- Curriculum & Instruction
University of Arkansas
304 Peabody Hall
Fayetteville, Arkansas 72701
Sean Connors
University of Arkansas, Curriculum and Instruction, Faculty Member
- My research and teaching interests involve the study of graphic narrative and the application of diverse critical per... moreMy research and teaching interests involve the study of graphic narrative and the application of diverse critical perspectives to young adult literature. I'm a former editor of SIGNAL Journal, a peer reviewed academic journal dedicated to research and scholarship on literature for adolescents, and host of The Storyteller's Thread, a monthly podcast that asks authors for young adults to talk at length about their work. You can listen to the program online at: https://seanconnors.net/storytellersthread/edit
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Two professors address the consequences of withholding knowledge from young people and offer a rationale for teaching challenged books and talking
points for teachers
and librarians.
points for teachers
and librarians.
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If Young Adult (YA) literature constitutes one of the social mechanisms that indoctrinate teenagers into working within capitalistic institutions, high school teachers would do well to ask what political and economic ideologies YA... more
If Young Adult (YA) literature constitutes one of the social mechanisms that indoctrinate teenagers into working within capitalistic institutions, high school teachers would do well to ask what political and economic ideologies YA fiction invites teenage readers to adopt. This article examines one genre of YA literature—YA dystopian fiction—to understand how it participates in neoliberal discourse. The article begins by defining neoliberalism and describing some of its core assumptions. Responding to arguments that regard YA dystopia as reproducing neoliberalism and its attendant ideologies, the article next examines how the critical dystopia, a type of dystopia that emerged in the 1980s and which critiques oppressive systems by depicting characters who resist them, models strategies for resisting neoliberalism. To demonstrate the different stances that YA dystopias can take in regard to neoliberalism, the article then examines the different degrees of emphasis that three popular YA novels—Divergent (Roth, 2011), The Hunger Games (Collins, 2008), and Orleans (Smith, 2013)—place on individual exceptionalism, competition, and systemic oppression rooted in gender, race, and class. To conclude, the article discusses the implications for high school teachers of asking students to critique neoliberalism in YA literature, and in their lives more broadly.
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A growing number of people are turning to young adult literature as a road map to address social injustice through activism, which suggests that literary texts are neither apolitical nor static works of art exploring ‘timeless’ themes.... more
A growing number of people are turning to young adult literature as a road map to address social injustice through activism, which suggests that literary texts are neither apolitical nor static works of art exploring ‘timeless’ themes. This article examines how two recent young adult protest novels, The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (2017) and The Marrow Thieves by Claire Dimaline (2017), resist the emphasis that neoliberalism—an economic philosophy that advocates for free markets and deregulation—places on extreme individualism and competition. In doing so, these books model collective action as a remedy for neoliberal policies that perpetuate systemic oppression.
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As prequels to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818/1985), the two books that comprise Kenneth Oppel’s The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein series introduce young adult readers to the Frankenstein family through the eyes of a teenage... more
As prequels to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818/1985), the two books that comprise Kenneth Oppel’s The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein series introduce young adult readers to the Frankenstein family through the eyes of a teenage Victor. This Dark Endeavor (2011) and Such Wicked Intent (2012) serve as entry-level introductions not only to the themes of Shelley’s novel, but also to the historical context in which it was written. The series is particularly notable for its ideological commitment to “leveling the playing field” with regard to representing gender. However, as is often the case with postfeminist approaches to young adult literature, there are limitations to this approach that invite productive conversations about the historical emergence of feminist movements and their current relevance in a neoliberal context (Connors and Trites, 2018; Pomerantz and Raby, 2015).
In a broader context, this essay positions popular culture adaptations as a primary point of contact with classic literature, drawing on contemporary adaptation studies (Cutchins et. al. 2018; Leitch 2017). This approach opens new paths for readers to think about how stories move through time and respond to their historical, political, and cultural milieu. This is the case with Oppel’s series, which resituates twenty-first century trends in gothic YA fiction in the late-eighteenth-century setting that gave birth to the gothic as a malleable and highly adaptable form. As historical gothic fiction, the books invite readers to explore the challenges of adapting canonical stories for contemporary audiences that require young adult readers to navigate the dominant ideologies associated with different historical moments.
In a broader context, this essay positions popular culture adaptations as a primary point of contact with classic literature, drawing on contemporary adaptation studies (Cutchins et. al. 2018; Leitch 2017). This approach opens new paths for readers to think about how stories move through time and respond to their historical, political, and cultural milieu. This is the case with Oppel’s series, which resituates twenty-first century trends in gothic YA fiction in the late-eighteenth-century setting that gave birth to the gothic as a malleable and highly adaptable form. As historical gothic fiction, the books invite readers to explore the challenges of adapting canonical stories for contemporary audiences that require young adult readers to navigate the dominant ideologies associated with different historical moments.
