This Literacy Portfolio serves as a culmination of weeks worth of effort in scholarship. All of the following is held together by a common thread: literacy. While “literacy” is a hard term to peg down, hopefully the following works will serve as a means of making it clearer. See the artist statements below for a guide for the following pages.
I begin this project with “Emerging from the Cave: Literacy in Philosophy”, which serves as my own personal literacy narrative. In class we discussed, contrary to common knowledge, how literacy isn’t just confined to proficiency in reading and writing, but rather can be extended to all sorts of skills. I took this discussion to heart, and decided to discuss philosophic literacy in this piece. Philosophy is my second major (next to sociology) here at Ohio State, and I consider it to be one on my passions and foremost hobbies. “Emerging from the Cave” goes back to the beginning to tell the story of the event that got me started in this field in the first place: a seemingly random club meeting.
Next, I move on to an exploration of literacy throughout space in my “Literacy Map”. It continues on the work done in “Emerging from the Cave” by telling the story of my journey to philosophic proficiency as I traversed the major. The event in “Emerging from the Cave” even serves as one of the points on the map. What is a benefit of displaying this information spatially? Put simply, by making its campus the medium of communication, I can express my gratitude to this university for sponsoring my literacy.
I then turn from looking at my own literacy practices to those of others in “From Nonconformity to Contentment: An Analysis of Narratives from the DALN”. However, rather than just relating literacy practices and journeys, I explore common themes throughout this cohort of narratives. In this piece, look for how a certain action, like all actions, has both positive and negative effects. Explicitly, how generalizing a group of people simultaneously allows one to rebel against society, but also perpetuates harmful stereotypes.
After this project, I am tasked with conducting qualitative research revolving around literacy in black, immigrant, business owners in Columbus, Ohio. The Annotated Bibliography serves as a means of relating the background research I have conducted on this population. Unfortunately, I was not able to locate any sources on this particular population. However, I was able to find research on “black immigrants”, “black business owners”, and “black immigrants in Columbus”. If these are all pieced together, a picture of the target population is able to emerge. All of the sources are credible, as they are either peer-reviewed and located in an academic journal, or from a trustworthy newspaper. However, there are limitations to the authors’ conclusions, including interesting methodologies and limits in terms of generalizability, which are both discussed.