Reading Widely, Reading Deeply: The Equity Challenge

• In Event: 58.027 - Reading Literature—Reading Worlds: The Equity Opportunity

Abstract

This talk will center on the social contexts of reading to consider how theories of mediation can contribute to an equity-based approach to the teaching and learning of literature. Literature has historically been understood to describe creative verbal texts through which meaning is constructed, represented, and interpreted. Other belletristic writing—eloquent essays, heartfelt letters, and so on—have also been considered by some to have literary qualities. In this talk, there are no restrictions on what might be termed literary, opening up possibilities for works that are found to be shallow by literary critics and cultural snobs, such as youth-oriented fiction and children’s literature, to be included among works meriting literary status. In many conceptions of literature, meaning is inscribed in, and inheres in, the text itself. This notion of the “autonomous text” suggests that the task of a reader is to use technical means to interpret literary devices that an author has used to embed specific meanings in texts (Coleman & Pimentel, 2012). In contrast, constructivist approaches view meaning as a culturally-grounded act in which the text is but one form of mediation (Smagorinsky, 2001). Readers also bring vast prior knowledge from personal experiences, formal and informal, that extend beyond technical strategic knowledge. Many reader-response theorists have been content with viewing this personal relationship with the text to be sufficient (Probst, 2004). Yet this conception is problematic in many ways. In particular, it overlooks both intertextual and intercontextual factors. Limiting engagement to readers and texts overlooks the historical ways in which texts are constructed, particularly in terms of the conventions they invoke. It further overlooks the acculturation to reading experienced by various individuals. Learning to read the Bible as a document of unquestioned truth, for instance, might limit one’s conception of the meaning potential of other texts, suggesting that unconscious factors may shape how readers engage with texts (Heath, 1983). Intercontextual factors refer to those recurring social practices through which activity is sustained over time (Floriani, 1993). Classroom contexts may thus have a great deal of influence over how texts are read in the setting of school. A classroom that adheres to the Common Core State Standards’ insistence that readers should read like detectives within the four corners of the text, for instance, are conditioned to tuning out other forms of knowledge and sensation, particularly emotions, that might inform and shape a reading. A class that strictly encourages personal responses may ignore critical textual cues that allow for textual mediation that provides contours for response. This paper will focus on contexts that shape equity-based instruction, exploring the wide range of mediational means that shape reading experiences in school settings. In service of equity, the school setting may stifle important sorts of constructions of meaning. This paper will use Twain’s Huckleberry Finn as an example of one text whose racist narration is often explain by teachers as a masterly ironic device, in the process shutting down emotional responses that might lead to fruitful interpretive writing (Smagorinsky, in press). The paper concludes with suggestions for research and practice.

Author

• Peter Smagorinsky, University of Georgia