Organizations like the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the World Health Organization, and the World Bank highlight literacy as essential for tackling global issues like inequality and sustainability. The A.A. in Literacy Studies at BMCC is an interdisciplinary program where students explore how literacy shapes personal and social identities locally and globally. Students learn how institutions influence literacy practices and community development. Through critical thinking and practical skills, students analyze and apply their knowledge to real-world challenges, enhancing their voice and impact in academic and social settings.
Transfer Options
BMCC has an articulation agreement with The Center for Worker Education at City College of New York to allow students completing the A.A. program in Literacy Studies to transfer seamlessly into five concentrations of the Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences Baccalaureate major without the loss of credits. The five concentrations with which the Literacy Studies A.A. program is articulated are Americas; History, Politics, and Society; Literary, Visual, and Media Arts; Urban Studies and Public Administration; and Social Welfare.
Explore Careers
BMCC is committed to students’ long-term success and will help you explore professional opportunities. Undecided? No problem. The college offers Career Coach for salary and employment information, job postings and a self-discovery assessment to help students find their academic and career paths. Visit Career Express to make an appointment with a career advisor, search for jobs or sign-up for professional development activities with the Center for Career Development. Students can also visit the Office of Internships and Experiential Learning to gain real world experience in preparation for a four-year degree and beyond. These opportunities are available to help BMCC students build a foundation for future success.
Contact
- Timothy Leonard
Program Coordinator
tleonard@bmcc.cuny.edu
- Brian Kelley
Program Coordinator
bkelley@bmcc.cuny.edu
Related Communities
Requirements
Literacy Studies Academic Program Maps
Required Common Core
| English Composition | 6 |
| Mathematical and Quantitative Reasoning | 31 |
| Life and Physical Sciences | 31 |
| TOTAL REQUIRED COMMON CORE | 12 |
Flexible Core
| Creative Expression | 3 |
| Individual and Society | 31 |
| Scientific World | 61, 2 |
| U.S. Experience in Its Diversity | 3 |
| World Cultures and Global Issues | 3 |
| TOTAL FLEXIBLE COMMON CORE | 18 |
| TOTAL COMMON CORE | 30 |
Curriculum Requirements
3 CRS.
ACL 125
Introduction to the Study of Literacy: Interdisciplinary Perspectives
- In this course, students will examine how, in both “developed” and “developing” contexts, local, national, and global policies and institutions affect an individual’s socialization into and acquisition of literacy (e.g., in educational and social contexts). Specifically, students will examine how socialization into and acquisition of literacy relate to the civic participation and socioeconomic opportunities of members of marginalized and minority communities (e.g., communities organized around gender, class, colonial status, race/ethnicity/tribal affiliation, sexuality, and/or religious sect). Students will analyze, through intersectional and postcolonial lenses, how cultural conventions (e.g., norms, prejudices, hierarchies, and traditions) influence and are influenced by local, national, and global policies related to literacy practices and education (particularly as they relate to gender). Further, students will examine how, in an increasingly globalized and neocolonial world, conceptions of and access to literacies can affect a) the maintenance of cultural values and practices and b) an individual’s rights, agency, and mobility (particularly as these phenomena relate to gender). Emphasis will be on how literacy acquisition, civic participation, social justice, and socioeconomic opportunities relate to how gendered individuals are valued, perceived, and defined in various cultural contexts.
3 CRS.
Creative Inquiry Elective4
3 CRS.
Literary, Compositional, and Linguistic Inquiry Elective 1,5
3 CRS.
Cultural Studies Inquiry Elective 1,6
3 CRS.
General Studies Elective 1,7
Research Core
Choose 1 from the following8:
3 CRS.
ACL 300
Critical Local Literacies: Literacy Inquiry in the New York City Region
OR
- This course serves as an introduction to the discourses and rhetorics of (dis)ability(e.g., physical and/or mental), illness, violence, and trauma, as informed by the fields of (dis)ability and violence studies and crip theory. Students will interrogate how individuals construct, through language, notions of the body, particularly the (dis)abled, ill, and/or violated body. Further, students will investigate language related to the ways that individuals experience and/or internalize traumas related to the body. Specifically, students will critically analyze the discursive relationships between institutional power and identification, empowerment, and agency. Studying a broad range of texts and speech events, particular emphasis will be placed on the ways that individuals employ literacy and linguistic practices and events for purposes of healing.
