Literacy, Play and Globalization by Medina, Carmen L.; Wohlwend, Karen E.;

Short description:

This book takes on current perspectives on children’s relationships to literacy, media, childhood, markets and transtionalism in converging global worlds. It introduces the idea of multi-sited imaginaries to explain how children’s media and literacy performances shape and are shaped by shared visions of communities that we collectively imagine, including play, media, gender, family, school, or cultural worlds. It draws upon elements of ethnographies of globalization, nexus analysis and performance theories to examine the convergences of such imaginaries across multiple sites: early childhood and elementary classrooms and communities in Puerto Rico and the Midwest United States. In this work we attempt to understand that the local moment of engagement within play, dramatic experiences, and literacies is not a given but is always emerging from and within the multiple localities children navigate and the histories, possibilities and challenges they bring to the creative moment.

Long description:

This book takes on current perspectives on children’s relationships to literacy, media, childhood, markets and transtionalism in converging global worlds. It introduces the idea of multi-sited imaginaries to explain how children’s media and literacy performances shape and are shaped by shared visions of communities that we collectively imagine, including play, media, gender, family, school, or cultural worlds. It draws upon elements of ethnographies of globalization, nexus analysis and performance theories to examine the convergences of such imaginaries across multiple sites: early childhood and elementary classrooms and communities in Puerto Rico and the Midwest United States. In this work we attempt to understand that the local moment of engagement within play, dramatic experiences, and literacies is not a given but is always emerging from and within the multiple localities children navigate and the histories, possibilities and challenges they bring to the creative moment.

'this is a book that gives you new ideas and turns your mind around each time you read it. Please read it over and over and expect new insights along the way. Readers who are interested in the concepts and theories the authors incorporate in their study are encouraged to read the original works to appreciate how these theories and concepts were being interpreted and connected in this book.'- Chen-chen Cheng, National Kaohsiung Normal University, Pedagogies, June 2015

"The subject of this book is important. The way that the global media affects children's concepts of the world needs the attention of educators since contemporary children are not only educated by their parents and teachers but by global film and television. Children’s play reflects this. Medina and Wohlwend (both, Indiana Univ.) also examine the interaction of the global and the local ... Summing Up: Recommended. Research faculty and professionals." - S. Sugarman, Vermont State Colleges, in CHOICE, January 2015

Table of Contents:

Part I: Literacy Research within Multisited Imaginaries and Converging Worlds  1. Global Networks, Cultural Production, and Literacy Practices  2. Understanding Multisited Imaginaries in Literacy Research  Part II: Mapping Multisited Imaginaries in Literacy Research 3. Mapping Global Markets in Local Communities: Studying Cultural Chapter Four: Cultural Production of Telenovelas Dramatic Worlds Carmen Liliana Medina with María del Rocío del Costa  5. Cultural Production of Disney Princess Play Worlds Karen E. Wohlwend  6. Convergences and Slippages in Children’s Improvisations and Teachers’ Pedagogical Imaginaries  Part III: Convergences in Collective Cultural Imaginaries  7. Participation, Scripting, and Embodiment in Children’s Collective Imaginaries  8. Globalization, Imagination, and the Possibilities of Agency  9. Literacy, Play, and Globalization in Teacher Education