Shirley Brice Heath is Professor at Large with Brown University’s Departments of Education and Anthropology, a visiting research professor at the Watson Institute for International Studies, and Margery Bailey Professor of English and Dramatic Literature and Professor of Linguistics and Anthropology at Stanford University.  Her many honors and awards include a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, the Grawemeyer Award in Education, the AERA Distinguished Educator Award, and the NCTE James Squire Award.  Her publications include the prize-winning book Ways with Words: Language, Life, and Work in Communities and Classrooms (1983), and Identity and Inner-city Youth: Beyond Ethnicity and Gender (1993), and ArtShow 2 Grow (2000), the prize-winning documentary she directed.  Professor Heath’s current talk follows the families presented in her classic volume Ways with Words and their adaptation of time, space, play and work to the internet. While individuals engage with literacy more than ever, the “more” does not come without some unintended consequences.  This talk will take us rapidly over three decades of watching literacy grow and lead us to debate whether or not, in this case, the adage “Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it” could apply.

~Refreshments following~