Prerequisite: ENG 101 or departmental approval
OR
- Through this course, students will analyze how power manifests itself through language and how people use language to create, reproduce, or resist/defy power. By studying the relationship between language and capital, language and institutionalized oppression (e.g. racism, ethnocentrism), and language and activism, students will explore the relationship between language, inequity, domination, and resistance. Students will analyze, through applying Critical Discourse Analysis to language events related to politics, policy, media, and institutional interaction, the power and perceived value of certain dialects and languages (e.g., discrimination towards and ideologies about languages/dialects). Students will engage with relevant critical social and linguistic theories relating to power. Prerequisites: ENG 100.5 or ENG 101 or Any 100-level LIN course or Departmental Approval
Literacy Studies Program Electives
Choose 2 from the following9:
- This course asks students to investigate the varieties of literacy behaviors in American society as sociocultural phenomena. Students will be exposed to the research of major scholars in the interdisciplinary field of literacy research (e.g., New Literacy Studies) as a means of considering the role literacy and literacy behavior plays, both historically and in a contemporary context, in a diverse American society. Students will analyze the various definitions of literacy and track the development of multiple literacies in American society, specifically studying the transmission of literacy as a cultural value, particularly in oppressed communities. The course will provide the students with the opportunity to analyze and reflect on their personal relationship with literacy and opportunities for upward mobility in a stratified United States.
- Reflecting on activist texts and language events as part of the literacy traditions of democracy, students will examine, through critical literacy perspectives, how activism and activist practice are situated as literacy practices. Students will learn about the links between literacy and activism. Through frameworks like discourse and rhetorical analysis, students will critically analyze how identity and agency/empowerment are enacted in a broad range of activist texts and language events from across the globe. Specifically, students will analyze the varied ways that diverse activists with different perspectives employ a tradition of discursive and rhetorical strategies to create their movements in conversation with historic and contemporary texts/language events of social change.
- This course is designed to help students understand a) how diverse children and adolescents learn, acquire, and utilize literacy skills and engage in literacy practices in varied contexts and b) how to support children's literacy and development through culturally relevant practices. Students will analyze how cultural values affect beliefs about what it means to be literate in childhood and adolescence, and students will examine the relationship between cultural values, literacy practices, families, and communities. Students will practice meaningful strategies that will help them understand how to integrate literacy into family and community-based settings.
3 CRS.
ACL 201
Libraries, Archives, & Literacies
3 CRS.
ACL 205
Health Literacies
3 CRS.
ACL 215
Literacies & Incarceration
3 CRS.
ACL 225
Adult Literacy Practices
- Through this course, students will learn about diverse perspectives about language and literacy development, specifically atypical development, of children (birth through adolescence). Students will confront questions facing scholars regarding typical and atypical development as well as the nature of typical and atypical second and multiple language development. Specific attention will be paid to language disorders, language delays, dyslexia and developmental disorders related to language and literacy. Prerequisites: ENG 100.5 or ENG 101 or Departmental Approval
3 CRS.
ACL 275
Selected Topics in Literacy & Language Studies
Interdisciplinary Inquiry Elective1,2
Choose 1 from the following:
- This course will introduce students to linguistics, the scientific study of language. Students will apply methods of scientific inquiry (including the scientific method) to linguistic systems (phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic) and language phenomena and events. Specifically, students will engage in observation of linguistic phenomena, collection of data, generation and testing of hypotheses, analysis of and interpretations of data, application and evaluation of theory, in order to form conclusions about linguistic phenomena.
OR
- This course develops students' abilities to reason well about scientific claims, scientific research, and the nature, value, and limits of scientific inquiry. To reason well about scientific claims, students understand and apply central scientific concepts, such as experiment, explanation, cause, effect, correlation, random sampling, testability, prediction, verification, and falsification. In addition, students evaluate instances of reasoning with such concepts by evaluating arguments for and against scientific claims and assessing the significance of possible outcomes of experiments. To reason well about the nature, value, and limits of scientific inquiry, students are introduced to central issues in the philosophy of science, such as the demarcation between science and pseudo-science, the reliability of scientific research, and the (un)reasonableness of beliefs about claims, such as moral and other normative claims, that fall outside the scope of sciences.
30
Total Curriculum Credits
60
Total Program Credits
- For students interested in Speech Pathology & Audiology at Lehman, take MAT 150, BIO 111, SOC 100, PSY 100, LIN 101, LIN 130, and ACL 250. Advisor can substitute LIN 130 for elective option only for those students transferring to Lehman Speech Pathology & Audiology program.
