Making Space for Youth-Produced Digital Texts as Remedy in a Time of “Crisis”: Inviting in Joy and Artistic Flourishing

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Amidst contemporary educational and political debates about youth’s use of digital tools, this symposium presents more joyful and playful possibilities for young people’s critical engagement with digital texts. This panel brings together scholars and educators across the field of literacy studies, whose work reaches across theories, methods, and research contexts. Offering a counter-narrative to prevailing technopanics, the convening scholars reframe youth’s digital practices as a potential asset in learning spaces. Panelists explore what can happen when educators disrupt the boundary between “in school” and “out of school” by inviting young people’s digital play and composition into the classroom. Widening definitions of what “counts” as literacy, presenters acknowledge young people’s expertise as inventors, activists, and creators in a postdigital age.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Writing and Literacies

Chair

• Mary Elizabeth Talian, University of Pennsylvania

Papers

• Out-of-School Writing Community as Remedy: Learning from Youth’s Digital Texts - Mary Elizabeth Talian, University of Pennsylvania; Jennifer Freed, University of Pennsylvania; Clara Abbott, University of Pennsylvania; Julia Adler, University of Pennsylvania; Amy Stornaiuolo, University of Pennsylvania

• Behind the Lens: Reimagining Creativity in Schools through Intergenerational Filmmaking - Jennifer Freed, University of Pennsylvania; Diana Lalata, University of Pennsylvania; Yining Lei, University of Pennsylvania; Jessica Sass, University of Pennsylvania

• Curatorial Play as Digital Literacy Praxis: Building a Youth-Led Digital Magazine - Clara Abbott, University of Pennsylvania; Sunny Ajitabh, Rutgers University

• “How do we change imaginations?”: Engaging Race-bent Fanart as a Tool for Widening Literary Imaginaries - Karis Michelle Jones, Baylor University; Scott Storm, University at Albany - SUNY

Discussant

• Glynda A. Hull, University of California, Berkeley