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Aesthetic Reading: Struggling Students Sensing Their Way To Academic Success, Cheryl Hogue Smith

Publications and Research

This article proposes to extend the revised transactional theory of reading that I introduced to JBW readers in 2012. That revised theory, building on Rosenblatt’s distinction between efferent and aesthetic reading, described a third reading stance I named “deferent” to designate the tendency of struggling student readers to defer their interpretations of texts to classmates or teachers deemed to have superior skill or authority. This new essay proposes a fourth, “anesthetic” stance of reading that focuses on counterproductive emotions struggling readers and writers feel that cause them to adopt a deferent stance of reading. This article also examines the dispositions …