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This article presents a critical multicultural analysis framework for examining literature for young people that addresses environmental and conservation topics through a lens of intersectional environmentalism. After defining... more
This article presents a critical multicultural analysis framework for examining literature for young people that addresses environmental and conservation topics through a lens of intersectional environmentalism. After defining intersectional environmentalism, the authors examine how this critical perspective builds on assumptions associated with posthumanism and ecofeminism. Three particular assumptions serve as the basis for questions that, taken together, compose a critical framework for examining how literary texts depict the relationship between environmental justice and social justice. The authors apply the framework to Eliot Schrefer’s novel "Endangered" to demonstrate how examining the book through a lens of intersectional environmentalism opens up new possibilities for understanding it. To conclude, the authors examine the implications for teachers of asking students to investigate literary texts from a perspective of intersectional environmentalism. In doing so, they argue that when students understand how environmental topics intersect with social justice topics, they are better prepared to appreciate the complexity of systems and social structures that support inequality and oppression, and that deem some lives more valuable than others.
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A concern with violence is central to social justice education, which aspires to prepare students to identify and address violent conditions in their local communities. Building on scholarship on Critical Peace Theory, this article... more
A concern with violence is central to social justice education, which aspires to prepare students to identify and address violent conditions in their local communities. Building on scholarship on Critical Peace Theory, this article presents a framework that teachers and students can use to interrogate systemic social violence in works of young adult dystopian fiction. The authors apply the framework to Suzanne Collins’s (2008) The Hunger Games in order to demonstrate how the novel critiques personal, structural, and cultural violence. To conclude, the authors examine the implications for teachers of creating opportunities for students to interrogate literary texts through a lens of violence. In doing so, we argue that when teachers help students to name and connect different forms of violence, they support their understanding that oppressive environments are constructed, and that people are thus capable of changing them.
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Readers are admonished not to judge a book by its cover, but is that necessarily good advice? This article examines a classroom activity that supports students’ attending critically to peritext—specifically, book covers. The authors... more
Readers are admonished not to judge a book by its cover, but is that necessarily good advice? This article examines a classroom activity that supports students’ attending critically to peritext—specifically, book covers. The authors identify a series of questions that teachers and students can ask to place YA texts in conversation with their peritext. Having done so, they demonstrate how a student reinterpreted the covers of a YA novel to more accurately reflect the book’s concern with celebrating diverse identities. The authors argue that when teachers ask students to attend critically to peritext, they support their understanding that, like texts, it is always ideological.
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This chapter presents a conceptual framework that teachers can use to support students’ attending closely (and critically) to how cities are depicted in YA literature.
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This paper reports findings from a study of two beginning English teachers and the relationship between their sense of agency and their respective contexts. The qualitative study followed two teachers through their first year of teaching.... more
This paper reports findings from a study of two beginning English teachers and the relationship between their sense of agency and their respective contexts. The qualitative study followed two teachers through their first year of teaching. How the perception of agency and the role of being a teacher evolved was determined to be related to the organizational behavior and expectations that both teachers experienced in their respective contexts. This study suggests that organizational context matters in the continuing development and maintenance of agency of beginning teachers and the type of agency that teachers might develop is influenced by organizational expectations.
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This chapter presents a critical framework that the authors suggest teachers can use with students to support their interrogating whether YA novels engage in or resist postfeminist discourse. The authors apply the framework to Kenneth... more
This chapter presents a critical framework that the authors suggest teachers can use with students to support their interrogating whether YA novels engage in or resist postfeminist discourse. The authors apply the framework to Kenneth Oppel’s YA neo-Victorian novel "This Dark Endeavor", the first book in the two-volume The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein series. In doing so, they demonstrate how, by depicting the character of Elizabeth Lavenza as a Historical Bad Girl, Oppel’s novel inadvertently engages in narratives associated with postfeminism despite actively trying to rewrite Elizabeth as a strong, female lead for twenty-first-century readers. To conclude, the authors examine the implications of students’ interrogating representations of Historical Bad Girls in YA literature.
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This chapter argues that when educators position students to attend closely to the presence of cultural models in Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel "Persepolis," they can support their examining how the graphic novel engages in problematic... more
This chapter argues that when educators position students to attend closely to the presence of cultural models in Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel "Persepolis," they can support their examining how the graphic novel engages in problematic discourses about Iranians and Muslims. At the same time, however, part of the genius of Satrapi’s text is that it does not simply reinforce a humanist model of essential sameness. Western readers may recognize themselves in Marji, but the text nevertheless invites them to also consider the formative role that culture plays in shaping a person’s belief system.
