The Centre Library

The Literacy Research Centre

Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G. et al. (1989). The empire writes back: Theory and practice in post-colonial literatures. New York: Routledge.

The experience of colonialization and the challenge of the post-colonial world have produced an explosion of new writing in English. This diverse and powerful body of literature has established a specific practice of post-colonial writing in cultures as various as Inida, Australia, the West Indies, Africa and Canada, and challenges the existing canon and dominant ideas of literature and culture. This comprehensive study opens up debates about the interrelationships of these literatures, investigates the powerful forces acting on language in the post-colonial texts, and shows how these texts constitute a radical critique of the assumptions underlying Eurocentric notions of literature and language. It is the first major theoretical account of a wide range of post-colonial texts and their relation to the larger issues of post-colonial culture. Bill Ashcroft is Lecturer in the Department of English, University of New South Wales. Garth Griffiths is Professor in the Department of English, University of Western Austratlia. Helen Tiffin is Associate Professor in the Department of English, University of Queensland.

Bakhtin, M. M., (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Here in English translation are four selections from Voprosy literatury i estetiki (Problems of literature and esthetics), published in Moscow in 1975. Bakhtin claims for the novel vastly larger territory than has been traditionally accepted. For him, the novel is not so much a genre as a force, "novelness." He examines the difficulty of arriving at a generic definition of the novel and attempts a classification of novelistic works based on the philosophic attitude toward time and space that each presumes. Finally, Bakhtin discusses literature and language in general, which he sees as stratified, constantly changing systems made up of subgenres, dialects, and almost infinitely fragmented "languages" in battle with one another.

Bakhtin, M. M., (1981). Speech genres & other late essays. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Speech Genres and Other Late Essays presents six short works from Bakhtin's Esthetics of Creative Discourse, published in the Soviet Union. All but one of these essays (the one on the Bildungsroman) were written in Bakhtin's later years and thus they bear the stamp of a thinker who has accumulated a huge storehouse of factual material, to which he has devoted a lifetime of analysis, reflection, and reconsideration. Vern McGee, who holds a Ph.D. in comparatative literature, is a professional translator. Michael Holquist is professor of comparative literature at Yale University. He is author, which Katerina Clark, of the definitive biography of Mikhail Bakhtin. Caryl Emerson is professor Slavic languages at Princeton University.

Bantock, N., (2000). The artful dodger: Images & reflections. Vancouver: Raincoast Books.

Internationally acclaimed for this Griffin & Sabine trilogy, Nick Bantock now brings new meaning to the art of autobiograph. Funny, idiosyncratic, and full of insight into the creative process, The Artful Dodger: Images & Reflections is a behind-the-scenes view of Bantock's lifework—interweaving his reminiscences with hundreds of artworks. Showcasing the vast and varied artistic territory Bantock has been exploring since long before his proverbial overnight success, The Artful Dodger surveys his work from English art school days to the present. Encompassing early sci-fi paperback covers to abstract paintings, children's books to his recent collages, The Artful Dodger is as rich in life as it is in art, revealing the creative range of a master of his craft.

Basso, K. H. (1966). Wisdom sits in places: Landscape and language among the Western Appache.Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press.

Bergman, B. (2001) The kids are all right. Maclean's.114: 42-48.

Brandt, D. (2001). Literacy in American lives. New York, Cambridge University Press.

Literacy in American Lives traces the changing conditions of literacy learning as they were felt in the lives of ordinary Americans born between 1895 and 1985. The book demonstrates what sharply rising standards for literacy have meant to successive generations of Americans and how - as students, workers, parents, and citizens - they have responded to rapid changes in the meaning and methods of literacy learning in their society. Drawing on more than 80 life histories of Americans from all walks of life, the book addresses critical questions facing public education of the twenty-first century: How does rapid economic restructuring affect the ways that individuals acquire reading and writing? How do families pass the skills of reading and writing on to children under conditions of relentless social and technological change? What is the role of economic change in maintaining inequality in access and reward for literacy? What is the human impact of the nation's growing reliance on the literacy skills of workers? Using extended case studies, this book gets beyond the usual laments about the crisis in literacy to offer an often surprizing look into the ways that literacy is lived in America.

Campbell, R., (Ed.). (1998). Facilitating preschool literacy. Newark: International Reading Association.

