This summer, we at the CLC have been working on a handbook we're calling a PRIMER FOR COMMUNITY LITERACY. This fall we'll be holding a workshop for literacy professionals in our community, show-casing strategies for supporting community literacy and featuring a training video made by CLC teens this summer. The video, called TEAM WORK: TEENAGERS WORKING THROUGH COMMUNITY PROBLEMS, shows a team of teenagers in a problem-solving dialogue and trying out literate strategies (collaborative planning, rivaling, and considering options and outcomes) for thinking and writing about urban stress.
Director of the CLC, Lorraine Higgins, will be joining the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh this fall. I (Elenore) am joining the faculty at Robert Morris College, just outside Pittsburgh's city limits. We both will continue as Research Associates and Project Directors at the CLC.
The last volume of the CLNN represented our initial, collective effort to build a community literacy bibliography (Volume 3). Since then, several readers have sent in additional citations which are listed here. Special thanks to Marcia Farr. On the request of several CLNN readers, she has supplied us with a more extensive and accurate list of her selected publications than was included in the initial bibliography.
Everyone seems to agree: Building community-university connections is a real challenge. We'd like to focus the next volume of the CLNN on issues related to initiating and sustaining these connections. Do you have an interesting story to tell? Advice? Send us your insights by October 16, and we'll distribute Volume 5 in early November.
Also, please send us portraits of your area of interest -- or an update to an earlier one. And the list of recommended readings can keep growing, too. Just send us more citations. Let us hear from you by October 16.
Here's to the new term!
Elenore Long and Linda Flower, editors
I have just arrived in Norfolk, VA, where I continue to develop my research interest in the impact of African American women's culture on rhetorical practice. [get permission]
I am interested in critical literacy and issues of literacy raised by texts generated by incarcerated writers, whether the writing is done within a school setting (most prisons run GEd and adult basic literacy programs and some run college programs) or outside the academic community. In my dissertation, I am looking at how inmate college students negotiate competing discourses operative in the correctional facility/academic setting.
I've taught for twelve years in college programs in various NY state prisons until this past semester when funding for this program was eliminated by the NY budget. I'm currently in the process of facilitating, with a local writers' organization, a writing group in one of the state facilities.
I am interested in hearing from anyone working with writers in correctional facility settings.
Costello, Patrick and Mitchell, Sally. 1995. Competing and Consensual Voices: The Theory and Practice of Argument. Avon: Multilingual Matters Ltd.
Farr, Marcia. "Countering violence with the Word: The uses of literacy by a Catholic Charismatic woman," presentation at American Anthropological Association annual meeting, Atlanta, Nov., 1994. (Forthcoming as chapter in book in honor of Roger Shuy.)
Farr, Marcia. (in press). "Echando relajo: Verbal art and gender among mexicanas in Chicago," in Proceedings of the Berkeley Women and Language Conference, 1994. University of California, Berkeley.
Farr, Marcia and Nardini, Gloria. (In press). "Essayist Literacy and Sociolinguistic Difference," in E. White, W. Lutz, and S. Kamusikiri (Eds.), The Politics and Policies of Assessment in Writing. New York: Modern Language Association.
Farr, Marcia and Guerra, Juan. (1995). "Literacy in the community: A study of mexicano families in Chicago," Discourse Processes Special Issue, Literacy Among Latinos, 19:1, 7-19.
Farr, M. (1994a). Biliteracy in the home: Practices among mexicano families in Chicago. In D. Spener (Ed.), Biliteracy in theory and practice. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Farr, M. (1994b.) "En los dos idiomas: Literacy practices among mexicano families in Chicago." Literacy across Communities. Ed. Beverly Moss. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Farr, Marcia. (1993). "Essayist Literacy and Other Verbal Performances," Written Communication, 10:1, 4-38.
Farr, Marcia. (1993). "Standard English and Educational Policy," in The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Edinburgh: Pergamon Press and Aberdeen University Press.
Farr, Marcia. 1990. "Dialects, Culture, and Teaching the English Language Arts: A Review of Research," in J. Jensen, J. Flood, D. Lapp, and J. Squire (eds.), Handbook of Research on Teaching the English Language Arts. New York: Macmillan.
Farr, Marcia. 1986. "Language, Culture, and Writing: Sociolinguistic Foundations of Research on Writing," in E. Rothkopf (ed.), Review of Research in Education, special issue on writing (XIII). Washington, D.C.: American Educational Research Association.
Farr, Marcia and Harvey Daniels. 1986. Language Diversity and Writing Instruction. Champaign, IL: NCTE.
Gundlach, Robert, Marcia Farr, and Jenny Cook-Gumperz. 1989. "Writing and Reading in the Community," in Anne Dyson (ed.), Collaboration through Writing and Reading: Exploring Possibilities. Urbana, IL: NCTE. (Also Occasional Paper No. 7, Center for the Study of Writing, University of California, Berkeley.)
Jacobs, Deborah. (1995). "Voice and the dialogic space of social action." in Forum, 6:2, 78-89.
Le Sueur, Meridel (1982). Worker Writers. Minneapolis, MN: West End Press. (Originally published in 1939 with support from the Minnesota Works Progress Administration.) Copies available through Midwest Distribution / P.O. Box 4642 / Kansas City, MO / 64109.
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ABOUT THE COMMUNITY LITERACY NETWORK NEWSLETTER: Across colleges and universities, many of us are developing university courses and lines of inquiry to address issues of community literacy. And it seems that we are asking many of the same questions: how might literacy, social institutions, and education work together to define and support social action? Our university courses that address community literacy typically share a commitment to innovative, hands-on learning through socially relevant experiences. Yet each of us teaching such a course must shape these commitments according to specific constraints and opportunities. Because of this shared dynamic, we educators have much to learn from one another; conversely, we stand to lose if working in isolation. The aim of the Community Literacy Network Newsletter is to put educators interested in issues of community literacy in touch with one another. The network is sponsored by the Community Literacy Center, a collaborative between the Community House and Carnegie Mellon University, both in Pittsburgh, PA. Editors are Dr.Linda Flower and Dr. Elenore Long.
For information or to send us your contributions to the next volume, please contact Kathy Meinzer [km39+@andrew.cmu.edu]. Postal address: Carnegie Mellon / Center for the Study of Writing & Literacy / Dept. of English / 259 Baker Hall / Pittsburgh, PA 15213.