Literacy Theories for the Digital Age

Digital and social media, multimedia, multimodality, and massive social and cultural changes in our global world are transforming what literacy is and how we ought to study it.  Kathy Mills’ book is, by far and away, the best guide yet to this new world.  It is the New 'New Literacy Studies'.

-- James Paul Gee, Arizona State University, USA

Literacy studies is moving on and Kathy Mills is helping us move forward, through new approaches, such as socio-spatial literacies, socio-material literacies, and sensory literacies. Many may be wary of all that technical language, but Mills signals her ability to make it comprehensible and leaves the reader with some control to, as the author says, take their own lines of flight. Enjoy the flight!

-- Brian V. Street, King’s College London, UK

Kathy A. Mills' work is truly impressive. The wealth of references contained within the volume makes certainly for a useful reading. But that is not the main asset of the book. What comes through as the strong point of Mills' work is that she has attempted to depict as large, comprehensive and complex a picture as possible of the multiple meanings that “literacy” may have in such a diverse global context as that of our planet in the 21st century.

-- Jose Ignacio Aguilar Río, Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3 University, France * LINGUIST List 27.3431 *

As literacy practices mutate in the digital era, research must evolve, and yet curricula still appear
to lag behind. Mills addresses her book to graduate students of education, so that they may gain a
vital introduction to some of the key theories that shape literacy education in the digital turn.

-- Sarah McMonagle, University of Hamburg, Germany * Journal Of Multilingual And Multicultural Development, 20