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Shirley Brice Heath visits OSU to Give Lecture, Graduate Workshop

Thanks to Harvey J. Graff and the Literacy Studies Working Group, Shirley Brice Heath will visit OSU and give a public lecture on "Vision, Language, and Learning: Why Literacy Depends on Much More Than We Can Ever Teach" on May 11 from 4:00 – 5:30 p.m. in Dreese Lab 113.

A linguistic anthropologist, Heath (Professor at Large, Brown University, Departments of Education and Anthropology, Watson Institute for International Studies and Professor Emerita, Stanford University) is the author of the prize-winning Ways with Words: Language, Life, and Work in Communities and Classrooms (1983) and co-editor of Identity and Inner-city Youth: Beyond Ethnicity and Gender (1993), also a prize-winning book, as well as several other books and many articles and book chapters.

In "Vision, Language, and Learning: Why Literacy Depends on Much More Than We Can Ever Teach," Heath addresses: Media, business, the entertainment industry, and children’s literature operate with increasing understanding of how vision and language affect memory, emotion, and a desire for more. Yet scholarship related to literacy in school, adult education, and other formal education settings continues to focus on "best practices." This cultural lag is driven by society’s persistent belief in the power of "teaching" reading and writing. Cultural psychology, anthropology, and cognitive linguistics point increasingly to the critical combined force of visual attention, role interactions, and language input. Generally out-of-awareness, this combination comes within social and cultural processes of learning environments that provide "exposure." Across all cultures, the ability to construct flexible, multi-dimensional, and dialogical representations of human cognition depends on breadth and depth of experience with symbolic systems. Reviewed in this talk will be research on the critical support that oral language fluency, habituated visual focus, and sustained roles within joint projects give to learning retention and adaptation. Data from family interactions, schools and community organizations, and youth groups (linked to medical and commercial organizations) will provide the background for arguments made here. Special focus will go to the vitally important language development of middle childhood and adolescence.

Heath will also be conducting a graduate workshop in Prof. Harvey Graff’s English 750 course in Denney Hall 262 on May 11 from 1:30-3:00. Graduate students in English may attend both the public lecture and the workshop for credit. The readings for the workshop will come from Professor Heath's landmark study, Ways with Words and will be available for photocopying in the RCLS office.

Graduate students are also invited to attend an informal coffee and conversation hour with Heath at 9:30 a.m., May 12, in Denney 311.

To register for the workshop, please sign up for two hours of independent study with Kay Halasek:
English 993: 08351-0 (2 hours of credit)
If you have any questions regarding the workshop, please contact Prof. Halasek at: halasek.1@osu.edu.