Facilitating Preschool Literacy addresses three important themes in the literacy learning of preschool children: 1. Children are active constructors of their own learning. 2. Families provide invaluable support in the early litercy learning of children. 3. Preschool settings should reflect the literacy learning that occurs in many homes and should provide opportunities for children to further develop their literacy. Accepting these views has a profound influence on the way early-years educators provide learning opportunities for the children in their care. The contributors to this volume—representing Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and including both university educators and preschool teachers—present ways to provide for, support, and guide children as they gain a greater understanding of reading and writing. The first part of this book considers the notion of children constucting literacy, the second part looks as literacy in the context of the home and family, and the third part focuses more directly on literacy learning in preschool settings. The chapters discuss the role of the parent or caregiver in supporting a child's literacy development, then explain how the preschool educator can build on and continue to link with the home literacy provision.

Doolittle, L., & Flynn, A. (Eds.). (2000). Dancing bodies, living histories: New writings about dance and culture.Banff: Banff Centre Press.

du Gay, P.,( Ed.). (1997). Production of culture/cultures of production. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

Culture is big business. Examining cultural goods and services, the cultural industries, and the cultural aspects of organization and work, this innovative text offers a novel understanding of relations between the economic and the cultural. The book shows how cultural products are produced, marketed and sold in an increasingly global economy. Individual chapters examine the emergence of truly global cultural products and the strategies of global cultural players such as Sony. They analyse how culture is circulated through the activities of the cultural intermediaries of design, marketing and advertising, and explore cultural production in practice through an examination of the contemporary fashion industry. The book also looks as why culture has become a crucial concern in business and organizations, and how the construction of particular corporate cultures has implications for the construction of identities which blur the boundaries between work and leisure.

du Gay, P., Hall, S., et al. (1997). Doing cultural studies: The story of the Sony walkman. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

In recent years 'culture' has become a central concern across a wide range of disciplines. This book introduces the main substantive and theoretical strands of this 'turn to culture' through the medium of a particular case study: that of the Sony Walkman. Using the example of the Walkman, this book indicates how and why cultural practices and institutions have come to play such an important role in our lives, and introduces some of the central ideas, concepts and methods of analysis involved in conducting cultural studies. The authors identify five major cultural processes—Representation, Identity, Production, Consumption and Regulation—which together constitute a sort of 'cultural circuit' that can be used to structure the study of any cultural text or artefact. It is this cultural circuit which is used here to analyse the Walkman as a cultural object. This unique book offers not only an introduction to key issues and debates in contemporary cultural studies but also a practical illustration of how cultural studies can be used to make sense of our everyday lives.

Flecha, R. (2000). Sharing words: theory and practice of dialogic learning. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

"...provides a unique example of the theory and practice of dialogic learning. By mixing educational and social theory with literature, life narratives, and personal accounts, Flecha creatively narrates the practice of dialogic learning in a seemingly utopian reality: a literary circle in which low-literacy adults enjoy reading books by authors like Kafka, Dostoyevsky, and Garcîa Lorca. The book highlights both theory and practice; it is both expository and narrative; and it refers as much to educational and social science works as to classical literature. In this way, Sharing Words may be an example of a new way of writing about educational theory and practice, one that results in a captivating and enjoyable experience that invites the reader to share and comment with colleagues, students, and friends." —Harvard Educational Review.

Goldberg, N. (2000). Thunder and Lightning: Cracking open the writer's craft. Toronto: Bantam Books.

Drawing on her own experience as a writer and a student of Zen, Natalie shows you how to develop a structure or plot that preserves all the off, kinky turns of your one-of-a-kind mind and captures the completely authentic way you see the world. She tells you how to "get out of the way" and let your characters take on their own life She shows you how to create a field big enought to allow your wild mind to wander—and then gently direct its tremendous energy into whatever you want to write. Here, too, is invaluable advice on how to overcome writer's block, how to deal with the fear of criticism and rejection, how to get the most from writing workshops and working with an editor, and how to learn from reading accomplished authors. With a generous helping of humor and compassion, she recounts her own mistakes on the way to publication—and how you can avoid the most common pitfalls of the beginning writer. And through it all there is a deep celebration of writing itself—not just as the means to an end, but as a path to living a deeper, more fully alive life.

Hammond, W. D., Raphael, T. E. (Eds.). (1999). Early literacy instruction for the new millennium. Grand Rapids: Michigan Reading Association.

