Exploring and Expanding Literacy Histories of the United States

A Spotlight on Under-Recognized Histories

Samuel DeJulio, Leah Durán

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN:
  9781032458540
• eBook ISBN:
  9781040123072
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Education General
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Exploring and Expanding Literacy Histories of the United States brings together new scholarship and critical perspectives hitherto missing from dominant narratives to offer a racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse record of the history of American reading instruction. This book addresses the many important developments in the history of literacy in the United States that occurred outside of mainstream public education, in marginalized communities in and outside of traditional school contexts.

Instead of a "top-down" approach of prominent thinkers and theorists, the book intends to cover key blind spots, including literacy education in Indigenous nations, and how marginalized groups have fought for access to education, by applying a critical lens to the under-recognized histories of literacy.

This volume is essential reading for courses on History of Reading Education and Foundations of Literacy.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• 1 Introduction to Literacy Histories in the United States
• 2 Mesoamerican Literacies: Ancient Writing Systems and Contemporary Possibilities
• 3 “Reading, and, Possibly, Writing”: Revisiting the History of the Williamsburg Bray School in Eighteenth-Century Virginia
• 4 Hawaiians’ Phenomenal Rise to Literacy in the Early 19th Century: A Historical Elision
• 5 Uyaqum Igai, an Indigenous Yugtun Writing System: What Was and What Might Have Been
• 6 La Batalla por el Idioma: Literacy Education and Puerto Rico's Battle for Linguistic Self-Governance After the U.S. Occupation (1900–1949)
• 7 “Our Parents Believed that We Should Learn Spanish the Right Way”: Spanish Literacy as Resistance and Ideological Negotiation at Las Escuelitas
• 8 Sustaining the Struggle: Literacy Sponsorship, Voting Rights, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
• 9 Conclusion
• Index