Spring 2009 | Newsletter | Volume 5:3
Upcoming Talks, Seminars, and Special Events
Friday-Sunday, April 3-5, 2009 on the campus of The Ohio State University
Expanding Literacy Studies, an International, Interdisciplinary Conference for Graduate and Professional Students, sponsored by LiteracyStudies@OSU. View the
Conference Program [PDF]
Friday, April 3, 2009 5:15–6:45 Knowlton Hall 250, 275 W Woodruff Av
The Literacy Myth: 30 Years Later. Expanding Literacy Studies conference keynote event. Author Harvey J. Graff will respond to a panel of graduate students.
Saturday, April 4, 2009 4:30–6:00 Knowlton Hall 250, 275 W Woodruff Av
Youth, Language, and Literacy. Expanding Literacy Studies conference keynote event. Shirley Brice Heath will respond to a panel of graduate students.
Sunday, April 5, 2009 10:45 a.m.-12:45 p.m. Knowlton Hall 190, 275 W Woodruff Av
The Field and Future of Literacy Studies. Expanding Literacy Studies conference keynote event. Participatory design pioneer Liz Sanders will lead an arts-based workshop. Registration required.
Friday, April 24, 2009 11:30 a.m.-1:00 p.m. ICRPH Knight House, 104 E. 15th Av
Graduate Student Interdisciplinary Seminar on Literacy Studies: A student-led discussion of works by Ira Shor in anticipation of the Spring Lecture on May 14, organized and moderated by Audra Slocum (Teaching & Learning).
Thursday, May 14, 2009 4:00-5:30 p.m. ICRPH Knight House, 104 E. 15th Av
LiteracyStudies@OSU SPRING LECTURE: IRA SHOR (City University of New York): "Can Critical Literacy Change the World?"
Friday, May 22, 2009 3:30-5:00 p.m. Denney 311, 164 W. 17th Av
History of the Book: Discussion moderated by DAVID BREWER (English).
Friday, May 29, 2009 11:30 a.m. -1:00 p.m. ICRPH Knight House, 104 E. 15th Av
Graduate Student Interdisciplinary Seminar on Literacy Studies: Career Opportunities in Literacy Studies, organized and moderated by Karin Hooks (English).
Literacy Studies Spring Lecture: IRA SHOR asks, "Can Critical Literacy Change the World?"
Merging the study of formal technique with social critique is not simple...but this project is no more and no less "political" than any other kind of literacy program. The claim of critical literacy is that no pedagogy is neutral, no learning process is value-free, no curriculum avoids ideology and power relations.
-IRA SHOR, "What Is Critical Literacy?"
Critical Literacy in Action: Writing Words, Changing Worlds
Literacy-that is, the social practices of meaningful communication and the textual practices of writing and reading-has been a major site of conflict and confusion in schools and colleges. One set of opinions, perhaps dominant in society, poses literacy as a transformative force in the modern world, with great implications for personal success in careers and for prosperous development in society. In this lecture, IRA SHOR, a pioneer in the field of critical education, asks whether we can we imagine a "critical literacy" that challenges unequal power relations? Could teaching "critical literacy" enable students to become civic activists for social justice, promote peace not war, and against the dreadful inequality? Could "critical literacy" change the world in which we live and work?"
Ira Shor (left) with Paolo Freire
IRA SHOR is a Professor of Rhetoric/Composition at the City University of New York's Graduate Center (Ph.D. Program in English) and in the Department of English at the College of Staten Island (CSI). He started the new doctorate in Rhetoric/Composition at the CUNY Grad Center in 1993. There, he directs dissertations and offers seminars in literacy, writing theory, critical pedagogy, whiteness studies, the rhetorics of space and place, and working-class culture. As a member of the English faculty at CSI, Professor Shor teaches courses in writing, literature, and mass media as well as graduate classes for schoolteachers. Shor's work with Paolo Freire, the noted Brazilian educator, began in the early 1980s. He and Freire co-authored
A Pedagogy for Liberation, the first "talking" book Freire published with a collaborator. Shor also authored the widely used
Empowering Education and
When Students have Power, two foundational texts in critical teaching. His
Critical Teaching and Everyday Life was the first book-length treatment of Freire-based critical methods in the North American context.
The LiteracyStudies@OSU Spring Lecture will take place on Thursday, May 14, 4:00–5:30 p.m. at the George Wells Knight House at 104 East 15th Avenue.
Expanding Literacy Studies:Conference Program Preview
Expanding Literacy Studies is the first international, interdisciplinary conference on literacy studies for graduate and professional students. The Call for Proposals yielded a stunning response: more than 180 proposals involving nearly 250 presenters from 66 institutions and 6 countries. The students represent the
Humanities, including English, History, Linguistics, Women's Studies, Rhetoric, Writing and Composition, Professional Communication, Comparative Culture, Literature, Spanish, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, Literacy Studies, Creative Writing, and Media Studies;
Education, including Teaching and Learning, Curriculum & Instruction,
TESOL, Somatic Studies, Workforce Development Education, Multicultural Education, Educational Policy, Adolescent Literacy Studies, Learning Sciences; the
Arts, including Fine Art, History of Art, Visual Design, Art Education, Dance; the
Social Sciences, including Anthropology, Psychology, and Political Science; and
Library Science.
