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.

This essay presents perspectives on the range of potential reciprocity in literacy research and service learning, focusing attention on opportunities for individualized and institutional reciprocation, as observed by Takayoshi and Powell. Researchers and students involved in community-based research or service programs have several opportunities to give back to their research participants and service organizations. The more they are aware of these opportunities or can make these entities aware of these benefits and act upon them, the more productive such research and service can be to the field of literacy studies as well as to those who participate.

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.

In this article, we share real-world literacy activities that we designed and implemented in two early literacy classes for preschoolers from two inner-city neighborhoods that were part of an intergenerational family literacy program, Literacy for Life (LFL). The program was informed by research that shows that young children in high literate homes develop important emergent literacy knowledge by engaging in meaningful and functional activities in their homes and communities that are mediated by print. We defined real-world literacy activity as reading, writing, or listening to real-life texts for real-life purposes. The children made significant gains in literacy knowledge when compared to the norm group. We share examples of how we integrated real-world literacy activities into daily classroom management/organizational routines, whole class and small group instruction, celebrations and special events and how we took advantage of teachable moments to make explicit the purposes and functions of print and texts in developmentally appropriate ways.

At a time when accusations of American ignorance and anti-intellectualism are ubiquitous, this article challenges problematic assumptions about intellectualism and proposes an expanded view of intellectualism. It is important to recognize and to challenge narrow views of intellectualism because they not only influence public perceptions of and engagement with education and intellectualism, but they also affect what and how we teach in U.S. schools and aid in institutionalizing social hierarchies that privilege the knowledge, learning sites, and educational experiences of the cultural elite. To demonstrate the benefits of revising our views of intellectualism, I draw upon my observations of and interviews with adult learners participating in GED-preparation writing workshops.

In being denied literacy under Portuguese colonialism and its aftermath and in caring for their own literacy and selves, African slave women and their land-born descendants, Cape Verdean women, became the protectors of many African-centered Cape Verdean cultural literacies (CVCL). Like Linda Tillman who specializes in culturally appropriate methodologies of research, I define cultural literacies as the various ways of “thinking, believing, and knowing that include shared experiences, consciousness, skills, values, forms of expression, social institutions, and behaviors” that tie individuals to different and specific discourse communities (4). I use CVCL to refer to literacies used by a large majority of Cape Verdeans with the understanding that Cape Verdeans also belong to social groups with other sets of literacies that are just as valid as CVCL (Gee vii-ix; Street 77). Koladeras may be understood as women who improvise, string together, and sing complicated, impromptu tales about their lives and those in their community, especially during feasts for saints. I argue that koladeras, because they are present in feasts for saints throughout the Cape Verdean diaspora, are transgenerational, transmigatory literacy educators of CVCL. In the pages that follow, I provide a brief historical account of Cape Verde as it pertains to the formation of CVCL, and I discuss—through the opening narrative, an account shared by Nha Titina (a koladera), and my own experiences—how koladeras are literacy educators responsible for the survival of CVCL throughout the Cape Verdean diaspora despite institutional attempts of erasure.

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 project examined health literacy efforts among adult basic education providers in Central Texas. A survey was conducted with all adult literacy providers in Central Texas (N=58). Most programs provide health-related information. Literacy programs see needs for helping students communicate with doctors, filling out insurance paperwork, and knowing where to go for treatment. Programs express interest in lessons designed to improve health literacy and networking workshops to collaborate with healthcare providers. Literacy providers recognize the health literacy needs of their students but do not always have the resources or capacity to improve their programs.

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.

This study uses fieldwork to investigate the sponsorship of legal literacy within a court mediation program. This examination of institutional involvement in literacy sponsorship demonstrates the ideological nature of literacy by showing the importance of context, investigating literacybased relationships, and uncovering the intertwined nature of oral and written forms of discourse. Little research so far has examined the sponsor’s perspective on literacy, and this study also examines how sponsors may accrue and distribute benefits. Further, the study explicates an approach to literacy sponsorship through mediation which, while still embedded with disparate power relations, may provide an equitable literacy sponsorship model for other community organizations.

