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Asking The Tough Questions: Teaching Literature And Nonfiction Through Critical Literacy To Recapture Our Voices, Agency, And Mission, Elsie L. Olan, Wendy Farkas, Kia Jane Richmond

Conference Presentations

Exploding the Myth of Mental Illness

Disrupting Notions Of Stigma While Empowering Voices: Examining Language Identity, Mental Illness, And Disability Through Young Adult Literature, Elsie L. Olan, Wendy Farkas, Kia Jane Richmond

Conference Presentations

Presenter Two will share new research on young adult literature which features characters with mental illness. She will describe strategies for using texts such as Your Voice is All I Hear (2015), Thirteen Reasons Why (2007), and The Impossible Knife of Memory (2014) to analyze and critique representations of mental illness in young adult literature. Drawing on research by Koss & Teale (2009) and Richmond (2014), this presenter will help session attendees interrogate “the power of language choices” and “become empowered to confront the stigma associated with mental illness and confront bullying” (p. 24).

Reimagining Movements: Towards A Queer Ecology And Trans/Black Feminism, Gabriel Benavente

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis seeks to bridge feminist and environmental justice movements through the literature of black women writers. These writers create an archive that contribute towards the liberation of queer, black, and transgender peoples.

In the novel Parable of the Talents, Octavia Butler constructs a world that highlights the pervasive effects of climate change. As climate change expedites poverty, Americans begin to blame others, such as queer people, for the destruction of their country. Butler depicts the dangers of fundamentalism as a response to climate change, highlighting an imperative for a movement that does not romanticize the environment as heteronormative, but …

Content Matters--Teaching "The Case For Reparations," 9-12, Tamara Jaffe-Notier, Carol Friedman

National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference

We offer specific materials and plans for teaching the structure and content of Ta-Nehisi Coates' persuasive essay, "The Case for Reparations," and building trustworthy relationships with and among students. By participating in this interactive session, you will practice teaching five specific high school appropriate lessons addressing requisite knowledge and skills for studying this essay, from real estate redlining to building academic vocabulary for rhetorical analysis.