Harvey J. Graff is Ohio Eminent Scholar in Literacy Studies and Professor of English and History at The Ohio State University. (PhD.,University of Toronto.) He joined OSU in 2004, and is developing the Literacy Studies @ OSU initiative. Previously, he was Professor of History at the University of Texas at San Antonio. In 1999-2000, Graff served as President of the Social Science History Association. In 2001, the University of Linköping in Sweden awarded him the Doctor of Philosophy honoris causa for his contributions to scholarship.
A comparative social historian, Graff is noted internationally for his research and teaching on the history of literacy (The Literacy Myth: Literacy and Social Structure in the Nineteenth-Century City [1979; new ed., 1991]; The Legacies of Literacy: Continuities and Contradictions in Western Culture and Society [1987, Italian ed., 1989, Critics' Choice Award of the American Educational Studies Society]; The Labyrinths of Literacy: Reflections on Literacy Past and Present [1987; new ed., 1995, Portuguese and Spanish translations in progress]; National Literacy Campaigns in Historical and Comparative Perspective [co-editor, l987]); the history of children, adolescents, and youth (Children and Schools in Nineteenth-Century Canada [co-author, 1979, 1994, in English and French]; Growing Up in America: Historical Experiences [editor, 1987]; Conflicting Paths: Growing Up in America [1995]); and urban history and studies. He has also written on family history, criminality; social structure and population; education; and methodology and theory in history, social science, and humanities. Recent publications include the chapter on history for The Social Worlds of Higher Education: Handbook for Teaching in a New Century, a project of the American Sociological Association, entry on literacy in the Oxford Companion to United States History, Looking Backward and Looking Forward: Perspectives on Social Science History (coeditor), “Understanding Literacy in its Historical Contexts,” special issue, Interchange (co-editor). Nearing completion is City at the Crossroads: Dallas, the Book; work has begun on a social history of interdisciplinarity, and several edited volumes. A selection of his essays on literacy appears in the distinguished series “Il Sapere Del Libro” (including Roger Chartier, Robert Darnton, and Donald McKenzie) from Edizioni Sylvestre Bonnard in Italy.
Among a number of advising/consulting positions, Graff was also principal academic advisor for the Chicago Historical Society’s Teen Chicago project, a multi-year project on the history of teens, oral history, public programming, and transformation of the roles of young people in museums and historical societies.
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