Literacies and Identities

The construct of literacy hinges on beliefs, values, affiliations and experiences. What is literacy? Who is literate? What counts as literacy in school? How do we know? How does literacy change in different places with different texts for different audiences with different purposes? In this research seminar, we will delve deeply into the study of literacy and identity. Focusing on our stories of self, we will explore how we have come to recognize literacy over the course of our lives. In so doing, it is my hope that we will all come to recognize a broader range of literacies and begin to consider how we can build on multiliteracies to teach more students in culturally responsive ways.

Through lenses of narrative inquiry, students will collaborate with the professor to design and conduct individual studies of their own literacy practices. Students will gain experience: a) developing personally relevant research questions, b) reviewing literature in the fields of narrative inquiry, teacher identity and literacy, c) gathering ethnographically rich, multimodal data from their daily lives, (e.g., journals, photo-ethnographies, collage, digital storytelling, etc.), d) employing narrative lenses to analyze documents, artifacts, photographs, etc., e) planning, drafting, revising, and editing an academic thesis, f) reviewing peers’ academic writing, and g) participating in a collaborative teacher inquiry group.

Interested students should email Prof. Johnson at elisabeth.johnson@csi.cuny.edu for further information and to express interest in registering for this section of the course.

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