“Literacy narratives are powerfully rhetorical linguistic accounts through which people fashion their lives; make sense of their world, indeed construct the realities in which they live. Literacy narratives are sometimes laden so richly with information that conventional academic tools and ways of discussing their power to shape identities; to persuade, and reveal, and discover, to create meaning and affiliations at home, in schools, communities, and workplaces, are inadequate to the task. For this reason, the collection focuses on the work of both narrative theorists and literacy educators.”

My first encounter with the discourse of literacy was in my education courses.  I loved the pedagogical conversations literacy raised and the interdisciplinary nature of it.  Literacy was not limited to ELA concerns, but across all subjects.  Being literate is a definition that changes in so many different contexts, and I think the Stories That Make Us perfectly demonstrated that fluidity and diversity.

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Katherine Hayles’ book, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Infomatics” was a fascinating read and deep dive into posthumanism, its implications, and the importance of the connection between science and literature in navigating our posthuman era.

To be honest, I never thought I would be able to define posthumanism or really understand what it entails, but Hayles’ piece was so engaging and reader-friendly that I was surprised by just how many connections I was able to make to my own experiences, literature, and media tackling these same issues of posthumanism.

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The creative diversity built into the very foundations of social media technology affords participants and users of all backgrounds and intentions to create a networked space, an extension of themselves.  Danah Michele Boyd extends the concept of “bedroom culture” to our creation of identity on social media platforms and profile creation.  Her chapter on “Writing Oneself into Being” intrigued me, as it appealed to all types of users and groupings.

She writes about the various uses and displays of MySpace that teens employed to give their imagined audiences their desired portrayal of themselves.  All of the featured adolescents rigidly adhered their profiles to a specific intention.  Some wanted to follow the trends of the “in-group” popular students by posting content relevant to those groups and updating frequently.  Others really only used it for its practical, communicative affordance to chat with their friends.  Some used it to document their interests or as a creative outlet/platform.  Regardless of what stance their profiles took, they all had an intended purpose, an imagined audience, and a set of restrictions and freedoms that worked in those contexts.

What fascinated me most about reading this article was the quick associations I was able to make from one group to the other.  Very quickly, examples of each of these types of behaviors popped into my head alerting me to people I know and how they use social media, and how I do as well.  I found myself rolling my eyes in some parts and agreeing with others, simply because even I was unconsciously searching for my place – my “in-group” – in the practices of identity creation through social media.  It was a very trippy experience sending me back to high school, where dare I say – I perfectly parroted what Cara, the sarcastic 20-year-old who eschewed the identity practices of the “popular people” lamented:

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My journey in education has only just begun, and the more pedagogical exploration I have, the more invigorated I feel for that future to come.  I see the classroom as a challenge for both the students and the teacher.  For the students, challenge helps them learn, grow, and take risks.  For a teacher, it does the same with the added benefit of fine-tuning instruction for a variety of learners and requirements.

When it comes to teaching, there is no “one way,” “right answer” approach.  Every day is an experiment in lesson planning and progression based on adaption to student learning.

The only requirement I think teaching really has is not giving up. Continue reading →

It is with no exaggeration that I am a born and bred classicist of literary theory and criticism, and by no stretch of the imagination an expert in the discourse of Digital Humanities and Rhetoric. In fact, most of what I attempted to digest from the readings are concepts completely foreign to me.

Way to date myself and then expect everyone reading this to believe I’m a part of this technology generation!

To say that I’m an anomaly in this fast-paced tech generation is an understatement, but grappling with these readings and struggling to determine how I could synthesize information so foreign to me returned me to my strengths. Instead of trying to pair my experiences with computers, phones, and the never-ending stream of social media, I returned to my roots: Dante. Continue reading →