Skip to content
2018
Volume 58, Issue 3
  • ISSN: 0034-527X
  • E-ISSN: 1943-2348

Abstract

The recent speculative turn in literacy, English education, and other ELA-related fields has brought renewed energy for redesigning English teaching and learning through genre awareness. However, extant work on speculative genres of reading, writing, and literary study assumes that ELA teachers are prepared or, more fundamentally, aware of these genres and their unique features. Addressing this gap, this article presents a single intrinsic case of Carlos, a queer man of Color and bilingual elementary teacher, as he cultivated genre awareness through an interactive approach to genre pedagogy through restorying. Based on a rhetorical genre studies approach, Carlos’s case demonstrates how English teachers might expand their genre repertoire to include speculative genres and integrate them into their classrooms. This article concludes by advocating for the integration of speculative literacies into English teacher education, doing so to disrupt normative realities tied to white supremacy and homophobia within the field.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.58680/rte2024583245
2024-02-01
2026-07-14
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Aquino J. (1976) Science fiction as literature. National Education Association.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Aquino J. (1977) Fantasy in literature. National Education Association.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Aspen Institute (2012) Informational text and the CCSS. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED541440.pdf
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Bach J., Peters E., & Bourgeois J. (2019) Teaching students the “what-ifs”: Conversations on YA speculative fiction. English Journal, 109 (2), 39–46.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Baker-Bell A., Butler T., & Johnson L. (2017) The pain and the wounds: A call for critical race English education in the wake of racial violence. English Education, 49(2), 116–129.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Bawarshi A. S., & Reiff M. J. (2010) Genre: An introduction to history, theory, research, and pedagogy. Parlor Press; WAC Clearinghouse.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Bazerman C. (1997) The life of genre, the life in the classroom. In Bishop W. & Ostrom H. (Eds.), Genre and writing: Issues, arguments, alternatives (pp. 19–26). Boynton/Cook Publishers.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Blackburn M. V., Caroline C., Kenney L., & Smith J. (2010) Acting out! Combating homophobia through teacher activism. Teachers College Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Bryant L., Srnicek N., & Harman G. (2011) The speculative turn: Continental materialism and realism. Re.press.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Cochran-Smith M., & Lytle S. (2009) Inquiry as stance: Practitioner research for the next generation. Teachers College Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Coleman J. J. (2021) Affective reader response: Using ordinary affects to repair literacy normativities in ELA and English Education. English Education, 254–276.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Coleman J. J. (2023) Narrative repair in teacher education: Restorying painful histories and “damaged” queer teacher identity. Teaching and Teacher Education, 124, Article 104031. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2023.104031
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Coleman J. J., Griffin A., & Thomas E. E. (2023) Restorying young adult literature: Expanding students’ perspectives with digital texts. National Council of Teachers of English.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Coleman J. J., & Hall L. (2019) What story, what identity, Wattpad? Teaching youth to restory YA literature. The ALAN Review, 46(2), 65–70.
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Connelly F. M., & Clandinin D. J. (1990) Stories of experience and narrative inquiry. Educational Researcher, 19(5), 2–14. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X019005002
    [Google Scholar]
  16. Creswell J. W., & Poth C. N. (2018) Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches (4th ed.). SAGE Publications.
    [Google Scholar]
  17. Destiel_trash_666 (2018) Forever and always by your side//Merthur: Introduction. Wattpad. https://www.wattpad.com/398084566-forever-and-always-by-your-side-merthur
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Devitt A. J. (2004) Writing genres. Southern Illinois University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Devitt A. (2009) Teaching critical genre awareness. In Bazerman C., Bonini A., & Figueiredo D. (Eds.), Genre in a changing world (pp. 337–351). Parlor Press; WAC Clearinghouse.
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Devitt A. J. (2015) Genre performances: John Swales’ Genre analysis and rhetorical-linguistic genre studies. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 19, 44–51. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2015.05.008
    [Google Scholar]
  21. Dunne A., & Raby F. (2013) Speculative everything: Design, fiction, and social dreaming. MIT Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  22. Dyches J. (2018) Critical canon pedagogy: Applying disciplinary inquiry to cultivate canonical critical consciousness. Harvard Educational Review, 88(4), 538–564. https://doi.org/10.17763/1943-5045-88.4.538
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Ellis J., Martinek J. D., & Donaldson S. (2018) Understanding the past, imagining the future: Teaching speculative fiction and Afrofuturism. Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy, 28(1), 111–122. https://doi.org/10.5325/trajincsch ped.28.1.0111
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Gavaler C. (2018) Superhero comics. Bloomsbury Academic.
    [Google Scholar]
  25. Grue M. N. P. (2020) An Afrofuturistic vehicle for literacy instruction. Journal of College Reading and Learning, 50(1), 33–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/10790195.2019.1693937
    [Google Scholar]
