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This study aims to investigate the ways affective intensities arise in the intra-actions within an assemblage (three Black girls, objects such as computers and hoodies, institutionalized discourse associated with race and successful participation in schools) as the girls create multimodal responses to literature. This paper shows how the intra-actions among the girls and material objects produce affective intensities or new ways of being and becoming through which youth reauthor themselves as central and peripheral participants.

The authors present an illustrative case of the ways girls’ embodied literacy identities emerge when Jillian, Isa, and Rhianna intra-act with materials in an assemblage that includes their material-discursive positionings through qualitative and multimodal interaction analysis.

The analysis describes the ways the girls agentively participate through play, composing and moments of becoming (fluid subjectivities) that include emotive acts such as acts of solidarity, loving connectedness and possible frustration that inform who counts and who can be successful in the classroom.

This single case study gives a descriptive, in-depth analysis of the ways affective intensities emerge as three girls respond to literature to understand their embodied and discursive practices within the composing process.

To fully understand agency and the students’ emergent subjectivities, the authors combine embodiment and material-discursive analysis to understand affective intensities that evolve during three Black girls’ composing processes and the ways the girls’ subjectivities shift within the intra-actions.

This study aims to discuss the ethical and political possibilities offered by the presence of teaching artists (TAs) and visual artwork in racially and culturally diverse high school literacy (English Language Arts) classrooms.

This study explores episodes from two separate ethnographic studies that were conducted in one teacher’s critical literacy classroom across a span of several years. This study uses a transliteracies approach (Stornaiulo et al., 2017) to think about “meaning-making at the intersection of human subjects and materials” (Kontovourki et al., 2019); the study also draws on critical scholarship on art and making (Ngo et al., 2017; Vossoughi et al., 2016). The TA, along with the materials and processes of artmaking, decentered the teacher and literacy itself, inviting in new social realities.

TAs’ collective interpretation of existing artwork and construction of new works made visible how both human and nonhuman bodies co-produced “new ways of feeling and being with others” (Zembylas, 2017, p. 402). This study views these artists as catalysts capable of provoking, or productively disrupting, the everyday practices of classrooms.

Both studies demonstrated new ways of feeling, being and thinking about difference, bringing to the forefront momentary possibilities and impossibilities of complex human and nonhuman intra-actions. The provocations flowing from the visual artwork and the dialogue swirling around the work presented opportunities for emergent and unexpected experiences of literacy learning.

This work is valuable in exploring the boundaries of literacy learning with the serious inclusion of visual art in an English classroom. When the TAs guided both interpretation and production of artwork, they affected and were affected by the becoming happening in the classroom. This study suggests how teaching bodies, students and artwork pushed the transformative potential of everyday school settings.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a transcript of a dialogue among literacy educators and researchers on the impact of generative aritficial intelligence (AI) in the field. In the spring of 2023, a lively conversation emerged on the National Council of Research on Language and Literacy (NCRLL)’s listserv. Stephanie initiated the conversation by sharing an op-ed she wrote for Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the rise of ChatGPT and similar generative AI platforms, moving beyond the general public’s concerns about student cheating and robot takeovers. NCRLL then convened a webinar of eight leading scholars in writing and literacies development, inspired by that listerv conversation and an organizational interest in promoting intergenerational collaboration among literacy scholars.

As former doctoral students of two of the panel participants, webinar facilitators Grace and Victoria positioned themselves primarily as learners about this topic and gathered questions from colleagues, P-16 practitioners and those outside the field of education to assess the concerns and wonderings that ChatGPT and generative AI have raised. The following webinar conversation was recorded on two different days due to scheduling conflicts. It has been merged and edited into one dialogue for coherence and convergence.

Panel participants raise a host of questions and issues that go beyond topics of ethics, morality and basic writing instruction. Furthermore, in dialogue with one another, they describe possibilities for meaningful pedagogy and critical literacy to ensure that generative AI is used for a socially just future for students. While the discussion addressed matters of pedagogy, definitions of literacy and the purpose of (literacy) education, other themes included a critique of capitalism; an interrogation of the systems of power and oppression involved in using generative AI; and the philosophical, ontological, ethical and practical life questions about being human.

