#7. A Bibliography of Scholarship About Literacy Narratives

Apropos to my post about literacy narratives this morning, I was looking through my files and found a bibliography of scholarship about literacy narratives that I compiled during my first quarter (Fall 2024) at UC Davis. I mentioned that my next post would involve a new and improved literacy narrative, and while that is definitely still coming, I thought I would share this bibliography with the Internet in hope that it may be useful to someone someday. 

While by no means comprehensive, this 28-source bibliography offers a solid sense of the directions that research on the literacy narrative genre has taken. Keep in mind that the bibliography does not consider sources that may have been published since the fall of 2024. Looking at the publication dates of the different articles, one can see that interest in the literacy narrative seems to have peaked around the early 2010s, though a steady stream of articles have been published continuing into the 2020s. See the histogram below: 

I used Claude to generate this histogram.

The bibliography provided below is separated into two sections. Using Stephen North's (1987) classic framework surrounding "lore," the sources in the first section offer more experiential and essayistic perspectives on the literacy narrative, whereas the sources in the second section showcase studies that utilize research methodologies. 

Lore-Oriented Sources

Berry, P. W. (2014). Doing time with literacy narratives. Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Culture, and Composition, 14(1), 137–160. https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-2348938

Brandt, D. (2015). A commentary on literacy narratives as sponsors of literacy. Curriculum Inquiry, 45(3), 330–333. https://doi.org/10.1080/03626784.2015.1031057

Brown, T. (2018). Literacy narrative: Ways to write #MeToo. Composition Studies, 46(2), 189–191.

Carlo, R. (2016). Countering institutional success stories: Outlaw emotions in the literacy narrative. Composition Forum, 34.

Corkery, C. (2005). Literacy narratives and confidence building in the writing classroom. Journal of Basic Writing, 24(1), 48–67. https://doi.org/10.37514/JBW-J.2005.24.1.04

Detmering, R., & Johnson, A. M. (2012). "Research papers have always seemed very daunting": Information literacy narratives and the student research experience. portal: Libraries and the Academy, 12(1), 5-22. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/pla.2012.0004

Eldred, J. C., & Mortensen, P. (2023). Returning to literacy narratives. College English, 85(6), 471–497. https://doi.org/10.58680/ce202332617

Hall, A. M., & Minnix, C. (2012). Beyond the bridge metaphor: Rethinking the place of the literacy narrative in the basic writing curriculum. Journal of Basic Writing, 31(2), 57–82. https://doi.org/10.37514/JBW-J.2012.31.2.04

Hope, K., Alford, K., & Chatham-Vazquez, R. (2022). Multimodal memoirs re-envisioning literacy narratives. English Journal, 111(6), 45-51.

Inayatulla, S. (2013). Beyond the dark closet: Reconsidering literacy narratives as performative artifacts. Journal of Basic Writing, 32(2), 5–27. https://doi.org/10.37514/JBW-J.2013.32.2.02

Kirtley, S. (2012). Rendering technology visible: The technological literacy narrative. Computers and Composition, 29(3), 191–204. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2012.06.003

Lawrence, A. M. (2015). Literacy narratives as sponsors of literacy: Past contributions and new directions for literacy-sponsorship research. Curriculum Inquiry, 45(3), 304–329. https://doi.org/10.1080/03626784.2015.1031058

Lindquist, J., & Halbritter, B. (2019). Documenting and discovering learning: Reimagining the work of the literacy narrative. College Composition and Communication, 70(3), 413–445. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26772575

Rutten, K. (2011). Academic discourse and literacy narratives as “equipment for living.” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, 13(4). https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.1880

Soliday, M. (1994). Translating self and difference through literacy narratives. College English, 56(5), 511–526. https://doi.org/10.2307/378604

Wittman, K. (2016). Literacy narratives in the margins. College Composition and Communication, 67(4), 678–685. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44783552

Young, M. (2004). Minor re/visions: Asian American literacy narratives as a rhetoric of citizenship. Southern Illinois University Press.

Research-Oriented Sources

Alexander, K. P. (2011). Successes, victims, and prodigies: ``Master’’ and ``little’’ cultural narratives in the literacy narrative genre. College Composition and Communication, 62(4), 608–633. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23006908

Alexander, K. P. (2015). From story to analysis: Reflection and uptake in the literacy narrative Assignment. Composition Studies, 43(2), 43–71.

Alexander, K. P. (2023). Reconceptualizing literacy: Experimentation and play in audio literacy narratives. Computers and Composition, 69, 102790. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2023.102790

Angu, P. E. (2019). Understanding voices from the margins: social injustice and agency in first-year students’ literacy narratives. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 43(8), 1152–1162. https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877X.2018.1458977

Bryson, K. (2012). The literacy myth in the digital archive of literacy narratives. Computers and Composition, 29(3), 254–268. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2012.06.001

Comer, K. B., & Harker, M. (2015). The pedagogy of the digital archive of literacy narratives: A survey. Computers and Composition, 35, 65–85. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2015.01.001

Ching, K. L., & Ching, C. C. (2012). Past is prologue: Teachers composing narratives about digital literacy. Computers and Composition, 29(3), 205–220. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2012.05.001

Ciuffetelli Parker, D. (2010). Writing and becoming [a teacher]: Teacher candidates’ literacy narratives over four years. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26(6), 1249–1260. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2010.03.002

Cohn, J. (2016). “Devilish smartphones” and the “stone-cold” internet: Implications of the technology addiction trope in college student digital literacy narratives. Computers and Composition, 42, 80–94. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2016.08.008

Finn, H. B. (2017). Linking the past to the present: Using literacy narratives to raise ESL students' awareness about reading and writing relationships. Teaching English in the Two-Year College, 44(3), 276-288.

Ruecker, T. (2012). Exploring the digital divide on the U.S.-Mexico border through literacy narratives. Computers and Composition, 29(3), 239–253. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2012.06.002