1st Edition
Rural Literacy Sponsorship Networks Piloting Mixed-Methods Mapping for Small Communities
This text provides an in-depth exploration of rural community literacy, examining the ways in which community-building, social networks, time, race, and politics interplay.
Mapping the dense literacy sponsorship network of a small rural town in the southeastern United States, Nichols offers a window into the challenges and successes of collective literacy sponsorship. Through an original mapping-focused approach, the book explores multiple social and environmental layers that construct literacy sponsorship writ large.
This approach provides a novel methodological entry to rural literacies and will be key reading for rural community literacy advocates, literacy scholars, graduate students, and researchers.Introduction: An Ecological Approach to Rural Literacies 1. Why Worry About the Rural, and What is “The Rural” Anyway? 2. Interlude on Researcher Positionality 3. Sketching A Literacy Sponsorship Network: Visualization as Method and Rhetorical Practice 4. Functional Ecologies: Collective Collaboration in Abbyville’s Literacy Sponsorship Network 5. Functional Ecologies: Collective Maintenance of Abbyville’s Literacy Sponsorship Network 6. Racial Barriers to Literacy Sponsorship Roles in Abbyville 7. Not Always What, but How: Study Ethics, Methods, and Methodologies 8. Conclusion: Futures for Researching Small Literacy Sponsorship Networks Appendix A - Interview Questions Appendix B – Interview-Based Codebook
Biography
Amy McCleese Nichols is the Director of Writing Resources and Associate Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Berea College.
