EXAMINING CANONICITY AS AN IMPLICIT AND DISCURSIVE FRAME IN SECONDARY ENGLISH CLASSROOMS  By  Michael Macaluso        A DISSERTATION  Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of  Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education  Doctor of Philosophy  2016   ABSTRACT  EXAMINING CANONICITY AS AN IMPLICIT AND DISCURSIVE FRAME IN SECONDARY ENGLISH CLASSROOMS  By  Michael Macaluso  The idea of the literary canon is a concept that has occupied the field of English Education for quite some time, where it is discussed, debated, and critiqued as a list of books (or as an ideological force linked to a list of books) that is, ought, and/or ought not to be read and engaged in the English classroom.  Using a critical qualitative approach, this project rethinks or disrupts this notion of canon as only a list of books, conceiving instead of the concept and its impact in much broader terms, ones that explore the educational project of canonicity, a larger concept that both endorses the canon as a list but also does much more to entrench the ideology inherent in such a list through pedagogical encounters.  By theorizing the latent meanings of the n using data drawn from three different secondary English classrooms, this project illustrates that the ways teachers act, think, and speak about and around canonical texts are imbued and embedded with one ideology in particular: religiosity, or general, religious-like discourses.  It also contends that the religious-ogies during the teaching of canonical texts.  Thus, this project demonstrates that canonicity is an all-encompassing approach to English education, a discursive frame that actually invites (or forecloses) certain pedagogical practices and encounters linked to instantiated traditions, assumptions, and pedagogical practices in the field.  In offering this notion of canonicity, the project imagines a new way in which the field of English Education might deepen its traditional critique and discussion of the canon as a list of books.                                  Copyright by MICHAEL MACALUSO 2016 iv                       For my parents, who have given me everything but have asked for nothing. And, of course, to Kate    v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS    As if I could ever acknowledge everyoneFirst, I want to thank my teachers and students  past, present, and future  as they are my foundation and, whether they know it or not, have certainly pushed me to pursue this degree in the first place.  Indeed, their influence helped to formulate this project in my mind well before I ever knew it existed.  I am grateful that I have learned so much from them.  And, of course, I am grateful to the many teachers who have agreed to be a part of this project (and more), including Lisa, Rachel, Joe, and Robert. To my advisor, Avner Segall, thank you for your unrelenting support and guidance.  So much of who I have become is a result of your constant prodding, your continual questioning, and your insatiable appetite for being unsatisfied.  You have pushed beyond what I ever thought I could doAvner respond to this?always being that voice in my ear. I would like to thank the members of my committee: Mary Juzwik, Kyle Greenwalt, Django Paris, and Amanda Thein.  You have all played a formative role in mentoring me (and this project) at various stages in my career, and I am grateful that you all have agreed to see me through to the end.  Thank you.  I am inspired by your patience and investment in me!  I will remember that as I continue to work with others as a teacher, scholar, and researcher.  Mary, thank you for taking me under your wing the past five years.  I owe many of my incredible learning experiences to you, including the discovery of my own epistemological stances.  Kyle, I am so happy to have met you in my first semester, as you have kept me true and faithful to myself and to my interests.  I am grateful for our honest friendship.  Django, your class my first year has been fundamental to my thinking on this topic; I have revisited it along with your  vi comments many times ever since.  Thank you for continuing to mentor me since then.  Amanda, I am so grateful you have agreed to work with me from afar.  I had admired you for some time before we first talked, and I am grateful for the Veal Seminar in allowing that to happen.  Still, you barely knew me when I asked you to be on my committee, but your gracious and positive mentorship has made me feel that my work has potential.  Thank you. So many friends and family have encouraged me along the way and helped Kati and me navigate this experience together.  From the time I was a young boy, my parents have gone above and beyond in their support of my endeavors and continue to do so now even with my own family.  And my brothers have always reaffirmed what I have always known  that I need them more than they need me.  Thank you again to my family, my parents and brothers and sisters-in-law, for being the guideposts I have needed along the way.  Thanks also to my extended family (including aunts, uncles, cousins, and parents, brothers, and sister in-laws) for being sources of unwavering support and, of course, babysitters.  None of this would have been possible without our families.  And thanks to my friends, colleagues, and mentors who have been consistently present for me along the way since day one, including: Kati, Cori, Don, Adam, Natasha, Carlin, Rob, Erik, and Christina.  A special thanks, too, to Sam for her early guidance and for introducing me to Arthur Applebee, whose work has been an impetus for my own. Thanks to Kati, who I try to emulate in all things and who I see with new wonder every day, especially after these past five years.  In every sense of the word, you are my partner.  looking forward to the next steps and beyond!  Finally, I give my most heartfelt love and thanks to Matthew, Michael, and Grace.  Your love and patience has sustained me these past years, and my favorite part of everyday has been coming home to see you.  There is nothing greater I can do than be a dad to you.  Thank you.  vii TABLE OF CONTENTS     LIST OF TABLES          ix  LIST OF FIGURES          x  PROLOGUE           1  CHAPTER 1           12 TOWARDS A THEORY OF CANONICITY      12  Introduction          12 Historical Contexts        13   Present Context        19   Purpose and Questions       25   Conceptual Framework        27           27   Discourse         31   The Frame         33   Curriculum and Pedagogy       34   Considering Canon, Curriculum, and Discourse    36  CHAPTER 2           38 METHODOLOGY          38  Critical Qualitative Research and Cultural Studies     38  Methods          41   Participants         42   Rachel          42   Lisa          45   Joe          48   Interviews and Observations       51   Data Analysis         54   On Methodological Baggage       58  CHAPTER 3           62 CREEDS AND DEEDS: SACRED TEXTS AND TEXTUAL PRACTICES  62  Introduction          62 Sacred Practices: Canonicity and Criticality     66  Canonical P     74 Sacred Practices and Canonized Pedagogy     78 Conclusion         84     viii CHAPTER 4           86 THE ENGLISH CLASSROOM AS RELIGIOUS RITUAL     86  Introduction          86   Icons and Iconization        88   Reverent-Bodies/d and Sacred Space      90   Truth and Knowledge        94   Discipline and Discipleship       98   Participating With the Word       103   Conclusion         108  CHAPTER 5           110 TEACHERS PREACHER: AUTHORITY AND CANONIZING PEDAGOGY  110  Introduction          110   Of Authority and Being Made to Listen     113   Towards (Building) Salvation       118   On Profess[or]ing        122   Other Models of the Teacher-Preacher     128   Conclusion         133  CHAPTER 6            134 ON CANONICITY          134  Introduction          134   Towards a Theory of Canonicity Revisited     135   Cross Case Discussion       143   English Education and Critical English Education    146 Imagining Non-Canonical Pedagogy      150  Implications          154  Conclusion          159  EPILOG       161  One Final Note         164  APPENDICES          166 Heart of Darkness Handout     167 Hamlet Handout      171 Appendix C: Manuscript written with Lisa for the English Journal   173 REFERENCES          186      ix LIST OF TABLES     Table 1  Most Frequently Taught Book-Length Texts by Most Recent Frequency  13    x LIST OF FIGURES     Figure 1      71  Figure 2    72  Figure 3 Rendering     91  Figure 4 eart of Darkness Handout       167  Figure 5 Hamlet Handout        171       1 PROLOGUE    ~ song lyrics from Bye Bye Birdie   I first heard these lyrics when I was a freshman in high school, having recently been cast Bye Bye Birdie.  They resonated with me, I remember, because I knew from a young age that I wanted to be a teacherteacher I might be, as I generally enjoyed most of my school subjects, but I was always drawn to and deeply moved  my experiences in my high school English classes that I knew for sure that I wanted to be a high school English teacher specifically.  I think a lot of that desire, interest, or calling on my part had to do with the canon and what I saw as my  somewhat divine expertise with these books     Before high school, I would imagine that my experiences of reading in school were much like everyone else.  Quite simply, reading was a chore, something to be tested on or checked for understanding.  This method of reading was ingrained in me since the first grade when, al readers, small books with a collection of short stories followed by a series of multiple choice questions.  They were not interesting to me, I felt that I was always behind the rest of the class, and I never did very well on them.  These feelings, combined with being placed ireading group, turned me off from reading at an early age. This perception of reading as a chore persisted through most of my schooling experiences.  I remember in middle school that I hated reading The Cay and Hatchet, and I vividly remember stressing out while reading Number The Stars 2  the result of my poor skills, not because I disliked the b method of reading for comprehension didn't change much in the early part of high school either  we had similar quizzes over A Separate Piece, Of Mice and Men, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (I even recall memorizing the name of the ferryboat in the latter  The Walter Scott knowing that my teacher would ask for it on the quiz), and I loathed wasting class time to read aloud huge chunks of these novels  or worse yet, Shakespeare  simply because that was (and still is) an expected practice in the classroom. What I thought odd, however, was that while I remained disengaged with these books and reading practices in school, I enjoyed reading and libraries and bookstores outside of school.  It was no big deal to me, for example, that my mom one day brought home a copy of Jurassic Park for me The Andromeda Strain ike to read the source material, and I did.  Similarly, even though reading quizzes smeared my enjoyment of The Indian in the Cupboard, I remember relishing in the sequels soon after I had opened them on Christmas day (yes, books were a welcome Christmas present in my estimation).  And that certainly was the difference  there was a feeling of joy and excitement when I read these books outside of school as opposed to those assigned for in-school purposes and read with a highlighter and pen in hand. More than anything, though, I was an avid reader of comic books.  My love of these books started at a young age, before middle school, and by accident when, one evening, I happened to notice a small magazine rack full of comic books at the local grocery story while shopping with my mom.  It must have been the colors and images that caught my attention or it  3 could have been some depiction of Batman in particular (I had a particular fondness of Batman since Kindergarten when I would watch reruns of the old TV show after school).  This time in my life was a time before superheroes became so prevalent (and cool, I might add), but there was something that day about an issue of The Uncanny X-Men that made me grab it and ask my mom if we could get it.  She obliged without a second thought, something that I recognize now was remember that while the rest of my family watched a movie together that night, I sat at a small desk in our kitchen and, under the soft glow of a desk lamp, read that comic book.  Everything changed after that  Cyclops, Storm, and Wolverine resonated with me, and I became a lover of comic books.  I still have that first comic book; after all, it saved my reading life, and I recognize the great privilege I had in parents who could and would support my reading habits. It was the storylines that intrigued me most  that these X-Men could be superheroes with special powers and yet be human at same time, dealing with human issues  acceptance and intolerance, identity and difference, empathy and alienation, and so on.  More recently, these comic books have been analyzed as metaphors for the adversities that come with adolescence, suggesting one reason why they resonate with so many people and no doubt why they stuck with me.  While some of these characters and storylines appealed to my awkward adolescence, on a different level, the adventures of the X-Men were epic, and I loved the battles of good versus evil that waged across the pages.  I was always fascinated with the conflict of good and evil, the where rights and wrongs and morals and morality were ingrained since childhood at church, at home, and at my Catholic schools.  But while the heroes were heroic and the villains were  4 easily classify them as entirely good or evil.  This grayness fascinated me, and for someone who came from a White, upper-middle class background, whose Christian worldview was hardly ever disrupted, reading about these characters, who were and were not like me, was an entirely new experience. While my reading of these comic books waned as I grew older and busier with school and other interests, my out-of-school and in-school reading practices surprisingly converged in my junior year British Literature class.  It started with Beowulf when I saw so clearly the parallels between the comic books I enjoyed reading at home and the events and dialogue that played out in that epic poem.  I noticed the same with King Arthur and Macbeth.  These were epic stories about good and evil, and they all hinged on the supernatural or super-heroic.  I remember regularly sharing with my mom the realizations of these parallels, amazed that those comic book writers had clearly read the same books when they were in high school too.  Even the names of characters were the same.  I saw similar parallels in other texts I read that year: Brave New World, Wuthering Heights, and Lord of the Flies.  While themes of good and evil, redemption,   But it was more than these textual themes that baited my reading interests that year.  For reading quizzes, forced to read aloud just to kill time, or listen to lectures on textual significance.  