Theorizing the Haunted Classroom

This dissertation explores feminist pedagogies, taken up as entirely contingent on the historical moment from which they develop and therefore specific to particular culture and politics, as offering alternative methods and rationale(s) for English education, no matter the era. Proposing that these pedagogies stand in opposition to a “politics of rationality” with its, for example, emphasis on high-stakes testing as “evidence” of accountability in the U.S., this dissertation claims feminist pedagogies are closer to failure than success. It is this lens of “failure” wherein an education of difference, one less violent, and more reparative, may be a starting point for a different kind of public education in America. Feminist pedagogies in this dissertation include those researched in three National Council of Teachers of English journals -- Language Arts, Voices from the Middle, and The English Journal. Some quiet, and some loud, feminist ways of teaching that subvert notions of "progress" in education rely on intimacies and attachments between human beings in local, literacy-rich settings that would have us question and radically change the foci and structure of English education. Moving away from the faulty value of measurement and towards the value of a less fixed, more dynamic value of love, this dissertation argues that the transformative power of the nurturing classroom has the potential to re-envision what is possible for children, especially those on the margins.