Rebecca Moore Howard
Office: 237 HB Crouse
Office hours: Tuesdays 1:15-2:15; Thursdays 1:15-2:15 & 4-5; and by appointment
Telephone: 443-1620
E-mail: rehoward@syr.edu
Home page http://wrt-howard.syr.edu

Schedule of Assignments
CCR 651, Interdisciplinary Studies in
Language and Literacy: Provincial and Global Issues
Spring 2004
Time:
Place:
Course website: http://wrt-howard.syr.edu/Syllabi/CCR651S04.html

January 13

Read before class as much of the following as you have time, energy, and interest for:

1. Adger, Carol Temple. "Language Policy and Public Knowledge." Center for Applied Linguistics. January 1997.
2. Bartlett, Thomas. "Why Johnny Can't Write, Even Though He Went to Princeton." The Chronicle of Higher Education 49.17 (3 January 2003): A39.
3. Freund, Deborah. "A Strategic Partnership for Innovative Research and Education." Syracuse University, 28 March 2001.
4. Freund, Deborah. "A Strategic Partnership for Innovative Research and Education (A-SPIRE): An Academic Plan for Syracuse University." Syracuse University, April 2001.
5. Lewin, Tamara. "Writing in Schools Is Found Both Dismal and Neglected." New York Times 26 April 2003.
6. "LSA Resolution on the Oakland 'Ebonics' Issue." Linguistic Society of America. January 1997.
7. McLemee, Scott. "Deconstructing Composition." Chronicle of Higher Education 21 March 2003.
8. The National Commission on Writing in America's Schools and Colleges. "The Neglected 'R': The Need for a Revolution in Writing Instruction." The College Board. April 2003.
9. Neal, Terry M. "Schwarzenegger Is No One-Dimensional Character." The Washington Post 13 August 2003.
10. "Policy Statement of the TESOL Board on African American Vernacular English." Center for Applied Linguistics. 10 March 1997.
11. Ridgley, Stanley. "College Students Can't Write?" National Review 19 February 2003.
12. Schroeder, Christopher. "Academic Literacies, Legitimacy Crises, and Electronic Cultures." Journal of Literacy and Technology 1.2 (Spring 2001).
13. Standards for Success. Center for Educational Policy Research, 2003.
14. Strauss, Valerie. "Educators Demand Upgrade in Writing." The Washington Post 13 May 2003.
15. U.S. English, Inc.
16. Winerip, Michael. "Discovering Crisis, Again and Again." New York Times 30 April 2003.

As you read these documents, ask yourself the following questions. For each source, I'll be asking you to point to specific passages of text that support your answers:

1. How is literacy implicity or explicity defined in these sources?
2. What expectations for literacy instruction do these sources articulate or imply?
3. What comparisons and contrasts do you perceive across these texts?
4. Into what categories would you sort these texts?
   
   And consider your own perspectives on these issues:
5. In what terms do you think about the literacy instruction in which you are presently or soon will be engaged?
6. What goals do you have for literacy instruction?
7. To what extent do you believe you need to negotiate your literacy instruction goals with those in the texts you have read today? Why?
8. How could you or should you negotiate your goals with the expectations that you find in these sources?

In class

1. We'll go over the syllabus and schedule for the course.
2. We'll consider possibilities for collaborative work in the course.
3. We'll consider possibilities for modifying the syllabus for second-year students who are already engaged in long-term projects in literacy studies.
4. We'll discuss the sources you've read and your beliefs about and desires for literacy and literacy instruction, and I'll ask you to answer the questions listed above.
5. I'll provide an overview of the discourse of literacy crises and some background on the notion of language standards.
6. I'll offer some background information on Saussure's work.
7. I'll assign you a chapter of Saussure to summarize. Some guidelines for summary-writing are in an online handout that I've prepared for my undergraduate students; you may find some of this useful.
8. We'll discuss principles whereby you might choose which of the recommended readings you want to write your two reports on.

January 20

Before class:

1. Review and rank the list of recommended readings for the course.
2. Read selections from Saussure's Course in General Linguistics, in Burke et al. 21-32; 53-63; 105-113. Pay closest attention to the first two selections.
3. Study the website for the University of Florida writing program. How does it represent literacy and literacy instruction?

As you read Saussure, note specific passages that help you answer these questions:

What are the major claims?

What evidence is provided for these claims?

How persuaded are you by the argument?

How would literacy instruction function in the framework described here?

What happens when you apply this argument to other sources you've read for this course?

What other questions should we be asking about this text?