The issues related to effective beginning reading instruction have always been controversial, and the advice that appears in newspapers, magazines, and research journals is often confusing and contradictory. Nonetheless, early reading achievements is increasingly being named as a top priority in venues ranging from national policy areans to local school districts. There exists a need for an information source that will consolidate and summarize the existing research, making it accessible to parents, teachers, administrators, and others concerned with our children's reading success. In this contentious climate, we also need examples of effective collaborations between individuals and institutions working toward successful literacy instruction. Early Literacy Instruction for he New Millennium is an attempt to meet these needs. It is the result of a joint effort of seven literacy educators who are committed to the improvement of children's literacy skills, and who represent a numer of Michigan organizations and institutions that have a long history of successful collaboration. The contributors take on a wide range of issues confronting literacy education at the close of the twentieth century.

Illich, I. (1993). In the vineyard of the text: A commentary to Hugh's didascalicon. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

In a work with profound implications for the electronic age, Ivan Illich explores how revolutions in technology affect the way we understand and read the text. Beginning with an extended reflection on the Didascalicon of Hugh of St. Victor, Illich celebrates the culture of the book from the twelfth century to the present. Hugh's work, at once an encyclopedia and guide to the art of reading, reveals a twelfth-century revolution in book making as sweeping as that brought about by the invention of the printing press and equal in magnitude only to the changes of the computer age—the transition from reading as a vocal, group activity performed in the monastery to reading as a predominantly silent activity performed by and for individuals.

Jardine, D. W. (2000). Under the tough old stars: Ecopeedagogical essays. Brandon: The Foundation for Educational Renewal.

"UNDER THE TOUGH OLD STARS" is relevant to those involved in any aspect of education, especially in these ecologically troubled times and times of deep, systemic problems in our schools. The essays in this book demonstrate that classroom curricula often present teachers and students with fragmented, isolated, and ultimately meaningless bits and pieces, in accord with an old logic of fragmentation that infests Western culture as a whole and schools in particular. These essays suggest that ordinary classroom events hide often overlooked intimate relationships, and show how these relationships can be richly and pleasurably interpretable. Schools can be places where we can meet our shared and contested ancestors and ancestries face to face, in ways that are whole, healthy, and ecologically sane and sustainable."—Bill Doll, Louisiana State University.

Livesey, R. C. (1999). The Corage to teach: A guide for reflection and renewal. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Paublishers.

The Courage to Teach, writes Parker J. Palmer, is a book "for teachers who have good days and bad, and whose bad bays bring the suffering that comes only from something one loves. It is for teachers who refuse to harden their hearts because they love learners, learning and the teaching life." This Guide for Reflection and Renewal is intended for teachers of the same description. Designed to support both solitary reflection and group dialogue, the Guide offers a variety of approaches to "exploring the innter landscapte of a teacher's life."

Mackay, H., (Ed.). (1997). Consumption and everyday life. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

Reviewing key contemporary issues and debates about consumption, this book portrays and assesses the varied and complex intersections of consumption and everyday life.Each contributor shows how cultural consumption involves a range of active, creative and critical practices. The rich and idiosyncrastic nature of local consumption practices is illustrated through case studies from different parts of the world. Through such examples the contributors show the varying balance between constraint and creativity, the links between consumption and production, and the patterns which shape access to symbolic and material resources. Consumption takes place in the context of everyday lives, which take place in space; questions of place and identity, the privatization of the home, and the linking of local everyday practices with broader, global processes are explored. Particular attention is given to the media and new communication technologies as points of overlap and exchange between the local and the global, between domestic consumption and the public sphere. The book is written in an accessible style, and each chapter includes questions and activities for students, and selected readings. The book will be of interest to students and lecturers across a range of disciplines including sociology, anthropology, communication, cultural and media studies and geography.

Mairs, N. (1994). Voice lessons on becoming a (woman) writer. Boston, Beacon Press.

Major, K. (2000). Eh? to zed. Calgary: Red Deer Press

From Arctic, Bonhomme and Imax to kayak, Ogopogo and zed, Eh? to Zed takes both children and adults on an alphabetic, fun-filled tour of Canada. Set in tightly linked rhyming verse, the words for this unique book resonate with classic and contemporary images from every province and territory in the country. Included are place names from Cavendish to Yarmouth and icons that evoke Canada's regions, cultures, discoveries and heritage. Accompanying the inventive text is a visual feast from the colourful palette of well-known illustrator Alan Daniel, who provides a witty mixture of folk art paintings, toys and models that leap from the page with a whimsical energy.