In working class education, one of the primary goals in addition to basic literacy was the formulation of class-based interpretations of society. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as literacy programs began to filter into the lives of the proletariat, an attempt to expand the definition of literacy past basic reading and writing skills occasioned the rise of institutions that defined literacy as not only reading and writing, but also knowledge of class and economic theory. Thus, these early proletarian programs developed a broader definition of literacy, past basic reading and writing programs, to class-based educational curriculum.

This article suggests that the methodology of community-based action research provides concrete strategies for fostering effective community problem solving. To argue for a community research pedagogy, the author draws upon past and present scholarship in action research and participatory action research, experiences teaching an undergraduate writing course revolving around action research, and conversations with community members who have benefitted from student research.

In Because We Live Here: Sponsoring Literacy Beyond the College Curriculum, Eli Goldblatt shares his experiences with community-based learning and encourages readers to "pay attention to the problems of the people among who we live" (6). The unique, self-

Why, if service learning has “come a long way,” has it not had the impact on the university or on the community that proponents expected? This article details interviews with eight teachers at Virginia Tech who use service learning in their classrooms, with particular attention to the convergence of literacies that occurs when teachers, communities, and students all attempt to work together. While these eight teachers seemed to have a good grasp of the expectations faculty and communities bring to this three-way relationship, they seemed unable to define the expectations students bring to the experience. This mirrors the current scholarship on service learning, which highlights faculty and communities but downplays the role of students. As we continue to work toward sustainable, reflective community partnerships, literacy studies like Barton and Hamilton’s Local Literacies can help us further examine the expectations students bring to service learning projects.

The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of a community literacy project on its participants. This year-long study focuses on a public library program titled Books in Motion, in which community members read children’s chapter books and meet monthly to watch the book’s film translation. Using a case study approach, the study’s data sources included small-group structured interviews, individual open-ended interviews, written surveys, field notes, and a reflective journal from monthly film nights. Findings suggest the following: (1) Books in Motion increased community literacy interactions, (2) the program motivated participants in innovative ways, and (3) the program offered participants access to literacy resources. As communities and public libraries seek to influence children’s reading today, Books in Motion illustrates reading as an act of community engagement.

This exploration begins with the history of libraries in the United States, examining the ways in which Jefferson’s library, the Library of Congress, and Benjamin Franklin’s ideas about libraries intended to address public literacy levels and problems. Changes to the structure, function, and role of libraries in public life are discussed in terms of the changes made since the first libraries were founded in the US with an eye toward developing public literacy and critical literacy as presently understood. Finally, the current practices of public libraries, including their support for community reading projects, their use as sites of literacy instruction (both ESL and basic education), and their use of technology and related functions are explored to see how libraries contribute to the goal of improving adult literacy in America. Two case studies will show how public libraries function as key sites and librarians as key supporters of this goal.

This study explains the development, implementation, and preliminary findings of an after-school pilot writing program that drew upon a peer collaborative model and a community literacy perspective. Preliminary findings suggest important benefits of this partnership for young children, parents, and the surrounding community.

The work highlighted in this essay focuses on an ethnographic study of a group of African American women, members of Phenomenal Women, Incorporated, who come together not necessarily to read and write, but who, in their “sista space”—their club—often read and write when they come together. In this space, they promote self-help through reading and writing and use their literacy skills to promote civic action and engagement and cultural enrichment. This essay examines the literacy practices in which these women engage in two types of literacy events during their annual Black History Month celebrations.

Digital artists have created a slew of literacy-themed texts using various combinations of photography, video, music, and writing. Creators of such forms regularly post these clips to online video-sharing sites like YouTube.com, where they provide audiences with diverse messaging about the significance and value of literacy. This review examines four such clips: "Literacy Empowers (Illiteracy Awareness Documentary), " "Bookwise Quotes: The Importance of Literacy, " "Reading Kills (Protesting Literacy at the RNC), " and "21st Century Literacy. " Each one addresses a different dimension of literacy and has been accessed several thousands of times. Whether these texts achieve their disparate purposes remains an open question, but what they argue and how they articulate their messages reveal how literacy is no less contested or open to (mis)appropriation in cyberspace than in more traditional cultural domains. While each begins with an implicit acknowledgement of the unrealized promises of literacies, none offer a coherent response to the enormous and asymmetrical challenges of creating critically literate global citizens.