In class:

1. We'll decide who's going to read and report on which of the recommended readings for the course.
2. I'll distribute copies of my summary of the Saussure chapters, which we'll read and discuss, to build a model for the chapter summaries that you'll be writing each week.
3. We'll discuss Saussure in more expansive terms, and I'll ask you to answer the questions listed above.
4. I'll offer some background information on Du Bois's work.
5. I'll assign you a chapter of Du Bois' book to summarize.

February 3

Before class,

1. Read Du Bois, W.E.B. The Education of Black People
2. Write a one-page summary of your assigned chapter in the Du Bois text. Bring enough copies to class for each member of the class.

As you read Du Bois, note specific passages that help you answer these questions:

What are the major claims?

What evidence is provided for these claims?

How persuaded are you by the argument? --for Du Bois' context? --for yours?

What role does, should, or could language instruction--the standard language or something else--play in the development of African American culture and ideals that Du Bois promotes?

What principles guide Du Bois' vision of education?

How might these principles be applied to contemporary literacy education for African Americans?

How might these principles be applied more generally to contemporary literacy education?

To what extent do you see these principles in current pedagogy and philosophy of literacy education?

What happens when you apply this argument to other sources you've read for this course?

What other questions should we be asking about this text?

In class,

1. We'll distribute copies of the Du Bois chapter summaries, read them, and discuss them.
2. We'll discuss Du Bois in more expansive terms, and I'll ask you to answer the questions listed above.
3. We'll ponder, explicate, contextualize, translate, and update this statement: "[I]f a member of one of the suppressed groups receives the national education . . . he must become a member of the privileged aristocracy or be educated for a life which he cannot follow and be compelled to live a life which he does not like or which he deeply despises" (113-114). "This is the problem of education with which the world is most familiar, and it tends to two ends: it makes the mass of men dissatisfied with life and it makes the university a system of culture for the cultured" (114).
4. We'll debate the possible meanings and applications of the statement, "[A] Negro university in the United States of America begins with Negroes. It uses that variety of the English idiom which they understand; and above all, it is founded, or it should be founded on a knowledge of the history of their people in Africa and in the United States, and their present condition" (123).
5. We'll consider the possibility of standard language as a technical skill: "[T]he relations of capital and labor have increased in complication and it has become . . . clear that Negro poverty is not primarily caused by ignorance of technical knowledge. . ." (124).
6. We'll review Aptheker's assertion, "Du Bois saw education (to be truly education) as partisan and--given the realities of the social order--fundamentally subversive" (xiii). "[H]is writing on education--as on everything else--has a kind of national consciousness, a specific motivation which--while directed towards his people--at the same time and therefore was meant to serve all humanity" (xiii-xiv).
7. We'll contemplate the stylistic shift in this collection of essays, as Du Bois' language becomes increasingly dramatic and hortatory, and consider the range of rhetorical and conceptual implications of that shift.
8. We'll consider how Du Bois' movement toward Marxism, evident in these essays, affects his vision of African American education.
9. I'll offer some background information on Parks' work.
10. I'll assign you a chapter of Parks' book to summarize.

February 10

Before class,

1. Read Parks, Stephen. Class Politics
2. Optional additional reading: Students for a Democratic Society. "Port Huron Statement of the Students for a Democratic Society." New York: Students for a Democratic Society, 1962.
3. Write a one-page summary of your assigned chapter in the Parks text. Bring enough copies to class for each member of the class.

As you read Parks, note specific passages that help you answer these questions:

What are the major claims?

What evidence is provided for these claims?

What happens when you compare this argument with Du Bois' vision of education for African Americans?

Does Parks actually assume the unanimity of purpose in its audience that this book addresses (see, for example, p. 17), or is that apparent assumption itself a performative speech act?

To what extent are you among the audience addressed at the bottom of 17? How does your political positioning in the progressive-to-conservative world that Parks describes affect the usefulness of this book for you as a comp/rhet practitioner? IE, is this a book only for Parks' faithful, and to what extent to you count yourself among that group? IE, how persuaded are you by the argument?

Parks begins his history in the 1960s and grounds it in political movements. How might an attention to Saussure's distinction between internal and external linguistics--and indeed, any attention to Saussurean linguistics--revise his argument?

The activist pedagogy that Parks endorses is one of coalition with forces outside the academy (16-17), an absence of which can doom pedagogical reform to failure (78). To what extent do you agree?

Does working within an institution doom revisionary pedagogy to the kind of containment described in Chapter 4? If so, what would be the point of revisionary pedagogy?

