| Definition: In literary theory, a text is any object that can be “read”, whether this object is a work of literature, a street sign, an arrangement of buildings on a city block, or styles of clothing. (Wikipedia) | Characteristics: - Can be read - contains some kind of meaning, especially socio-cultural meaning |
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| Examples: - Clothing - The Bible - Photographs - This digital garden | Non-Examples: - Are there any? |
As a college educated history teacher, I am used to the process of working with historical texts. In Foundations of History, I discovered a passion for understanding where ideas come from. My passion stemmed in part from a deep desire to make sense of my right wing evangelical undergraduate institution. Following the citations became an integral part of my undergraduate research for class and outside of class.
Implicitly and explicitly, I learned that some texts are more reliable than others for making sense of a particular topic. Through taking sociology courses I also started to see how the network of ideas that was accessible through higher education emphasized certain text authors over others based on their social power.
Today, in an attempt to disrupt capitalist hegemony, I might ask myself, what kinds of texts are valued in the history classroom?
I use identity texts to refer to youth-space texts inscribing ethnic, linguistic, local, and transnational affiliations on clothing, binders, backpacks, public spaces, rap lyrics, and electronic media. These texts were bound together by three factors: they indexed identities as members of particular groups, they were unsolicited literacy acts not officially evaluated by school, and all youth at South Vista participated in creating them. — Texting Identities: Lessons for Classrooms from Multiethnic Youth Space by Django Paris
Significant texts in youth spaces that are ignored or devalued by the “scriptural economy” are the signifiers youth use to demonstrate their identities through the things they use everyday.