Dis/Re/Orientating Critical Literacies: Following the lines of imagination & affect

Activity: Talk or presentation types › Invited talk

Description

What are the directions that critical literacies points us toward or away from? What happens if we turn critical literacies in different directions or toward different objects? And, what are the effects of “following the line” (Ahmed, 2006, 16) or treading new lines in the context of established and institutionalised traditions of English language and literacy teacher education? In this presentation, I explore two ‘stories’ of doing critical literacies with (student) teachers. Pulling together critical literacy scholarship with Sara Ahmed's work in affect theory (2014) and queer orientations (2006), I trace the lines of reasoning, imagining, and feeling that we draw (separately and together) – as they surface across multiple modes and literate practices. The first story explores the discursive design and negotiation of safe, brave, and contested spaces in English language and literacy teacher education in Scotland. I try to understand the role of texts and meaning-making in fostering asset-based pedagogies and mediating multiple perspectives. Story two is a collaborative study with Prof Belinda Mendelowitz (Wits University) which explores how teacher-postgraduate students redesign the discursive constructions of gender, race, and coloniality in South African higher education. (Auto)ethnographic data works alongside the texts that (student) teachers collect, create, and curate to illustrated the complex entanglements of critique, imaginative and multimodal redesign, and a range of affective responses. Following these lines reveals certain limits in critical literacies, potentials for empathy as solidarity’, and (re)imagining more equitable futures in/through English language and literacy education.
Period14 Jun 2024 → 15 Jun 2024
Held atUniversity of Sheffield, United Kingdom
Degree of RecognitionInternational

Keywords

  • Critical Literacy
  • Imagination
  • affect theory
  • Orientation
  • queer phenomenology

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