In this book, Johnston and Mangat consider ways in which particular postcolonial and multicultural literary texts are able to provide a space of cultural mediation for readers from various backgrounds. The studies described in the five chapters of the book explore the spaces of convergence of identity, culture and literature with students and teachers in high school contexts and undergraduates in university settings. In each study, readers are responding to texts that are culturally distant from their own literary and experiential histories. An objective of each study was to consider the nature of the cultural locations of the reader and the text, and the interstitial spaces between these locations. The book interrogates readers’ attempts to negotiate cultural difference in literary contexts and questions how this negotiation requires reading practices traditionally ignored in North American classrooms. The book will offer educators at the secondary and post-secondary levels rich material to draw upon for a rethinking of the school curriculum and will be of interest to scholars of postcolonial and literary studies.

This collection of essays explores the cultural significance of children’s reading by analyzing a series of Anglo-American case studies from the eighteenth century to the present. Marked by historical continuity and technological change, children’s reading proves to be a phenomenon with broad influence, one that shapes both the development of individual readers and wider social values. The essays in this volume capture such complexity by invoking the conception of “mediation” to approach children’s reading as a site of interaction among individual people, material texts, and institutional networks. Featuring a range of scholarly perspectives from the disciplines of literature, education, graphic design, and library and information science, this collection uncovers both the intricacies and wider stakes of children’s reading. The books, public programs, and archives that focus explicitly on children’s interests and needs are powerful arenas that give expression to the key ideological investments of a culture.

Through an innovative approach of critical ethnography and literacy research via case-study methodologies, Enacting Adolescent Literacies across Communities: Latino/a Scribes and Their Rites analyzes Latino/a adolescents’ engagement with the elements of literacy for English language arts learning and understanding. How young people enact literacies in their bicultural lives and understand literary traditions today reveals their own interests in democracy, equity, and opportunity. Moreover, the rites they perform often recover buried histories, mirrors, and stories similar to the pre-Columbian scribes whose intellectual legacy is relevant in the twenty-first century. R. Joseph Rodríguez illustrates how adolescents experience scribal identities and language pluralism that sustains their cultural knowledge as they make meaning and enact literacies with diverse audiences in civic and schooling communities.

Examines how the social and cultural contexts of classroom and community shape four classroom practices involving literature - read aloud, peer-led literature discussions, teacher-led literature discussions, & independent reading.

Without readers and audiences, viewers and consumers, the postcolonial would be literally unthinkable. And yet, postcolonial critics have historically neglected the modes of reception and consumption that make up the politics, and pleasures of meaning-making during and after empire. Thus, while recent criticism and theory has made large claims for reading; as an ethical act; as a means of establishing collective, quasi-political consciousness; as identification with difference; as a mode of resistance; and as an impulsion to the public imagination, the reader in postcolonial literary studies persists as a shadowy figure. This collection answers the now pressing need for a distinctively postcolonial take on the rapidly expanding area of reader and reception studies. Written by some of the top scholars in the field, these essays reveal readers and reception to be varied and profoundly unstable subjects that challenge many of our assumptions and preconceptions of the postcolonial – from the notion of reading as national fellowship to the demands of an ethics of reading.

Taking an innovative and multi-disciplinary approach to literature from 1947 to the present day, this concise companion is an indispensable guide for anyone seeking an authoritative understanding of the intellectual contexts of postcolonial literature and culture. An indispensable guide for anyone seeking an authoritative understanding of the intellectual contexts of Postcolonialism, bringing together 10 original essays from leading international scholars including C. L. Innes and Susan Bassnett Explains the ideas and practises that emerged from the dismantling of European empires Explores the ways in which these ideas and practices influenced the period's keynote concerns, such as race, culture, and identity; literary and cultural translations; and the politics of resistance Chapters cover the fields of identity studies, orality and literacy, nationalisms, feminism, anthropology and cultural criticism, the politics of rewriting, new geographies, publishing and marketing, translation studies. Features a useful Chronology of the period, thorough general bibliography, and guides to further reading

Taking up the idea that teaching is a political act, this collection of essays reflects on recent trends in ecocriticism and the implications for pedagogy. Focusing on a diverse set of literature and media, the book also provides background on historical and theoretical issues that animate the field of postcolonial ecocriticism. The scope is broad, encompassing not only the Global South but also parts of the Global North that have been subject to environmental degradation as a result of colonial practices. Considering both the climate crisis and the crisis in the humanities, the volume navigates theoretical resources, contextual scaffolding, classroom activities, assessment, and pedagogical possibilities and challenges. Essays are grounded in environmental justice and the project to decolonize the classroom, addressing works from Africa, New Zealand, Asia, and Latin America and issues such as queer ecofeminism, disability, Latinx literary production, animal studies, interdisciplinarity, and working with environmental justice organizations.