How far would you want to go in comparing the work of Wallace Douglass and other progressives of the early 1970s who resisted the New Right (see Ch. 5) with the tensions that now obtain between what I would call the New Patriotism and what it perceives as anti-Americanism within the academy?

Given what you know about the history of modern linguistics and its relation to public attitudes about language, think very carefully and seriously about the implications of Parks' argument against framing language rights issues in scholarly terms (176-178).

"[T]he SRTOL . . . created two mutually opposing positions. One, teachers are responsible for ensuring that students learn standard English. Two, teachers should not teach standard English." Teaching Standard Written English has become "synonymous with reactionary politics" (242). Chapter 6 describes the failure to develop sentence-level pedagogy to support SRTOL. How useful would it be to develop such pedagogy now--or has that moment passed?

Having read Parks' book, what agenda for would literacy instruction would you now recommend?

What other questions should we be asking about this text?

In class,

1. We'll hear reports on sources from the recommended reading list: Pennycook (David); Ong (Carolyn); Havelock (Chris); Scribner & Cole (Madeline).
2. We'll distribute copies of the Parks chapter summaries, read them, and discuss them.
3. We'll discuss Parks in more expansive terms, and I'll ask you to answer the questions listed above.
4. I'll offer some background information on language standards.
5. I'll assign you a chapter of Burke et al. to summarize.

February 17

Before class,

1. Read "Englishes"--Mencken, Paul, Dabydeen, Brathwaite, and Kachru (Burke et al. 285-329)
2. Write a one-page summary of your assigned chapter in Burke et al.. Bring enough copies to class for each member of the class.

As you read each of these essays, note specific passages that help you answer these questions:

What are the major claims made in and assumptions informing each text?

What evidence is provided for these claims and assumptions?

How persuaded are you by their arguments?

What happens when you apply these arguments to other sources you've read for this course?

How would literacy instruction function in the framework(s) described here?

What other arguments would you construct or what issues would you raise from this collection of readings?
As you read Mencken, consider this additional question:

What are the chief means of regulating American English today? How much do you approve of them, and why?
As you read Dabydeen:

What does he accomplish by referring to creole as "nigger talk"?

How much evidence can you supply (from your reading of his essay or from your other studies and experiences) for his assertion that the British colonial project was pornographic as well as economic?
As you read Kachru:

What is your rhetorical analysis of the syntax of this sentence? "Today . . . the English language is a tool of power, domination, and elitist identity, and of communication across continents" (318).

Kachru is describing the colonial and post-colonial experiences of other nations. To what extent can his analyses translate into U.S. composition classrooms?

In class,

1. We'll hear reports on sources from the recommended reading list: Heath (Elisa); Rose (Tyra); Stuckey (Kelly); Yagelski (Ty); Chiseri-Strater (Heather).
2. We'll distribute copies of the chapter summaries, read them, and discuss them.
3. We'll discuss "Englishes" in more expansive terms, and I'll ask you to answer the questions listed above.
4. I'll offer some background information on Marxism and postcolonialism as they pertain to literacy instruction and language standards.
5. I'll assign you a chapter of Burke et al. or the McCarthy et al. essay to summarize.

February 24

Before class,

1. Read (1) "Language Communities"--Vossler, Bloomfield, Bakhtin, Gramsci (Burke et al. 249-284); (2) McCarthy et al.
2. Write a one-page summary of your assigned chapter. Bring enough copies to class for each member of the class.

As you read, note specific passages that help you answer these questions:

What are the major claims?

What evidence is provided for these claims?

How persuaded are you by the argument?

How would literacy instruction function in the framework described here?

What happens when you apply this argument to other sources you've read for this course?

What other questions should we be asking about this text?
As you read Vossler, consider these additional questions:

How does he define "race"?

What cultural work might this definition of "race" accomplish in today's contexts?
As you read Bloomfield:

What would happen to his argument if he named race on pp. 261, 264, etc.?
As you read Bakhtin:

What brakes might Bakhtin put on Dabydeen's project of developing a creole literature?

How might Bakhtin critique Kachru's theory of linguistic neutrality?

Compare Bakhtin's portrait of individual utterance (on Burke et al. 271) with Bloomfield's portrait of idiolect (262).

Compare Bakhtin's and Bloomfield's assertions about what happens to a language or dialect when it incorporates words from another language or dialect.

Compare the social implications of Bakhtin's theory of social stratification of speech and Bloomfield's taxonomy of types of speech communities.

