English 8600 Schedule | Fall 2018

** Last Updated: December 3, 2018**

Week 1 | August 20 | Course Introduction

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Activity 1: Literacy Scavenger Hunt: “These Kids Today”

Discussion: What can’t “these kids” do? Is that real or imagined? What assumptions do these abilities have to do with literacy?

Discussion: Syllabus, Course Projects, Expectations

For next week, read the following from Literacy: A Critical Sourcebook

  • “Introduction: Surveying the Field”
  • Graff, “The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Our Times”
  • McHenry & Heath, “The Literate and the Literary: African Americans as Writers and Readers — 1830 – 1940”
  • Adams, “Theoretical Approaches to Reading Instruction”
  • Goodman, “The Development of Initial Literacy”
  • Arnove & Graff, “National Literacy Campaigns”
  • Hull, “Hearing Other Voices”

Also, read Brandt & Clinton, “Limits of the Local: Expanding Perspectives on Literacy as a Social Practice” (JLR)

As you read, ask yourself, how have we traditionally understood literacy / reading and writing? why have we wanted/needed to think of literacy in those terms? whose interests do those ways of thinking serve?

Due: Reading Blog 1 & Literacy Portfolios

Week 2 | August 27 | Framing Literacy Studies

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Activity 1: Agenda

Activity 2: Share Literacy Portfolios

Discussion: What is literacy? When is literacy? Where is literacy? How is literacy?

For next class, read the following from Literacy: A Critical Sourcebook

  • Ong, “Writing Is a Technology that Restructures Thought”
  • Scribner & Cole, “Unpacking Literacy”
  • Moll & González, “Lesson from Research with Language-Minority Children”
  • Greene, “Misperspectives on Literacy”
  • Baron, “From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technologies”
  • Charney, “The Effects of Hypertext on Processes of Reading and Writing”
  • Gere, “Kitchen Tables and Rented Rooms”

Also read Stuckey’s The Violence of Literacy

As you read, ask yourself, what, if anything, is special about writing? what makes writing different from talking? whose interests does it serve to value one form of communication (writing) over others (speaking, visuality)? how does “writing” mean different things in different contexts? how might our beliefs about literacy enact harm on others?

Due: Reading Blog 2

Week 3 | September 3 | Labor Day (No Class)

Week 4 | September 10 | Shifting Literate Landscapes

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Discussion: How has our perceptions of literacy shifted since Stuckey’s Violence of Literacy, or have they? How do we still enact that same sort of violence as English/writing teachers? And how might some of the “funds of knowledge” that the articles from Literacy: A Critical Sourcebook explore help us to undo some of that violence? Or is such a thing even possible? For next class, read the following from Literacy: A Critical Sourcebook

  • Street, “The New Literacy Studies”
  • Heath, “Protean Shapes in Literacy Events”
  • Brandt, “Sponsors of Literacy”

Also read Lankshear & Knobel, The New Literacies, 3rd edition.

As you read these pieces, consider how the “new” literacies disrupt traditional notions of literacy, as well as what it might mean if “everything is a literacy.” What’s the difference — is there a difference? — between rhetoric and literacy? How do we distinguish the work of those two fields?

Due: Reading Blog 3 (Now September 24)

Week 5 | September 17 | CLASS CANCELED DUE TO HURRICANE FLORENCE

Week 6 | September 24 | The New Literacy

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Activity: Review blog posts to set the evening agenda.

Discussion: What are ‘new’ literacies and what makes them ‘new’?

For next class, read

  • Banks, Digital Griots: African American Rhetoric in a Multimedia Age

In Digital Griots, Banks uses a rhetorical frame rather than a literacy frame for his discussion. As you read, think about how the literacy scholars we’ve read might talk about or examine these differently from a rhetorical scholar. These scholars and contexts overlap and it will benefit us all to think about these different lenses may offer us different knowledge.

Due: Reading Blog 4 — Remember to begin making connections to the readings from previous weeks as you pose your questions for your weekly reading blogs.

Week 7 | October 1 | The New Cultural Literacies, Pt 1

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Activity: Review blog posts to set the evening agenda

Discussion: How are the practices that Banks discusses specific to the community he examines? How does this attention to cultural rhetorical practices and experiences provide ways for thinking through literacy practices, as well?

For next class, read the following pieces from the Routledge Handbook of Digital Writing & Rhetoric

Read also

Due: Reading Blog 5 — Remember to make connections to the readings from previous weeks as you pose your questions for your weekly reading blogs.

Week 8 | October 8 | Fall Break (No Class)

Week 9 | October 15 | The New Cultural Literacies, Pt 2

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For next class, read

As you read for this week, how are these scholars explaining/defining multiliteracies and transliteracies? In what ways, if any, does transliteracies extend multiliteracies?

Due: Reading Blog 6 — Use this reading blog to sketch out a discovery draft/plan for your seminar paper project. What digital activist project do you think you want to study at this point? What interests you about this project and draws you to this group/its activist project? How will using a literacy framework to explore this group/its digital activism help you in some way to understand what’s happening there? What do you think you will struggle with most as you work on this project? How might I and others in the class help you with these struggles?

Week 9 | October 22 | Toward Transliteracies

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Activity: Explore/respond to seminar project proposals

Discussion: Multiliteracies v. transliteracies

For next class, read

  • Arroyo, Participatory Composition: Video Culture, Writing, and Electracy

Due: Reading Blog 7

Week 10 | October 29 | From Literacy to Engagement

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For next class, read

Due: Reading Blog 8

Week 11 | November 5 | Toward a Literacy of Social Movement

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For next class, read

Due: Reading Blog 9

As you’re reading, consider how Castells’s book, while not focused on literacy necessarily, names practices reading, writing, and designing practices that are participatory and networked in nature. What are those practices? How might those practices shape an activist literacy?

Week 12 | November 12 | Networking Activism, Pt 1

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Discuss Castells & Bridgman For next class, read the following:

Due: Reading Blog 10

As you read this week, notice that the pieces are all about specific digital activism projects. As with our discussion of Castells, how might these projects be shaping/naming a set of digital literacy practices that are also activist practices? How do they help us to articulate an activist literacy?

Week 13 | November 19 | Networking Activism, Pt 2

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Discuss Activist Digital Literacy Practices For next class, read

  • Jenkins et al, By Any Media Necessary: The New Youth Activism

As you read, pay attention to the ways that the authors engage with literacy practices of youth activist. How do they read, write, compose, design for change or to affect various communities? How might these literacy practices reflect activist literacies?

Due: Seminar Project Draft. In order for you to get some feedback on your project from the professor and peers, please provide a working draft of your project that we can read and respond to. Remember to tick the “Draft” box. Submitted drafts will be viewable here: Draft Seminar Projects.

Week 14 | November 26 | Networking Activism, Pt 3

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Discuss Jenkins et al.

Students should plan to respond to at least 2 of their peers’ drafts on the course site by Thursday, Nov 29 so that there is time for revision and preparation for next week’s Seminar Project Presentations.

Due: Seminar Project Presentation

Week 15 | December 3 | Final Class Meeting

This Class Seminar Projects Due
Activity: Seminar Project Presentations

Due Dates

  • Early | December 5, 2018 by 5:00 pm
  • On Time | December  7, 2018 by 5:00 pm
  • Final Option | December 11 by 5:00 pm