This article examines archival research as a generative community literacy practice. Through the example of a community-based project centered on archival research, I examine the increased possibility the archives hold as a site for rhetorical invention based on collaboration that includes contemporary community members and the recovered rhetoric of historical figures. I argue that archival research as community literacy practice creates conditions for a communal form of literacy sponsorship and offer a framework for approaching the archives.

Collaborative Imagination: Earning Activism Through Literacy Education, which makes a hopeful yet nuanced case for how networked efforts within institutions might create change. The book combines deep illustrations from the civil rights era with contemporary efforts in community literacy, layering perspectives as it moves forward and backward in time, to explore how different practices of literacy education shape notions of citizenship and how activists in literacy education go about pursuing social change. Laying out a parable to ground a key idea in his book, Feigenbaum retells the traditional story of the starfish savior: a man walking along a beach notices thousands of starfish washed up on the shore, and he sees another man throwing the starfish back into the sea, one by one. He tells the man throwing the starfish that this is a waste of time, as there are thousands of starfish-he cannot make a difference. The man throws another starfish into the sea and replies, "I made a difference to that one. " This story is meant to be inspirational, but Feigenbaum, drawing on Buzz Alexander's Freirean interpretation of the parable, points out that this story is an individualistic myth that limits the potential for activism: rather than running into to town to gather others to help, or researching the cause for why the starfish are being washed up along the shore, the man exemplifies the idea that good citizens act alone. As Feigenbaum writes, "The starfish savior's willingness to sacrifice time and energy toward a good cause makes him appear to be morally righteous, but in failing to enlist aid in resolving the macroproblem, he ensures that the vast majority of starfish will perish" (9). Acting out of a starfish savior mentality-or, as my students termed it, starfishing-means blending romantic naivet and individualism in ways that are ultimately ineffective in forwarding activism.

Sustainability in community engagement projects depends on careful attention to the ways we navigate complex, often challenging relationships with our partners, our students, agencies, and the institutions in which we occupy multiple, sometimes competing roles. This article considers the difficulty inherent in developing and maintaining relationships with the community members who choose to participate in our research. Based on the experiences of three undergraduate students in a community literacy seminar, the author traces the ways these students confront challenges in their projects, arguing for the value of difficulty in community literacy work.

Literacy “sponsorship” in refugee communities is not without its risks and limitations. For potential sponsors, risks include the commodification of refugee voices, while limits include inaccurate generalizations of those being sponsored. This essay draws from a case study of refugee student discourse to discuss how a more explicit decolonial approach to sponsorship can help sponsors rethink a giver-receiver paradigm. This approach would first deconstruct imperialist discourses of power and then replace them with new, alternatives to meaning-making. While contingent on local contexts, this study aims to set an agenda for continued debate within refugee community literacy support projects.

This article reports from instances of child language brokering among emergent bilingual youths and parents at a New York City after-school community literacy program composed largely of Mexican immigrant families. I argue that youth language brokers negotiated literacies with and for their parents in differing contexts, with different audiences, and under different dynamics of power relations. Young language brokers utilize bilingual practices to translate, interpret, and advise between adults and family members of different ages. Language brokers, I argue, use their bilingual learning to help their families and to show they care.

Eight English graduate students and a professor reflect on their semesterlong exploration of community literacy studies. The students, some in a MFA Creative Writing program and some doing doctoral work in literature, rhetoric, or English Education, discuss how the community literacies lens unsettled their relationship to English Studies.

Drawing on interviews with writing teachers, this article highlights some of the affective responses that may arise for students, community partners, and teachers when we situate our pedagogies in public sites beyond the classroom. I analyze a teacher-narrated moment of student distress to demonstrate how theories of transformative learning might help us productively theorize affect in service-learning and community-based education. To conclude, I offer a reciprocal model of care that employs tenets of feminist pedagogy, such as transparency and decentering of authority, and that acknowledges the valid emotions students, teachers, and community members may experience. I call for community literacy practitioners to see the power of all participants to both give and receive care in transformative education.