Instead, we acted out Beowulf and Macbeth in a grand fashion, we made surprising and contemporary connections with Brave New World, we drew our imagined depictions of Grendel and the witches, and deliberate discussions revolved around issues of morality   5 acts of revenge justifiable, what did these books reveal about our human nature?  rather than mere plot structure.  These activities and questions helped me see reading beyond a chore; reading became performative, purposeful, and fun.  There was significance to these books, and, most importantly, I finally felt as if they resonated with me so much that I knew my life had changed. More specifically, I fell in love with these books and with the act of reading that, after junior year, I knew there was only one option for me: I was going to someday teach these same books.  And so, my out-of-school reading shifted from comic books and popular fiction to   This shift needed to happen, I thought, because, after all, I was going to be an English teacher.  From that point on, my choices in life were determined, or at the very least, informed by my consumption of what I came to understand as the canon, that (somewhat nebulous) list of books that is, more often than not, defined by those books taught in secondary English classrooms.  In fact, my perceived love of these books clouded my perceptions of other books and even of opportunities and choices beyond text selection.  There were times in my life that I thought I was going to be a math teacher or a pediatrician (despite my calling to teach), but my British Literature class completely interrupted those notions of my future self.  I sought out -f the twentieth century Ulysses was canceled at the last minute), and I prided myself on my growing bookshelves of canonical novels and anthologies of British and American literature.  All of this was done with the intention that I would one day have the opportunity to teach these  6 books to students who would love and value them as much as I did, whose lives would be forever changed, liked mine.   Furthermore, being the product of Catholic schooling and a student of privilege at a Catholic university, I did not question or challenge my teachers or professors, I did not question or challenge reading lists, esteemed books, or even the ways in which these books were taught  there was no need to because my teachers and these books represented me  a White, heterosexual, Christian male  and aligned with my own worldviews.  My English classes were somewhat like my experiences at church: I was told what to read and how to think about it, and I did so without hesitation.  There was an authority about these books  and about my teachers and professors who taught them  apprentice of the canon.  In face, in order to more fully immerse myself in this body of literature, I abandoned my out-of-school reading interests in order to pursue the canon, which at the time represented the apex of cultural literacy for me (a notion I now certainly recognize as problematic for a number of reasons), of conversations among adults and intellectuals, of more mature audiences and themes.  Mostly, they reminded me of the importance of being an English teacher, which was and still is, I feel, my own personal calling in life.   Because of my commitment to these books, teaching came easy to me, and, no joke, I  in the ways mine had  through these great books.  And so, it was with these romanticized notions of Hamlet, Jay Gatsby, Hester Prynne, Huck Finn, Jane Eyre and so many others that I marched into school everyday and taught a cultural and racial mix of students in inner-city Baton Rouge and, later, mostly white students in suburban Chicago about canonical characters.  Students and parents  7   After several years of teaching The Crucibleclassroom.  Nothing really happened that made me feel this way; rather, I think it was the slow realization that I had been the product of the way things had always been done and of larger concerns and values that I did not recognize at the time  schooling more generally, the Advanced Placement curricula and mindset, expectations for college readiness, and so on.  On another level, I was teaching at a predominantly white, upper-middle class school where the  because the identities of the teachers and students (myself included) matched the characters in (and authors of) the canonical books we studied.  This realization was crushing to me, and I felt that I was duped by but also complicit in some great deceit. Funny though, in looking back, I realize now that what I perceived books was perhaps more so a fascination with the idea and ideology of being an English teacher (and an ideology that was similarly raced, classed, gendered, and religioned), much like those sentiments expressed in the song lyrics that open this prologue.  But, I recognize now that I was captivated by the ideology of being an English teacher of the canon.  I was hailed as a subject  as a type of student, as a type of reader, and even as a type of English teacher-yet-to-be  that these texts called for, of what I felt I was supposed to be rather than, perhaps, what could be.  Even though my British Literature teacher did the most to be different in her pedagogy, and set me on the path towards becoming an English teacher, she also did the most to reify the  8 perception of these great books as a or sophistication that would somehow advance me in the world.  And she did this in small ways, mainly through aside comments that revealed insights to her personal opinions about literature, art, and pop culture.  I certainly felt, in a very palpable way, that there was cultural capital that came with the reading of certain books and being an English teacher of great works of literature.  Before I get in too deep, permit me to say that I realize my story, at this point, may have taken on a tone of regret, perhaps even contriteness or repentance as I confess of my sins of the past (a point to which I will return in the Epilogue).  Granted, I do wonder sometimes at what could have been  both inside and outside of the classroom  had I not been influenced by a canonical way of thinking.  How would my life be different?  What choices would I have or have not made?  Further, why was I, out of all of my peers, the (only?) one who was influenced or taken by this perception of canonicity?  Despite these questions I have come to ponder (and I will revisit them and their themes in my Conclusion), I want to unequivocally say that I was and am proud to be an English teacher.  I do not regret following my calling, I do not regret my experiences as a teacher or my identity as a Catholic Christian, and I do not blame my own teachers for teaching me how they did and what they did in the classroom.  I did not choose teaching as a profession; rather, I have never felt more fulfilled and alive in my profession than I did when I was teaching high school English.  But this project, I hope, may point to what else took place  what I could not see as a student or even as a teacher myself  in the English classroom and what might be possible otherwise.    On that note, it was not until I finally did become a teacher that I continually questioned why I was doing what I was doing or why English was what it was.  Quite simply, I grew tired and somewhat resentful with the standard, traditional answers and rationales to curricular and  9 pedagogical questions.  I grew tired with The Crucible, for example, not because I had read and taught it several times, but because it was the story.  Both the text and I had become part of a script of the English classroom that this text should be the text taught to students and that there was a prescribed way of teaching it (grounded largely in close reading and literary analysis and interpretation).  Further, I see how my own privilege encouraged me to valorize and uphold these texts as well as a certain teacherly mindset or disposition in my pedagogy around these books.  I realized, too, at some point, that my love of the canonical books we studied in my British Literature class was tied to more than just the book  it was wound up in the connections I made between these books and with my comic books, in the ways in which those books were taught to me, and in the themes and discussions my classmates and I had had around those books.  To a certain extent, these connections that I was making on my own served as a disruption of those canonical books for me  that my comic books may be imbued with a value and purpose long held assumptions and traditions about what secondary English is and should be.  So, with this in mind, I think I began to do things in my own classroom to encourage different interpretations of the canonical texts and characters my students and I studied together, and I brought into the classroom controversies about the texts we studied  anti-Semitism, about why we read these books in the first place, about the lack of diversity in textbooks.  I tried to open up spaces of interpretation, plurality, and possibility that had otherwise been closed or not considered for my students and me.  Looking back, I may ascribe this practice of mine to a British Literature class I took in college, where we read Jane Eyre in tandem with Wide Sargasso Seato challenge the undercurrent of colonization that pervades the former book in content, style, and structure; indeed, to read  10 against the book.  It makes sense to me now why my own Advanced Placement (AP) English students disliked reading Wide Sargasso Sea out of any book I taught that year (including Hamlet, King Lear, Jane Eyre, A Streetcar Named Desire, but also The Kiterunner, The Life of Pi, and The Prince of Tides)  it was that book, perhaps, that disrupted or challenged their own worldviews or notions of privilege, indeed their (and my) own notions  in terms of plot (and a linear sense of structure), structure, genre, and even voice  of what type of books are studied in an English classroom, and one that held such high esteem as the AP English classroom.  Such a designation , I believe (and suggest in this project), contributes to the minutiae of schooling that undercut or marginalize criticality (from a critical literacy or Critical English Education perspective) in the classroom. Thus I came to graduate school with the same interest in the canon that I have had for twenty years  what it was, how it worked, what teachers believed about it  and my conversations in graduate school finally disrupted the canon for me (beyond a pedagogical approach) and provided some language to recognize the politics embedded in  that the (again, somewhat imaginary) list of books that constitutes the canon was contrived as a result of specific power relations and structures that maybe had little to do with the narrative of These conversations helped me to see why I valued X-Men in one space and Wuthering Heights in another.  Similarly, they helped me to see how the canon fit within my own privilege and personal narratives of whiteness, masculinity, Christianity, and heterosexuality  that I was indicative of its ideal audience and writers, that the canon comes from a place of privilege and special interest, and that it too plays a role in molding schools, classrooms, teachers, and students, much like the sentiment from the Bye Bye Birdie lyrics that began this prologue did for me.  My point here is that I let the ideology embedded in  11 those lyrics, the ideology of being an English teacher of the canon, define my own interests and my own canon.  Rather than letting me  or most importantly my students  define, find, or construct my own canon(s), I let the canon in some ways define me as a person and English teacher. With this in mind, and in considering my own story and goals towards a critical English education, I have begun to see how the canon may serve as a metaphor for the ways in which schools and classrooms may re/produce certain sentiments, storylines, or even ways of being and thinking in and of the English classroom, as it had and has for me and my students.  Thus, I hope this project is a (small but) beginning attempt in interrogating the power the literary canon exercises, not just in shaping curricula and pedagogical practices, but in shaping lives, values, and ideas.  I hope, too, that it begins to break some of the unquestioned traditions associated with reading, teaching, and knowing in the English classroom.    12 CHAPTER 1: TOWARDS A THEORY OF CANONICITY   Above all, however, there is   (Scholes, 1998, pp. 107-108)  canonical texts act as toolsets for reifying the status quo.Kirkland, 2011, p. 204).    Introduction  The idea of the literary canon is a concept that has occupied the field of English Education for quite some time.  It usually refers to or is linked to a list of texts traditionally taught (for whatever reason) as part of the curricula of the secondary English classroom.  Several national studies conducted over the past several decades have investigated what texts are taught in secondary English classrooms (Applebee, 1993; Stallworth et al., 2006; Stotsky, 2010; Stallworth & Gibbons, 2012), and these studies have helped to concretize the idea of the canon as xts of the English classroom (See Table 1).  While not entirely unchanging, these lists of texts have remained remarkably stable since the late 1800s, and as a result, most practitioners and scholars in English Education studies (whether they agree with the idea of the canon or not) have come to associate the literary canon with a body of literature or a list of books synonymous with required reading for students of the school subject English (Stotsky, 1994; Jago 2004; Hirsch et al., 1988; Bloom, 1995; Morrell, 2005; Kirkland, 2009, 2011; Rush & Scherff, 2013; Lapp, Fisher, and Frey, 2013).  Some of these texts include, with great frequency, The Great Gatsby, Romeo and Juliet, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and, more recently, The Crucible and Night.  In addition to identifying text titles, these studies further highlight the unrelenting pervasiveness of these lists and of the idea of the canon more broadly, proving, in a sense, that students have been reading the same content in secondary English classrooms for (at least) the  13 past fifty or sixty years.  The general stability of these lists helps to foster a definition of the literary canon as a dominant, pervading group of texts that have become staples of the secondary English classroom. Table 1  Most Frequently Taught Book-Length Texts by Most Recent Frequency  Stallworth & Gibbons, 2012 Stotsky, 2010 Applebee, 1993 The Great Gatsby Romeo and Juliet To Kill a Mockingbird The Crucible Night The Odyssey The Great Gatsby Romeo and Juliet To Kill a Mockingbird The Crucible Night Huckleberry Finn Of Mice and Men Julius Caesar The Scarlet Letter Lord of the Flies The Great Gatsby Romeo and Juliet To Kill a Mockingbird Hamlet Macbeth Huckleberry Finn Of Mice and Men Julius Caesar The Scarlet Letter Lord of the Flies  Historical Contexts  The inception of the idea of the canon, from the perspective of those texts taught in secondary English classrooms, can be traced back to two events: the Harvard entrance requirements of 1873-74 and the meeting of the Committee of Ten in 1892.  