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Upcoming Talks, Seminars, and Special Events

Tuesday, Janurary 19, 2010 4:00 – 5:30 p.m.; Thompson Library 150A & B
LiteracyStudies@OSU WINTER PROGRAM: “The New Research Library: Reading and Writing Spaces for Creating and Organizing Knowledge,” organized by ANNE FIELDS. Panelists: WES BOOMGAARDEN, OSU Libraries Preservation Officer; PETE CONFAR, Thompson Library Architect; JENNY ROBB, Cartoon Museum Curator; MAUREEN WALSH, OSU Libraries Metadata Librarian; and ANDREW LEHMAN, Graduate Student, Architecture.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 22, 2010 3:30 – 5:00 p.m. 311 Denney Hall, 164 W. 17th Av
History of the Book Reading and Discussion Group: DAVID BREWER will lead a discussion of readings from Regionalism and the Reading Class and Bearing Witness by Wendy Griswold.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 28, 2010 4:00 – 5:30 p.m. ICRPH Knight House, 104 E. 15th Av
The Ohio State University Lecture on Literacy Studies: WENDY GRISWOLD (Northwestern University): “The Great Depression, the Federal Writers’ Project, the American Guides, and What the Readers Made of Them.”

Winter Quarter
Tuesday, January 19, 2009 4:00 - 5:30 pm Thompson Library 150A & B
LiteracyStudies@OSU Winter Program: "Reading and Writing Spaces for Creating and Organizing Knowledge," organized and moderated by Anne Fields, Associate Professor, University Libraries.

Thursday, January 28, 2010 4:00 - 5:30 pm ICRPH Knight House, 104 E. 15th Av
The Ohio State University Lecture on Literacy Studies: Wendy Griswold (Northwestern University): "The Great Depression, the Federal Writers' Project, the American Guides, and What the Readers Made of Them."

Thursday, January 28, 2010 4:00 - 5:30 pm ICRPH Knight House, 104 E. 15th Av
The Ohio State University Lecture on Literacy Studies: Wendy Griswold (Northwestern University): "The Great Depression, the Federal Writers' Project, the American Guides, and What the Readers Made of Them."

FRIDAY, JANUARY 29, 2010 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. ICRPH Knight House, 104 E. 15th Av
Graduate Student Interdisciplinary Seminar in Literacy Studies: REGIONAL LITERACIES, with special guest Wendy Griswold.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2010 3:30 – 5:00 p.m. 311 Denney Hall, 164 W. 17th Av
History of the Book Reading and Discussion Group: DANIEL HOBBINS will discuss an essay from his recent research on authorial colophons, "The Authorial Colophon: Its History and Meaning":

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2010 Moritz College of Law
YOUTH AND SOCIAL MEDIA: A Symposium sponsored by I/S:A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society, Moritz College of Law, The Justice for Children Project, The Center for Interdisciplinary Law and Policy Studies, and LiteracyStudies@OSU. For more information, contact, contact PETER SHANE at shane.29@osu.edu.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2010 4:00 – 5:30 p.m. ICRPH Knight House, 104 E. 15th Av
Invited Speaker: MEGAN SWEENEY (University of Michigan): “The Underground Book Railroad: Women Prisoners and the Art of Reading.” Co-sponsored with Women’s Studies.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2010 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. ICRPH Knight House, 104 E. 15th Av
Graduate Student Interdisciplinary Seminar in Literacy Studies: WOMEN’S LITERACIES

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2010 3:30 – 5:00 p.m. 311 Denney Hall, 164 W. 17th Av
History of the Book Reading and Discussion Group: DAVID STALEY will lead a discussion and exercise on the future of the book.

THURSDAY, APRIL 1, 2010 3:30 – 5:00 p.m. 311 Denney Hall, 164 W. 17th Av
Corbett Lecture: JOHN DUFFY (University of Notre Dame). Co-sponsored with Disability Studies and Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Studies, Department of English.

FRIDAY, APRIL 30, 2010 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. ICRPH Knight House, 104 E. 15th Av
Graduate Student Interdisciplinary Seminar in Literacy Studies: INDIGENOUS LITERACIES

THURSDAY, MAY 6, 2010 4:00 – 5:30 p.m. ICRPH Knight House, 104 E. 15th Av
LiteracyStudies@OSU SPRING LECTURE: Teresa McCarty (Arizona State University): Language Pedagogy and Politics in Indigenous America – Miner’s Canary or Mariner’s Tern?

FRIDAY, MAY 28, 2010 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. ICRPH Knight House, 104 E. 15th Av
Graduate Student Interdisciplinary Seminar in Literacy Studies: VISUAL LITERACIES

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LiteracyStudies@OSU Winter Program: The New Research Library

Reading and Writing Spaces for Creating Knowledge
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Thompson Library 165, 4:00 – 5:30 p.m.


According to the new Director of OSU Libraries Carol Pitts Diedrichs, the future of academic libraries lies in special collections. What does this mean in terms of the library’s physical and virtual spaces and places? What challenges does the organization of collections present? What opportunities do the renovations and innovations represent for creating knowledge?

Join us for a conversation organized and moderated by Associate Professor Anne Fields with Wes Boomgaarden, Preservation Officer, OSU Libraries, and Renovation Project Manager; Pete Confar, Thompson Library Architect, Acock Associates; Jenny Robb, Associate Curator, Billy Ireland Cartoon Museum and Library; Maureen Walsh, Metadata Librarian, OSU Libraries; and Andrew Lehman, Graduate Student, Knowlton School of Architecture.