This paper provides a glimpse into one of the first panel conversations about ChatGPT and generative AI in the field of literacy. Not only are the panel members respected scholars in the field, they are also former doctoral students and advisors of one another, thus positioning all involved as both learners and teachers of this new technology.

On June 21, 2021, a motion was introduced to the Australian Senate calling on the federal government to reject critical race theory (CRT) from the national curriculum, claiming that CRT is divisive and racist. This was allegedly sparked by revisions to the national school curriculum, which included a more accurate reflection of the historical record of First Nations peoples’ experiences of colonisation and the framing of British arrival onto the continent as an invasion. This paper aims to overview the omnipresence of Western thought systems in the academy and critiques how knowledge production as a disciplinary practice positions race as a “marginalised knowledge”.

This paper is conceptual and it theorises the morphology and functions of racism within the Australian education system specifically, and across the board. This theorisation offers an invaluable starting point in rethinking how we advocate for and preserve Blac/k scholarship in academia. It examines how the political economy of racism in education offers a transformative position from which scholars can contribute to potential systemic change that promotes racial literacy and racial dignity, and the conditions necessary to foster these changes.

The paper confirms what studies by Blac/k scholars already highlight: that racialised knowledges are marked – as an aesthetic addition or as disruptive – or unnecessary – and how these patterns of colonial desires are manifested in the classroom or in race discourse.

Specifically, the arguments made in this paper examine two undertheorised concepts, namely, “racial dignity” and “trauma porn” to foreground the reimagination of practices that inform racial literacy in education. This offers a helpful starting place to consider how this form of education facilitates ongoing settler colonialism in Australia. The authors then propose an anti-racist pedagogical practice in social work education entailing three core crucial and transformative elements: self- reflexivity, storytelling and collaboration with Blac/k people.

This paper aims to describe the work of a group of seventh-grade boys in a middle school superhero storytelling project. In this project, the boys, one of whom identified as Latino and five of whom identified as Black, created a voiceless, faceless, raceless superhero named “Mute.” Using a Black feminist theoretical framework, the author considers how the boys authored embodied moments in the construction of their character and in a basketball scene. The author argues that within the narrated space of the story, embodiment functioned as a critical tool for authoring spaces that thwarted and bypassed dominant social narratives.

The white, female, university-affiliated author was a participant-researcher in the “Mute” group’s ten storytelling sessions. The ethnographic data set collected included fieldnotes, recordings and copies of all the writing and images of the group. The author uses this data to conduct a narrative analysis of the Mute story.

The author suggests that the group’s authoring of embodiment and choreography in their story makes space outside of the binary stances often available in traditional critical analyses. Instead, the group’s attention to embodied aspects of their character(s) allowed them to refuse either/or positions of such stances and construct a textured reality that existed beyond these bounds.

Black feminist theorists have warned that critical readings are potentially essentializing, risking a reification of the same systems they hope to overturn. The Mute group’s invention of a superhero character and their use of authored embodiment deflected such essentializing readings to imagine a new, more just (story) world. Thus, the author recommends an increased attention to how students are writing and reading embodiment to fully see the everyday ways they are critically working both against and beyond the social narratives that organize their lives.

Imagination in critical literacy research is usually referred to as a taken for granted concept that is seldom theorised, leaving the assumptions unchecked that everyone has a shared understanding of imagination. This paper aims to challenge critical literacy researchers to rethink the relationship between criticality and imagination and its implication for a critical writing pedagogy. It aims to synthesise the imagination and criticality in the context of critical literacy, both theoretically and empirically and in doing so to illustrate what form a critical writing pedagogy that foregrounds the critical imagination might take.

This argument is illustrated through analysing two sets of data that contain embodied enactments of contested gender issues across different modes and genres. Data from student teachers’ embodied enactments of contested gender issues and from their writing on these issues were analysed thematically.

