A Road Less Traveled

“If you want to understand the architecture of contemporary literacy studies, surveying Robert W. Blake’s impressive body of work is a wise way to begin. Over the course of a decades-long career, Dr. Blake helped build a foundation that would support the ‘language arts’ growing into a professionalized field of study informed by a multi-dimensional theoretical framework. Dr. Blake, a creative educator and prolific writer, helped introduce and popularize a wide-range of innovations and ideas that radically changed classrooms across the country. Through his work we can trace how our profession came to embrace ideas from many corners of the academy—linguistics, socio-linguistics, psychology, composition studies, response theory, literary studies, general curriculum and pedagogy—but always with the student at the center of his concern. I will happily replace my ‘course packet’ of articles surveying literacy studies over the decades with this thoughtfully curated collection from one of our truly great educators.”—Rob Linné, Professor and Director of English Education at Adelphi University