Community Literacy Journal

Our issue 3.1, Fall 2008, will be a special issue dedicated to papers presented at the National Community Literacy Summit in Washington, D.C. in the spring of 2007. The issue will be guest edited by Tanya Shuy, Education Program Specialist in the Division of Adult Education, U.S. Department of Education, who helped plan and facilitate this first Summit, with the goal of “bringing together more than 80 community leaders, scholars, and literacy experts to begin a national dialogue on improving and expanding literacy efforts at the community level.”

Tanya has edited a special issue of Scientific Studies of Reading (2006) and works with national groups, literacy workers, and coalitions to assist in the sustainable development of collaborations and research agendas. We think this issue of the CLJ will be an important opportunity to learn about emerging research and the range of community literacy experiences in federal, academic, and provider contexts.

Community Literacy titles reviewed in this issue:

Eli Goldblatt: Because We Live Here: Sponsoring Literacy Beyond the College Curriculum
Hampton Press, 2007
Reviewed by Marilyn Cooper

John Blake Scott: Risky Rhetoric: Aids and the Cultural Practices of HIV Testing
Southern Illinois University Press, 2003
Reviewed by Russell Carpenter

Mike Rose: The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker
Penguin, 2005
Reviewed by Ildiko Mellis

Diane Penrod: Using Blogs to Enhance Literacy: The Next Powerful Step in 21st-Century Learning
Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2007
Reviewed by Hsiao-ping Wu

Paul Collins: Community Writing: Researching Social Issues Through Composition
Lawrence Erlbaum, 2001
Reviewed by Grete Scott

Jeffrey T. Grabill: Writing Community Change: Designing Technologies for Citizen Action
Hampton Press, 2007
Reviewed by Karryn Lintelman

Charles Bazerman, ed.: Handbook of Research on Writing: History, Society, School, Individual, Text
Lawrence Erlbaum, 2007
Reviewed by TBA

Anne Mareck’s Review Essay on community-based environmental movements: Blessed Unrest, by Paul Hawkin; The Sustainability Revolution; by Andres Edwards; GRNSCH-L@listserv.brown.edu, a social networking list focused on
sustainability issues

The Assembly for Research of the National Council of Teachers of
English announces a conference on Literacy Research in Communities, to
be held February 15-17, 2008 at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN.
In this call, we would like researchers and educators to consider what
it means to do literacy research in and with communities, both
communities that are familiar to the researcher and those that are
not. We define communities broadly (i.e., classrooms, virtual
communities, schools, neighborhoods, community centers etc…).
(more…)

Lauren Rosenberg, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 2006

Abstract
This dissertation is based on a qualitative case study of four adults who attend a literacy center where they are learning to read and write better. My primary goal was to investigate how newly literate adults use writing to articulate their relationships to dominant ideologies of literacy. Methods of narrative inquiry were used to collect and analyze data.
(more…)

Special Guest Editors: Appalachian Literacies:
Katie Vande Brake and Kim Holloway, King College, Bristol, Tennessee (more…)