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This chapter focuses on a community inquiry project that asks pre-service teachers to reflect on the nature of the relationship between literacy and place, and, having done so, compose video essays that contest single stories (Adichie,... more
This chapter focuses on a community inquiry project that asks pre-service teachers to reflect on the nature of the relationship between literacy and place, and, having done so, compose video essays that contest single stories (Adichie, 2009) about people, places, and literacy in the South.
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This article argues for the value of preparing students to identify the presence of neoliberal ideologies that amplify racial stratification by defining entire groups of people as “disposable” The authors examine a YA dystopian novel to... more
This article argues for the value of preparing students to identify the presence of neoliberal ideologies that amplify racial stratification by defining entire groups of people as “disposable” The authors examine a YA dystopian novel to demonstrate how the text can be interpreted as a critique of neoliberalism.
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In emphasizing individualism and free-market economics, neoliberalism, an economic theory, assumes that talented individuals thrive when they are freed from governmental regulations. This is premised on a second assumption: namely, that... more
In emphasizing individualism and free-market economics, neoliberalism, an economic theory, assumes that talented individuals thrive when they are freed from governmental regulations. This is premised on a second assumption: namely, that individuals compete on a level playing field and succeed as a result of their own unique talents and abilities. In this way, neoliberalism erases the role that social constructs such as race, gender, class, ability, and so on play in privileging some groups of people and oppressing others. This chapter presents a three-part framework for identifying and critiquing neoliberalism and its attendant ideologies in multicultural Young Adult fiction. Having introduced the framework and relevant questions that teachers and students can ask in the service of examining neoliberalism in multicultural Young Adult novels, the authors apply the framework to Francisco X. Stork’s Marcelo in the Real World. By examining the stance the novel takes in regard to institutions, individualism, and interdependence (as opposed to independence), the authors demonstrate how the novel resists neoliberal ideologies in favor of a more progressive, inclusive worldview.
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This article presents a critical framework for reading neoliberalism—an economic philosophy that, amongst other things, privileges free-market capitalism and emphasizes individualism at the expense of the collective—in young adult... more
This article presents a critical framework for reading neoliberalism—an economic philosophy that, amongst other things, privileges free-market capitalism and emphasizes individualism at the expense of the collective—in young adult dystopias and other texts for adolescents. Having defined neoliberalism and examined four of its attendant forces, the authors highlight a series of questions that readers can ask of young adult dystopias in the service of determining whether they reflect, or resist, neoliberal ideals. The authors then apply these questions to a recent work of young adult dystopian fiction—Marie Lu’s (2013) Legend—to illustrate the complex readings that doing so makes available, and to underscore the potential benefits of investigating the economic politics of young adult fiction, especially when those fictions inadvertently rely on a logic that extends to genocide. To conclude, the authors discuss the implications for teachers and students of reading neoliberalism in young adult dystopian fiction, and in young adult literature more generally.
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This article argues that educators can tap into the passion that many students have for young adult fiction and use it to encourage their civic engagement. To demonstrate the shape this work might take, the author examines a class project... more
This article argues that educators can tap into the passion that many students have for young adult fiction and use it to encourage their civic engagement. To demonstrate the shape this work might take, the author examines a class project that asked undergraduates in a young adult literature course to identify a social justice issue in a young adult dystopia and produce a digital video essay in which they mapped elements of the novel’s content world onto the “real” world for the purpose of calling attention to how people experience the issue. Having done so, the author analyzes one student’s video essay to demonstrate how she used the content world of Rick Yancey’s (2013) The 5th Wave to advocate for Syrian refugees. To conclude, the author examines the implications for educators of using young adult fiction to support youth civic engagement.
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This essay locates Rick Yancey’s The Monstrumologist as belonging to a tradition of young adult literature that depicts boys learning to navigate hegemonic constructions of masculinity. The author argues that the novel warrants close... more
This essay locates Rick Yancey’s The Monstrumologist as belonging to a tradition of young adult literature that depicts boys learning to navigate hegemonic constructions of masculinity. The author argues that the novel warrants close study because, in associating the feminine with the monstrous, it ties boys’ performing hegemonic masculinity to their abjecting qualities that are conventionally associated with the feminine. The author speculates that in a post-9/11 world, The Monstrumologist’s misogynistic undertones may constitute a response to what some scholars in the field of gender and identity have characterized as a contemporary “crisis in masculinity.”
