Drawing on feminist and critical theories of politics and emotions, this paper attends to the hegemony of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) for multiply-marginalized students and explores what exemplary Young Adult (YA) novels can teach scholars, educators, and students about the productive use of anger in the face of injustice. Two acclaimed young…

The Bechdel test, the author's student Marley explained, is named for the US graphic novelist and cartoonist Alison Bechdel. To pass the test, a work of fiction must contain at least one scene in which two or more women (preferably named characters) discuss something other than a male. Students who read from the canon of works regularly encounter…

As a teacher with more than 30 years experience at the middle school, secondary, and college level, primarily in English studies, Patterson (the first author) decided a few years ago to reexamine his practices and instructional methods. He wondered what would be the effects on him and his students when he would begin to utilize ideas emanating…

Discusses how three girls take up competing social messages about gendered identity in the different kinds of texts they read. Explains that it is in the complex transactions between the reader's prior lived experiences and the language of the text where meaning is shaped. Contends that when girls are encouraged to consider the actions of female…

Activities related to women's issues are many and varied at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania, but it is doubtful how much of this sensitivity trickles down into actual literature courses. Efforts at moving students away from passive reading and into a more critical stance that would promote active engagement with texts must be encouraged…

This chapter examines how the study of popular romantic fiction was used to transform students' understandings of the ways in which gendered identities are constructed and their perception of the way textual meanings are determined.