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LiteracyStudies@OSU Encourages Interdisciplinary Scholarship

The story of LiteracyStudies@OSU encompasses a university’s worth of people and disciplines. But before all that, it begins with the hiring of Professor Harvey J. Graff as the Ohio Eminent Scholar in Literacy Studies by the Ohio State English Department, and with an issue he’d been mulling over for some time.

"Literacy Studies comes from questions that are very deeply-seeded in me" said Professor Graff. "What are the alternative ways in which we produce, organize, and publicize knowledge? And how can we stretch an interdisciplinary subject like literacy studies across a campus like this?"

Literacy Studies @ OSU seeks to generate a cross-campus dialogue into issues of literacy—including its historical, contextual, comparative, and critical perspectives and modes of understanding. The initiative includes a variety of programs: a Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization minor, for which students take classes in disciplines across campus; monthly graduate student seminars organized and run by graduate students; public programs; a History of the Book group; and, newly, an upcoming conference, Expanding Literacy Studies: An International Interdisciplinary Conference for Graduate Students.

It’s an interdisciplinary venture at its very foundation—Professor Graff himself is a comparative social and cultural historian who was hired by the English Department. "I think both as an historian and for literacy studies, it’s important that my primary location is not in the history department because there’s a kind of synergy and creative tension in being outside my own field but not too far away from it." The program has the potential to influence the drive for interdisciplinary scholarship that’s been spreading across campus as part of returning president Gordon Gee’s new initiatives.

Graduate students have played a pivotal role in the formation and continued success of LiteracyStudies@OSU. In return, Literacy Studies has shaped their scholarship at Ohio State, a fact Ph.D. student Michael Harker realized when preparing a paper for a panel that he, Professor Graff, and Ph.D. students Kate White and Kelly Bradbury led at the recent CCCC conference.

"In the process of putting together this conference paper, I realized it’s almost impossible for me to think about my work in rhetoric and composition without thinking about how literacy studies informs that work" said Harker. "Literacy Studies is concerned with questions that begin and end with interdisciplinary inquiry. And so much of rhetoric and composition grows out of interdisciplinary concerns."

"It affects my teaching because I’ve brought different materials in" said Kelly Bradbury, whose dissertation The Theory and Practice of Intellectualism in the U.S.: Literacy, Lyceums, and Labor Colleges, is directly influenced by her work in literacy. "It has expanded the kinds of conversations that we have in the classroom."

Kate White, Ph.D. student and chair of the graduate seminar for the last two years, has been watching as word of what’s happening finds its way to other universities. "It was amazing to get emails from professors who want to join our list serv. There’s a real need for people to get together across disciplines. It’s exciting for me to see."

"I like to think we’re creating a model for other institutions, and we’ll try to do more of that….People in different fields are beginning to want to come here to see what we’re doing" said Professor Graff. "The degree to which we succeed is important far beyond Ohio State."

Expanding Literacy Studies: An International Interdisciplinary Conference for Graduate Students will be held April 3-5, 2009.For more information on literacy studies, including all upcoming events and the deadlines for conference proposals, visit the Literacy Studies @ OSU website.