| In schools, talk about books tends to follow two paths. The first emphasizes a reader-response approach that focuses on affect, where students are encouraged to communicate how a text makes them feel. The second emphasizes a traditional “formalist” or interpretive approach, where students are taught the elements of a literary text (plot, theme, point of view, characterization and the like) and how to apply analytical skills to these elements. This course is about challenging the authority of these traditional approaches, and extending current literacy practices into contemporary critical methods of reading and understanding texts. Several critical theoretical techniques, including, but not limited to, feminist, post-colonial, and cultural studies, will be applied to a wide range of classroom texts: novels, children’s literature, math/science textbooks, history texts, and pop culture texts. Prerequisites: None. |
