This document provides biographical information about Vanessa Irvin Morris, an educator and scholar known for her work studying and promoting street literature. It outlines her educational background, areas of research focus, publications, and impact on academia. Irvin Morris is cited extensively for her work defining street and urban fiction genres and advocating for their inclusion in libraries and classrooms to engage urban youth. The document demonstrates how she has influenced literacy education and practices through her research on social literacies and use of street literature.

1. Presentation about a Scholar:
Vanessa Irvin Morris, Ed.D
“Give me a moment and I will give you a memory”. - Mc Elixir

2. Background and
Education

3. Vanessa Irvin Morris, Ed.D
University of Pennsylvania, Doctorate of Education
degree in Reading/Writing/Literacy,
*Magna Cum Laude
Dissertation: Reading in Mirrors:
Using Street Literature To Facilitate
Practitioner Inquiry With Urban
Public Service Librarians
Clarion University of Pennsylvania
Masters of Science degree in Library Science
Rutgers University
Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism and Mass
Media, minor in Philosophy

4. Vanessa Irvin Morris, Ed.D
Assistant Teaching Professor
College of Computing and Informatics
Drexel University
- Reading/Writing: Literary and
historical aspects of traditional and
contemporary Street Literature
- Literacy: Social literacy interactions
and practices between librarians
and library patrons
- Technology: Social literacies of
virtual experiences across social
media platforms

5. Writer
Vanessa Irvin Morris Blogger
Urban Fiction
Cultural
Competencies
Best Practices in
Library Science
Teens and
Reading
African American
Literature
Social Media
Distance
Education
African-American
Studies
Reader’s
Advisory
Philadelphia
Educator
Scholar

6. Contemporary
Street Literature

7. Favorite Theorists
Wolfgang Iser
Dennis Sumara
Susan Lytle
Gloria Ladson Billings
Brian Street
Bell Hooks
Pierre Bourdieu
Elijah Anderson

8. 1974

9. Late 1990’s
Philadelphia Free Public Library
Teen Librarian
Created innovative programs
Teens embraced Street Literature
Critical Race Theory

10. Late
1990’s

11. Streetliterature.com
2009

12. The Reader’s Advisory Guide to Street Literature
by
Vanessa Irvin Morris
ALA Editions, 2011

13. Defining
Street Literature

14. Street Literature
Street Literature is concerned with the cheap ballad-sheets,
pamphlets and other ephemera (temporary documents created
for a specific purpose and intended to be thrown away) of the
masses.
They circulated from the dawn of printing right up to the end of
the nineteenth century, a literature of often more influential
than books.
Leslie Shephard
The History of Street Literature, 1973

15. Broadsides are large sheets of paper
printed on one side.
Historically, broadsides were posters,
announcing events or proclamations, or
simply advertisements.
The Dunlap Broadsides
- One of the first published copies of
the Declaration of Independence,
printed on the night of July 4, 1776.

16. Often times pinned up on walls in houses and ale-houses, these broadsides provided
the public with news, speeches, formal notices and songs that could be read or sung
aloud.

17. One of the First Published Books
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets 1893
by Stephen Craine

18. Defining
Contemporary Street Literature

19. Defining
Urban Fiction

20. ….stories set in urban settings/cities that feature characters whose
experiences span cultural, social, political, geographical, and economic
boundaries.
The Reader’s Advisory Guide to Street Literature
Vanessa Irvin Morris
Urban Fiction

22. Presentation: Street Lit Collection Development, 2013
http://www.slideshare.net/kcboyd1/street-lit-collection-development-2013-18651891

24. Street Literature
What it is, what challenges it faces and how it can benefit teens.
http://youtu.be/SnqJ3daKgaY?list=PLZBs9Js_I-9CyKnnb71fYgoFaSwjhSqkD

25. These stories have the right to exist and to be respected as cultural
artifacts, whether we educators like it or not.
Vanessa Irvin Morris, 2014

26. Different Levels of
Understanding

27. Zeta Elliot

28. An interview with Vanessa Irvin Morris by Zetta Elliot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BDqeWFIiJo

29. Impact on Academia

30. Irvin Morris is Cited In:
Books Papers Conferences
Panels Blog Posts
Social Media Webinars
The Impact on Higher Education
- Literature Courses
- English Courses
- Library Science Courses
Works Cited in Books and Articles
- Classroom reading practice
- Educating urban children

31. Street Lit Book Award Medal
http://www.streetliterature.com/p/slbam.html

32. Impact on My Practice

33. What frustrates me most is that people actually think
they have the right to determine what qualifies as
literature and what does not, for whole populations of
readers. Of course we all have our preferences in what
we deem appropriate or interesting to read. However, I
don’t agree with the idea that just because I am a
librarian or a teacher or an author or whatever, that I
can say this literature is bad or this literature is better or
this literature is good for others. If that were the case, I
would personally dictate that the entire horror genre be
banned, because that genre is not my particular
preference to read or engage. But you see how silly
that sounds, right? I guess I am most frustrated at the
silliness of some of the anti-street lit rhetoric that is out
there.
Vanessa Irvin Morris, 2011

