English Journal Column Revised: Adventures with Text and Beyond

Adventures with Text and Beyond
Editor: P. L. Thomas

The New London Group (Cazden et al. 1996) “argue[d] that literacy pedagogy now must account for the burgeoning variety of text forms associated with information and multimedia technologies.” While the real world of “text” has expanded and challenged us with a variety of media, format, and genres
beyond print text, our classrooms have remained relatively static in the texts we challenge and the explanations we offer for text, medium, and genre.

This column will explore avenues to challenging the texts we bring into the classroom and our collective assumptions about what counts as text by expanding the works we invite our students to explore and experience. Within a critical literacy context, contributors should explore and share their classroom practices that address questions such as, What constitutes text, medium, and genre? How do comics, graphic novels, film, and electronic media challenge and inform our traditional
assumptions about print?

Submit an electronic Word file attached to your email to the column editor, P. L. Thomas, at paul.thomas@furman.edu. Contributors are encouraged to query the column editor and share drafts of column ideas as part of the submission process.