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Guest Speaker Lesley Bartlett Presents Her Research on the Cultural Politics of Literacy in Brazil

Lesley Bartlett.
On Thursday, January 29, Lesley Bartlett gave a lecture previewing her forthcoming book, The Word and the World: The Cultural Politics of Literacy in Brazil. Bartlett's lecture first addressed how non-governmental organization educators in Brazil construe educational philosopher Paulo Freire's ideas about literacy and translate them into classroom practice. She then presented highlights from her own ethnographic study of literacy in public schools and nongovernmental organizations in the Brazilian cities Rio de Janeiro and Joao Pessoa, before ending with a discussion how adult students' perceptions of the meaning, purpose, and effect of literacy programs impact the learning process. Adult Brazilian students-especially women students-often identify schooling as the primary contributing factor in expanding their social networks, according to Bartlett. The resulting economic benefits from these expanded social networks can be directly linked to the students' cultural understandings of literacy.

At the conclusion of her lecture, Bartlett entertained questions from the audience concerning the relationship of her work to Freirean ideology, teacher-student dichotomies, and pedagogical concerns. In the informal "Coffee and Conversation" session that preceded her lecture, Bartlett shared information about her current research project, which focuses on people of Haitian descent in the Dominican Republic, a study that examines how the category of race shifts as it travels through different geopolitical and institutional realms.

The second invited speaker in OSU's Annual Lecture in Literacy Studies series, Bartlett has been a faculty member of the Department of International and Transcultural Studies at Teachers College, Columbia University since 2002. She is affiliated with the Programs in Comparative and International Education and International Educational Development, as well as the Program in Anthropology and Education. Her research includes ethnographic studies of communication, multilingual literacies, popular education, race and class inequality, and schooling across the Americas.

To learn more about LiteracyStudies@OSU, please visit http://literacystudies.osu.edu/.
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