Briefly, the 1873-74 requirement stated, for the first time, that applicants would write a short composition on a literary text, with specific options ranging from authors like William Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott.  Because specific titles were mentioned in the requirement (and in subsequent requirements), secondary school teachers felt they had no choice but to teach those specific titles in their classrooms.  To capitalize on this large scale use of certain texts, publishers produced -1880s, annotated classics   In addition to and in light of this requirement, the Committee of  14 Ten, commissioned by the National Association of Education and chaired by the president of Harvard at that time, Charles William Eliot, met in 1892 to examine and evaluate the curricula of secondary school subjects.  Their 1894 report essentially created the Western, and especially American and British, literature-(Gere, 1992; Bauer &Clark, 2008), making literary study (of the American and British traditions) a universally offered secondary school subject (Applebee, 1974; Graff, 1987).  This historical context suggests that the origins of the literary canon date back to expectations of colleges and universities as well as to the influence of publishing companies (dominated by white men of the Anglo-Saxon, Protestant tradition).  In other words, this historical context evidences the (raced, classed, gendered, and religioned) power and politics behind the canon, more than the regularly-cited ,   that teachers and scholars (like Bloom, 1995) may credit as the force behind canon formation (Macaluso, 2013; Castle, 2009).  But whereas universities and publishers may have contributed to or given birth to the idea of the canon as a list of specific texts, the role these texts play in the classroom, as well as the pedagogical approach to teaching literary texts in schools and English classroom, has a historical antecedent in the original, religious foundations of schooling.  Historically, literacy has been linked to the Medieval, Renaissance, and Enlightenment periods and, therefore, to the religious power and authority of Western Christianity as a means to regulate conduct, to read Scripture, and to instill accepted forms and methods of reading as well as what was being read (e.g., Burke, 1998; Scholes, 1998; Collins & Blot, 2003; Graff, 1987; Street, 1993; Brandt, 2004).  Specifically, Graff (1987) argues that the link between literacy and religion accounts for vital but cons 15 (p. 74).  As a concept, practice, and/or skill linked to religion, literacy  in both method and content  has always been about power and discipline. In the more modern and American tradition, schooling was closely connected to and influenced by Protestant religious orientations during the early colonial period, where the school was seen as an extension of the home or church.  Though different religious sects existed across the colonies (Rury, 2013), t interpret the heavily 2002, p. 232).  In fact, many public schools through the mid-1800s, during the Common School movement, relied on Protestant creeds and used the King James version of the Bible in school as a way to , 2010).   For example, Horace Mann, founder of the Common School movement, ardently be2010, p. 51) and regard to truth, love to their country, humanity and universal benevolence, sobriety, industry, and frugality, chastity, moderation, and temperance, and those other virtues which are the ornament , 2010, pp. 55- Christian basis of American Protestantism and thus, the early foundation and ideology of schools (Fraser, 2010).  Importantly, then  for the purposes of this project  is that generalized (i.e., nonsectarian) religion and education were linked from the beginning, and these schools were meant to espouse broad Protestantism, grounded in the Bible and the Ten Commandments, for example, to encapsulate as many sects as possible (e.g., Johnson, 1997, Fraser, 2010; Pulliam, 2002; Rury,  16 2013).  Mann believed that this type of nonsectarian school would help to unify the American social fabric:  He felt that religious sectarianism and cultural conflict threatened American different groups in society without affiliation with any particular religious viewpoint, essential to the future of the republic. [Thus] Mann advocated a nonsectarian form of beliefs and cultural traditions.  This became of the principal meanings behind the term common school. (Rury, 2013, p. 77) Even though this Protestant tradition dated back to the New England settlements of the 1600s (with the Protestant Puritans and Calvinists), the reliance on Protestantism (though generalized and nonsectarian) did not sit well with other religious peoples during the mid-1800s, most particularly the Catholics, which resulted in the formation and rise of Catholic parochial schools by the late 1800s.  Eventually, schools of other religious sects and churches, such as those of Lutherans, Quakers, and Jews, were also established and provided alternatives to the nonsectarian Protestant norm of the common or normal school (Rury, 2013; Pulliam, 2002). The religious foundations of schooling also influenced the development of reading and English as school subjects.  Most notably, , is the oldest and most influential instructional tradition of English education, shaping its past and current form, methods, gh the Protestant, Common School movement and books like The New England Primer, which  17 .  Horace Mann, again a key figure here, argued that fic the more modern manifestations of schooling, reading, and literature instruction were deeply grounded in certain varieties of religiosity and the inculcation of Christian virtues and behaviors.   In addition to the Protestant Christian character of what was taught in these schools, Brass has historicized the traditional and taken-for-granted representations and assumptions of the school subject English to illustrate how the discipline, and English pedagogy  the method of teaching  in particular, has been linked to pastoral Christianity.  Through an analysis of foundational English textbooks produced and used at the turn of the twentieth century, Brass contends that and has traditionally been focused on goals 155) (such as those shaping the discipline today, with CEE position statements grounded in models of personal growth, democratic citizenship, and social justice, etc. (Brass, 2011)). The goals of early English teaching   But while literacy was used as a tool to moralize and discipline, the teaching of reading of and through literature mirrored the type of reading practices in certain Protestant religious spaces.  Brass uses 2011), as termed in these early textbooks, to describe a pedagogy  a philosophy and its associated techniques and practices  and their personal, spiritual, and social lives.  According to Brass, this type of English teaching and literature instruction were linked to (and still are linked to) pedagogies and methods that  18 discipline and form rather than ones that solely inform.  This type of instruction is no better apparent than in the methods associated with New Criticism, the dominant form of English pedagogy in the modern era since the 1930s (e.g., Applebee, 1974, 1993; Stotsky, 2010; Grossman, 2001; Hinchman & Moore, 2013).   New Criticism, a method aligned with or similarly referred to as close reading, divorces  text.  Quite simply, it involves thorough, methodical, analytic readings of a text  sustained probing analyses, with students reading and rereading to obtain deep and thorough understandings of texts and to grasp the ways texts shape understandingschman & Moore, 2013).  In short, New Critics focus on the text itself as the source of meaning about the text  a key feature grounded in the Protestant tradition of reading and interpreting the Bible for its meaning so much so that Guillory (1983) has argued that New Criticism as an ideology and pedagogy amounts to a canonical texts.  Applebee (1974) and Scholes (1998) similarly suggest that this method encourages technical and professional way of reading the text, even a type of allegiance.  Scholes (1998) has also expanded upon the link between New Criticism and Protestant Christianity, noting that the method   because New Criticism developed from and grew out of the evangelical Christianity of Billy Phelps, an influential, white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant male professor at Yale University (a place where the students were likewise largely white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant males).  According to between philology and New Criticism, a moment when it was indeed possible to profess literature with evangelical -14).  Importantly to note, then, is that not only were  19 the texts being studied representative of a certain race, class, gender, and religion, but so too were the methods by which those texts were being engaged  read, studied, taught, interpreted, etc.  Furthermore, the texts studied, those of the traditional and largely British canon, were used to inculcate Protestant Christian virtues, messages, and worldviews (Scholes, 1998).  Quite simply, by the mid-twentieth century, New Criticism funwho had p.27). These historical accounts are meant to show that English as a discipline, and literature instruction specifically (and especially grounded in the methods of New Criticism), has a strong, established tradition of teaching with or for traditions of religion and Christianity in particular  grounded in a white, middle-class, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant history.  While this tradition may not be explicitly acknowledged today (Brass, 2011), Christianizing, or broad moralizing, has remained a goal and an accepted assumption through the teaching of literature  and, importantly, canonical literature  ever since (Applebee, 1974).  Thus, from a historical s a list, as a method, and as a religious ideology.   Present Context In contemporary English Education conversations, the idea of the literary canon is still very much debated and discussed as a list of books or as an ideological force linked to a list of books.  For one, an analysis of the text exemplars of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS, 2010), the document that largely directs or informs pedagogical decisions of teachers across the country, illustrated an overwhelmingly partiality and predominance of canonical texts in that list of exemplars (Rush et al., 2011).  For example, the CCSS suggests a Shakespearean play to be  20 studied at every grade level, and the endorsed exemplars largely consist  This study of the CCSS largely confirmed what we already knew  classrooms.  In fact, Moss (2013) suggests that the CCSS list of text exemplars may serve to reaffirm or canon (p. 49) in that list of exemplars whereas contemporary and relevant texts(p. 49) are hardly mentioned.  Moss and Rush et al. seemed to be concerned with the over-emphasis on canonical texts (as opposed to those designated as contemporary, relevant, or diverse texts) as the list of books that shape the curricula of English education.   But the prevalence and perceived dominance of the canon is not new, as the list of the canon has been (and continues to be) contested ever since the feminist movement in academia (Gilbert & Gubar, 1979; Kolondy, 1980; Britzman, 1989), which critiqued the canon for its inherent whiteness and masculinity.  1970s and the rise of Comparative s a whole.  The  (or, similarly, the  have been waged ever since, calling out white, cis-hetero-patriarchy and resulting in advocates for alternative canons (the feminist canon, the multicultural canon, etc.) and the inclusion of more diverse texts and perspectives into the canon.  Despite this decades-long debate, the canon is still being discussed and debated today on these very grounds.  For example, in his call for proposals for the 2013 NCTE Conference, titled  Ernest Morrell asked in Why do we insist on teaching the novels, poems, and plays of people who are long since perished?... If we hold on to the teaching of literature as a primary  21 focus, what literature should be taught?2013).  These questions around the canon strike a familiar cord as they have been asked for decades despite, or perhaps as a result of, the fairly stable curriculum of book length text titles at the secondary level (Applebee, 1993; Stallworth et al., 2006; Stotsky, 2010; Stallworth & Gibbons, 2012). As further evidence of this debate in English education specifically, the editors of three NCTE journals, English Education, Voices from the Middle, and English Leadership Quarterly dedicated recent issues of their journals to the topics of the canon and texts and text selection for the English classroom.  In their editorials, these editors invoked the idea of the literary canon, again, as a list of books and its role as a staple in English classrooms.  They also, however, all called for an expansion or reconsideration of this list.  For example, English Education editors Rush and Scherff titled their issue  argued that think about the texts .  While two articles in that issue address the pedagogical uptake of texts in the classroom, the editorial does not link the specific idea of the canon with anything other than a list of books.  The editors conclude that, ideally, in-service and pre-only those from the literary canon but also relevant young adult literature, multicultural texts,   Their suggestion implies that if teachers knew about texts other than those deemed  and draw from other .   Similarly, in the Voices From the Middle issue dedicated specifically to the canon, with its rather ominous title of and editors Lapp, Fisher, and  22 once again critically examine the texts (2013, p. 7, emphasis added) concluding , like many before them, view of wha  tely include   Finally, Groenke (2012), editor of a recent issue of English Leadership Quarterly , wrote,  include the kinds of things young people say they like  such as high-interest young adult books.  While there are few vocal advocates of the canon today (e.g., Jago, 2011, 2004; Bloom, 1995; Hirsch et al., 1988, 1999), the popular critique of the canon seems to fall along these lines, that the list needs to be expanded or revised for more and diverse books/titles/authors/genres/representations to be included.  In fact, a collective set of voices has emerged in English education, calling for more inclusiveness in and alternatives to the canonical curriculum and its power over the broader English curriculum (e.g., Haddix & Price-Dennis, 2013; Stallworth et al., 2006; Rojas, 2010; Kirkland, 2009, 2011, 2013; Scholes, 2011).   The other contemporary critique leveraged against the canon comes from a branch of English Education in which I have participated and feel most closely aligned: Critical English Education.  Critical English education marries the concepts of critical literacy with an overall approach to English education.  Critical literacy (Janks et al., 2013; Luke, 2000; McLaughlin and DeVoogd, 2004; Vasquez et al., 2013; Comber & Simpson, 2001), grounded in critical social theory of the Frankfurt School (Habermas, 1975), disrupts the ideologies of texts and textual practices for the purpose of social transformation.  