This article suggests that the framework of prison abolition in prison literacy studies should be developed through the relational potential of queer community literacy practices among incarcerated writers. To that end, the author presents findings from a critical discourse analysis of a newspaper by incarcerated LGBTQ+ writers. Three primary forms of audience address and rhetorical… Continue reading (Anti)Prison Literacy: Queering Community Writing through an Abolitionist Stance by Rachel Lewis

Community is a tricky word: although it often connotes an inclusive and harmonious collaborative space, too often it signifies a site of struggle and negotiation, an attempt to find a common framework for conflicting and seemingly contradictory impulses. One of the marks of those active in “community literacy studies,” “service-learning” and ‘”engaged scholarship” is the… Continue reading Reflections: Defining Community/Building Theories by Steve Parks

I argue that literacy studies needs to define the role of peace in our efforts to pursue social justice. Drawing on the work of Vietnamese Zen Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, I show that promoting peace is the means, as well as the end, of working toward social justice. Further, I demonstrate that the process of… Continue reading Writing Peace: From Alienation to Connection by Gwen Gorzelsky

This article focuses on America’s Army Game, the first-person-shooter video game now being peddled by the U.S. Army for classroom use. In my community-based literacy class, where students partner with children and teens at a local youth center, this “game” helps us to grasp and problematize literacy sponsorship and recruitment-the idea that literacy education involves… Continue reading This Video Game We Call War’: Multimodal Recruitment in America’s Army Game by Nancy Welch

This article presents data from a 10-month case study of a critical literacy writing group for parenting and pregnant young adults. The author focuses on the efficacy of the program to foster the critical literacy skills of two participants. Drawing on field notes and written artifacts and using case study and discourse analysis, the author… Continue reading Figuring Identities and Taking Action: The Tension Between Strategic and Practical Gender Needs within a Critical Literacy Program by Christopher Worthman

Nearly two decades ago, the New London Group (NLG) theorized the concepts of multiliteracies and multimodality in their groundbreaking work, “A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures.” Challenging literacy education which overprivileged “formalized, monolingual, monocultural, and rule-governed forms of language” (61), the NLG argued that conceptions of literacy—and its attendant pedagogies—must be sensitive to the… Continue reading Review: Working with Multimodality: Rethinking Literacy in a Digital Age by Timothy R. Amidon

Contemporary nonprofit and governmental organizations actively mediate relationships through and compose representations of literacy initiatives and their participants’ literate abilities for multiple national and transnational audiences. Connecting Deborah Brandt’s theory of literacy sponsorship and New Literacy Studies scholars’ conceptions of literacy mediation to Bourdieu’s idea of the cultural intermediary, this article identifies critical processes of… Continue reading Literacy Intermediaries and the ‘Voices of Women’ South African National Quilt Project by Martha Webber

For several decades now, the scholarship of rhetoric and composition studies has shown an increased interest in community literacy and community-based pedagogy. Many point to the emergence of the Ethnography of Literacy (see studies by Heath, Barton, Cushman) and New Literacy Studies (Gee, Street, among others) as an origin for this initial focus on community… Continue reading Rewriting a Master Narrative: HBCUs and Community Literacy Partnerships, Introduction by Reva E. Sias and Beverly J. Moss

This essay proposes that a “governmentality” framework applied to literacy sponsorship in refugee communities can help identify and critique competing agendas of control. By drawing on interview transcripts collected from an after-school program for refugee youth, the essay offers a glimpse of the different perspectives that shape tutor and aid worker discourse. Some of these… Continue reading Governing Sponsorship in a Literacy Support Program for Resettled Refugee Students by Michael T. MacDonald