Using the Dickens Bicentenary to Connect Media Literacy and Literature

[Peter Gutierrez]

"...there’s an unfortunate tendency to view media literacy education as running counter to a humanistic appreciation of the arts, which includes literature; on the contrary, authors who achieve long-lasting fame and admiration represent an easy—dare I say fun?—way to incorporate media lit objectives into core curriculum.

In fact, this is already done to some extent—it’s just not done explicitly. When we talk about the audience and purpose for a given text, when we discuss adaptations into other media, when lit textbooks provide biographical nuggets as well as discussion questions geared to them, when we have students view various literary movements through a historical/cultural lens…  all these avenues and activities don’t detract from a study of the “content” but enrich it. They simply provide added context. And that means more opportunities to exercise critical thinking skills about both the texts under consideration, and, more broadly, about how literature lives and dies as part of a “media environment.”

With this in mind, and as a supplement to whatever you’ve already been doing to celebrate the Dickens Bicentenary, here are some central questions to open things up a bit. Again, this approach doesn’t mean ignoring textual elements such as “timeless themes” that help an author’s work appeal to audiences across wide expanses of time and geography… but additionally looking at other forces that could be at work."

More at bit.ly/H8d8XJ

Thanks--!

[Ryan Goble]

Hey Peter you might also cross-post (aka copy and paste) this bad boy into the Brit Lit (sans Shakespeare) if you feel like it. Also, I'll try and showcase your new blog and the excerpts here on a Blog and Cog Monday! Ry:)

[Peter Gutierrez]

Thanks, good idea -- but I'm not in the Brit Lit group.

Also, did you do the Blog & Cog and I missed it? Sorry...

If not, let's talk off-thread about this. I'd love to showcase, in turn, all the great work that MC POP members are doing... :)