Literacies as Resistance

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Series editor: Judith Dunkerly-Bean, Old Dominion University and Julia Morris (Assistant to the Editor) Old Dominion University 

 

One of the most fundamental aspects of a democratic society is the right to protest and resist oppressive societal structures and regimes. However, we are now in a time where protest and resistance is met with a totalitarian gaze that only seeks to reinforce hegemony and the dehumanization and silencing of the marginalized.  Yet, for many this is not a time for retreat, but rather a moment of solidarity, a time to create new knowledge and understanding through struggle. As Freire wrote, “Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.” 

 

Thus, the purpose of this series is to provide literacy educators and researchers (broadly defined) with a space to actualize and embody a  restless, impatient continuing used here as a verb, to denote the never-finished objective of critical pedagogy/literacies. It is the aim of this series to share the stories of those engaged in literacies of resistance that move beyond academic discourses to a “force capable of enacting justice” as Freire envisioned. To that end, “Literacy as Resistance” seeks voices that question and upset the oppressive status quo  

through research with (not on) the marginalized. It seeks to promote a wide and fluid definition of “literacies” that moves beyond walking on words to grasping the soul of them. It is an opportunity for scholars, activists, teachers and students to learn of on-the-ground efforts to utilize literacy as a powerful tool of advocacy and societal change.