1st Edition

Literacies, Sexualities, and Gender Understanding Identities from Preschool to Adulthood

    246 Pages
    by Routledge

    246 Pages
    by Routledge

    Offering diverse and wide-ranging perspectives on gender, sexualities, and literacies, this volume examines the intersection of these topics from preschool to adulthood. With a focus on current events, race, and the complex role of identity, this text starts with an overview of the current research on gender and sexualities in literacies and interrogates them from a range of multimodal contexts. Not restricted to any gender identity or age group, these chapters provide a much-needed and original update to the ways representations and performances of gender and sexualities through literacy practices are viewed in educational and sociocultural contexts. Scholars share their insights and transformative visions that respect and embrace difference while creating space for new and deeper understandings of contemporary issues.

    Foreword, Shirley R. Steinberg

    Section I. Gender, Sexualities, and Early Childhood Literacies

    1. Navigating Gender and Social Influences on Early Literacy Development

    Jacqueline Lynch

    2. Preschool-aged Children’s Gender Identity Development: Exploring Gender through Multicultural Literature

    Rebekah Piper

    3. Child’s Play: Reading and Remaking Gendered Action Texts with Toys

    Karen Wohlwend

    Section II. Gender, Sexualities, and Childhood Literacies

    4. A Literacy of Resistance: Girlhood and Domestic Violence

    Tracey Pyscher

    5. Gender in the Making: Literacies and Identities in Girls’ Self-Initiated Making Activities

    Elisabeth Gee and Priyanka Parekh

    6. Understanding How Indigenous Latinx Children Express Gender Identities

    Maria-Antonieta Avila

    Section III. Gender, Sexualities, and Adolescent Literacies

    7. "Holy Gendered Resource, Batman!": Examining the Broader Application of Comics and Superhero Fiction Beyond Their Restrictive Relationship with Boys

    Jacob Cassidy and Michael Kehler

    8. "This Is Why We Talk About Race and Sexuality, Too": Challenging White Feminism in and through Literacy

    Stephanie Anne Shelton and Shelly Melchior

    9. How Gender and Intersectionality Inform Adolescent Literacy

    Kathleen A. Hinchman and Donna E. Alvermann

    10. "Outside Voices": Justice-System Involved Adolescent Males Writing Their Identities

    Thomas Bean, Judith Dunkerly-Bean, Barbara Guzzetti, and Julia Morris

    11. Embedding the Complexities of Gender Identity Through a Pedagogy of Refusal: Learning the Body as Literacy Alongside Youth

    sj Miller

    12. Breaking Gender Expectations: Adolescents’ Critical Rewriting of a Trans Young Adult Novel

    Rob Simon and The Addressing Injustices Collective: benjamin lee hicks, Ty Walkland, Ben Gallagher, Sarah Evis and Pamela Baer

    13. Defining Gender and Sexuality in LGBTQ Memoirs

    Kate E. Kedley and Jenna Spiering

    Section IV. Gender, Sexualities, and Adult Literacies

    14. Performing and Resisting Toxic Masculinities on Sports News Comment Boards

    Erik Jacobson

    15. Transnational Women’s Online Literacies: Writing as Social Action

    Jin Kyeong Jung

    16. Diverse Men Making Media: Creating Cultural (Re)Constructions of Gender and Race

    Barbara Guzzetti

    17. Reading Fatherhood: The Importance of Fathers in Children’s Literacy Development

    Theodore S. Ransaw

    Biography

    Barbara J. Guzzetti is a Professor of English and English Education in the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences and Affiliated Faculty with the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College and the Center for Gender Equity in STEM at Arizona State University, USA.

    Thomas W. Bean is a Professor of Reading/Literacy and the Rosanne Keeley Norris Endowed Chair at Old Dominion University, USA.

    Judith Dunkerly-Bean is an Assistant Professor of Literacy at Old Dominion University, USA.

    "Comprehending the vulgarity of how dominant powers have existed and continued to exist at the expense of gender articulation, gender rights, and gender differences is an effort in which the authors of this book engage. To understand this is to begin to understand how gender is included within the complexities of intersectionality.….This volume offers ways in which to begin to enter a conversation [on these topics]."

    --From the Foreword by Shirley R. Steinberg, University of Calgary, Canada

    "This collection shines new light on some of the darkest corners of literacy formation. Not only does it walk readers through the nuanced evolution of the connection of literacy to sexuality and gender, but in doing so it reminds readers that everyone has a stake in how literacy is either encouraged or discouraged based on each unique situation. This text provides an excellent starting place for any number of discussions on how far we still have to go in pursuit of what it means not only to engage diverse literacies but also how to allow them to thrive."

    --Elaine O’Quinn, Appalachian State University, USA