Guest editor: Dana J. Wilber

Much of the work in literacy and digital technologies falls into the area of ‘new literacies’ (Lankshear and Knobel, 2006), a theoretical frame that defines literacies as new through tools and practices that previously did not exist. This special issue of Digital Culture & Education (DCE) seeks to reinvigorate and challenge approaches to the ‘new’ by drawing on existing and innovative models and approaches from outside of ‘new literacies’ to enrich this framework by focusing on the diverse roles digital literacy practices play in on and offline spaces (social networking, games, virtual worlds, etc.) as part of day-to-day public and private life. Specifically, the special issue seeks to expand the new literacies’ theoretical paradigm by asking:

• How might we expand the idea of new literacies through fine-grained examinations of specific literacy practices with particular tools or technologies, like social networking, digital games, and multimodal design through different frames?
• How can new perspectives, practices and/or theories (i.e. discourse analysis, feminism, Queer, gaming, literary theory, or post-structuralist) provide additional insights around the congruencies and/or tensions between literacies and digital technologies across institutional and non-institutional contexts?

The concern of Beyond new literacies is to highlight research that develops a theoretical dialogue between literacies and technologies, as more than ‘new’, through either applied research or theoretical intervention by:

• Making use of a wide variety of theoretical lenses to analyze and understand how literacies and literacy practices operate within virtual worlds or through specific digital tools.
• Analyzing the digital literacy and technology practices of users through a variety of methodological avenues (including discourse analysis, case study, oral history, experimental, mixed design, rhizoanalysis, etc.)
• Examining situated practices in everyday use, integrating issues of on and offline definitions and spatial distinctions

We encourage submissions from scholars, researchers, and practitioners from around the globe, working in areas such as literacy and education, gaming, new media, sociocultural studies of technologies, literary theory and technology, fan studies, adolescents and digital media, and media and identity. Submissions from research groups working in projects like video games research, digital storytelling, and mobile learning are encouraged.

Interested authors should send their manuscripts to Dana J. Wilber at wilberd@mail.montclair.edu or the editor of Digital Culture & Education at editor@digitalcultureandeducation.com by March 1, 2010.

Beyond ‘new’ literacies will be published in May 2010.

[...] Culture & Education (DCE) is now accepting submissions for a special May 2010 issue, Beyond ‘new’ literacies. Guest-edited by Dana J. Wilber, the issue will focus on the diverse roles digital literacy [...]