Because English Education has been largely  23 about the consumption and transmission of traditional texts and academic language (Grossman, 2001; Stotsky, 2010), Morrell (2005) positions destabilize the dominant ideologies perpetuated in and through, for example, the list of canonical texts.  From this perspective, Critical English Education offers scholars and educators a framework for resisting, challenging, or subverting what Kirkland (2011) refers to as the status quo master narratives supported by canonical texts, including whiteness, masculinity, heterosexuality, certain veins of Protestant Christianity, and even notions of culture, literary merit, and methods of reading.   In this tradition, Critical English Educators seek to critique the ideologies perpetuated in and through the canon.   For example-McDaniel and Young argue that these ideologies include normalcy, power, whiteness, and heterosexuality.  Borsheim-Black, Macaluso, and Petrone (2014) focus on reading against the ideologies of canonical texts specifically through critical literacy strategies.  And, Appleman (2009ideliterary lenses, like feminism or Marxism.  Appleman, too, is deliberate about her use of critical o uncritically teach Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or To Kill a Mockingbird That decision privileges the arbitrary literary value of a canonical text over the significance and relevance of a changing student  Whereas Morrell (2004; Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008) suggests canonical texts be used as a bridge to non-canonical and non-traditional texts and literacies, Kirkland (2008, 2011) has suggested that English teachers  24 ideologies of the text are decentered.  While all of these critical efforts deal with the ideological effects of the canon, all of these authors, in addition to advocating for the oft-canon as a list of books  essentially asking, what or who does this list of books represent and how might that representation be challenged, undercut, or nuanced?  This is a good question, of course, but terrain of English Education, the ideology of the literary canon as a list of books is still the object of investigation. While I am an advocate for the inclusion of non-canonical texts in the classroom and critical approaches to literature instruction, I am suspicious of the line of thinking that preserves the canon as, and links it to, a list of books, which is what all of the aforementioned authors do and which has been the pervading perception of the canon.  Indeed, this has been the argument of, about, and against the canon for decades  in fact, both the National Council of Teachers of English and its secondary-focused, practitioner-based journal publication, The English Journal, were originally established with the purpose to slow, stop, or counteract prescribed reading lists (Applebee, 1974; Stock, 2012) that helped to institute the canon.  But it seems that little progress has been made in this regard because in addition to being a familiar argument, the reasoning about changing books or instituting new lists also neglects the argument of English literary critic and theorist John Guillory in his seminal book Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation (1993) that creating a new list (or syllabus, as he calls it) simply reinstates a new canon, a new list, un  because it is still based upon the perceptions, values, and biases of one social group, ideology, or culture.  In other words, all of these respected scholars in the field reiterate a well-established argument about changing or  25 critiquing the canon as a list of books.  I want to build on this critique of the canon to further expand how we in English Education might deepen the ways in which we might critique the canon  by considering, for example, how canonical books has reinforced (rather than undercut) the canonical titles, how pedagogies associated with canonical texts may be connected to certain types of pedagogies like those described by Applebee (1974) and Brass (2011), or, more broadly, how transmission and New Critical models of pedagogy further reinforce the traditions, norms, expectations, and text titles of the English classroom (Marshall & Smith, 1997; Grossman, 2001).  This project attempts to do just that.  Purpose and Questions There certainly has been discussion in the field on how to teach canonical texts and how to critique the ideologies in and of canonical text and regardless of the fact that so much has been written in English Education about the canon, that writing has, by and large, produced a rather limited notion of what the canon means and entails  mostly, a list of books that is, ought, and/or ought not to be read and engaged in the English classroom.  I am interested in expanding and shifting that critical focus to consider the links and histories that Applebee (1974) and Brass (2011) contend.  Specifically, I am interested in anoth(1983) where, in discussing a certain time in history when professors used their knowledge of and about canonical texts to keep their jobs in the university,  wrote this statement to advance a different argument, I am curious about the role the canon plays not only as an ideology linked to a list of books but as an ideology (or unquestioned tradition or assumption) wrapped up in the pedagogical uptake of  26 books assigned and taught in secondary classrooms.  This is a different line of inquiry than considering how to teach canonical texts because, rather than looking for an answer of pedagogical practice, it seeks to examine the (unacknowledged or unknown) traditions, assumptions, and ideologies that are already intertwined with the pedagogy associated with teaching canonical texts.  With this idea in mind, I ask: How do ideologies of the canon play out beyond the text or a list of texts, particularly through pedagogy?  How are the ideas inherent in such a list  a canon  embedded in pedagogical encounters?  What is the relationship between the idea of canon and instruction?  And, even more specifically, considering the history and connection of English Education, literacy, and the canon to religion and Protestant Christianity, I wonder how religious ideologplay out beyond the text and through pedagogy. My goal in asking these questions for this project is to rethink or disrupt the notion of canon as only a list of books, conceiving instead of the concept and its impact in much broader terms, ones that explore the educational project of canonicity, a larger concept that both endorses the canon as a list but also does much more to entrench the ideology inherent in such a list through pedagogical encounters.  In other words, I hope to demonstrate that canonicity is an all-encompassing approach to English education, a noun and a verb, that engenders much more in the sense of pedagogy and the ways in which pedagogy interacts with, builds upon, extends, or subverts what we have, thus the  In order to investigate these questions and make this argument, I begin at the beginning  in an analysis and investigation of the word canon and its derivations in order to theorize the latent meanings of a term like canonicity.    27 Conceptual Framework   and most of them deal with the religious  and Judeo-Christian  nature and origins of the word.  Originally the Greek kanon or kanna straight rod (either of which could have been used to rule or measure).  The modern words cane and cannon (the gun) developed from this origin as well, but kanon has a more complex history as it has derived its meaning from cane reeds or rods.  As Scholes (1998) explains, The tubular channel characteristic of reeds or canes leads to associations of the word canon with functions that involve forcing liquids or gases through a channel or pipe, while their regularity and relative rigidity lead toward those meanings that involve measuring and controlling (ruling  in both senses of that word).  And it is likely that the ready applicability of canes as a weapon of punishment (as in our verb to cane, or beat with a stick) supported those dimensions of the meaning of kanon that connote severity and the imposition of power. (p. 105) or list of something; rather it associates canon with severely imposed power: regular, rigid, and inflexible.  At the same time, however, this definition corresponds to the idea of lists as something that is inflexible or unchanging or something, like a source or indicator of power, that involves measuring or ruling. This Greek kanon developed into the ecclesiastical Latin canonthe Church more broadly, could distinguish between sacred, accepted texts from all Apocrypha  28 (those non-canonical writings)  So, since roughly the fourth century, the term canon was used to designate those books accepted by Church authorities as having divine authority and, therefore, warranted recognition and inclusion in the Hebrew and New Testament Bibles.  It was not until 1768 that the word was first used to describe the works of secular authors, as it used today, despite its religious and sacred denotation (Komara, 2007; Harris, 1991).  Nonetheless, the authoritative connotations (of power, measurement, and inflexibility) remained as the word developed into its common definition referring to a set of books or texts recognized and accepted as sacred, genuine, or having some kind of merit or sacredness  literary, religious, or otherwise.  In this way, one may consider the books or texts that make up the Biblical canon, the literary canon, or the canon of American poetry, for example. But its other ecclesiastical Latin definition refers to the collective and official rules, laws, or decrees of the Church ().  These laws constitute official doctrines of the Christian Church as well as rules for its clergy or priests as laid out by the pope or ecclesiastical councils.  Similarly, but in more secular terms, canon has also come to refer to a general rule or principle or a standard for judgment and discrimination.  The verb form of the word, canonize, means to consecrate or to sanction by the authority of the Church.  Those holy men and women who are canonized in or by the church , those who are put on a deliberate path toward sainthood, are imbued with some sacred authority and recognized for their sanctity.  What is important from this etymological background here is that the word canon can carry several elements of its Greek, Latin, and contemporary meanings: the severity and imposition of religious power or rule combined with the sacred status of texts, whether religious or otherwise.   29 As Scholes (1998) so aptly acknowledges, to ignore the grounding of the modern term in a history explicitly influenced by Christian institut.  And yet they do, as evidenced by contemporary discussions about the literary canon and its debate discussed in the previous pages.  I am interested, however, in maintaining the religious connotations of the words canon and canonize when thinking about the secondary English classroom.  Specifically, I am interested in canons as sources of power: as authority and authorizing, as discipline and disciplining, and as sanctity and sanctifying. Transferring these religious connotations of the word to contemporary contexts is not so far-fetched.  In popular community spaces, the word canon is used in a similarly, religious way. For example, according to UrbanDictionary.com, canon is used in popular gaming circles to distinguish between fan-produced storylines, through media like fanfiction or fanvideos, and the official gaming storylines .  The fan-produced stories do not necessarily deviate from the official storyline, but may add to or expand it.  Similarly, in comic book communities, canon is used to refer to the original storylines of popular comic book characters as a way to ovies may deviate from the comic book canon (or source material) to appeal to wider audiences or simplify complex narratives by altering the canon of events and narratives.  Thus, in these community cases and spaces, canon designates something as official or original, something that carries authoritative weight or power, much in the way that scriptural canons in these popular spaces, canon carries its religious overtones, referring to the official and original (we might imagine the sacred or the Alpha), the author and authority (we might imagine God or some sacred text).   30 sanctity.  Above all, however, t.  And it is these con/notions of  discipline, dogma, authority, religiosity, power, sanctity  that I also see working in framing English teaching and classrooms.   In extending this theorization of canon from previous English Education scholars like Scholes (1998, 2011; and Guillory, 1993, 1983; and Harris, 1991), I argue for the concept of canonicity as a discursive frame and illustrate how it works in classroom data.  Further, to more closely tie these concepts discussion of Israel, borrowed from a different context.  His theory, grounded in Biblical scholarship, is that Israel and Judah are a creation (though not necessarily entirely from nothing) of p.3).  In other words, according to Davies, though Israel and Judah exist in the pages of the Scriptural canon, these places  as historical artifacts  did not necessarily exist as they are described.  Rather, the Scriptural canon peoples created and selected its own canon.  I borrow from this theory to suggest, likewise although in a different context, that the literary canon, as we know it in English education, did not arise from a committee or a specific list, that they were selected, somehow, as representative of the best works or that they have persisted of their own accord.  Rather, I would contend that the idea of the canon produced and constructed what we now consider to be school subject English, that the religious and ideological notions of canon created and produced the markers of what we might call or identify as literary instruction in English classroom.  Teachers, in other words, do not teach canonical texts; teachers and students are schooled by the (discursive, ideological, religious-like in a Protestant Christian sense) ways of the canon.   31 Discourse This study is grounded in a poststructural context that, as one theme or branch of the postmodern movement, makes visible and problematizes broad trends (or traditions, ideologies, authority, structures, and narratives) that are generally taken to be true, dogmatic, objective, or expected.  these grand, master, or metanarratives (Lyotard, 1984) because, while they may be perceived to be natural, normal, or objective, they have been constructed over time, developed from power relations, or grounded in historical contexts and politics.  Kirkland (2011), for example, implicates both texts and pedagogy traditionally associated with the English classroom as developing or instituting dogma and accepted trends when he argues, ELA instruction have long enforced master narratives, where canonical texts act as toolsets for   From this perspective, what English teachers do (approaches to or pedagogy associated with texts, students, learning, curricula, teaching, etc.) construct or maintain long-held narratives of the English classroom. The poststructualist attempts to shift away from these patterned structures or narratives in order to explore 2009, p. 73) through something like .  