Being prepared with accurate, credible, and timely information during a disaster can help individuals make informed decisions about taking appropriate actions. Unfortunately, many people have difficulty understanding health and risk-related resources. This exploratory, mixed methods study assessed disaster information-seeking behaviors and comprehension of public health disaster preparedness resources by individuals at an adult literacy center. A convenience pilot sample of 20 adult learners (mean age: 53.1) was recruited. Health literacy was assessed using Newest Vital Sign (NVS) and modified Cloze (multiple choice) tests on biological terrorism and avian influenza information. In-person interviews were conducted to determine participants’ knowledge, perceptions, and information needs about disasters. Thematic analysis of interviews was conducted using NVivo7. Mean NVS was 3.11/6.00 implying limited health literacy. Mean Cloze scores revealed marginal disaster comprehension (avian flu: .46/1.00; biological terrorism: .48/1.00). Over half of participants with inadequate Cloze comprehension self-rated their understanding as “good.” Key themes emerging from interviews were: multiple perceptions about disasters, limited access to preparedness resources, need for visuals and plain language information, and importance of knowing where to go during a disaster. Study findings advocate for multimedia, plain language, and visual communication to influence adult learners’ literacy practices and self-efficacy in interpreting instructions and acting appropriately in preparing for and responding to disasters.

For those of us of a certain age, the term "adult literacy" conjures images of recently arrived immigrants participating in English-language literacy classes to find or to get ahead in their jobs or to take a citizenship exam. Similarly, we might think of those high school dropouts wanting that GED and taking "refresher" courses to make it happen. But as readers of this journal can attest, the world of adult literacy is far more extensive and far more variegated than anything that used to be associated with the term "adult literacy. " While some communities still offer basic English language courses to those who cannot speak English or for those who wish to gain a greater proficiency in reading or speaking the language, the notion of "literacy" has expanded along with ways that communities and other organizations have developed to encourage literacy. Even in this current economic crisis, a great variety of literacy programs are offered to a great variety of clients with very specific needs. In this synthesis, I seek to review some of the major trends in adult literacy and provide some basic information for the interested reader. I do not mean this essay to be exhaustive but to offer a review of some interesting recent research published in a variety of journals on different approaches to adult literacy. As such, I will explore programs in this country and innovative approaches throughout the world in English and other languages. The aspects of adult literacy that I will survey here include the psychological and social factors that participants in literacy programs bring to the tutoring experience, non-governmental agencies and literacy, concurrent and transnational literacies, technology, and literacy for specific purposes.

In this interview piece, Victoria Purcell-Gates discusses her views on research methodology, her work creating a corpus of literacy practice data, her past work and current projects. In the afterword, the interviewer discusses the implications of Purcell-Gates approach for scholars in writing and literacy studies across the disciplines.

In this paper, I examine one rural school’s efforts to recognize and celebrate the multiple literacies of its students. Centered around the protagonist from Sherman Alexie’s novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, I discuss the importance of home/school connections in building students’ literacies. I detail the school’s particular process—LINK UP—in creating a family night to bridge the cultural gap that too often divides parents, students, and teachers.

With this special issue, our hope is to encourage community literacy educators, practitioners, and scholars to consider more deeply how the discipline of Community Literacy can support the development of a sustainable global society. Many thinkers, perhaps beginning with ecosopher Arne Naess, have suggested that in order to fashion an ecologically sustainable society our fundamental conception of what it means to live on a planet must deepen, expand, transform. We must develop an elemental appreciation of ourselves as equal members of the global biotic communityequal with marmot and manatee, with saguaro and birch, with amphibian, arthropod, lichen, and microbe-a community that is utterly dependent upon stable worldwide ecosystems for its continued existence.

