newsletter

Upcoming Talks, Seminars, and Special Events

Friday, March 28, 2008 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. ICRPH Knight House 104 E. 15th Ave Graduate Student Interdisciplinary Seminar on Literacy Studies: CCCCs Preview: "Creating an Interdisciplinary Model for Collaboration: Literacy Studies @ The Ohio State University," with presentations by Harvey J. Graff, Kelly Bradbury, Michael Harker, and Kate White.

Thursday, April 17, 2008 4:00 P.M. ICRPH Knight House 104 E. 15th Ave LiteracyStudies@OSU Spring Program: Languages and Literacies, with presentations by Fritz Graf (Greek and Latin), Jim Unger (East Asian Languages and Literatures), Leslie Moore (Education and Human Ecology), and Elaine Richardson (Education and Human Ecology). Organized and moderated by Marcia Farr (Education).

Friday, April 25, 2008 10:00. – 11:00 a.m. ICRPH Knight House 104 E. 15th Ave LiteracyStudies@OSU Open House, to recognize achievements, showcase accomplishments, and launch the conference website.

Friday, April 25, 2008 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. ICRPH Knight House 104 E. 15th Ave Graduate Student Interdisciplinary Seminar on Literacy Studies. African Americans and Literacy, organized by Lindsay DiCuirci (English) in anticipation of Heather Williams's lecture on May 1.

Thursday, May 1, 2008 4:00 p.m. ICRPH Knight House 104 E. 15th Ave LiteracyStudies@OSU Spring Lecture: Heather Williams (History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) on "Acquiring Literacy, Acquiring Freedom: Education Among Enslaved and Freedpeople in the American South."

Friday, May 30, 2008 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. ICRPH Knight House 104 E. 15th Ave Graduate Student Interdisciplinary Seminar on Literacy Studies. Conference Proposal Workshop.

Fall 2008
Thursday, October 9, 2008 4:00 p.m. ICRPH Knight House 104 E. 15th Ave LiteracyStudies@OSU Autumn Lecture: Jerry Zaslove (lnstitute for the Humanities, Simon Fraser University).

Winter 2009
Thursday, January 29, 2009 Ohio State University The Annual Ohio State University Lecture on Literacy Studies, featuring Lesley Bartlett (Teachers College, Columbia University) on the Cultural Politics of Literacy in Brazil.

Spring 2009
April 3 – 5, 2009 Ohio State University Expanding Literacy Studies, An International, Interdisciplinary Conference for Graduate Students, sponsored by LiteracyStudies@OSU.

Spring Lecture: Acquiring Literacy, Acquiring Freedom

Heather Williams, Associate Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, will speak at OSU on May 1, on "Acquiring Literacy, Acquiring Freedom: Education Among Enslaved and Freedpeople in the American South." Williams, a former attorney with the U.S Department of Justice and the New York State Attorney General's Office, teaches and writes about African Americans in the 18th and 19th Centuries, particularly in the American South.

According to Williams, many enslaved people placed a very high value on acquiring literacy and took risks to make it a reality. They broke the laws that southern states enacted to punish them for learning to read and write. They bribed white men and boys to teach them their letters. They often linked literacy to religion, family, and freedom. Literacy enabled them to read the Bible, to write and read letters that kept family members connected when the slave trade separated them, and to forge passes that enabled them to gain freedom. Once slavery ended, literate black people taught large numbers of freed women, men, and children who filled churches and schoolhouses. Many African Americans believed that literacy was essential to their participation in the political and economic life of the nation. This was how they would get access to the vote and thereby influence how they would be treated. At great financial and sometimes physical sacrifice, they built schoolhouses that might be burned down and risked beatings from those who believed education would unfit former slaves for the labor that had built the economy of the United States. Literacy, African Americans believed, would enable them to shape their lives after slavery and to make freedom meaningful.



Williams is currently researching the separation of African American families during the antebellum period and subsequent attempts to reunify families following emancipation. This work will consider, among other things, the process of mourning or grieving after separation, methods for keeping track of family members over distance and time, African American marriage following the war, and the larger society's reception of the idea of legalizing black marriages.
For more information about this LiteracyStudies@OSU event, contact Harvey J. Graff.

Language(s) and Literacy/ies

The term "literacy" has been used metaphorically in recent years to refer to realms beyond written language: "visual literacy," "health literacy," "scientific literacy," and so on. While there are some obvious reasons for this trend, it makes literacy sound like a single, uniform ability. Marcia Farr, a sociolinguist in the College of Education and Human Ecology and Department of English, has organized a panel on Languages and Literacies to raise awareness of the differences in histories of literacy in particular speech communities. The participants will present and discuss literacies in different parts of the world:
Fritz Graf, Greek and Latin
Leslie Moore, Education and Human Ecology
Elaine Richardson, Education and Human Ecology
Jim Unger, East Asian Languages and Literatures

For more information, contact Marcia Farr.

History of the Book: Spring Schedule

Here is the exciting schedule for the upcoming meetings of the History of the Book Group, complete with short descriptions of the topics for each session. The papers will be circulated in the week before the actual meeting.

Friday, April 18 3:30 - 5:30 p.m.
Jared Gardner will be sharing a (very) early draft of selections from chapter two of his current project, tentatively titled (this week): Serial Citizenship: Popular Culture and the Making of Mass Mediated Americans, 1745-1945 (phew!). The chapter he is working on now focuses on the penny press, story papers, and dime novels, 1836-1896.