Discourse, or a discursive system, that produce and  and becomes naturalized over time.  By becoming naturalized, discourses construct rules about knowledge and ways of (Ball, 1990, p. 17), often regarded as depoliticized speech, appearing to be stripped of ideology, politics, and historyp. 480).  In this sense,  or dogma about the world or create and  32 sustain certain versions of reality or narratives over others, and as a form of power, discourses help to order and organize the world.   For Foucault, discourses also means  make the world rather than mirror it.  While discourse is constructed through speech and language-in-use (Johnstone, 2008), linguistic since it organizes a way of thinking into a way of acting in the worp. 485).  Such discourses involve proscribed, habituated and largely unconscious ways of thinking, talking, feeling, acti(Kamberelis and Dimitriades, 2005, p. 48).  In this sense, discourse is also an embedded social practice. Discourses also produce individuals-as-subjects in that individual and collective actors iscourses that hey have not invented themselves.  These discourses (or scripts) limit what they can do, how they can interact with one another, and   So, discourses  it is an absent presence, yet a powerful one, since what it is to be a speaker, an author or knower, and with what authority these positions are , p. 90).  The role of the poststructuralist is to illuminate or resist these given, taken-for-granted ways of thinking, speaking, doing, or knowing.  The concept of discourse helps me to mobilize canonicity as something other than a list of books.  In this case, positioning canonicity as a discursive system allows me to see how, as I  33 have said, it may be an approach, both a thing and a verb, a construction that is linked to ways of thinking, feeling, being, and doing.  The Frame  The notion of the interactive frame is a tool borrowed from Goffman (1974), who argues that, quite simply, the frame is the definition of a social situation, which constructs and organizes   In other words, the frame , which is usually influenced by some prior situation, event, or theory.  Tannen and Wallet argue,  refers to a sense of what activity is being engaged in, how speakers mean (p. 207) in a certain context.  Thus, the frame (in any moment of interaction actions, experiences, and interactions during or in certain activities; it actAt the same time, experience is built upon frames, 121), including discourses and the practices of social reality.  In this sense, the frame (and in the way I borrow the term) refers or applies to a larger, social situation, such as a classroom, and the sets of expectations for the individuals involved in that frame.  In some circles, the concept of the frame may be equated with a discourse or discursive system.  While they may be similar concepts and while I contend that canonicity is a discursive formation (because it is a construction linked to power), I also contend that canonicity operates as a frame in the secondary English classrooms I observed for this project.  Frames are different  34 to life-established point of referencend Garner, 2009, p.121).  In this sense, they are the basis and backdrop to meaning, interaction, and context; they set the situation and foreclose what discourses may be at play or what can and cannot be said or intended.   Further, though there may be several discourses operating at any one time in a classroom, especially considering the varied backgrounds of students and teacher, I will argue students in these cases about the expectations, organization, meaning, and (dare I say) structures of the English classroom especially around the study of canonical texts.  Canonicity, in other words, is an always-already, pre-established, and pre-existing frame of the English classroom, even before the students and teacher enter it  canonicity is always already there, influencing what may or may not be done, felt, said, etc.  In this sense, frames may act as a type of 2012), a grand narrative (Lyotard, 1984), an ideology (Althusser, 1971), or the like) because while frames, like discourse, are connected to the ways in which people think, feel, act, and talk, frames may filter  may allow or disallow  what discourses, assumptions, and common sense notions and actions come into the secondary English classroom during periods of canonical literature instruction.    Curriculum and Pedagogy In order to consider the relationship between a text and the teaching of a text, I also rely on theories connected to both curriculum and pedagogy.  Specifically, Eliot Eisner (1985) argued that schools offer three curricula to students: the explicit, the implicit, and the null.  Briefly, Eisner contends that the explicit curriculum consists of everything the teacher intends to teach from reading and writing to specific texts and skills on a syllabus or in a textbook.  This  35 (p. 93).  The implicit curriculum, then, represents those intentional and unintentional values or messages imbued in the school or classroom  of the kind of place it iteaching.  In each case, the curriculum represents anything  teachers, the school, classroom, even students or pedagogy  that attempts to convey messages, values, or assumptions.   As such, pedagogy is discursively constructed, and like curricula, it is not neutral; it too is imbued with values and ideologies include or exclude certain meanings, produce or 2004, p. 496).  As certain messages or narratives (whether explicit or implicit) in his or her attempt to organize certain (educational) experiences for students.  Britzman (1989) refers to the implicit curriculum social (p. 149).  While the canon has long been the explicit curriculum and target of critique from English education scholars, I will focus more so on the way the canon is taught and how it is positioned to students by teachers.  to the explicit curriculum shapes his or her responses to the play between the explicit, the  149).  Thus, the focus is not about explicit knowledge  what is the canon, what happens in Hamlet, what are the themes and literary devices at play in the text  but the knowledge and ways of knowing that are produced during the teaching of a canonical text what is and is not valued, what is  36 the process by which the text is taught or read, what is the classroom ethos during moments of classroom study around a text, what has become natural classroom routine.     Considering Canon, Curriculum, and Discourse In drawing upon these conceptual frames for this study, I argue for canonicity as a theory that works as a discursive and implicit frame in English classrooms, where pedagogical practices and encounters as well as classroom space construct and are constructed by the notions of canon, canonicity, and religiosity described herein.  In thinking about canonicity in this way  as an approach rather than simply a list of books  I highlight how the instruction of canonical literature can reflect a set of sacred beliefs, rituals, and practices and reify notions of authority, discipline, hierarchy, and tradition that can undermine critical engagement with texts due to the canonical frame of the English classroom.  In the data chapters that follow, I make the following points as I show what canonicity is and how it works.  Chapter 3 is about sacred beliefs and how nglish classroom.  I will argue that teachers treat certain texts as sacred and advance an implicit hierarchy, authority, and sanctity around these texts through their pedagogical treatment of them.  Chapter 4 is about ritual.  I will focus on the pedagogy and classroom of one teacher in particular and liken the behaviors and practices of her English classroom to a broad sense of religious ritual.  Finally, Chapter 5 is about sacred authority and the pedagogical practices associated with the teaching of canonical texts.  I expand upon the first two data chapters to illustrate from where and how teachers draw their authority in teaching these texts and in teaching them in certain ways because authority is a necessary component of discipline, discipleship, and canon.  37 Thus, in these chapters, I will illustrate through classroom data how canonicity works on the ground and hails teachers into long-into joining.  In this sense, my project is not about how lists of books create or define a canon or even about the teaching of the canon itself as a list of books.  Rather, it is about how the very idea of canonicity associated with canonical texts implicitly constructs and produces the expectations, experiences, and perceptions of pedagogy in the secondary English classroom.     38 CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY   implicated in relations of power and how power and knowledge serve as   (Kincheloe & McLaren, 2002, p. 106)   Critical Qualitative Research and Cultural Studies Critical qualitative research (Kamberelis & Dimitriadis, 2005) is grounded in theories of poststructuralism, specifically the notion of discourse, which is the primary conceptual framework of this study.  It also challenges long-held and objectivist notions of knowledge and power, acknowledging that nothing is neutral; everything  including knowledge, literacy, and even pedagogy  is political and bound in the investments of people, culture, institutions, and social situations.  The task of critical researchers is to make known the discourses or discursive perpetually searching for new and interconnected ways of understanding power and oppression and the ways they sha p. 49).  The primary purpose of this study is to illustrate and extend a theoretical lens of canonicity that reveals how power shapes experiences in the English classroom.  Another purpose is to offer this theory of canonicity for future literacy and literary research.   One commitment of critical qualitative research is to value the local and contextual as opposed to broad, deterministic structures that espouse one version of reality.  In this sense, about a certain context or situation, critical researchers describe meaning onto events, interactions, or situations (Ropers-Huliman, 1998), illuminating the effects of discourse and discursive systems or of what may be considered the implicit or the invisible in any situation.  While my project does ascribe meaning and illuminate  39 the implicit, I admit that it also seems to propose a structure that explains how canonicity operates in the secondary English classroom; indeed, in an attempt to resist the structure that comes  I do argue that canonicity is a structure pervading these classrooms.  But discourses do represent the structures and relations of the world through thoughts, feelings, beliefs, practices, etc. (Fairclough, 2003).  Further, I borrow from a theorist like Goffman (1974, 1981) the idea of a structural-like metaphor describe what is possible, what can happen, or what is one story in thinking about certain social situations, which in my case, refers to the religiosity and canonicity in the English classroom.  I do not mean to imply that canonicity is THE interpretation1.  Rather, it is my interpretation and a schematic or heuristic that might help me (or others) to more systematically investigate the English classroom and further deconstruct its traditions and assumptions. certain meanings under particular historical conditions become more legitimate as representations of reality and take on the force of common sense assumptions shaping a broader 365).  In this sense, meanings (via discourses or storylines) can be traced to historical or to be or originated.  But cultural studies also posits that there are                                                  1 A quick point of clarification here: I do not contend that Goffman is a structuralist.  Instead, I  structural metaphors (i.e., the frame, the actor and the performance), he has been linked to postmodern or poststructural conversations (i.e., Battershill, 1990) like those in this project.  40  (Kincheloe & McLaren, 2002, p. 112).  In other words, because power works through any manifestation of culture and the production of culture, whether it be in or through a movie, a classroom, or a smart phone, any action or tradition organizes ways of knowing.  From a methodological perspective, then, a cultural studies framework to research methods helps me to consider how the pedagogical is political, how pedagogy positions teachers and students and is, by its very nature, value-laden (Segall, 2004; Giroux, 2010).  Stuart Hall (1990, 1992), a founding father of cultural studies, positioned of cultural criticism is essential for questioning the conditions under which knowledge is produced and subject The pedagogical, in other words, indicates what knowledge is of most worth and how subjects may come to know and represent something.  Thus, as my data chapters will illustrate, I have a broad notion of what constitutes pedagogy in the classroom (i.e., anything is pedagogical, including classroom space, clothing, and handouts), and I consider how that pedagogy positions the teachers and students involved in this study.  A cultural studies disposition combined with critical qualitative research leads to what Moje and Lewis (2007) refer to as critical cultural discourse analysisare ideas pedagogy as a site of meaning and helps me to see how an idea like canonicity may be embedded in practice or can be taken up as a disposition rather than a mere list of books.     41 Methods Before I begin describing the methods I used to investigate my questions, I want to admit that I know I run the risk of using and relying on canonical methods, methodologies, theories, and theorists of social science research to critique the way in which canonicity works in an English classroom.  Indeed, I did; I wholeheartedly confess that my methods were entirely canonical, using standard research practices like interviews, observations, and even transcription and data analysis techniques.  This irony, perhaps a contradiction in the context of my project, is not lost on me.  I continue to think about  and find myself ever perplexed by  what is canon and how I might see, challenge, and/or critique it across all that I do, including my own teaching, not just my research methods. That said, I organize this project as thematic case studies (Yin, 2003), using the intrinsic case study (Dyson & Genishi, 2005) model as its design, allowing me to deeply examine how large theoretical constructs regulate and are regulated by the teachers pedagogies of this project.  Creswell (1998) ccase) or multiple bounded systems (cases) over time, through detailed, in-depth data collection involving multiple sources of information (e.g., observations, interviews, audiovisual material, and p. 73).  The result of such research is a phenomenon (Dyson & description  The thematic and intrinsic approach to case study allows me to focus on the pedagogy as the unit of analysis, the localized events, context, and discursive practices of each teacher-participant in my study.  