LITERACY
ON ITS FEET: CRITICAL ARTS LITERACY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
A
CRITICAL ARTS LITERACY LAB
University of
Minnesota faculty in Literacy Education, Youth Studies, and Theatre Arts,
are working in partnership with teachers, artists, and students to create
a focus on critical arts literacy and social justice. Together, we have
created a critical arts literacy lab that we call “Literacy On Its
Feet: Critical Arts Literacy and Social Justice.”
This Lab is not an official space or place, but a conceptual framework
that has a curricular component for University of Minnesota students and
faculty, and a community component that involves faculty and students
working with K-12 teachers, arts organizations and community groups. The
curricular component includes courses that focus on understanding the
social, historical, political, and economic dimensions of all texts. Students
reading the texts are encouraged to ask what perspective the texts advance
and whose interests the texts serve. The ability to question assumptions
and discern the relationship between language and power is very important
to such critical analysis. Arts-based responses to texts, combined with
discussion and writing, provide students with the opportunity to understand
texts through body, experience, imagination, observation, interpretation,
and analysis. The community component of Literacy On Its Feet will focus
on getting these ideas and methods in circulation– particularly
with/for K-12 classroom teachers and community educators. We envision
the exchange between classroom, community, and public schools as a circuit
rather than a service, with teaching and learning taking place in multiple
directions.
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