Friday, May 9 3:30 - 5:30 p.m.
Amanpal Garcha, "The Profession and Book History: The Advent of Careerist Theory": this essay argues that book history has emerged owing to literary critics' projection of their own highly professionalized concerns onto the authors, texts, and eras they study. Book history -- with its characteristic focus on authorial careers, literary professionalization, print and publication practices, and the operations of the literary market -- thus may be seen as an extension of the discussions about academic publication, career-building, and professionalization that have proliferated since the 1990s.

Friday, May 30 3:30 - 5:30 p.m.
Lewis Ulman, "Reliable Witnesses?: A Rationale for Multimedia Textual Editions": Drawing examples from three editions on which he is currently working, Lewis Ulman will explore how multimedia textual editions might engage readers critically in four narrative threads: the lifeworld evoked in the text being edited, the history of the textual artifact, the editorial process of the editorial team, and the re-mediation of the text by the media of delivery. He will ask participants to assess the limits of the following claim: multimedia digital editions of books and manuscripts can provide access to a great deal of valuable information about unique cultural artifacts, often enough information for all but the most demanding codicological inquiry.

For more information about the History of the Book Reading and Discussion group or to subscribe to the group's listserv, contact group moderator Alan Farmer.
—Alan Farmer

Disciplined Interdisciplinarity

Graduate students from more than twenty departmental disciplines meet monthly as the Graduate Sudent Interdisciplinary Seminar in Literacy Studies. Students interested in literacy from virtually any perspective are encouraged to participate in these informal seminars as a way to explore intellectual and collegial connections with their peers in other fields. The March 28 meeting will feature a preview of "Creating an Interdisciplinary Model for Collaboration: Literacy Studies @ Ohio State University," featuring Harvey J. Graff, Kelly Bradbury, Michael Harker, and Kate White. The session is part of the program at the annual meeting of the Conference on College Composition and Communication, in New Orleans, April, 2008.

Lunch will be provided. For more information, contact the seminar coordinator Kate White.

News Items and Announcements

LiteracyStudies@OSU is hosting an Open House to recognize the program's achievements and showcase students' efforts on April 25, 10:00-11:30 a.m. at the George Wells Knight House.

Umeå University (Sweden) has opened a research position in Literacy and the History of Literacy. More information can be found at: http://www.umu.se/umu/aktuellt/arkiv/lediga_tjanster/312-640-08.html.

Reading ReMix: "a book group without a long-term commitment" sponsored by University Libraries, has announced its spring quarter reading selection: Natalie Danford's novel Inheritance. A complimentary copy of the book will be provided to each participant courtesy of The Friends of The Ohio State University Libraries. The discussion on April 16 will be led by Literacy Studies' Academic Program Coordinator Susan Hanson. The program is open to all OSU students. To sign up, send an email to remix@osu.edu.

Andrea Lunsford (Stanford) will present "Recent Research on College Writing" on April 10. Her visit to OSU is co-sponsored by Literacy Studies.

Send news items and announcements to literacystudies@osu.edu.

LiteracyStudies@OSU: An Initiative

We are developing LiteracyStudies@OSU with the aim of fostering 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 and 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.

Executive Group
Harvey J. Graff, English; Historygraff.40@osu.edu
Steve Acker, TELR; Communications/Journalism acker.1@osu.edu
Mollie Blackburn, Education blackburn.99@osu.edu
Sandy Cornett, Health Sciences cornett.3@osu.edu
Marcia Farr, Education; English farr.18@osu.edu
Anne Fields, University Libraries fields.179@osu.edu
Henry Fields, Dentistry cornett.3@osu.edu
Susan Fisher, Biology fisher.14@osu.edu
Carolina Gill, Industrial, Interior, & Visual Comm. Design gill.175@osu.edu
Terry Gustafson, Chemistry gustafson@chemistry.ohio-state.edu
Kay Halasek, English halasek.1@osu.edu
Kay Bea Jones Architecture jones.76@osu.edu
Alan Kalish, Teaching & Learning Center kalish.3@osu.edu
Jeffery K. McKee, Anthropology mckee.95@osu.edu
Beverly Moss, English moss.1@osu.edu
Leslie Moore, Education moore.1817@osu.edu
Amy Pope-Harman, Pulmonary & Critical Care harman-1@medctr.osu.edu
Doug Post, Medicine doug.post@osumc.edu
Marcy Raymond, Principal, Metro High School raymond@themetroschool.com
Cindy Selfe, English selfe.2@osu.edu
Peter Shane, Law shane.29@osu.edu
Amy Shuman, English; Folklore shuman.1@osu.edu
David Staley, History; Goldberg Center staley.3@osu.edu
Kevin Tavin, Art Education tavin.1@osu.edu
Andy Thomas, Medicine thomas@osumc.edu
Lewis Ulman, Humanities; English ulman.1@osu.edu
Mindy Wright, Director, Community Partnerships in ASC wright.7@osu.edu

Shawn Casey, Doctoral Student, English casey.169@osu.edu
Lindsay Dicuirci, Doctoral Student, English dicuirci.2@osu.edu
Susan Hanson, Academic Program Coordinator, LiteracyStudies@OSU hanson.94@osu.edu
Edward Adelson, Executive Dean, ASC adelson.3@osu.edu
Randy Smith, Vice Provost smith.70@osu.edu
Chris Zacher, Director, ICRPH zacher.1@osu.edu