The
program[PDF] features nearly 100 organized panels, paper and poster presentations, creative performances, roundtable discussions, and workshops, plus three keynote events. For information about on-site registration, accommodations, or accessibility write
expandingls@osu.edu.
Friday, April 3
3:30 - 5:00 p.m.
Panel: Women in Chains: The Cultural Constraints of Female Literacy
Panel: Literacy Stories as Classroom Texts
Panel: Professional Literacy
Panel: Literacy, Media, and Visual Texts
Panel: Literacy Debates in Communities
Panel: Research in Readers and Reading: From the Old West to the Electronic Frontier...
Panel: Visual Literacy
Panel: Letter Writing as a Wartime Literacy Practice
Panel: The New Work of First-Year Composition: Remixing Attitudes about Digital Literacy
Performance: The Body
5:15 - 6:45 p.m.
Keynote Panel: The Literacy Myth: 30 Years Later, with Harvey Graff
Saturday, April 4
9:00 - 10:30 a.m.
Panel: Queering Literacy Studies
Panel: Community Literacy Practices
Panel: Vernacular Literacies in the College Composition Classroom
Panel: Youth Literacy & Global/Social Change
Panel: Contesting Citizenship and Representation: Expanding Digital Literacies
Panel: Historical Issues of Literacy in Europe
Panel: Virtual Sites of Literacy and Identity
Panel: Literacies in Time of War
Panel: Pushing Theories of Literacy
Panel: Teaching Literacy and Promoting Social Change
Performance: Frederick Douglass and the New Literacy Studies: Illustrating the Connection
10:45 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.
Panel: Women and Literacy
Panel: Race, Culture, and Power
Panel: "Official" Literacies
Panel: Adult Literacies
Panel: I'll Meet You Behind the Words: Identity Politics in Language
Panel: Modes of Literacy in the Medieval Islamic World: Debate, Epigraphy, and Visual Cues as Markers of Exchange
Panel: Literacy Use in Online Communities
Panel: Hip Hop Literacy and Composition
Panel: Conceptualizing First-Year College Composition
Panel: Literacy and the Arts
Panel: Classroom Literacies
1:30 - 3:00 p.m.
Panel: From the Margins: Historical and Contemporary Black Literacy for Citizenship and Liberation
Panel: Postcolonial Perspectives and Marginalized Bodies
Panel: Comics and Literacy
Panel: Sites of Literacy
Panel: Fostering Communal Literacy: Utilizing Interactive Forums to Explore Shared Spaces
Performing Literacies
Panel: Literacies of Authenticity: Using Simulation and Visual Rhetoric in the Freshmen Writing Classroom
Panel: Wearing Colors: A Panel Investigation of the Development of Authority Through Literacy Practices of Gang
Members and Police Officers
Panel: Remixing Rhetoric: What's Old about New Literacies?
Panel: The Future of Literacy in the Classroom
Panel: (De)Constructing the Expert, (Re)Constructing the Novice: Tearing Down a Smokestack, Reclaiming Joe Six-Pack,
and Examining the Future of Civic Literacy
Dissertation Workshops (Closed Sessions)
3:15 - 4:15 p.m.
Roundtable: Terminological Conflicts in Design Disciplines
Roundtable: Exploring the Negotiations between Fundamental Religious and Secular Academic Literacies in the Writing
Classroom
Roundtable: Classroom Interactions That Support Learning Over Time: The Social Construction of Learning Opportunities
Roundtable: Preservice Teachers' Perspectives in Equity Literacies: Issues Explored Within Classroom Contexts
Roundtable: Writing as Exploration and Discovery
Roundtable: Community Literacy Work and Graduate Students: Finding Best Practices for Building Community and Academic Connections
Roundtable: What is "Common Knowledge" Today?
Roundtable: Confronting the Media Panopticon and its Influence on the Development of Literacy
Roundtable: Urban Literature vs. The Textbook: A Comparison of the Construction of Urban, Adolescent African American
Females
Roundtable: Meaningful Literacy Experiences Out of School
Roundtable: Practicing Literacy: Deliberations and Inquiries from Developmental and First Year Writing Students
Roundtable: Your Turn to Speak
Roundtable: Reading Revolutions: Interpreting Intersections of Literacy and Social Change
Roundtable: Moving Writing to the Center: Writing Studies
Roundtable: Cross Talk: An Opportunity to Discuss Student Inquiry Based Research Through the Framework of Multiple
Literacies
Roundtable: "Positioning" as Pedagogy
Roundtable: Dialogic Dramatic Inquiry: A New Literacy
Roundtable: Global Literacy for a Global Society
4:30 - 6:00 p.m.
Keynote Panel: Youth, Language, and Literacy, with Shirley Brice Heath
Sunday, April 5
9:00 - 10:30 a.m.
