)--and the history of the book group all continue into 2007, in fact, into 2010.

Our most important news is that OSU has pledged substantial support for the continuation and expansion of programs and activities, and the initiation of new ones for at least the next three years, 2007-2010. We will circulate fuller news over the coming months. Let me mention briefly the establishment of an office in Knight House with the cooperation and continuing association with the Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities.

In 2007-2008, we expect the GIS to have its formal beginning and take in its first class. With a grant from the Graduate School, we commissioned new graduate seminars in Health Literacy, Science Literacy, Visual Literacy, and Spatial Literacy as part of that program. They will be offered over the next few years. We also anticipate programs on Literacy and Language, Performance Literacies (Part II), and Spatial Literacy; a visit from the noted historian of science, women, and reading, Barbara Sicherman; among other activities, established and novel. Along the lines of the latter, we plan to inaugurate an invitational and prestigious Ohio State University Seminar in Literacy Studies. We are considering institutionalizing cooperation with literacy studies efforts and with graduate programs at other universities especially in the Midwest. And we are working on plans to take the show on the road! Join us!

Among the many individuals and offices across OSU who have contributed to our work so far, very special thanks goes to the interest and support of the College of Humanities (John Roberts, Dean), the Department of English (Valerie Lee, Chair), and the Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities (Chris Zacher, Director).

Snapshot of Upcoming Events

Friday, March 30, 11:30 am, Knight House

Wednesday, April 4, 2007, 4:30 pm: Wexner Center auditorium.

Friday, April 27, 2007, 11:30 am, Knight House

May 3, 2007, 4:00: 0264 MacQuigg Lab

Friday, May 25, 2007, 11:30 am, Knight House
Comics Storytelling
Wednesday, April 4, 2007, 4:30-6:30 pm, Wexner Center Auditorium

Sponsored by the Department of English, Literacy Working Group, Cartoon Research Library, Project Narrative, Narrative and Cognitive Theory Working Group.

"Comics Storytelling"
Comics are changing fast, both in the kinds of stories they tell, and how their creators tell them. Thanks to the "graphic novel" movement, the manga invasion and the growth of webcomics, the story of comics in America is more exciting and unpredictable than ever. Author and comics artist Scott McCloud puts all these trends into perspective in a fast-moving visual presentation.

Scott McCloud is a comic artist who has an unusual talent for explaining the magic of comics as narratives that marry words and images. His best known book is Understanding Comics, a book about the theory of comics informed by a heavy dose of narrative theory, theories of graphic interfaces. Understanding Comics was a Harvey and Eisner winner, was praised in The New York Times, Publishers Weekly and Wired, and published in over 13 languages.

Writing Now: New Developments in Mass Literacy
A Public Lecture by Deborah Brandt
Thursday, May 3, 4:00-5:30 pm, 0264 MacQuigg Lab

Sponsored by the Literacy Studies Working Group, with the support of the Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities, the College of Humanities, the Department of English, and the Arts and Science Colleges at The Ohio State University

Everyone knows that reading is good for you. Reading is considered the road to self-improvement, civic competence, upward mobility, not to mention pleasure and critical consciousness.But what about writing? In the history of mass literacy, writing enjoys far less prestige than reading and no clear status as a site of character formation or social good. Indeed, the value of writing has resided mostly in the reading of it, not the doing of it. Writing gains prestige for what it does for readers, not for writers. In this presentation, Brandt ruminates on the value of writing, where it can be found, and why those locations make writing so culturally different from reading. Brandt will also consider the implications of these differences as Americans in the 21st century spend less time reading and more time writing.

In addition to her public lecture, Brandt will conduct a workshop for graduate students, and meet informally with students, faculty, and staff during her early May visit.

Deborah Brandt is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she teaches undergraduate writing and graduate courses in literacy and contemporary writing studies. She is author of two award winning books, Literacy as Involvement: The Acts of Writers, Readers and Texts (1990) and Literacy in American Lives (2001). In 2003 she won the $200,000 Grawemeyer Award in Education, which brings attention to scholarly and artistic works that make important ideas accessible to audiences beyond the academy.

Graduate Student Interdisciplinary Seminar on Literacy Studies
"OurSpace: Resituating Civic Literacy in the University Curriculum"
with Michael Harker & Aaron McCain (Department of English)
Friday, March 30, 11:30 am, Knight House

There are perennial demands that are made for the types of student writing and deliberation that should be encouraged at the college level: it should be real, it should be civically engaged, it should be creative and critical, and it should be in the wide-range of currently available digital, video, and print media.

CommonPlace is a response to these demands. This pilot program, which began Winter 2007, implements an idea-networking site with two thematic requirements: topics must be timely and manuscripts must be written in such a way that the Ohio State student community would actually want to read them. Thus, students take on the role of author, critic, and editor, scrutinizing each other's arguments and writing through a blind peer review process, with the ultimate goal of putting student writing where it should be: in public.

Graduate Student Interdisciplinary Seminar on Literacy Studies
"Linking Literacies in Composition, Technology, and Copyright"
with Shawn Casey, Envera Dukaj, and Cormac Slevin (Department of English)
Friday, April 27, 2007, 11:30 am, Knight House

What does writing have to do with digital media? How does technology challenge and direct information literacy? Why should we be thinking about copyright now? Our presenters from the Department of English will discuss how digital technologies are expanding classroom literacies.

Graduate Student Interdisciplinary Seminar on Literacy Studies
"Drafting US Literacy," "Sponsors of Literacy," and "Ghostwriting and Shifting Values in Literacy." A discussion of Deborah Brandt's recent work.
Friday, May 25, 2007, 11:30 am, Knight House

The Graduate Literacy Seminar will meet to discuss some of Deborah Brandt's latest work on the shifting values of literacy in today's economy. In conjunction with her visit to our campus, we will be reading a selection of articles from her most recent publications.


