CRITICAL MEDIA LITERACY: TEACHING THE WORD AND THE WORLD
Ell.2S7S.001 (Spring 2012)
Department of Teaching and Learning
Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development
New York University
Time:
Tuesday 6:45-8:25
Location:
Instrnctor:
Dr. Myrrh Domingo
Office:
Email:
[email protected]
Phone:
Office: Honrs: Tuesdays 4-6 pm and by appointment
Waverly, 567
Pless Hall, 781
212.998.5862
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course will introduce students to critical theories and pedagogies for teaching media texts in
secondary classrooms. It focuses on interactions among word/world and social/symbolic associations
that play out in everyday lives within digital and physical contexts. Students will understand critical
literacy practices useful for analyzing the media texts that saturate them, and textual practices that
employ multiple media to compose transformative content that raises multiple and complex awareness
critical of a variety of social injustices. The course will address the following questions: What are media
Iiteracies? Why are they important to the teaching and learning of language and literacy in postmodern
society?
Conrse Objectives
By the end of the course, students will develop (or begin developing):
I. A critical awareness of social tensions as presented in media related to language, culture, and
power;
2. An appreciation of multiple varieties of media that fill urban and global contexts;
3. Critical approaches to teaching media, teaching about media, teaching through media;
4. A multiliteracies approach for exploring, investigating, understanding, and shaping pedagogies
around media and media literacy locations;
5. An awareness of issues of equity and justice in critical media education.
Course Texts
Require course texts will be available via Blackboard.
Suggested text: Alvermann, D. (Ed.). (20 I 0). Adolescents' Online Literacies: Connecting Classrooms,
Digital Media, and Popular Culture. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.
Strategies for Active Reading: As you study and think about the course readings, please keep in mind
that there are various ways to read a text. You can apply certain analytic frames to illuminate issues and
themes within texts. For example, you can read a text from a feminist perspective, making sense of it
with respect to how the relationship between gender and power permeates the text's meaning. There are
other orientations to reading that, for this class, you should adopt. I describe these "ways of reading" as
reading prepositions. These include the following:
• Reading within the text: You should read all texts for meaning and comprehension, attempting
first to understand the author's central arguments and the ways in which she attempts to achieve
them.
• Reading around the text: You should read all texts sensitive to the contexts in which they were