Author Archives: mkkeran

This week’s readings—most directly Du Gay and Pryke’s work—reflect on the question: Are culture and economy synonymous? I left these reading with the impression that, no, these words are not synonymous, but they are intricately related. This impression led me to the question: What is the role/place of literacy in culture, economy, cultural economies, andContinue reading “Week 11 Reading Response”

I have been using some of my newly acquired COVID-19-related-at-home-work time to catch up on reading many books my father-in-law—an entrepreneur, accountant, and consultant—has recommended over the years. These books fit the “guru-style” self-help books described by Gregg (“Executive” 53). Somewhat serendipitously, as I began these readings, I also began reading my father-in-law’s recommended TimothyContinue reading “Week 10 Reading Response”

I think I am not the target rhetorical audience of either Horner and Lu’s work or the work of Mike Rose. The intelligence and literacy skills involved in working class lives/blue collar jobs is nothing new to me, as like Rose, a large majority of my family members work in these types of careers as:Continue reading “Week 8 Reading Response”

In reading Evan Watkins’s Literacy Work in the Reign of Human Capital, the concept that most grabbed my attention was attention. In Chapter 3 “Star Power,” Watkins’s discusses the “attention market” describing an economic understanding of attention as “a primary and still underexploited resource” that can be capitalized on to secure profit (94). In manyContinue reading “Week 7 Reading Response”

This week’s readings offer a breadth of examples of how writing and literacy entangle in individuals economic lives and larger socio-political environments. Edwards’s piece, written largely in the form of a literature review, provides a thorough introduction to the ways in which literacy scholarship and economic scholarship have historically interacted. Lorimer Leonard tells the storiesContinue reading “Week 6 Reading Response”

In reflecting on Deborah Brandt’s The Rise of Writing: Redefining Mass Literacy, following both my reading of the text and participation in class discussion, the concept and critique of ghostwriting keeps running through my mind. Specifically, I have been considering the economic power dynamics at play within ghostwriter-represented party relationships. Brandt says that, in hiringContinue reading “Week 5 Reading Response Redo”

I would just like to preface this blog post with an apology. I accidentally read Deborah Brandt’s Literacy in American Lives instead of Brandt’s The Rise of Writing: Redefining Mass Literacy. I will post an updated reading response after completing the correct reading. However, I feel that Brandt’s text Literacy in American Lives also speaksContinue reading “Week 5 Reading Response”

Originally posted on MK's Literacy Blog:
In her “Introduction” and second chapter of Producing Good Citizens, Amy Wan offers a brief introduction to how literacy—though held up as an ideal tool in securing equality, liberation, security, and citizenship—has actually been used to reinforce hierarchical class and racial divisions in many circumstances. Wan’s “Introduction” specifically…

Through this course, I hope to have a better understanding of the connections between literacies and economies, and I hope that this knowledge will help shape the ways I teach literacy, as a concept, to my undergraduate students. Through reading and exploring the course texts, I would also like to gain knowledge about methodologies forContinue reading “Week 2 Continuing Introduction Activity”

In her “Introduction” and second chapter of Producing Good Citizens, Amy Wan offers a brief introduction to how literacy—though held up as an ideal tool in securing equality, liberation, security, and citizenship—has actually been used to reinforce hierarchical class and racial divisions in many circumstances. Wan’s “Introduction” specifically overviews how critiquing “literacy as a mechanismContinue reading “Week 2 Reading Response”