Navigation:
Video Segment 2: What were your parents' attitudes toward literacy and/or education?
Video Segment 3: How would your life be different if you didn't know how to read and write?
Video Segment 4: What is your experience with and attitude toward computers?
Lessons 1 & 2: Narrating Technology Use
Lesson 3: Technology Resistance
Lesson 4: Complexity of Technological Engagements
Working Definitions of Technological Literacy and Narrative Analysis
About this project:
This project focuses on four narratives of undergraduate women of color submitted to the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives (DALN) in the summer of 2008. The narratives in this exhibit are a subset of the narratives in the DALN, and are included in the DALN Collection, "Undergraduate Students of Color." All four young women were enrolled in OSU's Program for Arts and Humanities Development (PHD) Summer Institute, a program designed to mentor individuals from historically underrepresented groups who are interested in conducting research at the collegiate level. I chose these four narratives because their tellers focus on how personal literacy practices are both culturally and socially situated, and how such contexts also shape individuals use of and value on digital communication devices.
This exhibit asks the following questions:
My work in this exhibit builds on Peter Goggin's (2008) understanding that literacy practices should be “situated in terms of localized needs and uses, political ideologies, cultural identities and language uses, discursive practices, media technologies, and rhetorical praxis. They are also situated in terms of history, contemporary events, geographical location, material conditions, and social relevance” (p. 1). Digital composing practices, too, I argue, emerge from such social and cultural contexts.
Studying these narratives is also, in part, a response to Annette Powell’s 2007 call in Computers and Composition for further research that focuses on “actual practice in technologized contexts”; Powell articulates the hope that scholars can build “a template for African American technology use that is not based solely on deficit” (p. 33). Studying oral literacy narratives of technology use can help composition scholars/practitioners understand the technological values and practices of research participants. In this exhibit, I aim to minimize generalizations on the basis of race but focus on the elements of these narratives that resist the dominant narratives portraying minorities as uniform lacking access to technology.
Research with the DALN
The Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives is a particularly exciting archive for those interested in literacy practices. Although the DALN serves many purposes, it can be used in productive ways by Literacy Researchers and historians. Every contributor who adds their narrative to the DALN completes both a consent and release form. All contributors attach either a Creative Commons license to their narrative or assign the narrative to the DALN with a Deed of Gift. Within this exhibit I have included excerpts from the original and complete interviews of: Chanelle Mays, Viktoriya Kamara, Saffiyah Madraswala, and Anonymous Undergrad (I have used the pseudonym Anne Jacobs in this exhibit.) The full interviews are available for download at http://daln.osu.edu.
As readers navigate through the site, they will find excerpts from the original interviews. In each set of excerpts, the women answer the same question, which I have juxtaposed together on one screen, with my commentary. I have chosen to let the excerpts speak for themselves as much as possible within the constraints of the project, keeping in mind that these interviews are a singular representation of complex human beings with dynamic identities.
Before moving into the exhibit, readers should note the third column on this page titled "Navigating this Site." Readers will see a link in this position on all screens. Clicking the link once will provide additional information or analysis; clicking the link again will hide that information.
The Computers and Composition Digital Press is committed to making projects as accessible as possible for all readers. Readers who cannot access this project can request an alternative format by contacting Cynthia L. Selfe at selfe.2@osu.edu.
The exhibit contains links that require an internet connection to access material online. The video segments do take time to load; if readers are on a slow connection, they may want to read the transcript instead of watching the videos.
The central body of the exhibit contains brief video excerpts of the participants answering each of the interview questions. It is my hope that the juxtaposition of these responses may lead readers to some insights about their own literacy experiences and educational paths.
My own analysis of the excerpts, contained in the right-hand column of each screen, can be turned on or off. This design is meant to privilege the stories that these young women tell in their own words and to encourage the reader to fully engage with all four stories before moving to authorial commentary. My interpretation of these narratives is only one way to make meaning here. I encourage readers to interpret the stories I have selected in their own ways.
Once readers are finished with this page, they can use the left-hand navigation list to move on to the next page. Readers can click on any of the pages in the exhibit from any location.