Mitchell, C., Weber, S. (1999). Reinventing ourselves as teachers beyond nostalgia. Philadelphia, PA: Falmer Press.

This book extends an invitation to preservice and practising teachers to examine professional identity. Using practical examples from workshops and daily life, each chapter focuses on specific aspects of the teaching self, and explores a particular approach to self-study: photography, written memoirs, movies and self-video. Illustrative material is drawn from all levels—from kindergarten to high school and university—to illuminate issues and questions fundamental to teachers' lives. Much of the work involves tapping the creative power of images, memory work, and nostalgia in unexpected or unconventional ways; the emphasis is on reflective, inventive, even playful action. The reader is led on a path of personal exploration that moves between the private and public, the personal and social, and between individual and collective change. Not only does the book suggest ways to investigate, reinterpret and reinvent teacher identity and practice as part of professional development, it points to the ways that studying ourselves as a form of research can contribute to a body of knowledge about teaching, learning, and adult identity.

Neilsen, A. R., (Ed.). (1999). Daily Meaning: Counternarratives of teachers' work. Mill Bay: Bendall Books.

Neilsen, L., Cole, A. L. et al. (Eds.). (2001). The art of writing inquiry. Halifax, Nova Scotia: Backalong Books.

A rich collection of arts-informed writing as inquiry and inquiry into writing: essays, reflections, fiction, poetry and plays at the leading edge of contemporary scholaristry.

The Art of Writing Inquiry is the first in a series of works by scholars whose research is variously informed by the arts. The scholarship presented in this and subsequent volumes represents alternatives to research processes and representational forms found in conventional social science research.

Pennycook, A. (1998). English and the discourses of colonialism. New York, NY, Routledge.

English and the Discourses of Colonialism opens with the British departure from Hong Kong marking the end of British colonialism. Yet Alastair Pennycook argues that this dramatic exit masks the crucial issue that the traces left by colonialism run deep. This challenging and provocative book looks particularly at English, English language teaching, and colonialism. It reveals how the practice of colonialism permeated the cultures and discourses of both the colonial and colonized nations, the effects of which are still evident today. Rather than accepting the current popular view that English has become a neutral language of global communication, Pennycook argues that it remains a language to which colonial discourses still adhere, a language still laden with colonial meanings. The sources drawn on are diverse: from colonial documents from India, Malaysia and Hong Kong to travel writing; from popular books on English to students' writing; from personal experiences to newspaper articles. Pennycook concludes by appealing to postcolonial writing to create a politics of opposition and dislodge the discourses of colonialism from English.

Readence, J. E. and D. M. Barone, Eds. (2000). Reading Research Quarterly. A Journal of the International Reading Association. Newark, International Reading Association.

Reinking, D., M. C. McKenna, et al., Eds. (1998). Literacy and technology: Transformations in a post-typographic world. Mahwah, New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (2000). Linguistic genocide in education - or worldwide diversity and human rights? Mahwah, New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

In this powerful multidisciplinary new book, Tove Skutnabb-Kangas shows how most indigenous and minority education contribues to linguistic genocide according to United Nations definitions. Her starting point is that it is normal and desirable for people, groups, countries, and schools to be multilingual and multicultural. She brings together theoretical concerns and research areas that no other contemporary book synthesizes: linguistic human rights; minority and multilingual education, language ecology and threatened languages; the relationship between biodiversity and linguistic and cultural diversity; the impact of linguistic imperialism and unequal power relations on ethnicity, linguistic, and cultural competence, and identities. Theory is combined with a wealth of factual encyclopedic information and with many examples and vignettes. The examples come from all parts of the world and try to avoid Eurocentrism. Oriented toward theory and practice, facts and evaluations, reflection and action, the book prompts readers to find information about the world and their local contexts to reflect, and to act. It is essential reading for scholars, students, and practitioners in the fields of language and society, language policy and language planning, the sociology of education, critical pedagogy, comparative education, educational linguistics, minority studies, cultural studies, human righs, ethnolinguistics, anthropology, and ecological issues.

Thompson, K., Ed. (1997). Media and Cultural Regulation. Thousand Oaks, Sage Publications.

