Close Reading and the Oppositional Gaze: Teaching to Empower and Engage

Date: Wed, Jan 22, 2025
Time: 6pm-7:30pm
Location: Online
Registration: Click here to register

This workshop focuses on teaching students to employ bell hooks’s concept of the oppositional gaze through close reading. Combining close reading and the oppositional gaze in the classroom will help shape the future in three significant ways. First, it creates more engaged students. When students understand that they do not have to agree with common views of a text, they typically become more active readers because they will no longer read merely to understand. They will read to understand so they can add their own ideas to the conversation.

Second, it creates a more inclusive classroom. The oppositional gaze allows those who may feel symbolically annihilated within classroom material assert their views of the material in an informed and empowering way. This can have a far-reaching positive impact on a student’s ability to join in a conversation and change it for the better. Finally, since AI cannot be stopped, methods of assessing student comprehension through their writing must adapt. Allowing students to breathe new life into literature while using the critical eye necessary for the oppositional gaze will open new worlds of critical analysis.

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