34. Stand Up and Speak

35. Street Lit for Teens

36. Awards - Vanessa Irvin Morris, Ed.D
Faculty Book Award. Reading/Writing/Literacy Program.
University of Pennsylvania
Dissertation Award. **Merits Distinction** University of
Pennsylvania
Book Award. Zora Neale Hurston Award. American
Library Association/RUSA
Teaching Award. Most Innovative Instructor. Drexel
University

37. Street Literature
Conversations at the Circulation Desk: Teens and Street Literature
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDLtJWfu6FY&index=1&list=PLZBs9Js_I-9CyKnnb71fYgoFaSwjhSqkD

38. Bibliography
Agosto Denise E., Hughes-Hassell Sandra, & Irvin Morris Vanessa. (2010). Street lit : before you can recommend it, you have to understand it . In
Urban teens in the library :research and practice (pp. 53–66). Chicago: American Library Association. Retrieved from https://www.ideals.illinois.
edu/bitstream/handle/2142/47279/400_ready.pdf?sequence=2
Boyd, K. (2011). Author Spotlight: Vanessa Irvin Morris. Retrieved from MissDomino Blogspot. http://missdomino.blogspot.
com/search/label/Author%20Spotlight
Chiles, N. (2006, January 4). Their Eyes Were Reading Smut . New York Times, p. 1. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.
com/2006/01/04/opinion/04chiles.html?_r=0
Collison Robert. (1973). Story of street literature; forerunner of the popular press. London: Dent.
Corley, C. (2006). Triple Crown: A Literary Empire of Hard Knocks. NPR: All Things Considered. Retrieved from http://www.npr.
org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6538468
Elliot, Z. (2010a). An Interview With Vanessa Irvin Morris. Retrieved from Zetta Elliot YouTube Channel. http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=5BDqeWFIiJo
Elliot, Z. (2010b, January 25). What IS “street lit”? Fledgling. Retrieved from http://zettaelliott.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/what-is-street-lit/
Gifford, J. (2013). “Something Like a Harlem Renaissance West”: Black Popular Fiction, Self-Publishing, and the Origins of Street Literature:
Interviews with Dr.
Roland Jefferson and Odie Hawkins. MELUS, 38(4), 216–240.
Gleave, A. (2011). The Female Soldier in Street Literature and Oral Culture in the German-speaking Lands between 1600 and 1950: A Marker of
Changing Gender Relationships? Folklore, 122(2), 176–195. doi:10.1080/0015587X.2011.570517
Irvin Morris, V. (2011a). The Street Lit Author and the Inner-City Teen Reader. Young Adult Library Services, 10(1), 21–24. Retrieved from http:
//ezproxy.dom.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=67642897&site=ehost-live&scope=site
Irvin Morris, V. (2011b, February 27). Inner City Teens Do Read. Presented at the Beyond the Book Conference, University of Birmingham, UK.
Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/vanirvinmorris/inner-city-teens-do-read
Irvin Morris, V. (2012). The readers’ advisory guide to street literature. Chicago: American Library Association.

39. Bibliography
Irvin Morris, V. (2013, May 15). Street Smart: Urban Fiction in Public Libraries. Webinar. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/vanirvinmorris?
utm_campaign=profiletracking&utm_medium=sssite&utm_source=ssslideview
Lawrence, J. (2014). “I Read even the Scraps of Paper I Find on the Street”: A Thesis on the Contemporary Literatures of the Americas. American Literary
History, 26(3), 536–558.
Marshall Elizabeth, Jeanine, S., & Simone, G. (2009). Ghetto Fabulous: Reading Black Adolescent Femininity in Contemporary Urban Street Fiction.
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 53(1), 28–36. Retrieved from http://web.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.dom.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?
sid=1b270818-f5bf-45f8-8f15-91b875d39324%40sessionmgr4005&vid=7&hid=4112
Minzeshelmer, B. (2008, November 20). Sister Souljah rejects any labels on her literary output. USA Today. Retrieved from http://usatoday30.usatoday.
com/life/books/news/2008-11-19-souljah-midnight_N.htm
Ofori-Atta, A. (2011, June 2). Sister Souljah: More Than a Street-Lit Author. The Root. Retrieved from http://www.theroot.
com/articles/culture/2011/06/sister_souljah_interview.2.html
Rice, L. A. (2009, June 4). The Rise of Street Literature. Colorlines . News. Retrieved from http://colorlines.
com/archives/2009/06/the_rise_of_street_literature.html
Salman, J. (2012). Grub Street in Amsterdam? Jacobus (I) van Egmont, the Devil’s Corner and the Literary Underground in the Eighteenth Century.
Quaerendo, 42(2), 134–157. doi:10.1163/15700690-12341237
Shepard Leslie. (1973.). The history of street literature; the story of broadside ballads, chapbooks, proclamations, news-sheets, election bills, tracts,
pamphlets, cocks, catchpennies, and other ephemera. Detroit: Singing Tree Press.
Taft, J. (2011). “New Grub Street” and the Survival of Realism. English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, 54(3), 362–381. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.
dom.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=62252217&site=ehost-live&scope=site
The Word on the Street. (2004). The Word on the Street. Retrieved from http://digital.nls.uk/broadsides/index.html
Thomas-Bailey, C. (2011, November 3). Is “urban fiction” defined by its subject – or the skin colour of its author? The Guardian, 1. Retrieved from http:
//www.theguardian.com/books/2011/nov/03/black-urban-fiction-american?commentpage=2