Proleptic Perspectives on Antiracist Reading in an 11th-Grade English Classroom

• In Event: Composing Just Futures

Abstract

This paper draws from a year-long ethnographic study of an 11th grade English course. It compares two classroom events in order to analyze what anti-racist literary reading looks like in a secondary classroom context. Using Christina Sharpe’s (2016) concept of the “wake” and Michael Cole’s (2007) theory of prolepsis, it argues that, when texts were treated as instructional, proleptic possibilities were collapsed, and space was shut down for anti-racist imagining. However, when proleptic space was opened, texts were made available to many possible readings, and students had room to imagine otherwise. As global BLM movements shift English curricula, these two events illuminate the complications and possibilities of anti-racist reading in schools.

Author

• Elizabeth Krone, The Ohio State University - Columbus