There are few researchers today in rhetoric and composition, particularly in emerging literacies, who are talking about transnational literacy practices and the effects of a changing global economy on migration and thus on literacy.In Del Otro Lado: Literacy and Migration across the U.S.-Mexico Border,

In fields such as sociolinguistics and composition and rhetoric, communication is increasingly understood as translingual, that is, as negotiated socially across languages. Those of us engaged in community literacy can and should recognize the deeply multilingual nature of the communities in which we work, and we should understand, embrace, and forward the translingual approach. Here I reflect on my first conscious attempt to teach translingually in a college course with a community-based learning component. I present an overview of the translingual orientation, reflect on the decisions I made as I prepared a college community-based learning course with translingual intentions but not overt translingual objectives, and examine some the students’ reflections that reveal their language attitudes at the end of the course. I argue that small, intentional decisions made towards a broader translingual orientation towards language and literacy make an immediate difference in how students think about language, and that those engaged in community literacy partnerships are in need of a theory of communication that the translingual approach can provide.

This co-authored article describes a community literacy oral history project involving 14 undergraduate students. It is intellectually situated at the intersection of writing studies, oral history, and African American rhetoric and distinguished by two features: 1) we were a combined team of 20 collaborators, and 2) our narrator, Frank Gilyard, the founder and former director of the Central Pennsylvania African American Museum (CPAAM), was deceased. Because oral history is narrator-driven, Gilyard’s death required us to remain especially attentive to the epistemic value of his voice.

Within community literacy scholarship, ecological perspectives are used to characterize the literacy and language practices of various groups.Director of the Lancaster Literacy Research Centre, David Barton draws from biology to theorize ecology as the study of "the interrelationship of an area of human activity and its environment.It is concerned with how the activity-literacy in this case-is part of the environment and at the same time influences and is influenced by the environment" (29).The reciprocal nature of ecologies, and the way they account for the distribution, influence, and movement of organisms within and between environments makes ecology an ideal term for characterizing the relationships among groups, technologies, and cultures that influence the ways individuals learn, communicate, and interact with one another.In this keyword essay, I will highlight the appropriateness of ecology for describing networked communication and literacy practices, as well as offer an overview of how compositionists and community literacy practitioners have used ecological approaches in the work they do.It is necessary here to distinguish an ecological approach from one that is exclusively environmental.In 1989, environmentalist David Orr defined ecological literacy as "the demanding capacity to distinguish between health and disease in natural systems and to understand their relation to health and disease in human ones; knowledge of this sort is best acquired out of doors" (334).Ecological literacy in this respect is concerned with reading the natural environment.Orr's call for increased environmental awareness and attention to the ways humans impact environments remains increasingly urgent.However, this keyword essay focuses instead on how scholars and practitioners have adopted ecological metaphors to characterize literacy environments.The ecological approach I examine aligns more closely with that of ecocomposition theories than those of the ecological literacy Orr defines.In their Natural Discourse: Toward Ecocomposition, Sid Dobrin and Christian Weisser define ecocomposition as "the study of the relationships between environments (and by that we mean natural, constructed, and even imagined places) and discourse (seeking, writing, and thinking)" (6).Dobrin and Weisser's approach does not exclude environmental concerns but instead makes the role of language and discourse central in making those concerns visible.As Rhonda Davis suggests in her discussion of ecocomposition and community literacy, "while ecological literacy and the pedagogical approaches that result do not focus exclusively on environmental concerns, they have the potential to expand participants' awareness of such concerns" (80).

In the face of the $44 billion market—and rising—for foods labeled as “natural” (despite any formal regulatory oversight on the use of this term), this article examines multiple complex layers of community literacies and movements involving foods labeled as “natural,” including an increasing availability of “natural” foods and simultaneous rise in U.S. obesity rates, as well as grassroots movements that have challenged the use of “natural.” Then, using an online survey of 707 respondents in a localized community setting, I provide my own examination of literacies of “natural” foods by assessing specific consumer interpretations and regulatory knowledge of the word “natural” as it is found on food labels. Ultimately, I discuss what role these varying levels of literacies play in the rising U.S. movement to push back against the use of this claim in the face of an otherwise flourishing “natural” food market.