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This article draws on data from a qualitative research study that asked how six Latinos living in a Southern state used literacy to enact, defend, and transform their identities as transnational youths in response to evolving social... more
This article draws on data from a qualitative research study that asked how six Latinos living in a Southern state used literacy to enact, defend, and transform their identities as transnational youths in response to evolving social conditions they and their families encountered in the United States. In sharing the experiences of three participants, the authors demonstrate how the participants maintained their affiliation with the Latino community in part by using reading and writing to engage in community activism and highlight social and political issues facing Latino immigrants in the region where they lived. The authors conclude by discussing the implications of their research for English language arts teachers.
Building on scholarship that emphasizes a relationship between critical literacy and place-conscious pedagogy, this article describes a community inquiry project that asked undergraduates in an introductory literacy studies course to use... more
Building on scholarship that emphasizes a relationship between critical literacy and place-conscious pedagogy, this article describes a community inquiry project that asked undergraduates in an introductory literacy studies course to use oral histories they collected from people in the Arkansas Ozark region to engage in placemaking and reclaim narratives about literacy in the area where they lived. Titled " Literacy in Ozark Lives, " the project challenged the students to examine the oral histories with an eye toward identifying people and institutions that sponsored their interviewees' experiences with reading and writing, and explaining how social and economic transformations in the region shaped the purpose of their interviewees' literacy. To conclude the project, the students produced digital video essays intended to complicate problematic cultural models that promote a deficit view of people and literacy in the U.S. South, and in the Arkansas Ozark region in particular.
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In a prior investigation (Wilkinson, Soter, & Murphy, 2004), we conducted a meta-analysis of how quantitative studies use small group discussions to promote high-level thinking. In the present project, our initial intent was to develop an... more
In a prior investigation (Wilkinson, Soter, & Murphy, 2004), we conducted a meta-analysis of how quantitative studies use small group discussions to promote high-level thinking. In the present project, our initial intent was to develop an equivalent mechanism for qualitative studies that focused on the
same subject. However, our efforts to tease out effects-versus-claims and to identify measures used in the studies led to an evaluative coding manual. Our findings revealed that the majority of studies we investigated either neglected to provide sufficient background information regarding their participant populations or failed to contextualize the settings in which the studies occurred. (Study Funded by a grant from the Spencer Foundation, 2006-7).
same subject. However, our efforts to tease out effects-versus-claims and to identify measures used in the studies led to an evaluative coding manual. Our findings revealed that the majority of studies we investigated either neglected to provide sufficient background information regarding their participant populations or failed to contextualize the settings in which the studies occurred. (Study Funded by a grant from the Spencer Foundation, 2006-7).
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In a prior investigation (Wilkinson, Soter, & Murphy, 2004), we conducted a meta-analysis of how quantitative studies use small group discussions to promote high-level thinking. In the present project, our initial intent was to develop an... more
In a prior investigation (Wilkinson, Soter, & Murphy, 2004), we conducted
a meta-analysis of how quantitative studies use small group discussions to
promote high-level thinking. In the present project, our initial intent was to
develop an equivalent mechanism for qualitative studies that focused on the
same subject. However, our efforts to tease out effects-versus-claims and to
identify measures used in the studies led to an evaluative coding manual.
Our findings revealed that the majority of studies we investigated either
neglected to provide sufficient background information regarding their participant
populations or failed to contextualize the settings in which the studies
occurred.
a meta-analysis of how quantitative studies use small group discussions to
promote high-level thinking. In the present project, our initial intent was to
develop an equivalent mechanism for qualitative studies that focused on the
same subject. However, our efforts to tease out effects-versus-claims and to
identify measures used in the studies led to an evaluative coding manual.
Our findings revealed that the majority of studies we investigated either
neglected to provide sufficient background information regarding their participant
populations or failed to contextualize the settings in which the studies
occurred.
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This paper examines the current situation for teaching young adult literature, especially in light if CCSS text complexity and exemplar lists, and charts a course for moving forward.
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This article reports a study of a university supervisor and a preservice English language arts teacher as they worked collaboratively within two different field experience sites to develop a conceptual understanding of instructional... more
This article reports a study of a university supervisor and a preservice English language arts teacher as they worked collaboratively within two different field experience sites to develop a conceptual understanding of instructional scaffolding. An analysis of classroom observations and mentoring conversations was conducted to examine how the supervisor supported the preservice teacher's transfer of tools for instruction from a university program to the high school classroom. Findings indicate the significant role of the teacher education program's conceptual base in fostering this transfer.