Literacy is often conceived as the literacy of community members, but rarely as these members’ literacy of their communities. Although our sense of community has become increasingly separated from geography, our local environment is a critical resource for developing the eco-literacy necessary to imagine sustainable futures. The Green Map® movement offers a model for how educators can encourage such literacy through engagement with the local community. Green maps are maps of local green-living resources, including sites of cultural, natural, and civic significance. These maps are created by local citizens with support from the Green Map® organization, which has inspired a new era of grass-roots cartography. By involving students in the production of green maps, educators can encourage an ecoliteracy that is grounded in the local community and focused on designing shared visions of responsible co-existence.

In this ethnographic study of an organic foods cooperative, I examine community through three different facets—the Voluntary Association, the Lifestyle Enclave, and the Neighborhood. I use fieldnote examples to show how each of these community facets corresponds with the three visions of discourse for social change considered by Wayne Campbell Peck, Linda Flower, and Lorraine Higgins. Peck et al.’s most powerful discouse, community literacy, corresponds to the Neighborhood facet of community. The neighborhood holds promise for developing a Biospheric Literacy as developed by Anne Mareck in the introduction to this special issue. The kinds of meanings that she says acknowledge biospherically interdependent human and non-human community members are, I suggest, ritually enacted through neighborly communication. Further, it is through the cordial talk of neighbors that we communicate the kinds of understandings needed to affect positive social change and limit damage to our biosphere.

As part of an on-going ethnographic study of the role language plays in the construction of ecological relationships to Narragansett Bay, the major estuary and defining feature of the State of Rhode Island, this article explores the transformational moments when body and place connect and the literate acts that result from this connection. The participants in this study share stories of profound loss, unwavering advocacy, and ecological consciousness that reflect an understanding of what it means to be part of an ecological community and advocate for healthy, just, and sustainable communities across Earth’s entire biosphere. Moreover, the participants in this study demonstrate that biospheric literacies begin at the level of the body, extend outward through an understanding of the interconnectedness of living systems, and are reflected in the way we care for our own immediate ecological communities.

As a distinct geographically situated production of public record of daily events that is often imbued with the ideals of the community it serves, the daily newspaper, and the editorial pages in particular, holds a powerful space in the collective mind as a forum and litmus for community opinion. This essay provides a case analysis of community opinion on sustainability and sustainable development in the small island nation of Bermuda through letters to the editor in the country’s daily newspaper, The Royal Gazette. These letters, published in that powerful space through invested and dynamic local media literacy sponsorship, illustrate the potential for effective discourse on environmental sustainability that, at least in Bermuda, constitutes productive community activism in its own right and also fosters additional literate social action.

Saving the Next Tree used to be deep green. After the loss of the American chestnut and Fraser fir, yet another beautiful tree, the tree I now considered my favorite tree of the mountains, might be erased from the landscape. Also in 2004, the hemlock woolly adelgid (HWA), the insect responsible for the devastation, reached the north Georgia mountains, at the southern end of the Appalachian chain. Of course, many Georgians, and I am now one, were alarmed, and not just for sentimental reasons. This is a story of how people's disparate lives, careers, and interests can intersect, rather serendipitously, to support community action and to lead to personal growth. In the terminology of community literacy scholars, the hemlock project enabled groups to use their own situated knowledge, conveyed through both organizational and personal problem narratives such as the one above to identify wise options for action (Higgins, Long,. The project fits Jeffery Grabill's definition of communitybased research "as research that involves citizens working with professionally trained researchers [but entomologists and wildlife scientists in this instance, not writing instructors or rhetoricians] in a community-driven process to answer local questions or solve local problems []" (44). Similarly, the research is "action driven, " but the primary goal is environmental, rather than social, though "education, political and social change, and policymaking" goals do exist (Grabill 44). In the long term, all those involved in the hemlock project hope their efforts help to preserve a species, but secondary, unacknowledged goals of better understanding among stakeholders about complex environmental issues and personal and community transformation are also emerging from the process.