As more and more multimodal projects emerge through writing program curricula, and as community literacy projects redefine what it means to facilitate change and reciprocity through generating multiple texts for multiple audiences, we think it would be useful to consider the significance and prevalence of the selfie as a genre, particularly in regard to its potential power to inspire social activism and critical consciousness.

This article proposes permaculture, an ecological alternative to industrial agriculture, as a way to design first-year composition and community literacy classes. First, the paper connects permaculture with post-humanism to describe ecological community literacies—the type of knowledge that ecological theorists say we need to navigate the end of the anthropocene. Next, it describes assignments that can lead college students to this knowledge, and finally, it describes actual community literacy projects where college students can lead elementary students through assignments to gain this knowledge.

Pathways of Latinas and Latinos Writing in High School and College might seem a strange fit for a review in Community Literacy Journal.

A case study of a graduate-level community literacy seminar that involved a tutoring project with adult digital literacy learners, this essay illustrates the value of community outreach and service-learning for graduate students in writing studies. Presenting multiple perspectives through critical reflection, student authors describe how their experiences contextualized, enhanced, and complicated their theoretical knowledge of public rhetoric and community literacy. Inspired by her students’ reflections, the faculty co-author issues a call to graduate programs in writing, rhetoric, literacy studies, and technical communication to develop a conscious commitment to graduate students’ civic engagement by supporting opportunities to learn, teach, and research with community partners.

Chapter 1: Making Writing Accessible to All: The Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers and The FED, by Nick Pollard and Pat Smart Chapter 2: The Challenges of Circulation: International Networking of Homeless Publications, by Paula Mathieu Chapter 3: Respect, Writing, Community: Write Around Portland, by Sara Guest with Hanna Neuschwander and Robyn Steely Chapter 4: Listen to My Story: The Transformative Possibilities of Storytelling in Immigrant Communities, by Mark Lyons Chapter 5: Oral Histories as Community Outreach: Toward a Deeper Understanding of a Rural Public Sphere, by Laurie Cella Chapter 6: Unfinished: Story of sine cera, a Community Publication in Process, by Rachel Meads Chapter 7: Here in this Place: Write On! of Durham, North Carolina, by Kimberly Abels, Kristal Moore Clemons, Julie Wilson, Autumn Winters and Mahogany Woods Chapter 8: Sharing Space: Collaborative Programming Within and Between Communities, by Mairead Case, Annie Knepler, and Rupal Soni Chapter 9: Katrina in Their Own Words: Collecting, Creating, and Publishing Writing on the Storm, by Richard Louth Chapter 10: Writers Speaking Out: The Challenges of Community Publishing from Spaces of Confinement, by Tobi Jacobi and Elliot Johnston, with the SpeakOut! Writing Workshop Facilitators and Writers Chapter 11: A Bunch of Us Beg to Differ!: Queer Community Literacy and Rhetorics of Civic Pride, by A.V. Luce

This article presents findings from a case study of an adult literacy program. The author conducted this IRB-approved study as part of a three-year, research-based, community-engagement project that partnered the literacy program with a writing center at a large public research university. The author argues that the participatory methods afforded by community-engagement research can allow researchers to achieve insight into particular programs while contributing to local literacy. The author also argues that understanding the characteristics of particular programs can contribute to knowledge of the field of adult literacy education and help collaborators develop engagement projects that support adult literacy.

