This paper concerns the pedagogical work affect does in an Australian Year 11 literature classroom. Thinking with Ahmed's framing of affect from the viewpoint of cultural politics, I consider how affect aligns some bodies within particular social groups and situates some outside. Three key moments of affective charge are drawn from observations:…

This article explores the ways in which the teaching of canonical texts such as Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" intersects with discourses of race and identity in multicultural classrooms. Informed by Chinua Achebe's post-colonial reading of Conrad and the concept of 'double consciousness' adopted by W. E. B. Du Bois, I examine my…

Although viewed (and dismissed) by many as primarily a tool for communication, language (and literature) cannot be understood only in relation to "what" it communicates. A study of "how" it is shaped uncovers the social forces that provide its broad and complex template in the acts of reading and writing. This article focuses…

The paper explores questions of power arising from feminist facilitators running a doctoral writing group at a UK university. Butler's [2014. Re-thinking Vulnerability and Resistance. [Online]. Accessed September 12, 2017.…

This qualitative research study examined the connections made by refugee and immigrant youth to a teacher proposed mirror text at an elementary ESL book group. Mirror texts, or books in which youth with marginalized identities can see themselves reflected, have been argued to promote text connections and reading comprehension for minoritized…

Across one school year, in which I coached a fourth-grade teacher, she and I took an inquiry stance investigating how we could come to understand the reading identities kids held relative to Stephens' (2013) list of characteristics of effective and efficient readers. We also sought to understand how we could help kids develop, sustain, or extend…

This paper reports on a project that examined teachers' reading identities and explored ways in which those identities were manifested in reading pedagogy and were adopted by students. The paper focuses on one purposively selected teacher and his class. Tom Ziegler's personal and pedagogical practices were deeply aligned, and his…

Thousands and thousands of middle school students around the world participate in reading intervention programs, many that are very expensive with limited effectiveness. We wanted to know if an after-school intervention focused on close reading procedures could improve student achievement. Close reading of complex text involves annotations,…

Although emotions are an important facet of teaching and learning in all classes, emotional literacy plays an especially significant role in classes that engage critically with difference. My article redefines and theorizes critical emotional literacy, proposing that we understand it as a social practice that must be developed not only by means of…

Building on the work developed by Morrell (2003) on critical textual production, this paper provides a glimpse into a critical text produced by a student during a summer research seminar at a West Coast University. This paper highlights the process of critical textual production, the writing that resulted from this method and how a critical…

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…

The ability to infuse language with qualities of the human voice in the act of speaking is what distinguishes autobiography as a genre and makes it most suited to teaching students subtle features inherent in the complex act of writing. When students write from personal experience, they consciously begin to shape their identities in one direction…

An experimental colloquium course at the University of Delaware focuses on ways students read and respond to texts. Using nontraditional activities including image making and symbolic expression, the course discourages passive learning as it explores literature and its effect on the reader's inner world. (JB)