- Student can fulfill required Interdisciplinary Inquiry Elective (either LIN 101: Introduction to Linguistics or CRT 150: Critical Thinking & Scientific Inquiry) through Scientific Worlds Pathways and take another advised elective to fulfill Interdisciplinary Inquiry requirement. If student fulfills LIN 101 or CRT 150 through Pathways, then in consultation with program advisor student selects at least three credits from between ACL 100, ACL 135, COM 100, CRT 100, CRT 120, CRT 125, CRT 196, CRT 200, CRT 245, CRT 275, CRT 300, CRT 350, EDU 202, ETH 100, ETH 125, GWS 100, LIN 100, LIN 150, LIN 300, URB 100.
- If student completes ACL 195 requirement for World Cultures & Global Issues Pathways, they can, with advisor approval, choose between ACL 100, 110, 120, 135, 150, 175, 200, 201, 205, 215, 225, 250, 275.
- In consultation with program advisor, student selects at least three credits from between ACL 100, AFN 101, AFN 102, ANI@, ART@, CHI 411, COM 245, EDU 203, EDU 204, ENG 116, ENG 311, ENG 315, ENG 321, ENG 322, FRN 204, FRN 462, ITL 204, ITL 205E, ITL 312E, LAT 125, LAT 141, LAT 235, MES@, MMA@, MMP@, MUS@, SPE 210, SPN 204, SPN 410, SPN 420, SPN 426, SPN 480, THE@, VAT@.
- In consultation with program advisor, student selects at least three credits from between AFN 321, AFN 322, AFN 338, ASN 339, CHI 440, COM 265, CRT 200, CRT 300, EDU 205, ENG 250, ENG 3@, FRN 265, FRN 260E, FRN 261E, FRN 400, FRN 430, FRN 435, FRN 440, FRN 446, FRN 460, FRN 461, LAT 233, LAT 237, LAT 238, LAT 239, LAT 338, ITL 260, ITL 265, ITL 330, LIN 200, LIN 201, LIN 210, LIN 240, LIN 250, LIN 300, SPE 210, SPN 370, SPN 371, SPN 400, SPN 425, SPN 430, SPN 435, SPN 440, SPN 445, SPN 450, SPN 460, SPN 461, SPN 472, SPN 485, TRS@.
- In consultation with program advisor, student selects at least three credits from between ACL 110, ACL 120, ACL 135, ACL 175, AFL 111, AFL 112, AFL 113, AFL 151, AFL 161, AFL 210, AFN 121, AFN 122, AFL 123, AFN 124, AFN 126, AFN 127, AFN 128, AFN 129, AFN 130, AFN 152, AFN 154, AFN 253, AFN 256,ANT 100, ASN 111, ASN 114, ASN 129, ASN 211, CHI 170E, CHI 203, COM 100, COM 150, COM 245, COM 265, CRJ 101, CRJ 101, CRJ 204, CRT 100, CRT 120, CRT 125, CRT 196, CRT 200, CRT 210, CRT 245, CRT 275, CRT 295, CRT 300, CRT 350, ECE 110, ECO 226, ECO 230, EDS 201, EDU 201, EDU 202, ETH 100,ETH 125, GEO 100, GWS 100, HED 190, HED 195, HED 220, HED 225, HED 275, HED 285, HIS 225, HIS 226, ITL 170E, LAT 125, LAT 127, LAT 128, LAT 130, LAT 131, LAT 140, LAT 150, LAT 151, LAT 152, LAT 200, LAT 234, LAT 236, LIN 100, LIN 125, LIN 140, LIN 150, LIN 200, LIN 201, LIN 210, LIN 240, LIN 250, LIN 300, MAR 100, PHI 100, PHI 120, POL 120, POL 220, POL 260, PSY@, SOC@, URB 100.
- Number of credits required determined by student’s selections for Mathematics and Life & Physical Sciences requirements of the Common Core and Scientific World Flexible Core.
- CRT 300 option only for students transferring to Literary, Visual, and Media Arts or History, Politics, and Society concentrations.
- For students transferring to Urban Studies & Public Administration concentration, students can only choose ACL 201, 205, or 275 (depending on topic); for students transferring to Social Welfare concentration, students can only choose ACL 201, 205, 215, 225, or 275 (depending on topic); students transferring to the Americas can choose between ACL 150, 201, 215, 225, or 275 (depending on topic); students transferring to Literary, Visual, and Media Arts concentration cannot take ACL 205 for transfer to program but may complete it as an elective option.
- Student can only take 1 between ACL 150, 175, or 200 to fulfill the program requirement; however, they are not required to take any of the three courses.
- If student chooses, they can complete ACL 150 and/or 200 for respective Pathways.
