English Ph.D. Dissertations

Title

Post-Literacy: Designing Writing Curricula around Emerging Literate Activities

Date of Award

2013

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Department

English (Rhetoric and Writing) PhD

First Advisor

Kristine Blair (Committee Chair)

Second Advisor

Lee Nickoson (Committee Member)

Third Advisor

Sue Carter Wood (Committee Member)

Fourth Advisor

Lan Li (Committee Member)

Abstract

My project, titled Post-Literacy: Designing Writing Curricula around Emerging Literate Activities, focuses on the integration of digital and multimodal literacies in first-year writing curricula. This dissertation situates itself among other scholarship in new literacies, such as the work of Gee, Selfe and Hawisher. Particularly focusing on digital and multimodal literacies, I utilize Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to analyze how digital and multimodal literacies emerge in one first-year writing curriculum. By using ANT, it is my goal to identify the curricular and institutional structures that limit and facilitate the emergence of multimodal writing. Based on this research, I trace literacy as network and give specific recommendations on how to best use and incorporate digital and multimodal literacies in college writing curricula.

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