Journal Articles

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https://hdl.handle.net/10587/562
Journal articles published by Dr. DeNel Rehberg Sedo.

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    Cultural Capital and Community in Contemporary City-wide Reading Programs
    (Mémoires du livre / Studies in Book Culture, 2010) Rehberg Sedo, DeNel
    There are currently more than 500 city-wide reading projects in the US, and dozens in Canada and the UK. Through creative and traditional programming, such as canoe treks and book discussion groups, producers often use the One Book, One City model to “create community” through a selected text. This essay argues that instances of coming together to share reading experiences can be considered literary cultural fields as the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu conceived them. Readers seek cultural capital by participating in events because participation in book culture is considered a commendable and valuable activity. However, in order to participate, one needs to already have a certain amount of cultural literacy and capital. The essay offers an analysis of readers’ articulations of why they do and do not participate in city-wide book programming to help us better understand the motivations, pleasures and obstacles of membership in ephemeral reading communities.
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    Richard & Judy's Book Club and Canada Reads: Readers, Books and Cultural Programming in a Digital Era
    (Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group, 2008-03) Rehberg Sedo, DeNel
    This article is a result of a transnational comparison of two broadcast book programs' influence on readers' book choices. Online surveys and focus group interviews in Canada and the UK illustrate active audience participation in the converged era of print books, the internet, television and radio. The analysis examines readers' negotiation of book choices through uses and gratifications theory as informed by a cultural critique of the programs themselves. Readers simultaneously respond to and create a hierarchy of cultural tastes that are bound up in the cultural assumptions that they have about the different media.
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    More than "just a little library program": Discourses of power in One Book, One Community programming committees
    (LOGOS: The Journal of the World Book Community, 2010-05) Thurlow, Amy; Fuller, Danielle; Rehberg Sedo, DeNel
    This article looks at issues of power in the relationships between the organizers of three city-wide book reading projects on the one hand, and their communities, funders, and partners on the other. We contend that a discourse of "organizational legitimacy" emerges from an analysis of discussions with the organizers of the reading programs. Organizational legitimacy here demonstrates that the power effects are self-regulated, as well as externally introduced, and that it has both strategic and ideological implications. Our identification and subsequent analysis of this specific discourse was achieved through the application of a critical discourse analysis (Van Dijk, 1993) designed to locate power and privilege in the production and reproduction of discursive language. We expand this analysis to employ a Foucauldian understanding of power in our analysis of the management strategies of libraries and partner organizations in book reading projects. Emerging from the discursive language highlighted in our analysis is a discourse of legitimacy reflective of a broader social discourse of capitalism. This discourse highlighted participation, democratic process, and funding concerns for individual participants as they tried to explain, describe, rationalize or question the "legitimacy" of their organization or initiative. This approach problematizes legitimacy as a discourse and allows for connections between the broader social discourse and the enactment of discourse at the local level.
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    Experiencing information literacy in Second Life
    (Partnership: the Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research., 2008) Rehberg Sedo, DeNel; Rodrigues, Denyse
    Brave or naive, but aware of the research, teaching and play potential, the authors plunged into teaching part of an employee communication course at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia in Second Life, a virtual environment. Using the analytical tools of observational protocols, and discourse analysis of rhetorical accounts found in student and teacher reaction logs, discussion transcripts and focus group interviews, we situated ourselves among the learners to explore the threshold concept of information literacy in our classroom in Second Life.