What is it about?
This qualitative case study describes the responses adolescent students had to a Gothic studies reading unit that I designed. I selected this genre due to its popularity with adolescent students and the fact that it is not given priority in school. I specifically designed the unit to include traditional, canonical Gothic texts as well as contemporary and popular culture texts. The article illustrates participants' responses to the texts, the related activities, and class discussions.
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Why is it important?
This study is important because it sheds light on the kinds of texts that resonate with adolescents given where they are developmentally. There's a lot of research noting adolescents' disinterest and resistance to academic reading, partly because the texts they deem 'good reads' are not often reflected in the curriculum. This study shows that when efforts are made to prioritize texts that are meaningful to students, they are able to derive personal, social, and global understandings that enrich them as individuals.
Perspectives
This study came about from my own experiences as a middle school reading teacher. I came to see that the assigned curriculum did not always resonate with my students, particularly my more resistant readers. Yet, these same students were voraciously reading texts like Harry Potter, Twilight, etc. in their leisure reading. As a researcher, I wanted to understand why these texts seemed to 'speak' to adolescents and what would happen if these kinds of texts were given more priority in the classroom.
Dr Jennifer R Del Nero
College of New Jersey
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Slaying Monsters: Students’ Aesthetic Transactions With Gothic Texts, The Reading Teacher, January 2017, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1002/trtr.1551.
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