This text outlines the ways in which contemporary trends—political, social and economic—give rise to public debates about policies concerned with culture. How far can culture be regulated through formal controls on the media, and how are such controls shaped and contested in an age of cultural diversity and global cultural industries?

The book covers a range of key debates about the politics and regulation of culture in general, and of the media as a key site of contemporary cultural practice. A range of theoretical issues are explored in questions of the public sphere and the politics of leisure. Three key arenas of contested regulation, posing very different issues of the formation and regulation of culture and media are discussed: sexuality poses issues of control of representations, and of pornography and censorship. Globalization raises questions of national identity and cultural imperialism. Multiculturalism challenges existing models of cultural identity and citizenship. Through these three central cases, major contests around the public defining of culture, identity and difference are clarified. Balanced and accessible, the book deals with some of the most contentious aspects of contemporary cultural change. Incorporating questions, activities and selected readings, it will be invaluable to students and lecturers as a resource for understanding the 'culture wars' which occur ever more frequently in the 'global village'.

Wells, D. (2001). The David Suzuki interview. Trek, the Magazine of the University of British Columbia. 15: 19-20.

On the occasion of being named a co-recipient of the UBC Alumni Association's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000, David Suzuki reveals some surprising details about his motivation and reflects on his career and his future aspirations in an exclusive interview with Trek contributor Don Wells.

Wepner, S. B., W. J. Valmont, et al., Eds. (2000). Linking literacy and technology: A guide for K-8 classrooms. Newark, International Reading Association.

Willis, G. and W. H. Schubert, Eds. (2000). Reflections from the heart of educational inquiry: Understanding curriculum and teaching through the arts. Troy, NY, Educator's International Press, Inc.

This unique book discusses and illustrates the way the arts have influenced curriculum inquiry and the teaching and learning process. It is divided into two parts. The first part focuses on aesthetic, epistemological, ethical, ontological, and political explanations of the influence of the arts on curriculum. The second part offers personal accounts by well-known scholars who have been influenced by works of art and have translated those influences into their classroom curricula and teaching.

Woodward, K., Ed. (1997). Identity and Difference. Thousand Oaks, Sage Publications.

Identity crisis, identity politics, national identities, diaspora identities, sexual identities—in recent years identity and difference have been the focus of key debates in cultural studies. This book explores the challenge of these debates and makes accessible some of the vocabulary and concepts which are being developed to investigate them. The authors consider some of the most exciting and controversial issues in cultural studies across a range of different areas, following an introduction to the key questions and themes which run through the book and which make questions of identity so important in the contemporary world, at global, local and prsonal levels. The debates are explored in relation to the body, eating disorders, health and disease, sexuality, motherhood, 'race' and ethnicity.

Wright, R. (2001). Hip and trivial. Toronto, Canadian Scholars' Press Inc.

In Hip and Trivial, historian Robert Wright challenges the pervasive stereotype of young Canadians as addicts of televisual media who are fundamentally alienated from print culture. Variously identified as "slackers," "whiners" and, of course, "Gen-Xers"—a term that now signifies a dizzying array of intellectual, emotional and social defects—Canadians who came of age in the late 1980s and the 1990s live in a social-cultural space circumscribed by two stereotypes. On the one hand, they are believed to be violent, apathetic, depoliticized, suicidal, deviant, criminals—in a word, alien. On the other, they are commonly thought to be the products of the hyper-commercialization of youth culture in the age of "cool hunting," Tommy Hilfiger and designer consumerism. Arguing that the stigmatization of youth as illiterate and culturally ignorant is an element in a more generalized assault upon youth culture under neo-conservatism, Wright assess what it means to be young, powerless, and downwardly mobile in contemporary Canada, and to occupy marginalized cultural spaces. Hip and Trivial examines the rise of "CanLit" and "KidLit" since the 1970's, and the more recent emergence of a powerful consensus among Canadians that reading ought to be an essential component of family life. Young people in Canada have been extremely well served by the nation's "culture of literacy" as it has taken shape over the last thirty years. Youth today do not read less, or less voraciously, than do their elders. Wright argues, however, that the historic linkages between youth, reading and citizenship, so characteristic of the literary nationalism of the baby boomers, is no longer valid for their offspring. However much it may mystify the keepers of the canon, young Canadians live in a post-modern, globalized world of seemingly infinite cultural choice where reading has largely ceased to be a patriotic act. Robert Wright teaches history at Trent University in Peterborough, Canada