How do Bakhtin's and Bloomfield's linguistics comport with Saussure's?
As you read Gramsci:

How do you interpret his statement, "This, moreover, places expressive 'individualism' at a higher level bcause it creates a more robust and homogeneous skeleton for the national linguistic body, of which every individual is the reflection and interpreter" (281).

In class:

1. We'll distribute copies of the chapter summaries, read them, and discuss them.
2. We'll discuss "Language Communities" and McCarthy et al. in more expansive terms, and I'll ask you to answer the questions listed above.
3. I'll offer some background information on Pennycook's work.
4. I'll assign you a chapter of Pennycook's book to summarize.
5. We'll schedule individual or small-group conferences for the week of February 23 to discuss your work in the course and the position statement that you plan to write.

March 2

Before class,

1. Read Pennycook, Critical Applied Linguistics. Pay particular attention to the approaches to language planning in Chapter 3--and to Chapter 3 in its entirety, for that matter.
2. Write a one-page summary of your assigned chapter in the Pennycook text. Bring enough copies to class for each member of the class.

As you read Pennycook, note specific passages that help you answer these questions:

Where do you see identifiable departures from Saussurean formalism?

What are the major claims?

What evidence is provided for these claims?

How persuaded are you by the argument?

How would literacy instruction function in the framework described here?

What happens when you apply this argument to other sources you've read for this course, especially Parks and Kachru?

Why doesn't Pennycook include comp & rhet in his Chapter 1 list of discourses related to critical applied linguistics?

To what extent are the "four different positions on the relation between politics and knowledge" that he outlines on 25 ff. actually choices--or is he stacking the deck?

Pennycook is describing the colonial and post-colonial experiences of other nations. To what extent can his analyses translate into U.S. composition classrooms?

How much does the critical applied linguistics described by Pennycook respond to this declaration from Bakhtin? "Discourse lives, as it were, beyond itself, in a living impulse toward the object; if we detach ourselves completely from this impulse all we have left is the naked corpse of the word, from which we can learn nothing at all about the social situation or the fate of a given word in life" (Bakhtin, in Burke et al. 277).

What other questions should we be asking about this text?

In class:

1. We'll distribute copies of the Pennycook chapter summaries, read them, and discuss them.
2. We'll discuss Pennycook in more expansive terms, and I'll ask you to answer the questions listed above.
3. I'll describe some of critical race theory as it pertains to language standards.
4. We'll discuss the assignment or unit on language standards that's due next week.

March 16: Class meets in 009 HBC

Before class,

1. Read the Schueller article and the Friend & Minsker course unit.
2. For WRT 105 or 205, structure an assignment or unit on language standards. Use Friend & Minsker as a model of how highly developed and articulated this assignment or unit should be (though it need not be online). One of your primary decisions will have to be whether your assignment will, like Friend and Minsker's, be intended to impart rhetorical skills or whether it will be intended to engage students with topical material. Or both.

As you read Schueller, note specific passages that help you answer these questions:

What are the major claims?

What evidence is provided for these claims?

How persuaded are you by the argument concerning continuity from African American oppression to colonialism?

How would literacy theory and instruction function in the framework described here?

What happens when you apply this argument to other sources you've read for this course?

What other questions should we be asking about this text?

As you read Friend & Minsker, note specific passages that help you answer these questions:

What are the assumptions about race?

What are the assumptions about pedagogy?

With what principles have they structured this unit? What would a blueprint of the unit look like?

In class,

1. We'll distribute copies of (or view online) the assignments or units on language standards, read them, and discuss them.
2. We'll discuss both assigned essays in more expansive terms, and I'll ask you to answer the questions listed above.
3. We'll discuss the drafts of position statements that are due next week. I'll ask each of you to talk about your work-in-progress on these drafts.
4. I'll assign you two of your classmates' work-in-progress to respond to.

March 23

Before class,

1. Prepare a preliminary draft of your position statement on literacy or literacy instruction. Please give me your draft in hardcopy and as attached email.
2. Circulate your preliminary draft to all members of the class, at least two days prior to class.

In class:

1. We'll discuss interim drafts of position papers.
2. I'll offer some background information on linguistic relativism (which Bourdieu calls "neo-Kantianism") and anthropological linguistics.
3. I'll assign you a chapter of Burke et al. to summarize.

March 30

Before class,

1. Read in Burke et al.: (1) Whorf, "Science and Linguistics" (114-121); (2) Vygotsky, "Thought and Word," 122-126; (3) "Languages and Cultures" (Boas, Malinowski, Sapir, Levi-Strauss, Barthes) 373-415.
2. Write a one-page summary of your assigned chapter in Burke et al.. Bring enough copies to class for each member of the class.

