“We Make Geographies:” Critical Cartography and Spatial Storytelling in the Secondary ELA Classroom

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 2:15 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Mapping New Possibilities with Children’s and Young Adult Literature, the Arts, and Read-Alouds

Abstract

Our everyday geographies—including our potential to access and engage in them—are entwined with unjust narratives of who belongs where. Literature classrooms present rich sites for critical examinations and reenvisionings of these inequitable maps and understandings of our worlds. Yet few literature education scholars to date have employed spatial theories and critical cartographic methods in classroom-based research with adolescents. In this paper, I discuss how Grade 10 students engaged with tools of spatial literary analysis to (re)map and (re)story their everyday spaces, mobilities, and citizenships alongside those of young adult (YA) protagonists. Extending discussions of the “spatial turn” in literacy scholarship, the questions and insights that emerge from this study present possibilities for secondary literature education pedagogy and research.

Author

• Caroline Hamilton-McKenna, University of British Columbia