Literacy, Economy, and Power: Writing and Research after "Literacy in American Lives"

Epilogue: Literacy Studies and Interdisciplinary Studies with Notes on the Place of Deborah Brandt

203 Epilogue: Literacy Studies and Interdisciplinary Studies with Notes on the Place of Deborah Brandt Harvey J. Graff Claims about literacies, and their lack, surround us, multiplying like metaphorical insects.* Different observers see either an abundance of literacies forming foundations for flowing multimodalities or a crisis rooted in the presumed absence or inadequacy of appropriate literacies threatening the foundationsofourcivilizationandpolity(GraffandDuffy,2008;Graff,1995a).1 In typical formulations, literacy studies embraces two more-or-less opposing positions: that of “many literacies” and that of dangerously low levels of literacy, their causes, and their consequences. When conceptualized complexly —not the most common practice—their contradictory relationships form part of our subject of inquiry and part of the challenge for explication and explanation.2 And the demand for interdisciplinarity.3 The difficulties and the potentialities attendant with literacy gave rise to a field of literacy studies during the last one-third to one-quarter of the twentieth century. Sociolinguist David Barton relates, * Literacy Studies and Interdisciplinary Studies: Reflections My own definition of literacy emphasizes literacy as the ability to read—make and take meaning—and the ability to write—express understanding and make other communications —and their metaphors and analogies across distinct media and modes of communication. For me, interdisciplinarity is defined by questions and problems and the means developed to answer them in new and different ways that are constructed or built on or from elements from different disciplines. This might involve approaches, methods, theories, orientations, comparisons, understandings, or interpretations. I emphasize the former—questions and problems, not the disciplines. Or to put it another way, interdisciplinary defined or realized comes from fashioning interdisciplinarity via method, theory, and conceptualization to form a new and distinct approach or understanding derived from or based on aspects of different disciplines. This will differ by discipline and disciplinary clusters. Interdisciplinarity is not a matter of the number of disciplines. Therefore, there is no need to “master” two or more disciplines, as more than a few pundits have asserted. This essay is drawn from a longer piece, Graff, 2011b. Harvey J. Graff 204 The meaning of the word literacy is to be found not just by examining dictionary entries. It has become a unifying term across a range of disciplines for changing views of reading and writing; there has been such a growth of study in the area that is now referred to as Literacy Studies or the New Literacy Studies. (2007, p. 23)4 This is the realm of theory and practice that Deborah Brandt joined and was influenced by in the 1980s and 1990s. By the late 1990s and 2000s, English professor and compositionist Brandt herself became a shaping force (1990, 2001, 2009; Brandt and Clinton, 2002). Literacy Studies Literacy studies developed as an interdisciplinary field of study and knowledge , the theme of this exploratory essay. Barton further notes, In many ways Literacy Studies grew out of a dissatisfaction with conceptions of reading and writing which were prevalent in education in all areas, from early childhood reading to adult literacy programmes: these were conceptions of reading and writing which were based on over-simplistic psychological models. The critique has been made from a range of disciplinary vantage points and in a range of ways. (2001, p. 93)5 From “dissatisfaction” and “over-simplistic models” to criticism from multiple disciplinary “vantage points” and “ways”: This is one of the principal paths to the development of areas of interdisciplinary study and interdisciplines . In fact, that path also gives rise to the unique set of programs, rooted in part in history, that constitute LiteracyStudies@OSU, for example, which I direct at the Ohio State University and introduce later. Not surprising, tensions between the principal disciplines and their contributions to an interdiscipline mark the dynamics of change and development . The most common and perhaps most notorious is the clash between the cognitive/psychological in psychology (and sometimes also in literature , history, linguistics, or philosophy) and social/contextual approaches in anthropology, sociology, linguistics, and history. These differences often parallel the conflicts between “strong” or “great divide” theories and practice /contextual understandings. More practical but no less important is the long struggle between departments of English and colleges of education over institutional “ownership” of literacy. These recognitions remind us that efforts at interdisciplinarity are inseparably part of the processes of disciplinary formation, maintenance, and shifts themselves, not a later or Epilogue 205 separate movement.6 As she moved from...