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Not Your Mother’s Literacy, But Perhaps Your Daughter’s

What do information literacy, visual literacy, health literacy, and spatial literacy have in common? They involve processes or competencies that resemble or involve reading and writing. They are also among the literacies that students who pursue a new Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization in Literacy Studies at The Ohio State University get to sample critically.

Literacy Studies responds to a variety of cultural trends and interdisciplinary questions. For example, why is the term being used to describe everything from knowing how to navigate the internet (cyber literacy), protect the planet (environmental literacy), manage one’s money (financial literacy), and glean the truth on cable news programs (news literacy), to buying groceries (food literacy) and comprehending what a frown means (emotional literacy). It is also inseparable from conflicting developments in popular culture that emphasize the oral and the visual.

How many kinds of literacy are there? The appearance of multiple literacies is confusing. To many it is associated with a "crisis" in literacy.

According to Professor Harvey J. Graff, the literacies list is "pushing 500." Graff is the Ohio Eminent Scholar in Literacy Studies and a professor of English and History. A comparative social historian, Graff is known internationally for his books and articles on the history of literacy and the importance of that history to contemporary issues, including what he refers to as the "persisting sense of crisis." How people talk about literacy depends, says Graff, on how they define it, and how they define it depends on the context.

Graff initiated Literacy Studies @ OSU in 2004 as a working group, with the goal of fostering a campus-wide conversation about literacy and the study of literacy. The group, made up of faculty, staff, and graduate students from across campus, began by organizing a series of interdisciplinary programs as a way to put the various approaches to literacy studies at Ohio State into closer contact with one another. The needs and interests of participants stimulated a variety of specialized groups and activities, such as History of the Book Reading and Discussion Group, the Graduate Student Interdisciplinary Seminar in Literacy Studies, and the Ohio Researcher Lecture Series. The group also invited distinguished scholars in literacy studies to OSU, including Mike Rose in 2005, Shirley Brice Heath in 2006, and Deborah Brandt in 2007, and organized lectures, talks, and other activities around their visits. Not coincidentally, they all touched on issues related to popular as well as academic cultures.

The conversations and collaborations at these events led to new intellectual and institutional relationships between disciplines and their constituents who rarely had crossed paths previously. Literacy Studies is, as a result, broadly interdisciplinary, drawing from and contributing to research in the humanities, social sciences, arts, and education most directly, but also the biological sciences and professional areas, such as medicine, dentistry, nursing, business, and law. "When we first advertised for the position of Ohio Eminent Scholar in Literacy Studies, little did we imagine the scope and intellectual engagement that such a position would generate," said Valerie Lee, Chair of the Department of English.

The Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization in Literacy Studies is one significant outcome of these cross-campus relationships. The curriculum addresses the needs of students whose interests concern literacy, however broadly defined. For example, a graduate student in English whose primary research interest is, say, popular cartoon strips, graphic novels, or films, can ground her work by concentrating on the relationship between textual and visual literacy, language, culture, and humor. A student in Design whose field is design education can specialize in literacy, writing, and digital media. Or a graduate student in Nursing whose primary interest is community-based health programs can specialize in literacy and reading. The core course, Introduction to Graduate Studies in Literacy (English 750) is offered winter quarter 2008.

Literacy Studies @ OSU is housed at The Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities, George Wells Knight House, 104 E. 15th Ave. (614) 247-6539. If you would like to receive email announcements about programs, events, and news, contact Susan Hanson at hanson.94@osu.edu. For more information about the Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization in Literacy Studies, contact the Advising Coordinator Harvey J. Graff at graff.40@osu.edu or Marcia Farr at farr.18@osu.edu.