As you read Burke et al., note specific passages that help you answer these questions:

What are the major claims?

What evidence is provided for these claims?

How persuaded are you by the argument?

How would literacy instruction function in the framework described here?

What do you, as an advanced scholar of comp/rhet, get from reading excerpts from early twentieth-century anthropological linguistics?

What happens when you apply this argument to other sources you've read for this course?

Recall Saussure's statement, "[I]n language there are only differences. Even more important: a difference generally implies positive terms between which the difference is set up; but in language there are only differences without positive terms" (111). This concept, so eloquently asserted by Saussure, provides a cornerstone for postmodern theory and specifically the "linguistic turn." Put Saussure side by side with the linguistic relativism explicit in many of the texts in today's assignment. In Sapir's words, "the network of cultural patterns of a civilization is indexed in the language which expresses that civilization" (396). This linguistic relativism enables a happy hierarchy of "primitive" and "civilized" cultures. Tzvetan Todorov asserts that both universalism and relativity are involved in racialism. Racialism is relativistic in its treatment of facts, asserting a "discontinuity among the different 'races.'" But it is universalistic in its belief that the same values obtain everywhere. This belief allows different cultures to be judged hierarchically according to how well they demonstrate these values. (Todorov, Tzvetan. "'Race,' Writing, and Culture." Trans. Loulou Mack. "Race," Writing, and Difference. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Chicago: U of Chicago, 1986, 370-380.) How possible is it to have the postmodern linguistic turn without also having the cultural hierarchy of linguistic relativism? If language is all we have, how can we dodge the analysis of language as a way of judging the relative worth of culture and subjectivity?

What other questions should we be asking about these texts?
As you read Whorf, think about the extent to which what he says about "natural logicians'" hostility to grammarians' expertise in the "background phenomena" of language is as true for composition and rhetoric as it is for linguistics. As you read Boas, generate plausible explanations for why in heck he would be taking up this issue.
As you read Malinowski, think about the extent to which it is possible to draw useful linguistic principles from a text so explicitly pursuing an orientalist agenda.
As you read Sapir pay close attention to the logic whereby he establishes a hierarchy of languages, with the linguist in charge.

In class,

1. We'll distribute copies of the Burke et al. chapter summaries, read them, and discuss them.
2. We'll discuss Burke et al. in more expansive terms, and I'll ask you to answer the questions listed above.
3. I'll offer some background information on the Bernstein-Labov debate.
4. I'll assign you a chapter of Burke et al. to summarize.

April 6

Before class,

1. Read "Language, Class and Education"--Bernstein, Labov, Cox (Burke et al. 444-485)
2. Write a one-page summary of your assigned chapter in the Burke text. Bring enough copies to class for each member of the class.

As you read "Language, Class and Education," note specific passages that help you answer these questions:

What are the major claims?

What evidence is provided for these claims?

How persuaded are you by the argument?

How would literacy instruction function in the framework described here?

What happens when you apply this argument to other sources you've read for this course? Think, for example, about Saussure's discussions of language and exchange on Burke et al. 107-110.
As you read Bernstein, consider additional questions:

To what extent does Bernstein share Bloomfield's assumptions about class, e.g., In the United States, the "most striking line of cleavage in our speech is one of social class. Children who are born into homes of privilege, in the way of wealth, tradition, or education, become native speakers of what is popularly known as 'good' English; the linguist prefers to give it the non-committal name of standard English. Less fortunate children become native speakers of 'bad' or 'vulgar' or, as the linguist prefers to call it, non-standard English" (Bloomfield, in Burke et al. 264).
As you read Labov, consider additional questions:

Recall Pennycook's evaluation of the work of Bernstein and Labov (Pennycook 122-123). How do you evaluate Pennycook's evaluation?

What other questions should we be asking about these texts?

In class:

1. We'll hear reports on sources from the recommended reading list: Smitherman (Chris); Delpit (Kelly); Brodkey (Carolyn); Flannery (Tyra); Kozol (Elisa); Nettle & Romaine (David).
2. We'll distribute copies of the Burke chapter summaries, read them, and discuss them.
3. We'll discuss "Language, Class and Education" in more expansive terms, and I'll ask you to answer the questions listed above.
4. I'll offer some background information on Bourdieu's work, including neo-Marxism; forms of capital; hypercorrection and covert prestige in linguistics; and performative and illocutionary speech acts.
5. We'll review online research techniques in the Bird Library holdings.
6. I'll assign you a chapter of Bourdieu's book to summarize.

