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My Identity Exploration: Christina U. King


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New Literacies and Its Use as a Form of Activism

Prior to reading these articles on digital and pop culture literacies (Haddix & Sealey-Ruiz, 2012), case studies of young immigrant children and their intersectional identity negotiation (Compton-Lilly et al., 2017), and new media narratives as connective identity texts (Wargo, 2017), I don't know that I really viewed student use of new literacies as a form of activism on the parts of the students and/or the teachers. However, when looking at the potential and power associated with the ability to pen or write one's own story - these new literacies have the potential to shift or refocus the power away from the teacher - as in a more traditional and teacher-lead space - to the student. This repositioning or shifting of power opens up many doors for those who are typically marginalized - African Americans, Blacks, Latinxs, LGBTQ youth, immigrants, etc. I like the term "emancipatory pedagogies" used by Haddix and Sealey-Ruiz (2012) which aptly describes new literaci...

Making Sense of New Literacies

When thinking of New Literacies Studies (Street, 2003), I am inclined to think of it as a critical social practice which asks the questions of : Whose literacies are dominant? Whose literacies are marginalized? and Whose literacies are resistant? Literacy then is not a technical or neutral skill as the autonomous model of literacy would suggest. Rather, literacy is closer akin to the ideological model of literacy which posits that it is a social practice that is always embedded in socially constructed epistemological principles (Street, 2003, p. 77). Within NLS there are literacy events and literacy practice that work upon a continuum of sorts, with a shift from observing literacy events to conceptualizing literacy practices (Street, 2003, p. 79). Street (2003, 1998), describes the shift as involving both "events" (Heath, 1982) and social models of literacy that participants bring to bear upon those events and that give meaning to them. Wohlwend (2009) provides us with th...
Making Sense of Figured Worlds and Identity How I am making sense of figured worlds After reading Holland et al. (1998) Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds, I find myself seeing the world of academia, of which I am currently immersed, as a figured world in the truest sense. According to the authors, "figured worlds rest upon people's abilities to form and be formed in collectively realized "as if" realms" (p. 49). Their question of "What if there were a world called academia, where books were so significant that people would sit for hours on end, away from friends and family, writing them?" really resonated with me.  Academia is a figured world, created by those who positioned themselves as more knowledgeable than others and therefore capable of researching, scrutinizing, criticizing, and then writing about others in comparison to themselves and those whom they esteem. Holland et al. (1998) talk about the figured world as "a socially a...