Donna E. Alvermann

Donna E. Alvermann is an American educator and literacy scholar whose work focuses on adolescent literacy, multimodal and digital literacies, and young people’s engagement with popular media and visual texts. She is the Omer Clyde and Elizabeth Parr Aderhold Professor in Education, Emeritus, and a Distinguished Research Professor of Language and Literacy Education, Emeritus at the University of Georgia’s Mary Frances Early College of Education, where she has taught and conducted research since the early 1980s. Prior to her university career, she spent about twelve years as a classroom teacher in Texas and New York. Alvermann holds a Ph.D. in Reading and Language Arts Education and an M.L.S. in Information Studies from Syracuse University, as well as earlier degrees in education from the University of Texas at Austin.

Alvermann’s research and teaching address adolescents’ critical digital literacies, their use of popular culture, and the role of multimodal texts in and out of school settings. She has authored and edited numerous articles, book chapters, and books, and served in leadership roles in major literacy organizations and journals, including directing the National Reading Research Center in the 1990s and being elected to the Reading Hall of Fame in 1999. She is