The Ohio State University Lecture in Literacy Studies: Wendy Griswold

The annual Ohio State University Lecture on Literacy Studies established OSU as the place for both well-established and younger scholars to preview major studies and present significant new works. This year’s lecture will be presented by WENDY GRISWOLD, Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Sociology and English at Northwestern University on Thursday, January 28, 2010, from 4:00 to 5:30 p.m. at the Knight House, 104 E. 15th Avenue. She will speak about “The Great Depression, the Federal Writers’ Project, the American Guides, and What the Readers Made of Them.”

Griswold’s research and teaching interests include cultural sociology; sociological approaches to literature, art and religion; regionalism, urban representations, and the culture of place; the Federal Writers’ Project; and comparative studies of reading practices. Her recent books include Bearing Witness: Readers, Writers, and the Novel in Nigeria (Princeton UP, 2000), Cultures and Societies in a Changing World 3rd ed. (Pine Forge 2008), and Regionalism and the Reading Class (University of Chicago Press, 2008). She directs the Culture and Society Workshop at the Alice Berline Kaplan Institute for the Humanities.

The Ohio State University Lecture on Literacy Studies series is supported with funding from the College of Arts and Sciences, matched by the Dentistry, Art, Biological Sciences, Entomology, and the University Libraries.

Megan Sweeney: “The Underground Book Railroad: Women Prisoners and the Art of Reading”

Drawing on extensive interviews with ninety-four women prisoners, Megan Sweeney examines how incarcerated women use available reading materials to come to terms with their pasts, negotiate their present experiences, and reach toward different futures in Reading is My Window; Books and the Art of Reading in Women’s Prisons (University of North Carolina Press, February 2010). Given the scarcity of counseling and education in prisons, Sweeney argues that women use books to make meaning from their experiences, to gain guidance and support, to experiment with new ways of being, and to maintain connections with the world.


MEGAN SWEENEY is assistant professor of English and Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The lecture will take place Thursday, February 25, 2010 4:00 – 5:30 p.m. ICRPH Knight House, 104 E. 15th Av. For more information, contact Rebecca Wanzo at wanzo.1@osu.edu.

Event Follow-up: Informing Ohio Communities

Informing Ohio Communities, a symposium on sustaining democracy in the digital age took place November 20, 2009 at the Barristers Club. State and local leaders and educators, participated in the discussion with distinguished faculty from the Arts and Sciences and Education.

The Symposium was organized by LiteracyStudies@OSU to mount a critical yet constructive response to the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy, the first major national commission to assess information needs and recommend measures to better meet those needs. Graff co-chaired the proceedings with Peter Shane, the Jacob E. Davis and Jacob E. Davis II Chair in Law and the Knight Commission’s Executive Director. According to Shane, “the Commission was impressed by the wondrous range of new technological tools that are enabling more and more people to be creators, shapers, and distributors of information.” He referred to it as a “renaissance moment,” then cautioned that these tools “can be turned to democratic advantage only with skill and by design.” The discussion focused on several possible initiatives related to needs and opportunities in central Ohio, including

• Studying access to and uses of information locally
• Creating a strategic plan for information and communications excellence in Columbus/Central Ohio
• Bringing back and improving public access television
• Creating an online newspaper to serve the mid-Ohio Region
• Curriculum reform at OSU
• Reconsidering school and non-school approaches toward promoting greater facility in what is sometimes called “multiple literacies” and redefining literacy

Chester Jourdan, Executive Director of the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission, has suggested that MORPC might be a good venue for convening to discuss some of these ideas further. According to Graff, “We are now considering the best ways to follow such a strong beginning.”

News and Announcements

Locating LiteracyStudies@OSU

George Wells Knight House
104 E. 15th Ave
Columbus, OH 43201
PH: 614-247-6539
FAX: 614-247-6336
literacystudies@osu.edu

LiteracyStudies@OSU: An Initiative

LiteracyStudies@OSU is 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. We are building 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.

2009-2010 EXECUTIVE GROUP
Stephen Acker, Ohio Board of Regents
Edward Adelson, Music
Ginny Bumgardner, Medicine; Surgery; Research Education
Philip Binkley, Medicine; Public Health
Mollie Blackburn, Education; Teaching & Learning
Brenda Brueggemann, English; Composition, Rhetoric and Literacy
Sandy Cornett, Health Sciences; Allied Medicine
Marcia Farr, Education: Teaching & Learning; English
Anne Fields, University Libraries
Henry Fields, Dentistry
Susan Fisher, Biology; Entomology
Carolina Gill, Industrial, Interior, & Visual Communication Design
Harvey J. Graff, English and History
Terry Gustafson, Chemistry
Kay Bea Jones, Architecture
Alan Kalish, Teaching & Learning Center
Daniel Keller, OSU Newark, English
Jeffrey K. McKee, Anthropology
Beverly Moss, English; Composition, Rhetoric and Literacy
Leslie Moore, Education: Teaching & Learning
Cassandra Parente, OSU Marion, English
Doug Post, Medicine
Cindy Selfe, English; Digital Media
Peter Shane, Law
Randy Smith, Vice Provost for Academic Programs
Amy Shuman, English; Folklore
Kathryn Sullivan, Battelle Center for Mathematics & Science Education Policy
David Staley, History
Kevin Tavin, Art Education
Andrew Thomas, Medicine; General Internal Medicine
Lewis Ulman, English; Digital Media
Mindy Wright, Community Partnerships in ASC
Chris Zacher, Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities