The new resource will support K-12 teachers’ teaching of literature associated with under-represented groups.
Teaching Hard Literature prototypes being created
The Center for the Liberal Arts is developing, under the guidance of Teaching Tolerance, Teaching Hard Literature, a complement to the celebrated Teaching Hard History framework and resources. Teaching Hard Literature will encourage, support, and document the teaching of literature associated with hitherto under-represented populations. Having collected and analyzed survey responses from 1700 teachers nationwide, we are now sponsoring, with funds from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations and UVA’s College of Arts and Sciences, faculty-led teams to develop six prototypes in the second half of 2020:
Team 1-Professor Sylvia Chong, leader: Asian and Asian American writing
Team 2-Professor Jennifer Greeson, leader: teaching dialect (Chestnutt, “The Goophered Grapevine," "Po' Sandy"; Toomer, Cane; Hurston, "Drenched in Light," "The Gilded Six-Bits”)
Team 3-Professors Carmen Lamas and Natasha Heny (Curry), co-leaders: Shadowshapers
Team 4-Professor Carmen Lamas, leader: Latinx texts
Team 5-Professor Stephen Railton (ret.), leader: contextualizing Huckleberry Finn
Team 6-Professor Lisa Woolfork, leader: Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
Other portions of the resource will focus on literature associated with Native American, LGBTQ, disabled, working class, and other communities.
For information on our previous work with Teaching Tolerance, see
https://news.virginia.edu/content/uva-program-arms-k-12-teachers-resources-slavery-and-racism
https://cla.virginia.edu/program/making-civil-rights-matter
https://cla.virginia.edu/program/teaching-history-race-united-states-2018