Florida State Professor to Discuss Literacy in Movies About School
Posted on 2/25/2009
Shelbie Witte, an assistant professor of English education at Florida State University, will give a lecture at 6:30 p.m., Tuesday, March 10, on the University of Arkansas campus about "Representations of Literacy in Popular School Films."
The lecture in room 166 of the Graduate Education Building is free and open to the public.
Witte's research interests focus on multi-modal approaches to adolescent literacy learning, particularly at the middle level.
Witte is visiting the university for three days. Her lecture is co-sponsored by the Brown Chair in English Literacy held by David Jolliffe in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences and the Northwest Arkansas Writing Project directed by Chris Goering in the College of Education and Health Professions.
She will also be presenting information to students in the department of curriculum and instruction and to teachers involved in the Northwest Arkansas Writing Project. She is the co-coordinator of the National Writing Project's E-anthology E-team and the director of research for the Florida State University Writing Project.
In Witte's dissertation at Kansas State University, she analyzed key scenes from 15 films from the 1930s to the present that were set in a K-12 school, had a teacher as a central character, had a serious message, included at least one literary event and are available for rent in the United States. The study brought to light the potential impact of media and popular culture on education and literacy pedagogy.
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