The Veil Between Worlds: Examining the Present by Exploring the Fantastic in a Secondary Classroom (67256)

Session Information: Language Development and Literacy
Session Chair: Roxanne Belanger

Friday, January 6, 2023 (10:55)
Session: Session 2
Room: 321A
Presentation Type:Oral Presentation

All presentation times are UTC-10 (Pacific/Honolulu)

Common rhetoric in literary and educational circles is that what you read shapes you, but within high school literature classes in British Columbia there is an unspoken literary hierarchy of texts that are worthy of shaping young minds. Speculative fiction (SF) is one of the fastest-growing genres of Young Adult fiction, but teachers aren’t teaching it. Genre gatekeeping is enforced as SF is dismissed and looked down upon for lacking literary merit. While there is space for post-WWII speculative fiction, there is resistance against using contemporary SF in the classroom. In his introduction to Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Neil Gaiman writes that fiction "is a lie that tells us true things, over and over" (2011, p. xvi). This study contends that these truths and ideas that travel between the fantastic and our current world are what make the vast genre so valuable a tool for teaching students to interrogate their world. Indeed, the richness and potential of SF texts make them perfect vehicles for teaching and practicing critical literacy—the act and art of reading the world. Speculative texts provide students with an entry point into critical analysis of their worlds through the alterity present in the very nature of a speculative fiction text. One of the curricular big ideas of English Studies 12 is that "[t]he exploration of text and story deepens our understanding of diverse, complex ideas about identity, others, and the world" (Province of BC, 2021), and SF can provide a powerful framework for that exploration.

Authors:
Deb Bergman Wood, University of British Columbia, Canada


About the Presenter(s)
Ms Deb Bergman Wood is a University Postgraduate Student at University of British Columbia in Canada

See this presentation on the full schedule Schedule



Conference Comments & Feedback

Place a comment using your LinkedIn profile

Comments

Share on activity feed

Powered by WP LinkPress

Share this Presentation

Posted by Clive Staples Lewis

Last updated: 2023-02-23 23:45:00