Unit One
Foundations of Literacy and Identity

In this unit:

We will read widely across foundational and contemporary research into literacy and the brain. We’ll focus heavily on two of our course texts (Maryanne Wolfe’s Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, and Alice Flaherty’s The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer’s Block, and the Creative Brain), plus a range of peer-reviewed research articles and online resources. We’ll also build our own model brains and synapses using play dough and toothpicks (or whatever equivalent works for you), to help get a better sense of where literacy is taking place in our brains.

By the unit’s end, you should be able to:

• explain to a non-classmate peer the basics of how literacy affects an individual brain

• name and physically point to places in the (model) brain that connect to literacy activities

• articulate potential gaps in the existing research on writing & cognition, in the context of currently published work

Synthesis/Reflection Essay Assignment

Essay Grading Rubric