Guiding questions:
Has the Black/ African-American community truly been afforded equal access to literacy necessary to be successful in a contemporary America?
How is literacy used as a hegemonic tool/ tool of power? By whom? Against whom?
How can we help establish more equality for the Black/ African-American community?
Activity 1: What do you know about Black/ African-American history, culture, people?
Activity 2: Read “Why Slave-Era Barriers to Black Literacy Still Matter“
Activity 3: Read “With COVID-19, The AfricanAmerican Literacy Crisis Will Get Much Worse”
COVID19-and-African-American-Literacy2Activity 4: Take “the impossible” literacy test given to Black voters in the 1960s. Scroll down until you reach the instructions for the test: Try this one: “Write every other word in this first line and print every third word in same line (original type smaller and first line ended at comma) but capitalize the fifth word that you write.” Take the test that follows–write down your answers on your device or on a piece of paper.
How did you do?
Activity 5: A masterpiece, Black Boy is writer Richard Wright’s autobiography, about life in America during the first half of the 20th century. This selection, “The Library Card,” reveals the frightening experience he underwent in order to access books at the library.
Read “The library card” by Richard Right.
Activity 6: Have you ever participated in a peer review session? If so, what did you do? In this class, you will critique two of your classmates’ essays, ans you will receive feedback from 2 of your classmates as well. This process will help you reflect on your writing, and revise it.
Peer Review Week: November 9 – November 16
Go to “Peer Review” on our Discussion Board to submit your draft and to complete the peer review/ comment on 2 classmates’ drafts.
Individual Research Paper (Choice of Methodology): 4-5 pages (20%)
Your essay draft is due by November 9th, for peer review
The final draft is due by Tuesday, November 23rd.
Save the dates!
Here are your options. Which one did you select?
Option 1: Ethnography of Community
Students will conduct a mini-ethnography where they will observe individuals engaged in literacy practices (e.g., a Bible reading group; book club). Specifically, they will focus attention on the way that literacy is a tool that assists in the development of community, how communities create literacy practices, and the relationship between that community and identity formation (e.g., gender) and/or hegemonic or counternarrative discourses.
Option 2: Literacy Landscapes and Superdiversity: Literacy in the Community:
Students will study a diverse community in New York City and explore the language employed in the local environment (e.g., signs in store windows) and consider a) the expected literacy and language demands of members of the community and b) the landscape’s relationship to the concept of superdiversity. Analyses should focus on how language relates to identity, community, power, and/or hegemonic or counternarrative discourse.
Option 3: Literacy History Project For this paper, students will analyze how members of a particular minority community (e.g., indigenous groups in Northern United States) have been affected by the institutionalization of literacy in the United States. Students will examine scholarship that points to literacy practices within this community that are devalued or ignored by formal schooling while considering the strengths of the literacy practices of minority communities. You should also consider how minority communities have used the hegemonic tools of literacy practice to gain access to power.
Option 4: Think-Aloud Experiential Study Students will conduct a mini-research project where they gather data about individuals’ experiences with a particular literacy practices (e.g., the reading of a Supreme Court opinion addressing equality). Students will ask participants to engage in think-alouds about what they understand/do not understand while reading; what they disagree with. In reflection, participants will then discuss their overall thoughts about the relationship between literacy their access to power by being able to comprehend and evaluate the reading. Students will analyze data and their relationship to identity, community, and/or hegemonic or counternarrative discourses
Option 5: Analyses of Literacy Tests
With or without a partner, students will distribute a historic literacy test to at least five adults. As we will discuss in class, post-Civil War, many states required adults to pass a literacy test to be eligible to vote (with the explicit purpose of limiting voting access of African-American voters). Students will ask these individuals to take the literacy test. After the participants finish the test, students will ask participants to discuss their reactions to/experiences with taking the literacy test (e.g., did they feel there was cultural bias in the way the literacy test was structured). Individually, students will then write a 3–4-page reflection outlining what they learned through the activity while using data from participants to inform their reflection.
In a nutshell, a hegemonic discourse is the story that the ruling class tells. It justifies their power and confirms that they deserve it.
In a nutshell, a counternarrative discourse is a form of resistance to those in power; it contradicts the main/ generally accepted discourse.