Community literacy often engages with literacy practices-written, oral, visual, technological, social, and so forth-that occur and are scaffolded outside of traditional educational institutions. The writing done in community literacy projects, according to Peck, Flower, and Higgins, works to promote action and reflection while enabling people to work collaboratively and productively. In recognition of the multiple forms of literate practices and the types of community support that are needed and developed, a number of universities in the US have created community literacy programs. Carnegie Mellon University's Community Literacy Center, a notable example of this type of program, organizes the purposes and structural collaboration thusly: "At the Community Literacy Center (CLC) urban teens and adults, with the support of their Carnegie Mellon student mentors, use writing and public dialogue to take action and to address the dreams and problems of our urban neighborhoods. CLC writers produce powerful texts-petitions, plans, proposals, and newsletters" ("Hands On"). The benefit to both university students and community members is a collaborative workgroup dedicated to place-specific social action. Non-profit organizations have also formed, providing literacy support to particular communities, from Community Literacy Centers, Inc, which teaches adults to read, to Chicago's Open Books, which runs a volunteer bookstore and provides reading and writing programs.

This article reclaims Jane Addams as a community literacy pedagogue and explicates her pedagogical theory through an analysis of her social thought. Addams’ goal of “socializing democracy” through education led her to both encourage immigrant students to associate across difference and to assimilate into dominant literacies—tensions present in today’s community literacy contexts. The article includes suggestions for rhetorically redeploying Addams’ pedagogy in contemporary writing instruction. The educational activities of a Settlement, as well its philanthropic, civic, and social undertakings, are but differing manifestations of the attempt to socialize democracy, as is the very existence of the Settlement itself —Jane Addams, 1902

We understand "community literacy" as the domain for literacy work that exists outside of mainstream educational and work institutions.It can be found in programs devoted to adult education, early childhood education, reading initiatives, lifelong learning, workplace literacy, or work with marginalized populations, but it can also be found in more informal, ad hoc projects.For us, literacy is defined as the realm where attention is paid not just to content or to knowledge but to the symbolic means by which it is represented and used.Thus, literacy makes reference

In 2010, we received a nationally competitive grant from the Ford Foundation to undertake cross-disciplinary, community-engaged work to shift public conversations around youth sexuality, health, and rights (YSHR). We came to the projects from our positions as a humanities scholar (Licona) and as a social science scholar (Russell). According to the Ford Foundation, “a deeper understanding of human sexuality is an essential element of human rights and healthy social relationships.” Beginning with this assumption, we seek to be informed by and to inform policies and local practices; to initiate broad conversations that address sexual health and healthy sexualities for youth; and ultimately to develop innovative collaborations, programs, and research.

community literacy

This article highlights Education/Connection/Action (ECA), a locally developed community pedagogy deployed at a youth activism summer camp that served as a site for a community/academic teaching and research collaboration. Youth considered connections between a set of issues, including a local ban on Ethnic Studies, the School-to-Prison Pipeline, and Youth Sexuality, Health, and Rights. They drew from lived and learned literacies to inform participatory media projects that critically and creatively address restrictions on access to local knowledges and information with particular relevance to youth sexuality, health, and rights (broadly defined). In highlighting youth voices, desires, and needs across distinct youth communities, their collaborative productions demonstrate coalitional potential and a collective call for change.

In Slam School: Learning Through Conflict in the Hip-Hop and Spoken Word Classroom, Bronwen E. Low argues for the significance of critical hip-hop pedagogies, particularly when engaging with racial and social conflicts in educational settings. Low collaborated with a teacher at an urban arts magnet high school in the northeastern United States through a performance poetry course that was taught using a hiphop and spoken word curriculum. Overall, Low's book is useful for community literacy scholars as an application and assessment of a popular practice and growing pedagogy in schools and community organizations.

We understand "community literacy" as the domain for literacy work that exists outside of mainstream educational and work institutions.It can be found in programs devoted to adult education, early childhood education, reading initiatives, lifelong learning, workplace literacy, or work with marginalized populations, but it can also be found in more informal, ad hoc projects.For us, literacy is defined as the realm where attention is paid not just to content or to knowledge but to the symbolic means by which it is represented and used.Thus, literacy makes reference not just to letters and to text but to other multimodal and technological representations as well.

