Memoir in the Machine: Teaching Memoirs and Biographies as Counter-Archives in the Digital English Classroom

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 7:45 am - Gold 3
  In Roundtable Session: Shaping Identities, Relationships, and Worlds Through Digital Literacies

Abstract

This study examines the teaching of memoir and biography writing in high school English classrooms as a response to algorithmic bias and linguistic surveillance. Grounded in teacher inquiry and critical literacy, it explores how personal narrative operates as a literary form and a tool of resistance. Drawing on archival documents from Black educators and student-authored texts, this research reimagines the English classroom as a memory, resistance, and narrative reclamation space. It argues that teaching memoir and biography is not merely an instructional act but a justice-oriented practice that restores student voice and cultural agency in a digital landscape shaped by misrecognition and systemic erasure.

Author

• Abdul-Qadir D. Islam, Teachers College, Columbia University