Heather M. Pleasants received her PhD in educational psychology with a specialization in language, literacy, and learning from Michigan State University. She is a past Spencer Dissertation Fellow and is a writer, ethnographer, and the Director for Community Education at the University of Alabama.
Dana E. Salter is completing her PhD in curriculum and instruction from McGill University and is the Community Outreach Specialist for the Alonzo A. Crim Center for Urban Educational Excellence at Georgia State University.
Contents: Lalitha Vasudevan: The Complicated Work of «Making the Familiar Strange» in Community-Based Literacies Research and Practice - Heather M. Pleasants/Dana E. Salter: Writing Oneself into the Story - Amy Hill: Digital Storytelling and the Politics of Doing Good: Exploring the Ethics of Bringing Personal Narratives into Public Spheres - Ed Lee/Liz Miller: Entry Point: Participatory Media-Making with Queer and Trans Refugees: Social Locations, Agendas and Thinking Structurally - Pip Hardy/Tony Sumner: Our Stories, Ourselves: Exploring Identities, Sharing Experiences and Building Relationships through Patient Voices - Diana J. Nucera/Jeanette Lee: I Transform Myself, I Transform the World Around Me - Jason Edward Lewis/Skawennati Fragnito: You Want to Do What with Doda's Stories? Building a Community for the Skins Workshops on Aboriginal Storytelling in Digital Media - Jesikah Maria Ross: Adventures in Community Media: Experiments, Findings, and Strategies for Change - Rob Simon/Jason Brennan/Sandro Bresba/Sara DeAngelis/Will Edwards/Helmi Jung/Anna Pisecny: The Teaching to Learn Project: Investigating Literacy through Intergenerational Inquiry - Josh Schachter/Julie Kasper: Finding Voice: Building Literacies and Communities Inside and Outside the Classroom - Ouida Washington/Derek Koen: Visions Beyond the Bricks: Reflections on Engaging Communities to Support Black Male Youth - Kofi Larweh/Jonathan Langdon: Seeing the Synergy in the Signals: Reflections on Weaving Projects into Social Movement Mobilizing through Community Radio.
Within community-based digital literacies work, a fundamental question remains unanswered: Where are the stories and reflections of the researchers, scholars, and community workers themselves? We have learned much about contexts, discourses, and the multimodal nature of meaning making in literacy and digital media experiences. However, we have learned very little about those who initiate, facilitate, and direct these community-based multiliteracies and digital media projects. In Community-Based Multiliteracies & Digital Media Projects: Questioning Assumptions and Exploring Realities, contributors discuss exemplary work in the field of community-based digital literacies, while providing an insightful and critical perspective on how we begin to write ourselves into the stories of our work. In doing so, the book makes a powerful contribution to digital literacies praxis and pedagogy - within and outside of community-based contexts.