Thus, while I prominently feature the pedagogy of one teacher-participant in each of the data chapters in this project, a thematic rendering of the pedagogies of all three of my participants constitute the data chapters represented herein.     42 Participants  Over a period of several months, I observed as many as 8 teachers for potential inclusion in this project.  I never intended to include all of them in the formal analysis stages of this project, but I wanted to be able to choose whom I would include for an in-depth study.  I observed these teachers for varied amounts of time, but 3 stood out to me from early on, and I decided, as time went on, that they would be the ones included in this project.  These three teachers are Joe, Lisa, and Rachel  three teachers who are quite representative of the field of teachers as white, middle-class, women and men.  I chose them for a variety of reasons but mainly because they provided me full access to their room and resources, they were very good teachers in my estimation, they focused on the teaching of literature as their primary means of instruction, and they expressed an interest in critical literacy or critical approaches to the teaching of literature, a personal commitment of mine.  Of course, these teachers had different but that did not play a key role in my analysis of the data.  Rather, I simply found it an interesting layer to my observations overall.  Again, more than anything, I found myself  from a researcher, teacher educator, and former teacher point of view.  From my perspective and based upon my observations, they were just good teachers, and the students, it seemed, enjoyed coming to class; it did not seem like mere drudgery.  Rachel  A mutual friend put me in contact with Rachel.  The friend knew of my research interests and knew Rachel as an excellent teacher who had a strong background in literature and taught an  43 , as we shared similar teaching experiences and family backgrounds.  She too had young children, and we invited parenting tips and stories.   Rachel, a white, middle-class woman, teaches in a largely rural school about 25 minutes from her home, and she was excited when she landed this job because she was initially hired to be the drama teacher and director, and having taken drama courses in college and even acted in  she no longer teaches drama or directs school plays, she still teaches in the designated drama classroom and tries to attend the school drama productions.  After several years as the drama director, she found the position to be a heavy commitment, especially once she starting having young children at home.  Once her principal asked her to take over AP English literature rather than drama, she jumped at the opportunity.  She was nervous to take over AP English at first, but she felt comfortable knowing she was inheriting a list of texts from the previous teacher, rather e to the curriculum was to swap out Heart of Darkness for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Heart of Darkness because it was very difficult to get the kids to read it and We were reading Huck Finn in my sophomore class and were having really great conversations es these texts, she also teaches The Inferno, Hamlet, Beowulf, The Odyssey, Siddhartha, and To The Lighthouse  44 Rachel has a Masters Degree in Education, and has been teaching for 8 years.  When I observed her, she was beginning her fourth year teaching AP English, and she mentioned that she hopes to stay at this school as long as possible because she loves the students and the classes she teaches.   She felt very drawn to her rural students because she felt that her class gave them an opportunity to talk, think, and feel valued, ideas she appreciated as a student herself.  She A great deal of who I am I owe to teachers because I think teachers essentially made me feel like there was something important and special about me and the way I thought about things and she added,  I decided I wanted to be a teacher because I felt like so many kids just needed an adult that cared about them and saw that they had value.  I feel like English teaching is a way topic, the right conversation, you could really see things start to change in them and to inspire them.  (Interview 1) These personal experiences as well as her desire to care for, change, and inspire her students really made me interested to see how Rachel positioned the texts she taught, how she taught them, and how her students responded to them.  Indeed, I saw Rachel foster very personal relationships with her students, as she invited them on a daily basis to share personal stories or and upbeat note, and I was interested to see how or if she channeled that energy toward the texts she taught.  Because Rachel was interested in pursuing her education once her husband finished his nursing program and established himself in his field, she regularly asked me about my  45 experiences in graduate school or for my opinions about how to teach something.  She was most critical literacy and wanted her students to be able to ask good questions and have good questso easy to be exposed to messages that you can take at out the end goals of her   Lisa  I met Lisa when I was assigned to her school as a field instructor for the teacher interns I had to oversee.  One of those teacher interns taught in the room next to her, and he always spoke highly of Lisa, saying that she served as another resource besides his mentor teacher.  Lisa and I had brief, casual conversations every now and then in the hallway that year, and we connected quickly over the similar books we taught in our teaching careers.  In addition to teaching American literature classes, Lisa also taught a film class (something I had always been interested in), so I enjoyed hearing about the films she taught.  Sometimes, if I came by early, Lisa would let me into her classroom to watch the film with her class.   My initial impressions of Lisa were quite strong, but I never maintained any sustained contact with her after that year.  Three years later, however, after asking my methods students for recommendations of good teachers worth observing in their schools, one of my students came up to me after class to tell me about her positive experiences with Lisa.  As it turned out, my student mentioned that Lisa commented to her one day that she knew me, and thought well of me,  46 because some of my methods students had been her assigned classroom teacher interns in the time since.  On that note, I reached out to Lisa, we met soon after and shared our mutual regard for one another, and I made plans to visit her classroom on a somewhat regular basis.  She was thrilled to allow me into her classroom and gave me open access; she said I could visit any class, drop in unexpected, record sessions, and take copies of handouts and materials.  She was extraordinarily generous, and she had even told her own students about me before I came in, so they were prepared for my frequent visits. Lisa, a white, middle-class woman, taught in a suburban school system, and her classes had a diverse mix of students, including Native American, Asian American, and African American students, but about two-thirds of the classes I observed were White.  Lisa, as I will explain, taught an honors class, so she moved quickly through texts.  Sometimes it was hard for me to be present every day for one of her units because sometimes they only lasted a couple of days, but the benefit was that I was able to see her approach to a number of texts.  These included texts like The Crucible, Catcher in the Rye, The Joy Luck Club, Maus I and II, Of Mice and Men, The Scarlet Letter, and the Stephen King novella The Body.  She also taught shorter works from other American authors like Poe, Emerson, and Thoreau.  When I asked her why she (interview 1).  That said, however, Lisa felt that she had a lot of freedom to teach whatever she wanted in her honors class, a luxury she did not necessarily have in her regular American she said (Interview 1).   In light of this freedom, she mentioned that she frequently tried to change her literature circle book options in her regular American literature class, but kept things somewhat stable in  47 her honors class.  Instead of offering the honors class a literature circle unit, for example, she required them to read Joy Luck Club.  When I asked her why her honors students were not doing most of my honors kids have probably read some of these or would picWhen I asked her about why she required Joy Luck Club specifically over another option (like the contemporary texts she offered in the regular literature circles), she said,   why I want my honors kids to read it.  And I want to have some diversity, not to sound cheesy about it.  We have so many dead white guys we read, and -American author who has written some fabulous books.  Typically, I have a handful of Asian students who can really relate to it, and I stories start running together.  Even with the honors kids, I give them this graphic organizer just sgood discussions on this novel.  (Interview 2) These comments suggested to me that Lisa thought deeply about her curricula and considered a number of factors, canonicity being one of them, when choosing texts for classroom study. Importantly, in her 9th year of teaching, Lisa mentioned that she felt like she was just now getting a handle on her courses and on teaching as a whole, knowing what she wanted to do with the texts she taught and where shenjoying teaching more now, she said, and feels the most confident she ever has.  Further, she is open to learning new interpretations from students and remaining open to a variety of opinions Lisa felt like she was better able to situate texts now in their chronological and historical context.  This situating, she  48 believed, provided a critical context for her students, where they could base their opinions and analyses of the texts they studied on the specific context of the time in which the text was placed.  Thus, for example, she taught about the Holocaust and the Great Depression before they began reading Maus and Of Mice and Men, respectively.  She said specifically in relation to this approach and to the latter text,  supposed to feel for Lennie and George without knowing how bad it really was during possibly teach all of it, but I want to fill in the blanks before we dive in to try to have empathy for these characters without any background knowledge. (Interview 2) So for Lisa, using this context to have empathy for characters and to understand why characters did what they did were key parts of her goals for classroom study.  Joe   I was thrilled when one of my own preservice teachers that I had taught in my methods courses was offered a job in the area at a local school.  Having known her to be a strong teacher at her placement sites as well as someone passionately committed to teaching canonical texts, I kept in touch with her, hoping that she may agree to be a participant in my study.  When I finally reached out to her, she actually referred me to Joe, an established teacher at the school who was going to be her grade-level cooperating teacher.  When she introduced us, Joe immediately welcomed me wholeheartedly into his classroom, saying that I had his full consent to do  49 because he was used to only having preservice teachers observe him in his classroom; I was the first graduate student who wanted to observe him as a participant in a study.  Because of this, I did feel at times like Joe was perhaps performing for me or, at the very least, justifying his pedagogy to me, especially when he felt like he was doing something (a pedagogical practice or activity) that was counter to current trends or research.  I represented to him, in other words, d this on at least one occasion), whereas Rachel and Lisa saw me  perhaps because of our friendly introductions  as a colleague or friend or someone of that nature.  Two things about Joe, a white, middle-class man, stood out to me from our first interactions.  First, he seemed very tech-savvy.  He used online quizzes and discussion boards, an interactive whiteboard, and had scan codes posted around the room where students could use their smartphone to scan the code and get more information on a topic or assignment.  Second, Twitter account and the handles and hashtags he followed that kept him abreast of these conversations and trends.  For example, one day after observing his AP English class where he had shown a documentary, he told me he felt pressure to accomplish more during classtime,  knew what he was talking about only because earlier that week I had read a recently posted article on an education website that discussed the adverse effects of assigning too much homework.  So, I was interested to see how these two qualities played out in his classroom on a day-to-day basis.  Another aspect about Joe that was interesting to me was his concern with his classroom  50 looked like a standard room and even was smaller compared to others I had seen.  But, Joe added features that made it, in his words, feel less like a classroom and more like a coffee shop or lounge.  Even though he had traditional student desks arranged in rows (what I would consider a typical classroom), he had 5 lamps placed around the room that provided the light for the room; he never used the overhead, halogen lights, contributing to the had several plants scattered about, and he had recently (just before I started observing him) and deliberately removed his teacher desk from the classroom and only used a bookcase for his personal items and materials.  He felt the desk took up too much room and distracted from the idea that the room belonged to the students just as much to him.  The back corner had a small coffee table with some collapsible bungee cord chairs (they were a big hit!), and a front corner had a stack of large, orange cushions.  During small group time, the students were encouraged to use these corners of the room.  About halfway through my observations of Joe, he also brought in a coffee maker and said he would start making a pot of coffee on a regular basis, as long as the students brought in their own cups and mugs.  As I already mentioned, despite the typical set-up of desks, these elements were meant to encourage a casual atmosphere to the classroom, and I , critical attempt at breaking long held expectations of the average classroom.   In addition to teaching AP English literature, Joe teaches a section of regular senior English.  He had been teaching for 11 years at his current school, and he spent 5 years at a school before he moved to his current one, where he was originally hired as a math teacher (his minor), but moved over into English when a teacher retired.  Though he started out teaching freshman English and AP, he now only teaches AP and senior English.  On this teaching seniors and AP classes, he said,  51 I seem to get that everywhere I go.  I think they always put me as close to college as in that regthing. (Interview 1) One reason, he thinks, for this reputation as such is because he teaches difficult texts like Oedipus Rex, Antigone, Hamlet, The Stranger, several Ibsen plays, and Death of a Salesman.  