Faculty Vita

Peter Cowan, Ph.D.

Academic Degrees

Professional Experience

Selected Publications

“Drawn” into the community: Re-considering the artwork of Latino adolescents. (1999). Visual Sociology, Vol. 14, 91-107

Devils or Angels: Literacy and Discourse in Lowrider Culture. (In press). In J. Mahiri (Ed.), What They Don’t Learn in School: Literacy in the Lives of Urban Youth, Oxford & N.Y.: Peter Lang Publishing Company.

Understanding the Past to Speak the Present: Toward a Postcolonial Conception of Literacy in the Americas. (Under review).

Current Professional and Academic Association Memberships

American Educational Research Association

Conference on College Composition and Communication

International Visual Sociology

Conference Presentations

Theoretical Issues in the Study of Literacy, 25 September 2001, Graduate School of Education, UC Berkeley Invited speaker to discuss visual literacy and the findings of “’Drawn’ into the community: Re-considering the artwork of Latino adolescents” (Cowan, 1999) in Dr. Jabari Mahiri’s graduate seminar/required course for MA/Ph.D. students.

American Educational Research Association’s Annual Meeting, 28 April 2000, New Orleans, LA, “Visual literacies and discourses in Latino lowrider culture” Presented preliminary dissertation research and potential findings as member of panel presentation What they don’t learn in school: New literacies in the lives of new century youth, organized by Dr. Jabari Mahiri.

Literacy Practices in Non-School Settings, 25 January 2000 & 25 February 1999, Graduate School of Education, UC Berkeley, “Teacher as Ethnographer” Invited speaker to describe using ethnographic methodologies to explore connections between out-of-school literacy practices and ethnicity in Dr. Mahiri’s graduate seminar.

Fourth Annual College Writing Conference of the Intersegmental College Writing Collaborative, 28 February 1998, UC Berkeley, “The Motivating Power of Popular Culture” A workshop for teachers centered on developing an anthropological curiosity about the popular culture their students engage in outside of school.

Multiple Literacies: 1997 Conference of the U.C. Council of Writing Programs, 8 November 1997, UC Berkeley, “What they don’t learn in school: Literacies, popular cultures, and American youth” A panel presentation focusing on non-school literacy practices as they intersect with forms of popular culture.

Berkeley Language Center’s Lecture Series, 14 February 1997, UC Berkeley, “The paradox of the language teacher: What do language teachers teach?” paper presented by Dr. James Gee Member of a panel responding to Dr. Gee’s presentation.

Research Areas

“Drawn” into Community and Identity: Exploring the Visual Literacy Practices of Latino Adolescents. Sarah Freedman (chair), Jabari Mahiri, and Jose Saldivar. Examination Fields: Literacy Theory, Visual Literacy Theory, Cultural Studies

Honors/Awards

2000-2001 University of California Linguistic Minority Research Institute Dissertation Research Grant Award One of six “promising doctoral students” in the University of California system awarded dissertation research funding.

1994 Council for Basic Education National Fellowship for Independent Studies in the Humanities One of eight two-member teams of teachers selected nationwide to carry out an independent study. Our study, Chicanos: Their American Dreams and Experiences, was conducted under the auspices of Dr. Amado M. Padilla, Professor of Psychological Studies in Education in the School of Education at Stanford University.

1984 Adlai E. Stevenson Junior Fellowship, University of California, Santa Cruz One of four original, undergraduate fellows selected to team-teach a discussion section of Stevenson College’s required, freshman, humanities core course.

1982 University of California Regents Scholarship Awarded an academic scholarship “in recognition of high academic achievement and demonstration of outstanding promise.”