My Life With Literacy : The Continuing Education of a Historian

Calling My Life With Literacy a “new intersectionality,” Harvey J. Graff explores both overarching and underlying patterns that connected his development and lived experience from childhood to and through his retirement from the academy. He considers the inextricable interconnections of personal experiences and relationships; the political, broadly defined to include life-shaping contexts and historical events, influences, values, commitments, and experiences; the social, intellectual, and political dimensions of academics and scholarship—a life of learning and using literacy and literacies; and the circumstances of living in six major cities and studying and then teaching in five universities. Graff’s pioneering scholarship in the history of literacy and literacy studies provides both the frame and the foundation for his work in the history of children and youth; the history of cities; higher education past, present, and future; and interdisciplinarity itself.

Harvey J. Graff is Professor Emeritus of English and History, inaugural Ohio Eminent Scholar in Literacy Studies, and Academy Professor at The Ohio State University. Recognized internationally for his work on literacy studies and education, children and youth, urban studies, and interdisciplinarity, his publications include numerous articles and chapters in edited collections as well as the books The Literacy Myth, The Legacies of Literacy, Conflicting Paths: Growing Up in America, The Dallas Myth, Undisciplining Knowledge: Interdisciplinarity in the Twentieth Century, and Searching for Literacy.