1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910819032203321

Autore

Fernandez Ramona <1947->

Titolo

Imagining literacy [[electronic resource] ] : rhizomes of knowledge in American culture and literature / / Ramona Fernandez

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Austin, : University of Texas Press, 2001

ISBN

0-292-79825-3

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (237 p.)

Disciplina

302.2/244

Soggetti

Literacy - United States

Educational anthropology - United States

Culture

Multicultural education - United States

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. [203]-212) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- Introduction TO READ OR NOT -- One THE SEMIOSIS OF LITERACY -- Two WHOSE ENCYCLOPEDIA? -- Three READING TRICKSTER WRITING -- Four DISNEY’S LABYRINTH: EPCOT, CAPITAL OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY -- Five THE SMITHSONIAN’S ENCYCLOPEDIA: MUSEUM AS CANON -- Conclusion IMAGINING LITERACY IN A MIXED CULTURE -- NOTES -- REFERENCES -- INDEX

Sommario/riassunto

Defining the "common knowledge" a "literate" person should possess has provoked intense debate ever since the publication of E. D. Hirsch's controversial book Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. Yet the basic concept of "common knowledge," Ramona Fernandez argues, is a Eurocentric model ill-suited to a society composed of many distinct cultures and many local knowledges. In this book, Fernandez decodes the ideological assumptions that underlie prevailing models of cultural literacy as she offers new ways of imagining and modeling mixed cultural and non-print literacies. In particular, she challenges the biases inherent in the "encyclopedias" of knowledge promulgated by E. D. Hirsch and others, by Disney World's EPCOT Center, and by the Smithsonian Institution. In contrast to these, she places the writings of Zora Neale Hurston, Maxine Hong Kingston,



Gloria Anzaldúa, and Leslie Marmon Silko, whose works model a cultural literacy that weaves connections across many local knowledges and many ways of knowing.