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The rise of YA dystopian literature has seen an explosion of female protagonists who are stirring young people’s interest in social and political topics, awakening their civic imagination, and inspiring them to work for change. These... more
The rise of YA dystopian literature has seen an explosion of female protagonists who are stirring young people’s interest in social and political topics, awakening their civic imagination, and inspiring them to work for change. These “Girls on Fire” are intersectional and multidimensional characters. They are leaders in their communities and they challenge injustice and limited representations. The Girl on Fire fights for herself and for those who are oppressed, voiceless, or powerless. She is the hope for our shared future. This collection of new essays brings together teachers and students from a variety of educational contexts to explore how to harness the cultural power of the Girl on Fire as we educate real-world students. Each essay provides both theoretical foundations as well as practical, hands-on teaching tools that can be used with diverse groups of students, in formal as well as informal educational settings. This volume challenges readers to realize the symbolic power the Girl on Fire has to raise consciousness and inform action and to keep that fire burning.
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Bringing together scholars in literacy education and the humanities, The Politics of Panem: Challenging Genres examines how the Hunger Games books and films, when approached from the standpoint of theory, can challenge readers and viewers... more
Bringing together scholars in literacy education and the humanities, The Politics of Panem: Challenging Genres examines how the Hunger Games books and films, when approached from the standpoint of theory, can challenge readers and viewers intellectually. At the same time, by subjecting Collins’s trilogy to literary criticism, this collection of essays challenges its complexity as an example of dystopian literature for adolescents. How can applying philosophic frameworks such as those attributable to Socrates and Foucault to the Hunger Games trilogy deepen our appreciation for the issues it raises? What, if anything, can we learn from considering fan responses to the Hunger Games? How might adapting the trilogy for film complicate its ability to engage in sharp-edged social criticism? By exploring these and other questions, The Politics of Panem: Challenging Genres invites teachers, students, and fans of the Hunger Games to consider how Collins’s trilogy, as a representative of young adult dystopian fiction, functions as a complex narrative. In doing so, it highlights questions and issues that lend themselves to critical exploration in secondary and college classrooms.
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Two professors address the consequences of withholding knowledge from young people and offer a rationale for teaching challenged books and talking points for teachers and librarians.
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Drawing on Foucault’s examination of the gaze as a disciplinary mechanism, and de Certeau’s discussion of how people use tactics to resist oppressive power systems, this article advocates reading the gaze in young adult dystopian fiction.... more
Drawing on Foucault’s examination of the gaze as a disciplinary mechanism, and de Certeau’s discussion of how people use tactics to resist oppressive power systems, this article advocates reading the gaze in young adult dystopian fiction. To illustrate the complex readings that doing so makes possible, the author examines three young adult dystopias—M. T. Anderson’s Feed, Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy, and Corey Doctorow’s Little Brother—to demonstrate how they depict adolescents as having varying degrees of agency to resist the gaze. To conclude, the author discusses the implications for teachers and students of reading the gaze in young adult literature.
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If Young Adult (YA) literature constitutes one of the social mechanisms that indoctrinate teenagers into working within capitalistic institutions, high school teachers would do well to ask what political and economic ideologies YA fiction... more
If Young Adult (YA) literature constitutes one of the social mechanisms that indoctrinate teenagers into working within capitalistic institutions, high school teachers would do well to ask what political and economic ideologies YA fiction invites teenage readers to adopt. This article examines one genre of YA literature—YA dystopian fiction—to understand how it participates in neoliberal discourse. The article begins by defining neoliberalism and describing some of its core assumptions. Responding to arguments that regard YA dystopia as reproducing neoliberalism and its attendant ideologies, the article next examines how the critical dystopia, a type of dystopia that emerged in the 1980s and which critiques oppressive systems by depicting characters who resist them, models strategies for resisting neoliberalism. To demonstrate the different stances that YA dystopias can take in regard to neoliberalism, the article then examines the different degrees of emphasis that three popular YA novels—Divergent (Roth, 2011), The Hunger Games (Collins, 2008), and Orleans (Smith, 2013)—place on individual exceptionalism, competition, and systemic oppression rooted in gender, race, and class. To conclude, the article discusses the implications for high school teachers of asking students to critique neoliberalism in YA literature, and in their lives more broadly.
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Although they are set in the future, dystopias are very much concerned with the present. At their core, they represent an attempt on the part of writers to use literature as a vehicle to examine contemporary social and political issues... more
Although they are set in the future, dystopias are very much concerned with the present. At their core, they represent an attempt on the part of writers to use literature as a vehicle to examine contemporary social and political issues that could, if left unattended, bring about undesirable consequences for people. Dystopian narratives are not diametrically opposed to utopian literature.
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... Asked to explain why they think this is the case, they often tell Sean that they have not considered this question before and, perhaps more significant, their perceptions of what counts as ... Is not Cormier's The Chocolate... more
... Asked to explain why they think this is the case, they often tell Sean that they have not considered this question before and, perhaps more significant, their perceptions of what counts as ... Is not Cormier's The Chocolate War on a par with Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge? ...
