The faculty in the Language, Literacy, and Culture (LLC) cluster investigate language and literacy practices in relation to sociocultural, historical, technological, and ideological formations. In their research and teaching, our faculty members represent interdisciplinary areas of study across the humanities, social sciences, and education. They expand beyond traditional disciplinary divisions, in theory and methods, to nurture collaborative and participatory approaches at the intersection of research and action. Our faculty and students conduct research in local and international contexts and study language and literacy in a wide range of institutional and informal settings, including classrooms, homes, healthcare centers, community organizations, and online environments. As a scholarly community, they advocate for cultural and linguistic diversity in research, practice, and policy, with special emphasis on access, equity, and innovation in education. Their vision of language, literacy, and culture affirms language and literacy education as crucially important to social justice and participatory democracy.
Key Intellectual Areas
LLC joins the study of literacy and the study of language in sociocultural context. The cluster is grounded in semiotic, sociocultural, and sociocritical approaches to language and literacy. Across its strands, the cluster emphasizes several shared intellectual commitments. We study language and literacy as social practices situated within broader ecologies of learning, including schools, homes, communities, and digital platforms. We recognize the transformative effects of the digital revolution on communication and literacy practices, as well as the importance of multimodal forms of meaning-making. At the same time, we approach language and literacy scholarship with a strong commitment to equity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging, recognizing the ethical and political dimensions of educational research.
The cluster prepares students to engage key debates across several related fields of inquiry:
- Reading and literacy development, including tensions between cognitive and sociocultural perspectives on how readers engage with texts and how reading should be taught in schools.
- Writing and composition studies, where skills-based models of writing instruction coexist with perspectives that understand writing as a sociocultural and rhetorical practice.
- Language acquisition, bilingualism, and translanguaging, including debates about language ideologies, language policy, and the educational experiences of multilingual learners.
Methodologically, LLC scholarship is characterized by strong expertise in qualitative and interpretive research traditions, including ethnographic research, discourse and interaction analysis, multimodal analysis, design-based research, and community-engaged research. Through this training, students develop analytic sensibilities that allow them to examine language and literacy as dynamic practices shaped by historical, social, and political processes.
Student Learning and Experience
Opportunities for teaching experience are also central to the program, with doctoral students serving as graduate student instructors in classes such as EDUC 140, EDUC 154, and developing their pedagogical skills through mentorship and practice.
Through these intellectual and professional experiences, the LLC cluster prepares scholars who will contribute to research communities in literacy studies, writing and composition, reading, language education, and translanguaging.