GSLIS Assistant Professor Carol Tilley recently discussed the importance of inclusion in her teaching and research with Associate Professor Kathryn La Barre. Tilley’s remarks are part of a new interview series, Reflections on Inclusion, which explores the School’s efforts to respect varied perspectives and diversity of experiences.
Tilley teaches courses in youth services librarianship, media literacy, and comics. Her research focuses on the history of youth services librarianship; comics and other forms of children’s print culture; information inquiry and instruction in school libraries; information seeking and use; and media literacy.
I teach three somewhat different courses, each with their own unique content areas: Youth Services Librarianship (506), Media Literacy (515), and Comics: Advising Child and Adult (590CR). So it will be easier for me to talk about my approach to each course individually, but there are a couple of ways I approach my courses that have relevance for inclusion.
First, as an instructor, it’s important for me to build on organic opportunities for discussion in the classes I teach. In Youth Services Librarianship (506), for instance, all of my students have the perspective of having once been a child and teen, but many students also have paraprofessional experiences in schools and libraries—from all regions of the U.S. and sometimes from other countries, too—that inform what we do in classes.
Second, I’m a proponent of student choice in terms of assignments (and sometimes readings). I want students to select experiences and topics that are personally meaningful. For example, in Media Literacy and Youth (515), I encourage students to ‘play’ with media and technologies that are new to them. Consequently, students have played complex tabletop games for the first time, created video mashups, scripted interactive digital stories, learned how to engage in Twitter, tried making machinima, and more.
Youth Services Librarianship (506)
Description: Theory and techniques in planning, implementing, and evaluating library programs/services for youth (ages 0-18) in public and school libraries/media centers; the knowledge base, skills, and competencies needed by the library media professional in the development of all aspects of young people’s reading/viewing/listening and information literacy skills.
The idea of community and services for diverse communities permeates our discussions in this class. One of the big issues we discuss is socioeconomic differences, which are central to reading development, library service equity, and the new digital divide. We also address issues such as disability and race. For example, a wiki assignment in this class allows students to select areas of interest and develop content related to youth services librarianship. In previous semesters, my students have developed web pages about topics such as GBLTQ youth, multicultural literature, homeschoolers, disability issues, programming and reading for boys, and English-as-a-new-language (ENL) learners. Each topic is written from the standpoint of how it intersects with youth in libraries.
Students also complete an observation assignment in a library of their choice, which allows them to consider elements of service equities along with issues of collection and representation. For instance, they have observed age-related service inequities for teens in terms of proportional space for collection development and the quality and extent of access to computer resources in libraries. But these assignments also help students consider how libraries in communities provide services. For example, what does a rural library look like in terms of services to young people, or how does a school library in a largely immigrant area reflect the needs of its community?
Media Literacy for Youth (515)
Description: Provides students with theoretical knowledge and practical methods useful to librarians and other professionals working with young people and media. Building on traditional understandings of literacy, media literacy explores the consumption and production of diverse types of texts including print, images, games, and music. Topics for this course may include the role of race in media, media literacy as a catalyst for social change, and intellectual property issues related to media education.
This course includes readings, lectures, and discussion about issues related to race and ethnicity, socioeconomics, gender, and youth civic engagement, with an emphasis on different perspectives. For example, one of our doctoral candidates visited this term and talked with students about strategies for making computer coding (programming) more accessible to middle school girls and other young people.
Diversity and inclusion issues also emerge naturally through the course design. Students have a wide latitude of choices for their assignments through participant observation in settings of special interest, allowing them to gain hands-on experience working with young people, media, and technologies. Students also lead class discussions on topics of their choice, which have included representations of intellect on television, GLBTQ issues and video games, portrayals of teen sexuality in film, and hip-hop and spoken word performance.
Comics: Advising Child and Adult readers (590CR)
Comics—in forms including comic strips, comic books, graphic novels, webcomics, and manga—represent an important cultural medium, which appeals to persons of all ages and is collected by many school, public, and academic libraries. This course introduces students to the comics medium, its history, and its cultural influences. Students will read a variety of comics and learn about materials and techniques key to providing reader's advisory in this medium. Although this course focuses on American comics, some readings and discussions will touch on this medium’s international dimensions.
This is a genre-based class, but students can self-select readings within this framework from a collection of bibliographies. If students wanted to focus on Latino or GLBTQ comics, these selections would be perfectly in scope for the class. To a small degree, we are able to discuss a variety of perspectives, including women and African American cartoonists; international comics, such as Indian, South American, and African; and underground (alternative) comics, which often focus on non-heteronormative sexualities and non-mainstream cultural elements.