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To say that graphic novels have attracted attention from educators is by now axiomatic. Professional journals, like this one, routinely feature articles that extol their virtue as a pedagogical tool. Books attest to the creative ways... more
To say that graphic novels have attracted attention from educators is by now axiomatic. Professional journals, like this one, routinely feature articles that extol their virtue as a pedagogical tool. Books attest to the creative ways teachers are using them to scaffold students as readers and writers. Sessions devoted to graphic novels at the National Council of Teachers of English’s annual convention are invariably well attended and seem to proliferate in number from one year to the next. By all accounts, it would seem that educators have embraced a form of text whose older brother, the comic book, was scorned by teachers in the not-so-distant past. Appearances, however, can be deceiving. When Melanie Hundley, on behalf of the editors of The ALAN Review, invited me to contribute a column on graphic novels for an issue of the journal devoted to the influence of film, new media, digital technology, and the image on young adult literature, I was only too happy to oblige because it aff...
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This essay offers a reorientation of our views on the interrelationships of language and thought as a field of constantly reprogrammable energy, and provides an argument as to why we believe this new metaphor (i.e., language as a field of... more
This essay offers a reorientation of our views on the interrelationships of language and thought as a field of constantly reprogrammable energy, and provides an argument as to why we believe this new metaphor (i.e., language as a field of energy) matters in language pedagogy, in classrooms at all levels, as well as within teacher education and teacher professional development. We define language as a field of energy in the following way: as language operating as a “region” in which a force (in this case, words and their rhetorical functions) operates to bring about some influence resulting in an effect or having an impact on one’s own behaviors, on the behaviors of others, as well as having the capacity to influence emotions, and/or the course of events. Following a brief introduction in which we state our purpose, we present the case for the above argument in the context of current language and literacy education. In doing so, we delineate language-thought-perceived reality relatio...
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This chapter argues that when educators position students to attend closely to the presence of cultural models in Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel "Persepolis," they can support their examining how the graphic... more
This chapter argues that when educators position students to attend closely to the presence of cultural models in Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel "Persepolis," they can support their examining how the graphic novel engages in problematic discourses about Iranians and Muslims. At the same time, however, part of the genius of Satrapi’s text is that it does not simply reinforce a humanist model of essential sameness. Western readers may recognize themselves in Marji, but the text nevertheless invites them to also consider the formative role that culture plays in shaping a person’s belief system.
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In this chapter, Sean P. Connors and Roberta Seelinger Trites argue that “neoliberalism has influenced the erasure of race” in contemporary YA dystopian fiction. They devise a framework for determining if a YA novel critiques or condones... more
In this chapter, Sean P. Connors and Roberta Seelinger Trites argue that “neoliberalism has influenced the erasure of race” in contemporary YA dystopian fiction. They devise a framework for determining if a YA novel critiques or condones neoliberalism and, thus, “whether it is reproducing, complicating, or resisting” neoliberal ideologies. To demonstrate how YA dystopian novels reproduce neoliberalism as a means to privilege the individual and erase race and racist power structure, the essay considers Sherri L. Smith’s Orleans as a counterexample, arguing that Smith’s novel “employs neoliberalism” to challenge “the erasure of race.”
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PRESERVICE TEACHERS enrolled in a children's literature course that I teach are required to interview a school librarian about trends that individual has observed in the field of children's literature over the past 5 years. In... more
PRESERVICE TEACHERS enrolled in a children's literature course that I teach are required to interview a school librarian about trends that individual has observed in the field of children's literature over the past 5 years. In their written reports, the preservice teachers invariably cite the popularity of graphic novels, defined here as a book-length narrative told in the medium of comics. Despite their apparent popularity with young readers, these texts are seldom (if ever) taken up in schools near the university where I work. Instead, "a great deal of current literacy instruction is still accomplished through traditional texts...(Hasset & Schieble, 2007)" (DeGracia, 2012, p. 58). Pressure to prepare students for standardized tests that privilege alphabetic literacy, coupled with the emphasis that the Common Core State Standards place on text complexity (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers [NGA Center ...
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It's not the books you teach, but how you teach them.-Junot Diaz, quoted in GuptaFor the past few years I have asked preservice English teachers in a course I teach on young adult literature (YAL) to interview a secondary school... more
It's not the books you teach, but how you teach them.-Junot Diaz, quoted in GuptaFor the past few years I have asked preservice English teachers in a course I teach on young adult literature (YAL) to interview a secondary school librarian about contemporary adolescents' reading preferences. I encourage students to explore a range of topics in their interviews, including authors who are popular with adolescents, genres that appeal to them, and titles that are checked out of the library most frequently. I also invite students to examine the role that YAL plays in the school's English curriculum. My objective for the assignment is twofold: to make our otherwise abstract conversations about YAL more concrete, and to deepen prospective English teachers' appreciation for the role it plays in students' lives, in school and outside of school.The trends the students document when they report their findings often parallel national trends. Echoing a 2014 Publishers Weekly r...