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.

Other News

The Literacy Studies Working Group is pleased to announce the development of two new graduate level interdisciplinary courses in literacy.

Health Literacy

Fall Quarter 2007 (Tentative)

Participating Faculty: Taught by a team of faculty in the health professions
Credit Hours: 3 credit hours (2 hrs seminar; 7 hrs "clinical")
Pre-requisites: Graduate level in Health Professions; Graduate level in Literacy Specialization

Course Description: Examine and analyze the issues and challenges of low health literacy. Includes an examination of the data for national and international literacy levels and populations at risk for low literacy; research on health literacy; measurement tools; development of health information in plain language; effective health communication techniques; and organizational approaches to meet the challenges of low health literacy.

Course Objectives: At the conclusion of this course, the students will be able to:


Required Text: Schwartzberg JC, VanGeest JB, Wang CC, editors.
(2005). Understanding Health Literacy: Implications for Medicine and Public Health. Chicago: AMA Press.

Additional Readings
From Texts: Nielsen-Bohlman L, Panzer AM, Kindig DA, editors.
(2004). Health Literacy: A Prescription to End Confusion. Washington DC: The National Academies Press. www.iom.edu

Doak CC, Doak LC, Root JH. (2nd edition, 1996) Teaching Patients with Low Literacy Skills. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company. Out of print. Chapters available at: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/healthliteracy/doak.html

Assigned Readings: Required readings for each week will be from the text, an assembled package of selected articles, articles or book chapters on electronic reserve at Prior HSL, and Web site downloads.

Biology 710
A Graduate Seminar in Scientific Literacy

Winter Quarter 2008 (Tentative)
Instructor: Professor Susan Fisher, Department of Entomology

Course Rationale: It is increasingly clear that success in the workplace and effectiveness as a citizen require scientific literacy. Despite the growing need to be scientifically literate, there is significant debate over what the term actually means and a growing consensus that our methods for teaching scientific literacy succeed only in making science inaccessible and irrelevant to students. Evidence of the problem is all around us: In 1980, the Ohio Poll determined that 80% of Ohioans believed in a geocentric universe in which the sun revolves around earth. In 2000, 76% of Ohioans agreed with this view. In 2005, 60% of Ohioans agreed with the statement: "Humans were created in their present form about 6,000 years ago." Recent efforts by the State Board of Education to amend science standards to permit inclusion of "Intelligent Design" as a scientific alternative to evolution suggests that not only are our citizens ignorant of scientific content, but that they have difficulty separating scientific thought from other modes of thinking.

This is a foundational course with several goals:

• To define scientific literacies and understand the different types of scientific literacies
• To develop an understanding of the historical roots of western science and technology
• To understand the nature of science and how it is different from other modes of thought
• To explore the relationship between scientific literacy and other forms of literacy, e.g., visual;
• To probe how the teaching of science must change in order to achieve scientific literacy and the role of technology in facilitating this change
• To understand the relationship between science literacy, ethics and the citizen scientist

Evaluation: Seminars are designed to foster independent thinking through discussion of assigned readings and leadership of seminars. Your grades will be determined as follows:

Assigned readings: Several readings will be assigned to the class each week. When possible, the materials will be posted on Carmen. Sometimes, the readings will be available on-line. Books will be placed on reserve in the library. Students are expected to have read the materials before coming to class on Tuesday. In addition, students are asked to come to class prepared with written questions derived from the readings. You may be called upon in class to share your questions. The quality of the questions will be evaluated for their insight, comprehension and originality and will constitute 10% of the final grade.

Student Journals: Students will write and turn in 5 1-2 page papers based on the weekly readings. These are not to be synopses of the readings. Rather, the journal entries are meant to analyze the reading materials, present strengths and weaknesses, comment on the cogency (or lack thereof) of the arguments made and connections to other areas of scientific literacy. The journals are due at the end of week eight. Twenty percent of the final grade will be determined by the journal entries.

Student Seminars: Each student will be responsible for leading a Thursday seminar during the quarter. Each student will choose and disseminate reading material to the class at least 2 days prior to the seminar. Each student seminar will consist of a review of pertinent literature in the field, a 40-60 minute presentation of the material, followed by a one-hour discussion led by the student. Finally, the student seminar leader will write a 10 page paper on his or her topic that summarizes the literature and presents ideas for further exploration. Papers are due at the end of week nine. Seventy percent of the final grade will be determined from the seminar and paper.

Lancaster University Literacy Research Center

Summer School, July 16-20, 2007
Linking Learning to Literacies: A Social Practice View

This program is a week-long Summer School designed to explore the puzzle of adult learning and its relation to literacy issues in many contexts.

We will explore the following topics:

• Learning and the Adult Learner
• Literacy Learning Provision
• Mapping Learning Theories onto Literacy Theories
• Literacy Learning Practices—Methods in Contexts
• Learning Theories, Literacy Policies and Research

The summer school will be of interest to practitioners, managers, researchers and those interested in adult learning. It will provide an opportunity to meet people working in a similar field, develop anew network of colleagues and friends and provide an opportunity to deepen your knowledge of adult pedagogy. Contributors will include Sondra Duban, Mary Hamilton, Yvon Appleby, David Barton, Roz Ivanie, and Anita Wilson.

Lancaster is an historic city in the North West of England, one hour from Manchester Airport and an hour's drive from the heart of the Lake District.

Details and application form can be found at www.literacy.lancs.ac.uk
Please e-mail Kathryn James at Kathryn.james@lancaster.ac.uk with any questions.


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.



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.

If you would like to subscribe to the LSWG listserv, contact Lindsay DiCuirci at dicuirci.2@osu.edu