Exploring the Relationship Between Figurative and Realist Readings in Critical Literary Study

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session Nine
  In Roundtable Session: Epistemic Inquiries: Justice-Oriented Ways of Learning and Knowing (Table 13)

Abstract

This paper describes how figurative literary reading may both facilitate and hinder justice-oriented interpretations in English classrooms. It draws from Freirean notions of critical literacy to investigate the relationship between students’ reading of textual words and social worlds in their responses to literature. Using the discourse analytic concept of indexicality, it specifically analyzes two events from a year-long ethnographic study of an 11th grade English classroom. These events illustrate how students’ figurative readings of words in literary texts both obstructed understandings of material histories and made space to imagine beyond real world constraints. Through this comparison, the authors explore the affordances and constraints of figurative reading practices in critical literary study.

Authors

• Beth Krone, Kennesaw State University
  Presenting Author

• Scott Storm, Bowdoin College
  Presenting Author