Approaches to Aesthetics in Literacy Research

Session Submission Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium articulates new ways of theorizing and methodologically operationalizing aesthetics across a spectrum of literacy research, where aesthetics conveys attention to both what texts or participants say as well as how they say it--the artistic effects of their messages. We present four different studies by scholars from multiple institutions and drawing on different methodological traditions. These studies take up aesthetics in high school English classrooms, in youth out-of-school digital compositions, and in teacher education.

Content Area

• AREA 6. Adolescent, College, and Adult Literacy Processes

Chair

• Scott Storm, University at Albany, State University of New York

Discussant

• Glynda A Hull, University of CA, Berkeley

Individual Presentations

• Critical Aesthetics of Teens’ Digital Activist Literacies in an Online Multi-Case Study - Dominique Skye McDaniel, Kennesaw State University

• Aesthetic Literacies in Youth Literary Interpretation - Scott Storm, University at Albany, State University of New York

• Aesthetic and Efferent Readings of Digital News Media in an 11th Grade ELA Classroom - Beth Krone, Kennesaw State University

• ELA Teacher Education and the (Re)turn to Aesthetics - Kelsey Leigh Roach, Baylor University; T. Philip Nichols, Baylor University