Women and Literacy: Moving to Power and Participation
Women’s Studies Quarterly 32: 1 & 2 (Spring/Summer 2004)

Edited by Mev Miller with Ilene Alexander

In a geopolitical order dominated by information technologies, it is an alarming reality that more than half of the world’s women are illiterate. And over the last twenty-five years, the gender-gap in literacy--in print, technology, health, economics, and politics--has only grown. Here adult learners and practitioners from adult education and women’s studies raise significant questions about literacy and women, identity, and power. From prison education to refugee advocacy, contributors offer detailed analyses of how women's literacy affects their families and communities, and ultimately contributes to knowledge-production and social change.

Both U.S. and international perspectives are represented through essays, personal accounts, and poetry illuminating common frustrations and accomplishments shared by adult women learners and practitioners around the world. The contributors also reveal contradictions inherent in literacy programs as governmental pressures threaten women’s ability to experience their education as anything other than preparation for employment and as women’s need for appropriate, relevant learning materials continues to grow. Complete with an annotated bibliography of important resources, this comprehensive study of literacy education and women is as invaluable as it is timely.

MEV MILLER is the founder of WE LEARN (Women Expanding: Literacy Education Action Resource Network) and resource coordinator for the System of Adult Basic Education Support (SABES) in Fall River, Massachusetts. Her work with literacy includes facilitating book discussion groups for women in adult literacy programs and teaching citizenship classes for immigrant/ESOL students.

ILENE ALEXANDER is a lecturer in the composition program at the University of Minnesota and a teaching consultant in the university’s Center for Teaching and Learning Services.

LORNA RIVERA, co-chair of the WE LEARN Board, is also a contributor to this issue.

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Table of Contents

Editorial
Mev Miller

SECTION 1: LITERACY/LITERACIES: MEANINGS, THEORIES, AND PRACTICES
Literacy Practices: An Alternative Definition for Women-Focused Institutions, Pedagogy, and Research, Josie Lauritsen Lee
The Meanings of Literacy: A Participatory Action Research Project Involving Women with Disabilities, Heidi V. Silver-Pacuilla and Associates from the Women in Literacy Project
Literacy Groups in Ghana: Liberation with Limitation, Janice Windborne
Rethinking Adult Literacy Training: An Analysis through a Third World Feminist Perspective, Chizu Sato

SECTION 2: READING/WRITING: SURVIVAL, HEALTH, AND WELL BEING
Stories of Women, Words, and Well being: The Effect of Literacy on Women’s Health, Estela M. Kennen, Linda Martin, and Terry C. Davis
"My Way Out of This Life Is an Education", Jane Maher
Spaces of Possibility: The Place of Writing in Urban Drug Treatment, Kelley Evans
"But is it Education"? The Challenge of Creating Effective Learning for Survivors of Trauma, Jenny Horsman

SECTION 3: FUNCTIONS/FREEDOMS: WORK, WELFARE, & IDENTITY
Designing Women: Gender and Power in Welfare –to- Work Educational Programs, Jennifer A. Sandlin
"But I Have a Bigger Future than I Thought": The Voices of Student Parents after Welfare Reform, Melissa Blum
Multiple Literacies and Identities: The Experiences of Two Women Refugees, Doris Warriner
Learning Community: Popular Education and Homeless Women, Lorna Rivera

SECTION 4: LITERACY AS ILLUMINATED BY LITERATURE AND POETRY
Towards a New Learning System: A Freirean Reading of Sapphire’s Push, Laurie Stapleton
P.iled h.ip D.eep (poetry), Jeryl J. Prescott
Literacy at City Tech (Poetry), Hilary Sideris
Literacy Through Poetry: A Pilot project for Rural women in the Republic of Yemen, Najwa Adra
Sheherazad (Poetry), Areej Zufari
sleeping dreams (poetry), Rashida Lawrence
Things to Write With (prose), Devin Cook
Her Mother’s Quiet Houses ( Poetry), Heather Bouwman

SECTION 5: PEDAGOGICAL CONCERNS, RESOURCES, AND BOOK REVIEWS
Annotated Bibliography: Women and Literacy, Sandra Kerka and Susan Imel
Building Literacy into Courses: Syllabus & Pedagogical Considerations, Ilene D. Alexander (with sample syllabi by Jenny Horsman and Suzanne Smythe)
Joanne Larson's Literacy as Snake Oil: Beyond the Quick Fix, Ujwala Samant
Madeline Arnot's Reproducing Gender? Essay on Educational Theory and Feminist Politics, Jennifer Rothchild

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