Table Of ContentLITERATE LIVES IN THE
INFORMATION AGE
Narratives of Literacy
From the United States
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LITERATE LIVES IN THE
INFORMATION AGE
Narratives of Literacy
From the United States
Cynthia L. Selfe
Michigan Technological University
Gail E. Hawisher
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS
2004 Mahwah, New Jersey London
Copyright © 2004 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in
any form, by photostat, microform, retrieval system, or any other
means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers
10 Industrial Avenue
Mahwah, New Jersey 07430
Cover design by Kathryn Houghtaling Lacey
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Literate Lives in the Information Age: Narratives of Literacy from the United States,
by Cynthia L. Selfe and Gail E. Hawisher
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN: 0-8058-4313-2 (cloth: alk. paper)—ISBN 0-8058-4314-0 (pbk : alk. paper).
Copyright information for this volume can be obtained by contacting
the Library of Congress.
Books published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates are printed on acid-free paper,
and their bindings are chosen for strength and durability.
Printed in the United States of America
1 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vi
Introduction: Literate Lives in the Information Age 1
Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe
1 Cultural Ecologies and the Literacies of Technology 31
Damon J. Davis, Gail E. Hawisher, Sally A. Osborne,
Cynthia L. Selfe, and Jill R. Van Warmer
2 Privileging—or Not—the Literacies of Technology 61
Paula Boyd, Gail E. Hawisher, Karen Lunsford,
Mary Sheridan-Rabideau, and Cynthia L. Selfe
3 Complicating Access: Gateways to the
Literacies of Technology 83
Cynthia L. Selfe, Gail E. Hawisher, Dean Woodbeck,
and Dennis Walikainen
4 Shaping Cultures: Prizing the Literacies of Technology 109
Gail E. Hawisher, Thomas A. Lugo, Melissa Pearson,
and Cynthia L. Selfe
vi CONTENTS
5 Those Who Share: Three Generations of Black Women 133
A. Nichole Brown, Gail E. Hawisher, and Cynthia L. Selfe
6 Inspiring Women: Social Movements and the
Literacies of Technology 161
Jane Parenti Blakelock, Jena Maddox Burges,
Gail E. Hawisher, Cynthia L. Selfe, and Janice R. Walker
7 The Future of Literacy 183
Danielle DeVoss, Gail E. Hawisher, Charles Jackson,
Joseph Johansen, Brittney Moraski, and Cynthia L. Selfe
Conclusion: Stories From the United States
in the Information Age 21
Cynthia L. Selfe and Gail E. Hawisher
Apendix 235
References 241
Author Index 251
Subject Index 25
Acknowledgments
During the more than six years that we have been working on this re-
search, we have met and talked with a great number of people from all
parts of the United States and abroad. All have contributed enormously to
our project in suggesting stories to us that we may have overlooked; in
giving alternate interpretations to the literacy narratives we have col-
lected; in recommending additional studies we had not read; and, some-
times, in confirming for us our analysis of how people have taken up and
incorporated the literacies of technology into their everyday lives. We
have been privileged to share our work with them and have learned a
great deal about research into literacy along the way.
Large-scale investigations of literacy, digital and print, are difficult to
undertake. They require time, money, labor—support of all kinds. There
are interviews to collect, digital recorders and computers to purchase,
transcriptions to type, graduate students to involve, interviews to analyze.
Each case study takes time to draft; to set in historical, cultural, and social
contexts; to share with co-authors and colleagues; to revise and re-think.
The stories in this book, in other words, are told only with the generosity
of many people, groups, and organizations.
We owe a great deal to Teresa Bertram, the project's transcription spe-
cialist, and to the graduate students who helped conduct some of the in-
terviews: Paula Boyd, Julie Estep, Nichole Brown, Joseph Johansen,
among them. Their work and ours could not have been undertaken with-
out the generous and longstanding support of colleagues and graduate
VII
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
students in the Center for Writing Studies and Department of English,
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; the Humanities Department at
Michigan Technological University; and the Department of English at
Clemson University. In addition, we owe thanks to the International Soci-
ety of Technical Communication and to the National Council of Teachers
of English. Both organizations supported this research project with grant
funding that allowed us to do work we consider important.
We are also indebted to those editors and researchers who have pub-
lished parts of our research in the pages of their journals and edited col-
lections: Rebecca Burnett, editor of the Journal of Business and Technical
Communication; Marilyn Cooper, editor of College Communication and
Composition; Don Daiker, Ed White, and Lynn Z. Bloom, editors of Com-
position Studies in the New Millennium; Nancy Barren, Nancy Grimm, and
Sibylle Gruber, editors of Taking on the Touchy Subjects of Race, Class, and
Ethnicity; and Beth Daniell and Peter Mortensen, editors of Women and
Literacy. Our research is the better for their insightful editorial sugges-
tions. Linda Bathgate and Eileen Meehan, our editors at Erlbaum, have
at all times lent their professional expertise to making sure that the book
on our research was every bit as good as the research that went into the
study itself.
We are extraordinarily grateful as well to those colleagues and depart-
ments who invited us to share our work on their campuses and who pro-
vided a forum for productive discussions. These include those at Temple
University; the American University of Cairo; University of Arizona; Uni-
versity of Oslo; University of Massachusetts, Amherst; University of Lou-
isville; University of Tokyo; Dakota State University; Rutgers University;
Pennsylvania State University; and Aristotle University, among them.
Special thanks also go out to our partners and family without whom it
is unlikely that any of this work would have been accomplished.
Gail E. Hawisher
Urbana, Illinois
Cynthia L. Selfe
Louisville, Kentucky
February 2004
INTRODUCTION
Literate Lives in the Information Age
Gail E. Hawisher
Cynthia L. Selfe
The increasing presence of personal computers in homes, workplaces,
communities, and schools has brought about dramatic changes in the
ways people across the world create and respond to information. In the
United States, for example, the ability to read, compose, and communicate
in computer environments—called variously technological, digital, or
1
electronic literacy —has acquired immense importance not only as a basic
J
We couple the concept of literacy with technology although recognizing the unease with
which some scholars view the proliferation of terms like visual literacy, digital literacy, media
literacy, and so forth. Anne Wysocki and Johndan Johnson-Eilola (1999), for example, argue
that "when we speak ... of [alphabetic] 'literacy' as though it were a basic, neutral,
contextless set of skills, the word keeps us hoping... that there could be an easy cure for eco-
nomic and social and political pain, that only a lack of literacy keeps people poor or op-
pressed" (p. 355). Increasingly, of course, this same kind of thinking is applied to online liter-
acy practices: If only we could teach everyone to be technologically literate and give all easy
access to computers, the world would rise above its poverty and ignorance. Gunther Kress
(2003) also suggests that literacy is an inappropriate word to link with terms not specifically
aimed at "[making] messages using letters as the means for recording that message" (p. 23).
For Kress, not only is the move imperialistic (many cultures don't use the concept of literacy,
and still others don't even use letters or an alphabet), but it's also confusing. According to
Kress, it allows us to conflate too simply the competencies required to make meaning in
multimodal contexts. As the title of our book attests, however, we endorse linking literacy
with words, such as technological, digital, electronic, as well as the all encompassing literacies
of technology. We believe that by naming these abilities literacies, we signal the enormous
importance they hold for functioning in today's literate world. James Gee (2003) would
seem to agree. By emphasizing "the idea of different sorts of multimodal literacy" (p. 14)
1
