Conference Title Explanation

As our definitions of literacy grow to include concepts and practices that exceed the binaries of alphabetic reading and writing, more and more disciplines and fields are adopting a discourse of literacy to describe the practices and expertise that define their concerns. Complicating this situation are the historically isolating factors of disciplinarity. Recognizing the need for an expanded conversation about literacy that exceeds disciplinary boundaries, the Graduate Student Interdisciplinary Seminar on Literacy Studies @ The Ohio State University announces a conference for graduate students from all disciplines to meet as Literacy Studies scholars to share questions, research, approaches, and findings. Ohio Eminent Scholar and Professor of English and History, Harvey J. Graff, sponsors the conference through the LiteracyStudies@OSU initiative that he directs.

As a framework for investigation, Expanding Literacy Studies is meant not only to bring perspectives together, but also to do the double work of developing a critical perspective on the proliferation of literacy and literacy-based concepts as they appear in more and more fields of inquiry. As we have seen in historical investigations of literacy, the word literacy is often made to carry the myths, hopes, and dreams of a culture. Yet literacy, by itself, has seldom been able to meet those aspirations. Literacy's extension calls for the expansion of our critical understanding. This critical understanding must integrate [interrogate] the approaches developed in many fields if we are to observe and acknowledge the work of literacy beyond the myth of reading and writing.

This conference seeks to create a space that will facilitate [sponsor] conversations about literacy from a broad set of international, interdisciplinary perspectives. The conference invites conversations, even as it draws our attention to the fact that we work in the midst of an expansion that simultaneously will shape our own disciplinary careers and pursuits. With strong support from The Ohio State University, LiteracyStudies@OSU has sought to do more than establish and extend the reach of Literacy Studies. Instead, like our conference title, we seek, on the one hand, to expand our own perspectives by speaking to disciplines and practitioners that are "outside the comfort zone" of traditional Literacy Studies. On the other hand, at the same time, we turn our new perspectives to the critical analysis of the expansion that has provided the context to seek [advance, make] new connections [conversations].

Choosing the Conference Title: The Process

The process of choosing the conference title occurred during several discussions which took place online and in committee meetings over the course of several weeks. The discussions were transformed into visible maps of our thinking and relationships among words, phases, and questions began to point to broad, organizational concepts which suggested the actions or qualities of connecting, locating, and exploring. These concepts were evocative and generative, leading us to metaphors such as bridges, mushrooms, networks, hubs, webs, umbrellas, landscapes, weavings, and Venn diagrams. We discovered that expanding was a key abstraction, a recurrent, connective theme running through our conceptualizations of title metaphors, actions, and purposes. We were attracted to the word expanding because of its potential for performing the dual actions of acknowledging the proliferating myths and manifestations of literacy and literacy studies, as well as creating an expansive, inviting space for critical inquiry into the growing territories of literacy and literacy studies.