He Aristotle, Hegel, and Nietzsche.  I also like existentialist, absurdist ideas.  I really enjoy that Even though he likes all of the texts that he teaches, most of these texts were in place, according to Joe, at least two teachers before him who taught AP English at the school.  When I asked him why he taught these texts, even though he could choose other   Beyond his degrees in English and Math, Joe also has a Masters in Curriculum and Instruction and a Masters in K-12 administration.  Interviews and Observations approaches and orientations towards their pedagogy and curriculum.  This involved, minimally, observations of at least one entire unit of instruction around one canonical text and at least two audio-recorded interviews with the teacher of about 45-60 minutes before and after that unit.  With Rachel and Lisa, I conducted a third interview somewhere in the middle of the unit, and I  52 also had regular, informal interviews with all of the teachers during the unit, either before or after class or school, if I had questions or comments.  All of these interviews, to accommodate the   Though I asked all of the teachers mostly the same questions in that first interview, I would still characterize it as semi-structured (Fontana & Frey, 2005) in nature, because I asked both standardized and spontaneous questions that helped to clarify the  and beliefs.  Some questions from this initial interview, in addition to those that helped me to learn about them, their contexts, and their experiences, included: What are your goals for literary study and how do the/some texts you teach meet those goals? What is your understanding of the literary canon? What is your understanding of how the canon came to exist? What is it about these canonical texts that make them such a staple of high school classrooms? So, they all knew about my interests in the canon, in teaching the canon, and in critical literacy, but they did not know about my emergent interest in, and subsequent focus on, the religious dimensions of canonicity that I wanted to explore.  This is quite simply because I was not sure, to a certain extent, how or if religious dimensions of teaching, canon, or canonicity might emerge in my observations.  Thus, I did not ask any questions pertaining to religion. After an initial interview, I observed teachers during an entire unit of literary study.  During observations, I audio-recorded all classroom interactions, and I took extensive field notes to help me analyze the data.  These notes focused on the pedagogical moves the teachers made during each class period as well as the ways in which they framed their lessons, study, reading,  53 and/or analysis of texts.  Because I was interested in the implicit storylines (McVee, 2011) told repeatedly throughout the lesson: What story does this pedagogy tell?  How do these storylines construct or contribute to a canonical discourse?    As the teacher taught, I tried during the class period.  Closely aligned with the concept of discourse, storylines work at the micro level of conversation or interaction (in this study, the classroom) in order to position oneself and others to achieve some social objective or to define or explain some object or situatibe concepts, themes, or behaviors, and, importantly, the storylines about these objects, and the positions they incur, create larger social meanings (Davies & Harré, 2001).  So, storylines are both made available from and contribute to larger discourses, such as religiosity.  Because I knew I was interested in (but not limited to) the religious dimensions of canon and canonicity, I  not mean actual or explicit religious elements, but aspects and characteristics that parallel or resemble religion and religious systems: practices, rituals, and beliefs as well as ways of knowing, thinking, being, and feeling connected to religion or being religious.  For example, I thought about pedagogy in the context in and around the classroom, etc.  I will explain these religious aspects in more detail below, as I arose from and helped me to analyze my data.  My observations focused mainly on what was going on in and around the classroom  interactions, space and arrangement   54 in these aspects of the classroom beyond the text being studied, the explicit curriculum.   Finally, I also collected any handouts (worksheets, assignments, quizzes, etc.) or instructional materials (powerpoints, worksheets, etc.) the teachers used over the course of the unit.  Data Analysis  My analysis of data persisted over time and through several iterations.  First, while I was observing teachers, I wrote weekly analytic memos (Charmaz, 2000) to myself, noting what happened on any given day, the relationships among the teacher, the text, and the students, and any thought on or around my broad idea of canonicity.  Once I had completed my observations, I began the process of transcription.  While I conducted a general transcription of all interviews, I do rely on the conventions of narrative discourse analysis (Gee, 1991) to see initial themes and patterns across classroom discourse and interactions.  The data re/presented in this project, however, are presented more generally to emphasize salient pieces for analysis.  With general themes in mind, I conducted several rounds of open coding (Dyson & Genishi, 2007) to help me further theorize canonicity and to identify important ideas that ran across the different data sources, but specifically for what Dyson and Genishi (2005) refer to enerated major categories around larger discourses of religion (below) (1997) conceptions of a discourse of spirituality.  This type of discourse, Beach says, is based on a belief of religious forces, tends to be inflexible in views, stends to invoke narratives of sin, salvation, healing, and the like.  In addition to these general concepts, I drew concepts from my reading of scholarship around religious and literary canons (Maddix & Thompson, 2012; Davies, 1998; Abraham, 1998; Brenneman, 1997; von Hallberg,  55 1984; Bloom, 1995; Scholes, 1998; Applebee, 1974) as well as the concepts connected to the historical and social foundations of schooling discussed earlier, all of which are reflected in the categories below (which, of course, are culturally-situated and likewise raced, gendered, religioned, classed etc.).  Importantly, I focused broadly on certain varieties of Protestant Christianity here because, like Beach (1997), I was interested in and concerned about general, religious-like, and the historically Protestant Christian experiences and principles underpinning US common schools, rather than on specific sectarian religious doctrines that fall beyond the scope of this study.  I wanted to maintain the focus of this project on the English classroom and on English pedagogy around canonical literature instruction rather than on the nuances of specific Christian doctrines or traditions.  Maintaining a broad (nonsectarian) sense of Protestant Christianity helped me to keep that focus.   Nonetheless, these data categories includedMuch like the Bible or any other sacred scripture, certain texts in the English classroom carry a more privileged (or sacred) status over others (i.e., Hamlet).  While this from teacher to teacher, the idea is that certain texts, charged with authority, power, or knowledge.  Teachers and students, in some ways, show these texts.  As an extensioGood, disciplined conduct or behavior to read/understand those textsIn many religious traditions, there are expectations of decorum, respect, deference, and fortitude when reading any sacred text.  Likewise, teachers have certain expectations of themselves and of their students when reading or studying canonical texts in the English classroom.  This reading is not for enjoyment purposes but rather to instill certain disciplined habits (which are usually determined by what the teacher claims to do or  56 knows to be true) or perceived good readers.  Texts deemed less worthy for classroom study (like young adult or contemporary texts) are akin to apocryphal texts  they are generally recognized but exist on the boundaries of English classrooms (outside or choice readings) because they are   Pursuit of sacred truths in those texts  the need to understand themCanonical texts, much like the Bible for some Protestant Christians, have literal, fixed, or inherent truths, interpretations, messages, or meanings that need above), because the students are not yet prepared or worthy to understand them.  Ultimately, however, the pursuit of these truths leads their betterment (however defined). Teachers charged with sacred knowledge, authority that derives from the textTeaching canonical texts invests teachers with a certain omniscient authority, power, or knowledge as well.  This is not their own authority, but an authority handed down or passed on through the text.  Thus, the text may be morally, ethically, or spiritually charged.  Teachers as clergy or pastors who act as arbiter/mediator between students and sacred texts (helping them understand truths)Invested or worthy to understand canonical texts or the truths or messages in them; thus, they shepherd preacher may view his congregation  they interpret and explain the congregation interpret and understand their messages.   The use of texts  as a means to a certain endAkin to Jesus and his use of parables, canonical texts are indicative of the stories/metaphors/imagination that  57 bring them to some higher salvation or truth.  In this way, successful readings or understanding of texts can lead to success/redemption/salvation and therefore better the character of the students.  Passive reception/acceptance of knowledge, truth, graceagainst its truths, much like one may do with sacred scripture.  The texts and textual practices used in classroom study usually result from sacred tradition  time  curriculum/syllabus) or some presumed cultural/spiritual understanding.  Once I had decided upon these larger categories, I re-read all of my data, coding and classifying them for this this broader lens of religious discourse.  This stage helped me to illuminate the notion of canonicity in my data.  Having then categorized data in this way, I narrowed the data even more to focus on the most salient pieces that best captured these religious constructs.  These data were then re-project.  Finally, once the chapter themes were set, I conducted a Foucauldian (1972) version of critical discourse analysis to explore the effects of the religious discourse as well as to consider alysis, considering storylines helped me to balance the micro-interactions (activities, discussions, pedagogical practices, etc.) at the classroom level with the macro-discourses I wanted to analyze.  As I did during my observations, I analyzed my data for the micro-storylines that made up or were constructed in the data.  Then, I considered how they are constructed and how they positioned and were positioned by the teacher participants.  This analysis helped me to see (the micro- 58 macro) recursivity in my data: how storylines built towards larger, religious discourses and how the religious discourses shaped moment-to-moment storylines, interactions, and comments.    Of course, throughout this entire analysis process, I recognized my own role in the constructidepicted in the prologue, attempts to reveal some of my own values and commitments and my role in the construction of the data.  Specifically, I could not separate from my analysis my own Catholic identity and my past as a Catholic school students and teacher.  In fact, having only known the Catholic school classroom before conducting research in public schools, I think I was poised, based upon my identity and background, to see how religiosity was ever-present absent presence  these secular classrooms.  Thirty years as a practicing Catholic allowed me to see what I could not in my own context as a Catholic secondary school teacher: that a religiosity   On Methodological Baggage  On this note, there is one participant who is not mentioned at all in this study, but who is, at the same time, all over this study: Robert.  I have written extensively about Robert before, as his classroom served as my first research site for a previous study and, thus, as my first foray into my role as academic researcher and scholar.  My experiences with Robert were the impetus for this very study, even though this study has taken on a different shape and direction than what I had anticipated.  In short, what I learned about my experiences with Robert was that I was complicit, whether conscious or not, in the friendly camaraderie that developed between Robert and me as I came to his classroom on a daily basis.  There was nothing necessarily overt that  59 confirmed this relationship (we did not see or talk to each other outside of the classroom, for example, and we did not know each other before I started visiting him), rather we were both white males who taught similar courses and students, we had similar interests, we both had young children at home, and we both enjoyed pop culture.  As a result, I think both he and I  that influenced, I think, how he taught when I l study.  I have no doubt, in other words, that our interactions would have been completely different had I been, for example, a woman, an African-American man, or even an older man who had been observing his classroom.  Specifically, I have come to realize, in reflecting on my time with Robert, that I was hailed as a  during interviews and whatnot.  Being a younger, more novice educator but also a doctoral student, I think Robert saw my interest in him as an opportunity both to groom me and to  in a certain way  show off his knowledge about his background, the discipline, and even texts he taught.  During our conversations, he also confidently and ardently staked his claims  those who he felt were not qualified to make decisions about his own teaching.  Knowing that I was an instructor of English methods courses, he also unapologetically referred to college education classes as experiences with the discipline, I deferred, mainly to maintain and encourage our solidarity and, however shallow, to gather rich data for my own research purposes.    I had gone prominent role in this project, but every time I went back, I could not separate Robert from the gendered lens with which I had come to see of and in him, his interactions, and his pedagogy.   60 new interests  I could not see past the gendered ways in which he conducted class.   So what does Robert have to do with this current study?  Two things.  For one, I was much more guarded and standoffish with my participants.  I was worried that knowing too much about me (as a person) and my interests (as a researcher) might influence their work.   And, I think I was more aware of my presence in their classrooms as a white male and a white male the Academy.  There were times I was worried that Rachel, for example, was trying to prove herself and play to my interests or that Joe was performing for me, which knowing of my general interest in the canon, felt as though they could not be overly critical of the canon because they had a visitor in the back of the classroom (me) who represented everything the canon stands for: whiteness, heterosexuality, masculinity.  