The subject of refugee experience poses compelling problematics for the study of community literacy. Yet, community literacy projects that support language acquisition, cultural orientation, and cross-cultural communication are some of the most important resources available to newly resettled refugees. Refugee students and adult learners arrive in the U.S. and are forced to learn English as quickly as possible while also having to figure out the new and complicated bureaucratic trappings of finding a job, making doctors' appointments, and enrolling in school. Refugees, however, cannot be considered one homogeneous group, and the issues surrounding refugee resettlement and community literacy play out in a myriad of ways. Community literacy research, particularly of the ethnographic variety, teaches us that very little can be generalized or concluded about literacy practice or literacy acquisition from one community to another. This observation cannot be overstated when it comes to the literacy issues faced by refugee communities in the U.S. In this keywords essay, I outline several aspects of refugee experience that carry important implications for understanding literacy in the contexts of refugee resettlement. While this essay is not meant to describe how refugees gain literacy or what their literacy practices look like-such work requires ethnographic study-instead, I offer a range of ways for talking about literacy in relation to refugee experience, particularly through the lenses of the interdisciplinary field of refugee studies and rhetoric and composition. Despite the implications refugee experience might have for understanding literacy in global contexts, the perspectives of refugees have been given only cursory attention. A synthesis of contemporary scholarship, however, affords us sufficient grounds to enact a more reflective, ethical, and responsible approach to understanding literacy-learning in refugee communities.

Educators focused on community literacy and public engagement have access to a unique critical platform from which larger social issues that impact us both as a whole and on very personal levels are open to exploration. Being particularly situated to have significant impact on community, literacy work in this area may require uncommon pedagogical strategies. Based on its comprehensive focus on sustainability, ecological literacy, sociopolitical factors that affect communities, and a multitude of other factors that underpin social injustice, ecopedagogy may be uniquely positioned to offer a more holistic view than other composition pedagogies such as place-based education and ecocomposition.

This study investigates how literacy was constructed at an adult literacy organization’s volunteer tutor-training program. By drawing on qualitative analysis of training texts used during training, such as training evaluations, and data gathered from interviews with experienced tutors, it is possible to identify the assumptions about literacy constructed by the training program and tutors’ training practices. Tutors seemed to present mixed assumptions about literacy: students simultaneously were given authority over their own literacy practices and literacy goals, while a sentiment of universally valued reading and writing skills was also present in terms of achieving fluency.

Considering the situated complexities and competing interest of exploitation and hope inherent in community literacy work, this article examines the ways that the Community Arts Program (CAP) at California State Prison-Sacramento complicates and also reifies archetypal grand literacy narratives and considers the place of such narratives within a broader argument for literacy as acts of creative resistance scaffolded by small, organic, tactical moves.

of New Mexico hosted the inaugural Summit of the National Consortium of Writing Across Communities (NCWAC) in nearby Santa Fe. In attendance were twenty-four established and emerging scholars and graduate students working in (and across) fields such as community literacy, writing program administration, writing across the curriculum, and second-language writing.

A multi-faceted Shakespeare festival in a small town in rural east central Arkansas, part of a larger Community Literacy Advocacy Project, represents a concerted effort to alter the discourse of decline in this economically troubled region, but it also raises some challenging issues about how such projects distribute social and cultural capital among their participants.

This article examines what a pedagogy of public rhetoric and community literacy might look like based on an understanding of twentieth century Mexican American civil rights rhetoric. The inductive process of examining archival materials and conducting oral histories informs this discussion on the processes and challenges of gaining civic inclusion. I argue that writing can be both a healing process and an occasion for exercising agency in a world of contingency and uncertainty. To illustrate, I describe several key events shaping the evolution of the post-World War II Mexican American civil rights movement in New Mexico. Taking a case study approach, I begin this chapter by examining the civic discourses of one prominent New Mexico leader in the post-World War II civil rights movement: Vicente Ximenes. As a leader, Ximenes confronted critical civil rights issues about culture and belonging for over fifty years beginning in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It is a historical moment worth revisiting. First, I set the stage for this examination about writing, citizenship, and civic literacy by analyzing two critical rhetorical moments in the life of this post World War II civil rights activist. Secondly, I connect the Ximenes legacy to a growing movement at the University of New Mexico and the ways that we are making critical responses to current issues facing our local communities in New Mexico. By triangulating social acts of literacy, currently and historically, this article offers organizing principles for Composition teachers and advocates of community literacy serving vulnerable communities in their various spheres of practice.

