Introduction

Literacy studies is a field that permeates all aspects of life. Literacy exists in homes with the varied ways that people live, speak and practice the everyday. Literacy takes place in communities to support people and to bridge different practices and perspectives. Literacy can act as an agent of change and can encourage new forms of activism, resistance and revolution. Literacy happens in workplaces to fulfil tasks and services that keep economies moving. In schools, literacy fosters in children and young people a desire to communicate and bolster competencies and, ideally, ignites interests and passions. Literacy is aesthetic, material and multimodal. Literacy is both local and global, evident in rural as well as in urban settings. Literacy changes with practices, and transmutes across borders, languages and modes. Literacy is digital, immersive and networked. Literacy is felt, sensed and associated with place. The Routledge Handbook of Literacy Studies covers all of these disparate, complex instantiations of literacy to widen the scope and vision of the field and, ultimately, to re-imagine its future across the humanities and the social sciences.