  26. Hemmings C. (2012) Affective solidarity: Feminist reflexivity and political transformation. Feminist Theory, 13(2), 147–161. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700112442643
    [Google Scholar]
  27. Hollar J. L. (2019) Science fiction literature in the classroom: A final frontier for multicultural education? Multicultural Education, 26(2), 1–6.
    [Google Scholar]
  28. Jones K., Storm S., Castillo J., & Kar-bachinskiy S. (2021) Chasing new worlds: Stories of roleplaying in classroom spaces. Journal of Language & Literacy Education, 17 (1), 1–17.
    [Google Scholar]
  29. Kuznets L. R. (1985) “High fantasy” in America: A study of Lloyd Alexander, Ursula LeGuin, and Susan Cooper. The Lion and the Unicorn, 9 (1), 19–35. https://doi.org/10.1353/uni.0.0075
    [Google Scholar]
  30. Love H. (2007) Feeling backward: Loss and the politics of queer history. Harvard University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  31. Matos A. D., & Wargo J. M. (2019) Editors’ introduction: Queer futurities in youth literature, media, and culture. Research on Diversity in Youth Literature, 2(1), Article 1. https://sophia.stkate.edu/rdyl/vol2/iss1/1
    [Google Scholar]
  32. Merla-Watson C. (2019, April 26). Latinofuturism. In Lynch D. S. (Ed.), Oxford research encyclopedia of literature. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.648
    [Google Scholar]
  33. Messina C. M. (2019) Tracing fan uptakes: Tagging, language, and ideological practices in The legend of Korra fanfictions. The Journal of Writing Analytics, 3, 151–182.
    [Google Scholar]
  34. Miles M., Huberman A., & Saldaña J. (2014) Qualitative data analysis: A methods sourcebook (3rd ed.). SAGE Publications.
    [Google Scholar]
  35. Miller C. R. (1984) Genre as social action. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 70(2), 151–167. https://doi.org/10.1080/00335638409383686
    [Google Scholar]
  36. Mirra N., & Garcia A. (2020) “I hesitate but I do have hope”: Youth speculative civic literacies for troubled times. Harvard Educational Review, 90(2), 295–321. https://doi.org/10.17763/1943-5045-90.2.295
    [Google Scholar]
  37. Mitchell S. (2018) All out: The no-longer-secret stories of queer teens throughout the ages. HQ Young Adult.
    [Google Scholar]
  38. Muñoz J. E. (2009) Cruising Utopia: The then and there of queer futurity. New York University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  39. New London Group (1996) A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60–92.
    [Google Scholar]
  40. Oziewicz M. (2017, March 29). Speculative fiction. In Lynch D. S. (Ed.), Oxford research encyclopedia of literature. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.78
    [Google Scholar]
  41. Patton M. (2015) Qualitative research and evaluation methods: Integrating theory and practice. SAGE.
    [Google Scholar]
  42. Ravitch S., & Carl N. (2016) Qualitative research: Bridging the conceptual, theoretical, and methodological. SAGE.
    [Google Scholar]
  43. Rybakova K., & Roccanti R. (2016) Connecting the canon to current young adult literature. American Secondary Education, 44(3), 31–45.
    [Google Scholar]
  44. Saldaña J. (2013) The coding manual for qualitative researchers (2nd ed.). SAGE Publications.
    [Google Scholar]
  45. Schalk S. D. (2018) Bodyminds reimagined: (Dis)Ability, race, and gender in Black women’s speculative fiction. Duke University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  46. Sciurba K. (2021) Black youth poetry of 2020 and reimagined literacies. Journal of Literacy Research, 53(4), 516–538. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086296X211052264
    [Google Scholar]
  47. Sloane B. L. (1978) Junior high/middle school idea factory: The real world of imagination. English Journal, 67(2), 74–75. https://doi.org/10.2307/815002
    [Google Scholar]
  48. Tardy C. M., Sommer-Farias B., & Gevers J. (2020) Teaching and researching genre knowledge: Toward an enhanced theoretical framework. Written Communication, 37(3), 287–321. https://doi.org/10.1177/0741088320916554
    [Google Scholar]
  49. Thomas E. E. (2019) The dark fantastic: Race and the imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games. New York University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  50. Thomas E. E., & Stornaiuolo A. (2016) Restorying the self: Bending toward textual justice. Harvard Educational Review, 86(3), 313–338. https://doi.org/10.17763/1943-5045-86.3.313
    [Google Scholar]
  51. Thomas P. L. (2011) Science fiction and speculative fiction: Challenging genres. Sense Publishers.
    [Google Scholar]
  52. Toliver S. R. (2020) Can I get a witness? Speculative fiction as testimony and counterstory. Journal of Literacy Research, 52(4), 507–529. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086296X20966362
    [Google Scholar]
  53. Toliver S. R. (2021) Freedom dreaming in a broken world: The Black radical imagination in Black girls’ science fiction stories. Research in the Teaching of English, 56(1), 85–106.
    [Google Scholar]
  54. Truman S. E. (2019) SF! Haraway’s situated feminisms and speculative fabulations in English class. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 38(1), 31–42. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-018-9632-5
    [Google Scholar]
  55. Yin R. K. (2018) Case study research and applications: Design and methods (6th ed.). SAGE.
    [Google Scholar]
  56. Zamora L. P., & Faris W. Eds. (1995) Magical realism: Theory, history, community. Duke University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  57. Zigo D., & Moore M. T. (2004) Science fiction: Serious reading, critical reading. English Journal, 94 (2), 85–90. https://doi.org/10.2307/4128779
    [Google Scholar]
  58. Zipes J. Ed. (2002) The Oxford companion to fairy tales: The Western fairy tale tradition from medieval to modern. Oxford University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.58680/rte2024583245
Loading
/content/journals/10.58680/rte2024583245
Loading

Data & Media loading...

  • Article Type: Research Article
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error
Please enter a valid_number test