In his latest writings on the history of literacy and its importance for present understanding and future rethinking, historian Harvey J. Graff continues his critical revisions of many commonly held ideas about literacy. The book speaks to central concerns about the place of literacy in modern and late-modern culture and society, and its complicated historical foundations.Drawing on other aspects of his research, Graff places the chapters that follow in the context of current thinking and major concerns about literacy, and the development of both historical and interdisciplinary studies. Special emphasis falls upon the usefulness of "the literacy myth" as an important subject for interdisciplinary study and understanding. Critical stock-taking of the field includes reflections on Graff's own research and writings of the last three decades, and the relationships that connect interdisciplinary rethinking and the literacy myth.The collection is noteworthy for its attention to Graff's reflections on his identification of "the literacy myth" and in developing LiteracyStudies@OSU (Ohio State University) as a model for university-wide interdisciplinary programs. It also deals with ordinary concerns about literacy, or illiteracy, that are shared by academics and concerned citizens. These nontechnical essays will speak to both academic and nonacademic audiences across disciplines and cultural orientations.

In his latest writings on the history of literacy and its importance for present understanding and future rethinking, historian Harvey J. Graff continues his critical revisions of many commonly held ideas about literacy. The book speaks to central concerns about the place of literacy in modern and late-modern culture and society, and its complicated historical foundations.Drawing on other aspects of his research, Graff places the chapters that follow in the context of current thinking and major concerns about literacy, and the development of both historical and interdisciplinary studies. Special emphasis falls upon the usefulness of "the literacy myth" as an important subject for interdisciplinary study and understanding. Critical stock-taking of the field includes reflections on Graff's own research and writings of the last three decades, and the relationships that connect interdisciplinary rethinking and the literacy myth.The collection is noteworthy for its attention to Graff's reflections on his identification of "the literacy myth" and in developing LiteracyStudies@OSU (Ohio State University) as a model for university-wide interdisciplinary programs. It also deals with ordinary concerns about literacy, or illiteracy, that are shared by academics and concerned citizens. These nontechnical essays will speak to both academic and nonacademic audiences across disciplines and cultural orientations.

Scholars across the disciplines, specialists in higher education, administrators, and interested readers will find the book's multiple perspectives and practical advice on building and operating--and avoiding fallacies and errors--in interdisciplinary research and education invaluable.--Michael Bevis, The Ohio State University, School of Earth Sciences "The Quarterly Review of Biology"

This book provides a critical account of the development of questions, approaches, methods, and understandings of literacy within and across disciplines and interdisciplines. It provides a critique of literacy studies, including the New Literacy Studies. This book completes a series that the author began in the 1970s. It criticizes and revises the New Literacy Studies and how we think about literacy generally. It is a revisionist study which argues that literacy and literacy studies are historical developments and must be understood in those terms to comprehend their profound impact on our traditions of thinking about and understanding literacy, and how we study it. Graff argues that literacy studies in its academic, institutional, and policy forums, but also in popular parlance, has lost its critical foundations, and this hinders efforts to promote literacy. He examines literacy over time and across linguistics; anthropology; psychology; reading and writing across modes of communication and comprehension; “new” literacies across digital, visual, performance, numerical, and scientific domains; and history. He underscores the value of new directions of negotiation and translation. This book will interest scholars and students in the many fields that constitute literacy studies across the humanities, social sciences, education, and beyond.

Following on the groundbreaking contributions of Deborah Brandt’s Literacy in American Lives—a literacy ethnography exploring how ordinary Americans have been affected by changes in literacy, public education, and structures of power—Literacy, Economy, and Power expands Brandt’s vision, exploring the relevance of her theoretical framework as it relates to literacy practices in a variety of current and historical contexts, as well as in literacy’s expanding and global future. Bringing together scholars from rhetoric, composition, and literacy studies, the book offers thirteen engrossing essays that extend and challenge Brandt’s commentary on the dynamics between literacy and power. The essays cover many topics, including the editor of the first Native American newspaper, the role of a native Hawaiian in bringing literacy to his home islands, the influence of convents and academies on nineteenth-century literacy, and the future of globalized digital literacies. Contributors include Julie Nelson Christoph, Ellen Cushman, Kim Donehower, Anne Ruggles Gere, Eli Goldblatt, Harvey J. Graff, Gail E. Hawisher, Bruce Horner, David A. Jolliffe, Rhea Estelle Lathan, Min-Zhan Lu, Robyn Lyons-Robinson, Carol Mattingly, Beverly J. Moss, Paul Prior, Cynthia L. Selfe, Michael W. Smith, and Morris Young. Literacy, Economy, and Power also features an introduction exploring the scholarly impact of Brandt’s work, written by editors John Duffy, Julie Nelson Christoph, Eli Goldblatt, Nelson Graff, Rebecca Nowacek, and Bryan Trabold. An invaluable tool for literacy studies at the graduate or professional level, Literacy, Economy, and Power provides readers with a wide-ranging view of the work being done in literacy studies today and points to ways researchers might approach the study of literacy in the future.

This book is a guide to current research and debate in the field of literacies practice and education. It provides both an historical and lifespan view of the field as well as an overview of research methodologies with first-hand examples from a range of researchers involved in literacy research.

The Routledge Handbook of Literacy Studies offers a comprehensive view of the field of language and literacy studies. With forty-three chapters reflecting new research from leading scholars in the field, the Handbook pushes at the boundaries of existing fields and combines with related fields and disciplines to develop a lens on contemporary scholarship and emergent fields of inquiry. The Handbook is divided into eight sections: • The foundations of literacy studies • Space-focused approaches • Time-focused approaches • Multimodal approaches • Digital approaches • Hermeneutic approaches • Making meaning from the everyday • Co-constructing literacies with communities. This is the first handbook of literacy studies to recognise new trends and evolving trajectories together with a focus on radical epistemologies of literacy. The Routledge Handbook of Literacy Studies is an essential reference for undergraduate and postgraduate students and those researching and working in the areas of applied linguistics and language and literacy.