Abstract
The history of literacy, as a regular, formal, significant, and sometimes central concern of historians having a wide range of topical, chronological, and methodological inclinations, in the 1990s is certainly well established. Its relevance transcends the interests of historians and educational researchers alone, as the inclusion of a historical chapter in a volume on Reading Across the Life Span attests. Nevertheless, this also raises key questions about the necessary relationships between the historical study of literacy and those of reading and life course studies, either past or present. They cannot fairly be said to have commenced, let alone grown to fruition. Bridges between historical and contemporary literacy students and those between historians of literacy and reading researchers are joined much too rarely for the active, mutually enriching and reinforcing development of all sides of the possible equations. The active thrust and exceptional growth in historical literacy studies over the past 2 decades have propelled the subject to new prominence; yet, basic linkages among and between subjects and students, by discipline and interdisciplines, barely have advanced (Note 1).
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Graff, H.J. (1993). Literacy Patterns in Historical Perspective. In: Yussen, S.R., Smith, M.C. (eds) Reading Across the Life Span. Recent Research in Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-4376-2_4
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