A crucial aspect of the critical imagination entails creating pedagogical spaces that mobilise affect and empathy alongside criticality. Embodied literacy work across different modes and genres can play a significant role in facilitating the critical imagination by enabling students to enact, perform and immerse themselves in different discourses, ultimately generating new insights and ways of seeing.

Data was drawn from a relatively small sample of 30 assignments in the context of teacher education in South Africa. More empirical research needs to be conducted across a wider range of contexts.

The paper provides a theoretical framework and practical ideas for implementing a critical writing pedagogy that foregrounds the critical imagination and thus could be used in both teacher education contexts and school literacy classrooms.

This paper challenges critical literacy researchers to rethink the relationship between criticality and imagination and its implication for a critical writing pedagogy.

This essay-conversation brings together two literacy scholars who have worked with religious literacies: Suresh Canagarajah and Anne Elrod Whitney. They discuss not only the importance of religious literacies research but also their own experiences conducting such research as people of faith themselves.

The essay is derived from a live interview conversation between the authors, which was later edited along with short introductory and closing material.

Their conversation addresses religious literacies in disciplinary contexts, in teaching and in the careers of scholars.

This essay offers researchers and practitioners in literacy education a perspective from two scholars whose recent work has treated their own faith explicitly.

This study aims to build on Gee’s (2003) earlier question exploring specifically the learning processes associated with broadening cultural empathy and exploring personal bias through gameplay in the role-playing game, Oblivion.

Methodology for this case study (Stake, 1995) was informed by narrative (Reissman, 2001) methods that focused on collecting descriptions of the unique experiences of participants while being engaged in gameplay and their personal reflections synthesizing game-based engagement and course content. “Narrative research offers the possibility of exploring nuances and interrelationships among aspects of experience that the reader might better understand other related situations” (Josselson, p. 239). Our study focused on using narrative research methods to examine embodiment within the fictional world of the game as an experiential participatory-learning experience.

All participants indicated that the most salient learning experiences of the course was playing the game. The process participants underwent the experience of an event in the game and linked this gaming experience to their personal real-life reaction combined with emotions and thoughts. They then self-reflected on those reactions, which cumulatively contributed to self-reported increased self-awareness in the areas of personal bias, stereotypes, attitudes, values, beliefs and privilege. Three themes were identified from the data, namely, increase or variance in levels of self-awareness, navigating unfamiliar cultural systems and increased understanding and cognitive empathy for others. In addition, a fourth additional theme of embodiment and the value of embodiment were identified.

Lacking in the findings were reports by participants regarding application of skills to different cultural populations. Future research will focus on how integration of application of skills can be facilitated using similar pedagogical practices. Because this study included a small number of participants who were counseling students in a master’s program, the applicability of the findings to other student populations is limited. Further research would need to determine whether or not the findings could be replicated with other types of students.

Embedding the intervention within the structure of a course appeared to provide a supportive and safe space for experiencing embodied selves, it also provided a mode for performing their future selves for and with colleagues experiencing similar situations. In this way, they were able to venture with and among their colleagues toward a fuller understanding of self, and particularly in conjunction to diverse populations. These features of the intervention appeared to work in concert together holistically affording a space where they could be vulnerable enough, open enough, to begin questioning their central thoughts and beliefs and increase their empathy for others who are different.

Using the game of Oblivion allowed our students to have an embodied experience in a virtual space where they got to experience being in a completely different culture and experience culture shock. They had to make decisions that forced them to review their belief systems, go against their belief systems, or explore options that were against their belief systems in a safe way with no real-life repercussions. This embodied experience allowed our participants to engage in behaviors that none would dare to do in their real world and provided a comfort zone to explore taboo subjects.

Embedding the game within the curriculum encouraged participants to experience feelings of embodied empathy (Gee, 2010). Oblivion assisted in this process by providing participants the opportunity to gain entry into a unique designed world, a realistic but pseudo-cultural world replete with social and institutional structures both familiar and foreign to their real life. This appeared to provide a realistic manifestation of self, positioning participants toward experiencing embodied empathy for the designed scenarios in the game.