Community Literacy and the Rhetoric of Public Engagement spotlights her experiences with Pittsburgh's Community Literacy Center (CLC), an innovative project in community literacy initiated in 1990. The 2008 book details a rhetorical model of engaging the privileged and marginalized voices of community leaders, academics and urban teens into meaningful dialogue that values all perspectives and embraces differences as valuable resources. According to Flower, the discourse of academic cultural critique has taught "us how to speak up [and] speak against" (2 original emphasis). However, what we lack and what this text provides is a model that teaches us "to speak with others [and] to speak for our commitments [] for a revisable image of transformation" (2 original emphasis).

Preface Personal Prologue Chapter 1: Introduction: Examining Crisis, Laurie MacGillivray and Devon Brenner Commentator Introductions, Tracy Sweeney (Early Career Teacher), Jane Fung (Veteran Teacher) and Elizabeth Moje (Teacher Educator) Part I: Reading and Writing in Times of Crisis Chapter 2: Making Contact in Times of Crisis: Literacy Practices in a Post-Katrina World, April Whatley Bedford and Devon Brenner Chapter 3: Hallelujah! Bible-based Literacy Practices of Children Living in a Homeless Shelter, Laurie MacGillivray Chapter 4: Reactions to Divorce: Communication and Child Writing Practices, Gisele Ragusa Chapter 5: When daddy goes to prison: Examining crisis through fanfiction and poetry, Mary K. Thompson Chapter 6: Reading and Writing Teenage Motherhood: Changing Literacy Practices and Developing Identities, Kara L. Lycke Chapter 7: Disability Identification: Shifts in Home Literacy Practices, Gisele Ragusa Part II: Crises Arising from Literate Practices Chapter 8: Finding Husbands, Finding Wives: How Being Literate Creates Crisis, Loukia K. Sarroub Chapter 9: A State Take-Over: The Language of a School District Crisis, Rebecca Rogers and Kathryn Pole Chapter 10: Brewing a Crisis: Language, Educational Reform, and the Defense of a Nation, Susan Florio-Ruane Part III: Reflecting on Crises and Literacy Chapter 11 Commentators' Insights, Tracy Sweeney (Early Career Teacher), Jane Fung (Veteran Teacher) and Elizabeth Moje (Teacher Educator) List of Contributors

We understand "community literacy" as the domain for literacy work that exists outside of mainstream educational and work institutions.It can be found in programs devoted to adult education, early childhood education, reading initiatives, lifelong learning, workplace literacy, or work with marginalized populations, but it can also be found in more informal, ad hoc projects.For us, literacy is defined as the realm where attention is paid not just to content or to knowledge but to the symbolic means by which it is represented and used.Thus, literacy makes reference not just to letters and to text but to other multimodal and technological representations as well.

A general overview of the Writing Democracy project, including its origin story and key objectives. Draws parallels between the historical context that gave rise to the New Deal’s Federal Writers’ Project and today, examining the potential for a reprise of the FWP in community literacy and public rhetoric and introducing articles collected in this special issue as responses to the key challenges such a reprisal might raise.

Drawing on interview data regarding literacy practices done in tandem with housework, this article presents an array of recipe uses among retirement-age women. Given their backgrounds as professionals who came of age during second-wave feminism, the women see little value in “domestic” practices such as cooking literacies (Barton & Hamilton). However, the women’s uses of recipes for a variety of rhetorical purposes, in and out of the kitchen, are valuable material and social reflections of the women’s success in acquiring traditional literacies in school and at work.

The purpose of this study was to explore one South Korean (hereafter Korean) mother’s literacy practices after she had migrated to Canada for the purpose of overseeing her children’s education. Using a case study method, we focused on language, media, domains, and purposes of literacy practices in Korea and Canada. Data were obtained through two semi-structured interviews, two home visit observations, a questionnaire, and collection of literacy artifacts. The documented changes in the mother’s literacy practices, along with the theoretical and methodological approaches used to document them, offer promising areas and approaches for future research about the out-of-school literacy practices of (im)migrant students.

