Literacy & Justice Through Photography

Wendy Ewald, Katherine Hyde, and Lisa Lord share their perspectives as an artist, a sociologist, and a teacher to build on students’ own ideas and experiences in integrating four Literacy Through Photography projects—American Alphabets, The Best Part of Me, Black Self/White Self, and Memories from Past Centuries—into the curricula. Using the backdrop of contemporary culture and the politics of urban schools, the book presents creative and engaging portraits, detailed project descriptions and lesson plans, and reflections and resources to promote critical thinking, self-expression, and respect in the classroom while also addressing the standards across various disciplines and grade levels.

“We believe that a primary reason for doing these projects is that they provide students the chance to explore—with honesty, creativity, and critical thinking—important social, personal, and political topics that otherwise are easily avoided in the classroom. . . . Whether looking at the body, identity, race, culture, and/or language . . . Literacy Through Photography, as a philosophy and practice, is about students learning to read and write by doing, by creating their own works of art (rather than studying someone else’s) that combine words and images to express an idea and to tell a story.”
—Wendy Ewald, Katherine Hyde, and Lisa Lord, from their introduction