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This article argues for the value of preparing students to identify the presence of neoliberal ideologies that amplify racial stratification by defining entire groups of people as “disposable” The authors examine a YA dystopian novel to... more
This article argues for the value of preparing students to identify the presence of neoliberal ideologies that amplify racial stratification by defining entire groups of people as “disposable” The authors examine a YA dystopian novel to demonstrate how the text can be interpreted as a critique of neoliberalism.
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ABSTRACT
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Building on scholarship that emphasizes a relationship between critical literacy and place-conscious pedagogy, this article describes a community inquiry project that asked undergraduates in an introductory literacy studies course to use... more
Building on scholarship that emphasizes a relationship between critical literacy and place-conscious pedagogy, this article describes a community inquiry project that asked undergraduates in an introductory literacy studies course to use oral histories that they collected from people in the Arkansas Ozark region to engage in placemaking and reclaim narratives about literacy in the area where they lived. The Literacy in Ozark Lives project challenged the students to examine the oral histories with an eye toward identifying people and institutions that sponsored their interviewees' experiences with reading and writing, and explaining how social and economic transformations in the region shaped the purpose of their interviewees' literacy. To conclude the project, the students produced digital video essays intended to complicate problematic cultural models that promote a deficit view of people and literacy in the U.S. South, particularly the Arkansas Ozark region.
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... Drawing on critical response papers two students composed after reading Pride of Baghdad, a graphic novel by Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrichon, the author argues that when readers possess the background knowledge needed to... more
... Drawing on critical response papers two students composed after reading Pride of Baghdad, a graphic novel by Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrichon, the author argues that when readers possess the background knowledge needed to approximate the role of the implied ...
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Abstract This article recounts what happened when one of the authors, a pre-service teacher, introduced a digital multimodal composition project in her 9th-grade inclusion English classes to support junior high students as they read the... more
Abstract This article recounts what happened when one of the authors, a pre-service teacher, introduced a digital multimodal composition project in her 9th-grade inclusion English classes to support junior high students as they read the novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Rather than regard new literacies as competing with print literacy for attention, the authors argue that teachers serve students best when they design assignments that blend old and new literacies in ways that allow them to coexist and inform one another.
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This longitudinal study examined how the approach leaders in two schools took to implementing the Common Core State Standards shaped the way that two first-year teachers constructed meaning related to being a teacher. Instructional... more
This longitudinal study examined how the approach leaders in two schools took to implementing the Common Core State Standards shaped the way that two first-year teachers constructed meaning related to being a teacher. Instructional leadership constructs and threat rigidity theory were used to analyze qualitative data gathered over a nine-month period. Findings indicate that the way schools as organizations respond to external mandates can influence the way that beginning teachers conceptualize, and approach, their work in the classroom.
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Several assumptions surround popular discourse about Suzanne Collins’s commercially successful Hunger Games series, including one that regards Katniss Everdeen, its protagonist, as offering young female readers access to a newly empowered... more
Several assumptions surround popular discourse about Suzanne Collins’s commercially successful Hunger Games series, including one that regards Katniss Everdeen, its protagonist, as offering young female readers access to a newly empowered subject position.
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No study of speculative fiction would be complete without acknowledging the comic book, a staple of American popular culture since its inception in the twentieth century. Since Superman first appeared on the cover of Action Comics #1 in... more
No study of speculative fiction would be complete without acknowledging the comic book, a staple of American popular culture since its inception in the twentieth century. Since Superman first appeared on the cover of Action Comics #1 in 1938, the comic book, as a form of storytelling, has been virtually synonymous with speculative fiction, encompassing an array of genres, including (but not limited to) crime, horror, fantasy and—perhaps most famously—science fiction (SF).
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... walk in the park. I would like to acknowledge my fellow graduate students, I-Chia Chou, Caitlin Ryan, Kevin Cordi, Ryan Rish, Frank Beickelman, and Sunny Wee for their friendship and support. Likewise, I would like to acknowledge the... more
... walk in the park. I would like to acknowledge my fellow graduate students, I-Chia Chou, Caitlin Ryan, Kevin Cordi, Ryan Rish, Frank Beickelman, and Sunny Wee for their friendship and support. Likewise, I would like to acknowledge the staff at the Laughing Ogre, who never ...
