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The Literacy Studies Working Group of
The Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities

invites you to

Vision, Language, and Learning:
Why Literacy Depends on
Much More Than We Can Ever Teach

Shirley Brice Heath

Professor at Large, Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University
and Margery Bailey Professor Emerita, Stanford University

Thursday, May 11, 4:00 - 5:30 p.m.
Dreese Lab 113, 2015 Neil Avenue

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.

The Literacy Studies Working Group is supported by
the Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities, College of Humanities,
Department of English, and Arts and Science Colleges.

Literacy Studies at OSU: A New Initiative

Harvey J. Graff, English & History; Steve Acker, TELR & Communication; Terry Barrett, Art Education; Mollie Blackburn, Language, Literacy and Culture, Education; Marcia Farr, Language, Literacy and Culture, Education & English; Anne Fields, University Library; Henry Fields, Dentistry; Susan Fisher, Biology; Alan Kalish, Teaching & Learning Center; Carolina Gill, Art & Design; Kay Bea Jones, Architecture; Beverly Moss, Center for the Study & Teaching of Writing & English; Amy Shuman, Folklore & English; Lewis Ulman, English & Humanities; Mindy Wright, Writing Workshop; Amy Pope-Harman, Medicine; and Susan Hanson, Doctoral Candidate, English.
We are developing a Literacy Studies Working Group, with the aim of fostering 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. The Literacy Studies Working Group intends to foster 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.

If you would like your name added to the LSWG listserv, contact Susan Hanson at hanson.94@osu.edu