(Re) storying English: why text selection isn’t the answer

While school English has been (and in some contexts remains) a key mechanism for the imperial project, in settler societies it carries a core responsibility for unsettling colonial narratives and discourses. Thinking with the concepts of Indigenous relationality and literary sociability, and drawing on research undertaken by the Literary Education Lab https://literaryeducationlab.org/ , this talk addresses systemic and individual challenges encountered in sustaining anti-colonial practice, and explores new approaches to reading and literary knowledge building that might support a powerful, relational literary imaginary in and beyond secondary classrooms.

Professor Larissa McLean Davies is Deputy Dean and Professor of Teacher Education at the Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne. Her research focuses on teacher knowledge, literacy, and English education, emphasising how teacher knowledge is developed in the context of justice, anti-colonial, and sustainability imperatives. She co-directs the Literary Education Lab, exploring literature’s role in addressing social and environmental challenges.