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Recently, as students gathered their belongings at the end of a graduate-level methods of literature instruction course that one of us teaches, a preservice teacher asked how he might respond to a series of challenges that he faced... more
Recently, as students gathered their belongings at the end of a graduate-level methods of literature instruction course that one of us teaches, a preservice teacher asked how he might respond to a series of challenges that he faced teaching Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice to a group of high school seniors in a socioeconomically diverse suburban school located in the mid-South. Several of his students were English language learners, and most planned to enter the workforce or military after graduation. Asked why the school's English department had chosen to require seniors to read that particular play, the preservice teacher explained that, like other literary works the school district adopted when it redesigned its literature curriculum in response to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), the play was chosen because it appeared on a list of CCSS-approved exemplar texts said to reflect the level of text complexity that students ought to encounter in their senior year of high school.The preservice teacher went on to explain that students in his mentor teacher's class had responded to an anticipation guide prior to reading the play, but that no attention had been given either the social-milieu in which it was written or the time period in which the story took place. Moreover, when he approached his mentor teacher to inquire about the possibility of his showing the students a film adaptation of the play prior to their reading it to familiarize them with the issues and themes it explores, the mentor teacher politely dismissed the idea, noting that close reading of the sort the CCSS emphasize requires that students best approach the play "cold." Needless to say, the students were disengaged, the preservice teacher was frustrated, and the unit deteriorated into a series of lifeless exercises that required the students to extrapolate the meaning of symbols, metaphors, and themes irrespective of the situated cultural understanding they may have brought to bear on the reading of the text.It is tempting to write this incident off as an isolated example of inappropriate teaching. Yet in "Reading Without Understanding: Common Core Versus Abraham Lincoln," Alan Singer, a professor of Social Studies education at Hofstra University, argues that it may be constitutive of a larger problem with how close reading is taken up in the context of the CCSS. In his essay, Singer refers to an online video in which David Coleman, a figure regarded by many as the architect of the CCSS, presents a model three-to-five day unit plan designed to promote close reading of Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address." Describing a series of problems with the instructions that teachers were given to promote student understanding of the text, Singer writes, "Teachers are specifically instructed not to ask erroneous guiding questions' that require knowledge of historical context and research that takes students beyond the words in the text and gives actual meaning to the words" (para. 7). Moreover, they are dissuaded from asking questions that invite students to speculate about how the social historical context in which Lincoln lived might have shaped his, and his audience's, understanding of the issues the speech touches on. "A close reading of text without historical context," Singer concludes, "promotes reading without understanding" (para. 17).Daniel Ferguson echoes Singer's concerns, but extends his argument by proposing that close reading, at least as it is taken up by the CCSS, deprives students of a voice in the classroom by refusing to acknowledge their ideas and background experiences as worthy of consideration in discussions that are concerned with determining the meaning of texts. Indeed, Ferguson charges the CCSS with encroaching on students' "rights to literacy," arguing that just as literacy is a civil right, so too is the right to have one's "experiences, knowledge, and opinions valued" (para. 19).In this essay, we argue that considering texts divorced from the contexts within which they are written and read is part of a larger set of issues that surface under the umbrella of "close reading. …
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The first book in Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy was published just over a decade ago, concurrent with the collapse of the housing market, the onset of the Great Recession, and the United States’ involvement in two foreign wars.... more
The first book in Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy was published just over a decade ago, concurrent with the collapse of the housing market, the onset of the Great Recession, and the United States’ involvement in two foreign wars. This paper argues that the Hunger Games series does not, as some critics suggest, engage in neoliberal discourses that are detrimental to collective action. Quite the opposite, the series positions young readers to understand care and coalition building as antidotes to neoliberalism’s destructive impulses.
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In a prior investigation (Wilkinson, Soter, & Murphy, 2004), we conducted a meta-analysis of how quantitative studies use small group discussions to promote high-level thinking. In the present project, our initial intent was to develop an... more
In a prior investigation (Wilkinson, Soter, & Murphy, 2004), we conducted
a meta-analysis of how quantitative studies use small group discussions to promote high-level thinking. In the present project, our initial intent was to develop an equivalent mechanism for qualitative studies that focused on the same subject. However, our efforts to tease out effects-versus-claims and to identify measures used in the studies led to an evaluative coding manual. Our findings revealed that the majority of studies we investigated either neglected to provide sufficient background information regarding their participant populations or failed to contextualize the settings in which the studies occurred.
a meta-analysis of how quantitative studies use small group discussions to promote high-level thinking. In the present project, our initial intent was to develop an equivalent mechanism for qualitative studies that focused on the same subject. However, our efforts to tease out effects-versus-claims and to identify measures used in the studies led to an evaluative coding manual. Our findings revealed that the majority of studies we investigated either neglected to provide sufficient background information regarding their participant populations or failed to contextualize the settings in which the studies occurred.