Tabitha Dell’Angelo
Field of Study: Urban Education
Member since: 2021
How did you become interested in visual literacy? What do your work involve and how does it intersect with visual literacy?
I started out in arts based research more generally. Over the years I began to be very interested in comics and photography as ways to interpret the contexts in which I am interested. I am also working on including more visual literacy strategies in my teaching in order to enhance learning for all of my students.
What are you currently reading/writing/watching/listening to/ and/or curious about?
t the moment I am immersed in children’s literature as I plan to teach a new class. I recently read a new YA novel called Lobizona that tackles important social issues and includes werewolves! I am also getting ready to stage a play that was sidelined because of COVID almost two years ago. I love television and believe we are living in a time of really great TV. Everything from comedies like Black AF to dramas like Succession are challenging our notions of the world. I have also been revisiting the work of Philadelphia native Zoe Strauss. She is a brilliant photographer who was born in the same month and year as me and raised nearby. I feel connected to her and her work even though we have never met.
What does the term ‘visual literacy’ mean to you?
What does the term ‘visual literacy’ mean to you? This is somewhat difficult because I feel like every field is their own little subculture with specific ways of knowing. I have always been someone who needs to visualize ideas. My notebooks are filled with charts and blocks and arrows. I need visuals to process information. But, more broadly, I see “visual literacy” as using visuals as both ways of communicating, processing, and understanding the world. If literacy is reading, writing, speaking and listening — I think “visual literacy” is the recognition that text is more than words — that we can read, write, speak and listen through visual mediums.
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