Literacies: Reading, Writing, Interpretation

Literacies provides students with engaging selections on complex issues that resist easy answers.

This impressively diverse collection contains 44 selections from both academic and nonacademic sources. Coupled with thoughtfully crafted pedagogy, these readings ask students to examine the knowledge, experience, and assumptions they bring to their reading, to interpret the selections in conversation with other readings, and to respond in writing. With the Second Edition, the editors have strengthened the book’s emphasis on literacy as a theme, incorporated more cross-disciplinary selections, and enriched the apparatus. These revisions reflect the editors’ commitment to making Literacies the ideal choice for composition courses that emphasize academic discourse.

Terence Brunk is assistant professor of English and acting literature coordinator at Columbia College, Chicago, Illinois.


Suzanne Diamond is assistant professor and director of the writing center at Marietta College.


Priscilla Perkins is assistant professor of English and assistant director of the writing program at Roosevelt University.


Ken Smith is assistant professor of English and director of writing at Indiana University South Bend. Previously, he directed the course at Rutgers from which Literacies was developed.