cfp: Expanding Literacy Studies - Grad Student Conference

[Lauren M. Squires]

It would be great to have some new media/internet scholars doing
literacy-related (broadly defined) work at this conference happening
at OSU in the spring - please forward to interested grad students you
might know! -LS

CALL FOR PROPOSALS:

Expanding Literacy Studies is an International, Interdisciplinary
Conference for Graduate Students to be held April 3-5, 2009, at The
Ohio State University.

Literacy Studies is a recent construct. At the same time, it addresses
long-standing questions and concerns within and across disciplines.
But what is literacy? Who is studying it? And how is it being studied?

Literacy is traditionally defined as reading and writing. Contemporary
constructs, however, include everything from cyber and health literacy
to mathematical and visual literacy. The potential advance this
broadened view might represent is complicated by historical myths
about literacy, persistent fears about declines in literacy, and
failure to connect literacy research across disciplines.

Addressing the need for an expanded conversation about literacy that
exceeds disciplinary boundaries, this conference is a space for
graduate and professional students from all fields to ask questions,
consider directions, examine representations, make connections, and
share investigations of literacy, broadly defined. This conference
aims to expand the dialogue and explore the landscape and
intersections of literacy studies as a framework of critical
investigation. This approach is meant to do the double work of
expanding the field while critiquing the expansion. To that end, we
invite proposals from graduate and professional students in ALL
fields.

POSSIBLE TOPICS AND POINTS OF ENTRY:

* health literacy
* literacy and technology
* visual literacy
* representations of literacy
* definitions of literacy
* law and literacy
* art literacy
* uses and abuses of literacy
* motivations for literacy
* symbol systems
* the sociology of literacy
* the teaching of literacy
* reading and writing
* literacy and science
* performances of literacy
* literacy and popular culture
* the future of literacy
* histories of literacy
* intersections of literacy
* production and consumption of texts
* multiple literacies
* the literacy myth
* literacy and social change
* sites of literacy
* literacy in communities
* work literacy

WAYS TO PARTICIPATE:

* Facilitate a Roundtable Conversation
* Lead an Interactive Workshop
* Present a Creative Performance or Work of Art
* Participate on a Panel (present a paper or discuss a poster)
* Serve as a Discussant on a Panel of Presentations
* Share and Discuss Your Research in a Dissertation Workshop

WAYS TO COLLABORATE:

To facilitate cross-discipline and cross-institutional collaboration
on proposals, we will begin posting requests for collaborators on the
conference website immediately. Visit the site to connect with people
who have submitted requests and/or submit your own request for
collaborators. Please include a description of the topic and format
(presentation, performance, workshop, etc.) you are interested in
collaborating on, along with your contact information.

CONFERENCE SPECIAL FEATURES:

Keynote Panel with Harvey J. Graff: "Responses to The Literacy Myth:
30 Years Later"
In honor of the 30th Anniversary of the publication of The Literacy
Myth: Literacy and Social Structure in the Nineteenth Century, author
Harvey J. Graff will respond to a panel of graduate students from
various disciplines speaking about "the literacy myth." Harvey J.
Graff is currently Ohio Eminent Scholar in Literacy Studies and
Professor of English and History at The Ohio State University.

Interactive Workshop by Participatory Design pioneer Liz Sanders
Senior Lecturer in the Department of Design at Ohio State and
President of MakeTools (a design research firm), Liz Sanders is a
pioneer in the use of participatory research methods for the design of
products, systems, services, and spaces. Sanders speaks about and
teaches human-centered design to students, clients, and colleagues
around the world. She will lead conference participants in an
interactive workshop about the future of literacy, as a reflection of
and closure for the conference.

Plenary Presentation by Shirley Brice Heath, author of Ways with Words
Heath is a sociolinguist and anthropologist whose primary interests
are oral and written language, youth development, racial relations,
organizational learning, and the relationships among aesthetics,
cognition, and human development. At the heart of Heath's research are
the organizational structures and cultural values and behaviors that
surround the learning and use of language. She is the author of the
prize-winning book Ways with Words: Language, Life, and Work in
Communities and Classrooms (1983) and co-editor of Identity and
Inner-city Youth: Beyond Ethnicity and Gender (1993), as well as
several other books and over 100 articles and book chapters. Heath is
Professor at Large for the Watson Institute for International Studies
at Brown University and Margery Bailey Professor Emerita at Stanford
University.

DEADLINE:

We will begin reviewing conference proposals September 1, 2008.
Proposals will not be accepted after October 15, 2008.

To learn more about the conference and to submit proposals, please go
to http://literacystudies.osu.edu/conference.

This conference is sponsored by LiteracyStudies at TheOhioStateUniversity
(http://literacystudies.osu.edu).