Panel: Explorations of Literacy and Disability
Panel: Multiple Literacies as Political and Cultural Empowerment
Panel: Theorizing the Everyday
Panel: Literacy in a Global Context
Panel: Web-Mediated Collaborative Literacy
Panel: Cognition and Literacy
Panel: Literacy in Cross-Cultural Settings
Panel: Multi-Modal Pedagogy
Panel: Where the Classroom Meets the Streets: Literacy Convergences at Virginia Tech
Panel: Civic Literacy in the Southwest: Creating Conversations Across Communities
10:45 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.
Workshop: Teaching Towards Technology's Thought Patterns
Workshop: Pages: An Arts, Literacy and Writing Program
Workshop: Sharing a Photovoice Experience: Ethics, Methodological Concerns, and Opportunities
Workshop: Is One's Economic Class a Motivator for Service Learning and Community Literacy?
Workshop: Using Online Tools to Facilitate Collaborative Writing Communities
Workshop: Reading the Facebook: Cyber-Literacy of Social Networking Sites (SNSs)
Workshop: Biospheric Literacy: What It Is, Why We Should Care, and What We Can Do
Workshop: Literacy Myth and Epistemological Agency in the Practice of Literacy Narrative in College Composition
Workshop: Watching Literacy Emerge: Connections Between the Secondary Classroom and "Real-Life" for the Graduate
Student- Teacher
Workshop: Coming Clean: Understanding Literacy through Ideological Self-Revelation
Keynote Workshop: The Field and Future of Literacy Studies, with Liz Sanders
News and Announcements
SUSAN JACOBY:Where did America's Rationality Go?
Bestselling author of
The Age of American Unreason, Susan Jacoby offers an unsparing indictment of the American addiction to infotainment-from television to the Web-and cites this toxic dependency as the major element distinguishing our current age of unreason from earlier outbreaks of American anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism. Sparing neither the right nor the left, Jacoby asserts that Americans today have embraced a universe of "junk thought" that makes almost no effort to separate fact from opinion.
Thursday, April 1, 2009 7:00 p.m. Jennings Hall 001
Jacoby began her writing career as a reporter for
The Washington Post. Her articles and essays on law, religion, medicine, aging, women's rights, political dissent in the Soviet Union, and Russian literature have appeared in
The New York Times Magazine,
Washington Post Book World,
Los Angeles Times Book Review,
Newsday,
Harper's, and
The Nation, among other publications. She is program director of the
Center for Inquiry-New York City, a rationalist think tank.
This lecture is sponsored by the Departments of Entomology, EEOB, Anthropology, PCMB, Molecular Genetics and Microbiology; The Colleges of the Arts and Sciences, BMAPS, SBS and OSU Newark; The Office of Research, The First Year Experience, LiteracyStudies@OSU, Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities, The Center for the Study of Religion, and the Batelle Center for Math and Science Education Policy.
For more information, contact Susan Fisher at
fisher.14@osu.edu.
-Susan Fisher
Literacy Studies GradSem: Expanding Interdisciplinarity
During Spring Quarter the GradSem will host a discussion of the work of the LiteracyStudies@OSU guest speaker Ira Shor. The session will be held April 24th. Contact Shawn at
casey.169@osu.edu. GradSem participant Karin Hooks is organizing a session for May 29th on career opportunities in Literacy Studies. Contact Karin at
hooks.28@osu.edu.
-Shawn Casey and Audra Slocum, Co-Chairs
History of the Book: Thinking through Connections
Recent work in the humanities regarding the relations between persons and objects has proceeded along three surprisingly non-intersecting lines: book history, "thing theory," and the social anthropology of art. On May 22nd, David Brewer will lead a discussion of the latter two in order to help us think through the potential utility of bringing these modes of inquiry into closer contact with one another. 311 Denney Hall 3:30- 5:00 p.m. If you have a project you'd like to present to the group or if you have ideas for readings that the group might enjoy, contact me at
farmer.109@osu.edu.
-Alan Farmer
Goldberg Speaker Series: Technology and Teaching
Edward A. Hill, Jr.,
MATRIX Learning Program Manager, will talk about "Mobile Computing and NextGen Learning" on Tuesday, April 7, 11:30-1:00, in 168 Dulles Hall. MATRIX partners are educators and researchers, software and game developers, and curriculum designers who are concerned about the lack of interest and ability in mathematics by many middle school students. They share a belief that new strategies and techniques can be borrowed from electronic games and simulations and small pocket-sized technologies that have already captured the interest and time of that same group of students. Please RSVP to David Staley at
staley.3@osu.edu by Monday, April 6.
–David Staley
Literacy Narratives: Building an Archive
At a recent Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Studies meeting, Humanities Distinguished Professor
Cindy Selfe announced a project that she and Louie Ulman are undertaking for the
Digital Archives of Literacy Narratives (DALN). They're asking colleagues from colleges and institutions around the country to hold their own "Everybody has a literacy story...Tell us yours!" event on their own campuses. So far, they have heard from more than 30 institutions that want to host such an event, and are hoping for even more. For more information, write Cindy Selfe at
selfe.2@osu.edu.
–Cindy Selfe
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