This article argues that methodologies for studying community literacy must be reexamined in light of advancements in technology and the research community’s relationship to those technologies. Based on her ethnographic study of an Amish community in southeast Ohio, the author offers a counterpoint to discussions of literacy and digital tools by showing how differing perspectives on technology led to complications during the data collection process. Furthermore, Adkins argues that methodologies cannot always be dictated by a template or by “best practice” and that researchers and IRBs should be more flexible in their thinking about how to treat research communities ethically.

Communities—and their literacies—exist within larger contexts, and writing has the potential to empower or oppress, to maintain the status quo, or to transform the collective community. School is one such context and, in recent years, the nature of writing has changed; digital writing skills needed to participate in contemporary society do not always resemble skills of traditional, school-based literacy. This article examines the teaching of digital writing as an issue of social justice by sharing the perspectives of several novice teachers who were challenged to alter their views of what writing is and how it should be taught.

Originally published in: Holmes, Ashley J. “Virtual Volunteerism: Review of LibriVox and VolunteerMatch.” Community Literacy Journal. 6.1 (Fall 2011). DOI: 10.1353/clj.2012.0006 Copyright © 2012 Community Literacy Journal. Posted with the permission of the publisher.

Women who work in highly male-dominated fields such as science and the military often find it difficult to establish a place for themselves within their workplace communities. In this essay, I examine how two related online communities for military women enable participants to overcome their workplace isolation, form a collective consciousness, find positive mentorship, and develop a community literacy that affords them a voice through which to enact both personal and public change.

The scholarship and practice surrounding community literacy endeavors are rife with discussions of reciprocity, and by and large, the notion that all parties that comprise the communities formed by such literacy endeavors need to gain skills, concepts, and experiences that are valued in other communities in which they reside. 1 Despite this relative consensus on the theory of reciprocity, the act of developing reciprocal relationships isn't as straightforward as accepting the theory thereof. To that end, this keyword essay traces reciprocity's trajectory in our field by beginning with a brief look at the genealogy of the term and the development of its canonical roots. From there, we move into an overview of case studies and instances where, despite the best intentions of th.organizers, reciprocity was replaced by notions of altruism or of otherizing participants. These problematic cases are then juxtaposed with instances where researchers and community members alike self-consciously harnessed the theories of reciprocity and were able to develop mutually beneficial relationships, both small and large-scale. As this essay will show, achieving truly reciprocal relationships while building community/university relationships is not easy, but it is vital.

This essay revises Paula Mathieu’s call for relationship-based tactics of engagement over institution-based strategies. Because engaged scholars operate within institutional contexts, they should utilize both tactics and strategies to make the academic institutional paradigm more conducive to relationship-based engagement. In supporting this long-term goal, community-literacy practitioners can adapt Brian Huot’s theory of instructive evaluation to enable collaborative assessment of community partnerships. One possible mechanism for such institutional invention would be the establishment of quasi-strategic, quasi-tactical Community- Literacy Associations.

This paper applies the lens of recent literature on neoinstitutionalism and institutional entrepreneurship to understand the stages of growth in a community Literacy Coalition. It explores the interactional, technical and cultural phases of institution building identified in other case studies as they emerge in this community study. Finally, it emphasizes the work of local institutional entrepreneurs and acknowledges the involvement of macro-level institutional entrepreneurs that coordinate the approach of communities such as this one and help to bring about the isomorphic qualities seen in coalitions across the nation.

Using Jack Goody and Ian Watt’s theory of literacy as a normalizing agent, I show how the presence of the English language and “English Only” values and policies have affected the Amish and their home language, Pennsylvania Dutch, and their religious language, “High” German. These changes are seen as detrimental to the Amish who, like linguistic scholars William Labov, John E. Joseph, and Joshua A. Fishman, equate language with identity.