9.706 the idea of literacy

Humanist (mccarty@phoenix.Princeton.EDU)
Tue, 9 Apr 1996 22:03:41 -0400 (EDT)

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 9, No. 706.
Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities (Princeton/Rutgers)
Information at http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/

[1] From: Bornstein <georgeb@umich.edu> (35)
Subject: Re: 9.703 the idea of literacy?

Well, there's quite a bit on this. My first thought would be to see
if "literacy" is one of Raymond Williams' "keywords" in his book
"Keywords," and otherwise to look at his book "The Long Revolution,"
parts of which might be helpful. There's some good stuff on the
subject in relation to America by Cathy Davidson.
--Best wishes, George Bornstein

On Mon, 8 Apr 1996, Humanist wrote:

> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 9, No. 703.
> Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities (Princeton/Rutgers)
> Information at http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/
>
> [1] From: James O'Donnell <jod@ccat.sas.upenn.edu> (15)
> Subject: "literacy"
>
>
>
> For something I need to talk about shortly, I puzzle over the concept of
> "literacy". There is an abundant history of the ancient and medieval and
> early modern histories of literacy, but the specific word itself is first
> attested only in the year 1883 (OED) and several related words show a
> striking burst of energy in the early 1880s. This matches my sense that
> "literacy" as the object of discourse (a learning to read and write that
> may be widely disseminated) is more or less coterminous with our very
> modern concern with mass education, an educated citizenry, etc. When I
> rummage the library for studies of "literacy", however, I don't find this
> caesura described or respected: all the historical studies start with
> Cadmus and the Greeks and work their way forward. Can any enlightened
> Humanist point to a good study of the modern history of the *concept* of
> literacy?
>
> Jim O'Donnell
> Classics, U. of Penn
> jod@ccat.sas.upenn.edu