April 13

Before class,

1. Read Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power. I recommend that you read Ch. 10 first; then the editor's intro; then chapters 1 (including the appendix), 3, 5, and 8; then whatever other chapters you wish. You might want to skip Chapter 6, unless you're conversant with Heideggerian theory.
   Many of the theorists whose work Bourdieu draws on or references have already been introduced in this course. For the rest, I recommend that you use the Internet as you read, to look up unfamiliar figures such as Talcott Parsons. Use especially the reference works on the library website. Look for discipline-specific dictionaries and encyclopedia, especially dictionaries and encyclopedia of biography.
   As you read Bourdieu, recall two passages from Du Bois: [1] "[T]he relations of capital and labor have increased in complication and it has become . . . clear that Negro poverty is not primarily caused by ignorance of technical knowledge" (124). [2] "To the New Englander of wealth and family, Harvard and Yale are parts and only parts of a broad training which the New England home begins and a State Street or Wall Street business ends" (127). And recall this from Gramsci: "[T]he highest level of the ruling class, which traditionally speaks standard Italian, passes it on from generation to generation, through a slow process that begins with the first stutterings of the child under the guidance of its parents, and continues through conversation . . . for the rest of one's life" (284).
2. Write a one-page summary of your assigned chapter in the Bourdieu text. Bring enough copies to class for each member of the class.

As you read Bourdieu, note specific passages that help you answer these questions:

What are the major claims?

What evidence is provided for these claims?

How persuaded are you by the argument?

How would literacy instruction function in the framework described here?

What happens when you apply this argument to other sources you've read for this course?

What does this have to do with literacy studies?

Bourdieu's concern is with spoken language. How applicable are his arguments to written language?

Does Bourdieu believe everyone wants what the dominant class has? Do you?

Chapter 1: Pay attention to how Bourdieu constructs the "linguistic market" as he deploys the terms circulation, capital, domination, and distinction. Also, evaluate his evaluations of Bernstein and Labov.

Chapter 3: How much might Bourdieu's discussion of the efficacy of performative speech acts extend to any socially legitimated speech? In other words, would it mean that it's not enough to speak a standard code, if you're not already recognized as a standard speaker?

Chapter 8: How broadly should we interpret the word "politics"? See especially p. 182.

Chapter 9: How finely should we equate Nietzsche's priest with ourselves as literacy teachers?

What other questions should we be asking about this text?

In class:

1. We'll hear reports on sources from the recommended reading list: Dunn (Heather); Gee, Hull, & Lankshear (Madeline); Haas (Ty).
2. We'll distribute copies of the Bourdieu chapter summaries, read them, and discuss them.
3. We'll discuss Bourdieu in more expansive terms, and I'll ask you to answer the questions listed above.
4. I'll offer some background information on Brandt's work.
5. I'll assign you a chapter of Brandt's book to summarize.
6. We'll schedule individual or small-group conferences for the week of April 18 to discuss your work in the course and the position statement that you plan to write.

April 20

Before class,

1. Read Brandt, Literacy in American Lives.
2. Write a one-page summary of your assigned chapter in the Brandt text. Bring enough copies to class for each member of the class.

As you read Brandt, note specific passages that help you answer these questions:

What are the major claims?

What evidence is provided for these claims?

How persuaded are you by the argument?

How would literacy instruction function in the framework described here?

What happens when you apply this argument to other sources you've read for this course?

What other questions should we be asking about this text?

Having completed this course, what expectations and requirements do you have for scholarship in literacy studies? To what extent does Brandt fulfill these expectations and requirements?

In class:

1. We'll continue our discussion of Bourdieu.
2. We'll distribute copies of the Brandt chapter summaries, read them, and discuss them.
3. We'll discuss Brandt in more expansive terms, and I'll ask you to answer the questions listed above.
4. I'll assign you two of your classmates' penultimate drafts to respond to.

April 23

Before class,

1. Prepare a penultimate draft of your position statement on literacy or literacy instruction.
2. Circulate your penultimate draft to all members of the class, at least two days prior to class.

In class:

We'll discuss penultimate drafts of position papers.

April 27

Individual conferences instead of regular class this week. Bring two copies of the current draft of your paper to your conference--one for you and one for me.

May 4

Final draft of position paper due. Please submit your paper in hardcopy and as an attachment to an email.

Back to Rebecca Moore Howard's homepage