Adolescents’ Intellectual and Emotional Communion: Exploring Shared Vulnerability and Connection in Literacy Learning

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium explores adolescents building intellectual and emotional communion as they compose in and out of school settings. It attends to an expansive understanding of shared vulnerability (Dutro, 2019), embracing joy, anger, silliness, empathy, and care. The five papers in this session include such varied contexts as a queer youth writing collaborative, a film workshop in rural Utah, a poetry club in an urban public high school, an eighth-grade ethnic studies class, and a book club for Muslim teens. Across these settings and using a variety of qualitative methods, authors will explore different forms of group vulnerability through composition and connection and consider implications for supporting young people’s feelings of connection in literacy events.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Writing and Literacies

Chair

• Gemma Cooper-Novack, Independent Scholar

Papers

• Queer Students Talk Back to Schools From an Out-of-School Time Setting - Gemma Cooper-Novack, Independent Scholar

• Finding Intellectual Communion in Rural Utah: Adolescent Filmmakers Forging Connection Through Humor and Care - Virginia Killian Lund, University of Rhode Island

• How I Refute Them Poetically - Andrea Vaughan, University of Illinois at Chicago; Melina Lesus, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Narrating Cultural Legacies: Eighth-Grade Students Cultivating Care and Connection Through Crafting and Sharing Stories - Tashal Brown, University of Rhode Island

• Voices of Strength and Identity: A Journey for Muslim Adolescents - Fatima Seyma Kizil, Syracuse University

Discussant

• Elizabeth Dutro, University of Colorado - Boulder