Sustaining Textual Passions: Teaching With Texts Youth Love

Abstract

Building on youth literacies in formal learning spaces is a promising direction for asset-based literacy learning designs. However, in response to ways that academic spaces can deaden passionate literacy study, it is important to attend to the resulting affective flows of such practices. This study traces how affect was sustained and dampened in a high school English classroom that intentionally brought together academic and fandom practices. We listened to how affective encounters with the popular text Grey's Anatomy unfolded across the class, with a particular focus on Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) focal students’ experiences. We found derision and dismissal of certain texts and experiences by peers (undergirded by dominant narratives about fandom and literary taste) dampened affective resonance. All the same, collective intensities were sustained through respectful discourse between fans and potential fans as well as BIPOC women's fugitive literacy practices resisting dampening practices of White students.