CAPAL16 Productive Interpretations: Encouraging Patron Agency through Cultural Criticism

Productive Interpretations

Encouraging Patron Agency through Cultural Criticism

Ryan P. Randall, College of Western Idaho

@foureyedsoul

If you'd like to follow along, load this in your browser: https://www.ryanpatrickrandall.com/talks/capal16.html

Hello!

Map showing relationship of Boise and Calgary on map

Overview

Cultural studies on agency & cultural criticism
Traditional LIS accounts of patron agency
Examples of how to encourage agency

Cultural Studies & Agency

Cover of Grossberg's Bringing It All Back Home

"Capitol Crawl" for the ADA

Protestors climbing U.S. Capitol building steps as a protest in favor of passing the ADA

1990 protest for Americans with Disabilities Act

Washrooms

Gender Neutral Bathroom sign

"Culture"

Raymond Williams cover
Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society

Culture as practices not just elite connoisseurship

Cultural Criticism

cover of Reading the Romance

Janice Radway, Reading the Romance and reader response criticism focusing on how readers use texts

Critiques of Library Discourse around Agency

John Buschman, Libraries, Classrooms, and the Interests of Democracy
Wayne Wiegand, "To Reposition a Research Agenda"
Henry Giroux, "Schooling and the Culture of Positivism"

Examples of Using Cultural Criticism

Vivian Harsh, director of Bronzeville library in Chicago:

Conversations with poets like Langston Hughes
Readers' discussion forums (more than book clubs)
Speakers from range of political parties
Collecting African artwork & material culture

Laura Burt's "Vivian Harsh, Adult Education, and the Library's Role as Community Center"

Pedagogical orientation

Problem-posing rather than banking model
Signage that presents a theme rather than a set
Investing in & displaying material collection with an eye to its pedagogical potential

Works Cited

Burt, Laura. "Vivian Harsh, Adult Education, and the Library's Role as Community Center." Libraries & the Cultural Record vol. 44, no. 2, 2009, pp. 234-55.
Buschman, John. Libraries, Classrooms, and the Interests of Democracy: Marking the Limits of Neoliberalism. The Scarecrow P, 2012.
Giroux, Henry. "Schooling and the Culture of Positivism: Notes on the End of History." 1979. On Critical Pedagogy. Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011, pp. 19-47.

Works Cited, cont.

Grossberg, Lawrence. Bringing It All Back Home: Essays on Cultural Studies. Duke UP, 1997.
Radway, Janice A. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. U of North Carolina P, 1984.
Wiegand, Wayne. "To Reposition a Research Agenda: What American Studies Can Teach the LIS Community about the Library in the Life of the User." The Library Quarterly, vol. 73, no. 4, 2003. pp. 369-82.
Williams, Raymond. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Oxford UP, 1976.