Second, and connected to this note, while I cannot be sure of the extent to which my gender, race, age, and sexuality played a role in influencing what Lisa, Rachel, and Joe did on a day-to-day basis, I certainly know and can see how my religious upbringing played a role in the construction and analysis of my data.  Scheurich  (p. observation and, most important, to my analysis of data.  I could not separate, for example, what I have come to know about Christianity, religion, and Catholicism as a practicing Catholic from my stance as a researcher.  I can see what I want to see, in other words, despite any methodological or analytic rigor I may bring to the table, and my life as a student and teacher of and in Catholic schools helped me to read and re-read my data.  At the same time, as a practicing and life- 61 Christian doctrines and roots that undergird this project.  Thus, I will say what I have said before based upon my experiences with Robert: I am convinced that the data re-presented in this study my participants and me.  Certainly, this data has been constructed between us, and my own positionality  my mere  makes me the participant of this study, which is why I frame this project around my story.  62 CHAPTER 3: CREEDS AND DEEDS: SACRED TEXTS AND TEXTUAL PRACTICES     (Lisa, Interview 2)  marketplace and the  (Scholes, 1998, p. 27)  mission  (Drane, 2001, p. 163)   Introduction The fundamental assumption of this project is the idea that canonical texts  those texts traditionally taught in secondary English classrooms  may have some hierarchy or authority, some power invites particular tendencies toward and practices in using these texts for classroom study.  Thus, canonicity, as I have called it, is an approach, a discursive system, that does more than merely identify certain books-as-canon; it actually engenders certain pedagogical practices and encounters.  This chapter considers how produces certain pedagogical practices that may convey their understanding of these texts as a type of sacred literature or, at the very least, as more sacred than other texts.  Specifically, this chapter illustrates and imagines the ways in which teachers talk about, think about, and use these texts like a type of sacred (or authoritative) Scripture, where just as the Bible (as a type of sacred Scripture) is central to Christian salvation, faith, and practice (Maddix and Thompson, 2012, p. 80), so too might canonized texts in the English classroom be tied to comparable expectations and practices in the context of an English classroom.  Their power, according to teachers, results  63 in some type of transformation of or within students that they then carry into their own lives;   According to teachers, they inspire, transform, awaken, or lead directly to success and salvation.   For example, in one of my conversations with Rachel, the teacher who was hired as the drama director and drama teacher but now teaches Advanced Placement English Literature (a course known for its rigor, per AP guidelines, and usually reserved for advanced students in their I kind of buy into Hamlet as the icon of the .  This comment, in the context of telling me about her course texts and why she teaches them, revealed a sentiment that I would see across my secondary English classroom.  When I asked Rachel to explain what she meant by this comment, she spoke generally about the canonical texts she uses in her classroom, saying,  experience, in terms of teaching them in a high school context, that we feel young people ew 2) Hamlet elf among a group of English educators Hamlet in secondary classrooms.  Even her rather a nod to her notion that something happens in the reader  64 some change occurs to or in them as a result of reading these canon/ized texts.  Canonical texts, Hamlet-as-icon: her comment underscores not only that Hamlet is representative of the high school English classroom, but that she might consider it to be an actual icon, a venerated relic (I will expand upon this point in the next chapter).  In this sense, what teaching of Hamlet  like the Bible or sacred Scripture  and in the service of the profession more generally.  From this perspective, Hamlet can be seen as preserving and adoring Hamlet in her classroom and in the literary (rather than spiritual) formation of her students, and thus teaching Hamlet for duty, a responsibility, or an act that indicates somethinshe says.   As we will see in this chapter, also aligns with the thinking, methods, and practices of other teachers in this study.  This veneration is perhaps because a belief about the power of texts in this way might be derived from Sunday school models of English and the Protestant social foundations of education more generally, where In early English teachers could contend for young peopleembodied and then approaching literary Chubb, 1902, 380 cf. Brass, 2011, pp. 160-161).  In a contemporary context, while perceived secular, canonical texts  65 are not outwardly or explicitly religious in nature, the ways in which some teachers treat them is.  Hamlet and its power, status, value, she sees Hamlet  While Rachel features more prominently in the next chapter, I use her words to open this chapter because her veneration of Hamlet and other canonical texts aligns with the thinking, methods, and practices of other teachers in this study.  And, most of all, her words anchor and drive the larger argument of this chapter (and indeed of the dissertation overall): that certain texts can be considered sacred or privileged in the minds of the English teachers of this study (and beyond, I think) and that this belief is tied to certain practices or pedagogical approaches that emulates the English classroom equivalent of worship or, at the very least, of sacred ideologies about texts.  Like the other teachers discussed in this chapter, Rachel suggests that these texts do more than just inform; they actually form and transform, bringing about a change in her students or leading them to some higher truth or salvation.  In this case, texts used for classroom study they are charged or imbued with sacred authority, power, truths, or knowledge.  This chapter also illustrates, however, that not all texts  whether perceived canon/ized or not  carry the same value or (literary or insHamlet, are sanctioned or authorized over others for engagement, classroom, or even canon/ized purposes. The idea of the canonical text as a type of sacred Scripture proposed in this chapter illustrates the ways in which a discourse of canonicity is woven into pedagogy and moves beyond the typical notion of canon as a list of books that may inform the curricula of English  66 their classroom practices (actions or deeds) implicitly reinscribe the deference, respect, hierarchy or even worship of some texts over others because of their perceived innate power or esteem  indeed their perceived sacredness, where, in some fundamentalist Judeo-Christian traditions, the sacred text is fixed, determined, and seemingly not open to interpretation, change, or critique.  Thus, in imagining these texts as sacred, I often pepper Biblical quotations in these chapters as a way to imagine the religious discourses that may be embedded in the ways teachers act, think, which canonicity works as a discursive system, for the ways in which it works as believing, saying, knowing, and doing.   Sacred Practices: Canonicity and Criticality Much like Rachel advances a hierarchy of texts in her classroom and sanctions certain texts over others, Joe (who will also be featured in a later chapter) is explicit in his creed and deeds about the sacredness of Hamlet.  Joe, who had been originally certified as a math teacher, teaching math, he felt h -1).  As a result, he focuses on preparing his students for college and teaching what he deems college-level texts, such as Hamlet.  While his pedagogy reveals the extent to which he idolizes Hamlet like Rachel does, Joe also praised Hamlet from our first i 67 something about it that people have been intrigued besteem for Hamletwritten athat he see some innate power, quality, or value to Hamlet that warrants these feelings, and his pedagogy around Hamlet reinforced these notions over the roughly four weeks he taught the text.  How so?  Over the course of his unit, Joe frequently relied on methods that sanctified the word of Hamlet: His students had to listen to online lectures about Hamlet, they had to take copious notes on their reading homework, they had regular reading quizzes, they had to participate in online discussion forums about the text, grade.  All of these activities elevated the word of the text, rather than the interpretation or response of the students.  Even the online discussion forums, which Joe mentioned were in the (2.12), were focusinterpretations of the text.  Joe also found through online media (iTunes University) lectures erstanding of the lectures before they even began reading the play together.  Finally, Joe frequently lectured on Hamlet  an important point because it was something that I did not see him do with Heart of Darkness.  During those weeks he taught Hamlet, lecture was the characteristic classroom discourse: Joe told his students what they needed to know about and see in Hamlet.  During these lectures, Joe seemed to be drawing on Hamlet as a source of truth and knowledge as he pointed out important passages and advanced his interpretation of the play that usually aligned with or expanded upon the interpretation of the Stanford professor.  And, during his introduction of the text to his students,  68  been written about more than Hamletseemed to be little contradiction between what he believed and practiced, between his pedagogical intentions and his pedagogical enactment, between his creeds and deeds.  Just like Rachel, for Joe, the pedagogy around Hamlet seems to show adoration and, perhaps even more so than to speak their mind because Hamlet was the text Joe deemed they needed to know about.  Part of JoHamlet became clear to me during my first interview with him.  When, I asked what he thought it was about canonical texts that made them so prevalent in secondary classrooms, he replied, They are classics for a reason.  They are canonical for a reason.  They reflect some of the best that Western civilization has to offer.  reason we are reading Shakespeare for the last four hundred value  like [Harold] Bloom said, nothing new has been written in the past three hundred years. (Interview 1)2    of those words, as both connote quality, correctness, and even moral fortitude.  The texts of the canon, he seems to say under my interpretation of canonicity, are in accordance with t/Truth and factors   its value (or canonicity)                                                  2 A problematic statement, no doubt, for a number of reasons, including the implications that it erases other civilizations, cultures, and raced and categorically privileges a Western, or white, Anglo-Saxon, Christian, masculinist, tradition.   69 was conferred or established from its con/inception.    They simply are, by their very nature.   In addition to commenting on the sacred nature of these texts, Joe also mentions that they  comment reinforce canonized notions of Shakespeare and texts of the Western canon, but Joe also (like Rachel) specifically likens Shakespeare to the f/Father of this canon: all literature since Shakespeare is a permutation or iteration of a Shakespearean storyline.  In other words, Joe seems to call or liken Shakespeare to the Author of the Word, as the source of Truth and origin/ality.  He is the Alpha from which all   Rather than questioning the sacred tradition canonical texts and authors like Shakespeare have in the English classroom, Joe reifies it and, in the process, reifies Shakespeare as the authority on the matter.      specially intriguing to me, as Joe expressed his own interest in critical literacy practices in an early interview to me (Interview 1) and, later, a would reHamlet with this critical interest  how would he subvert or challenge the tradition that he claimed to admire so much?   Hamlet throughout his teaching of that play (to be discussed in a later chapter), and that status was preserved or even made more explicit when I observed Joe teaching Heart of Darkness immediately after he had finished his teaching of Hamlet.  Before his students began reading Heart of Darkness, Joe showed them the documentary .  On the handout he  70 gave to students during this introduction (Appendix A), We begin [this unit] by watching the excellent documentary , which chronicles   While I knew Congo as the setting of Heart of Darkness, I asked Joe why he had his students watch this documentary and why it served as their introduction to Heart of Darkness.  way to understand the book from a critical perspective, since I really want them to contextualize this sto real events in its history (3.2).  By using this documentary, Joe wanted to establish in his students a critical orientation toward Heart of Darkness from the start, even before they xt was immediately undercut, especially compared to their introduction to Hamlet, in which the students were required to listen to (and subsequently be quizzed on) online lectures about the play from the Stanford English professor.  This immediate sense of criticality contributed to a postcolonial Heart of Darkness, and this sense of criticality was not present, or even an option, during their study of Hamlet.  Hamlet was thus absolved of this critical perspective.   Soon after the students had finished viewing the documentary and begun reading the text, -colonialist, feminist, and Marxist criticisms and race theory.  To help the students read against Heart of Darkness from a critical point of view and in a very explicit way, Joe required the students to post quotations (on post-it notes) on a bulletin board  titled their Critical Concept Ma   at the back of the room.  Student-chosen quotations from the text were written on post-it notes and then attached (via the post-it notes) to the specified critical  71 lenses labeled on the board that Joe had introduced and provided on a handout.  This map, then, consisting of quotations from the text and critical lenses, would serve as evidence of their critical reading of the text.  Firgure -it notes and quotations from the text.  Figure 2 depicts the board after several days with student additions.  So, the board at the back of the room served as a visual reminder of their critical engagement with the text, and their small and large group conversations about Heart of Darkness were guided by this activity on a regular basis.  At the end of the unit, the students would then write an in-depth critical analysis of the text using one of these literary lenses.  Their assessment of that text, then, was actually an assessment of their developing critical consciousness about that text. Figure 1  critical lenses and example quotations.             72 Figure 2 ses with student participation after several days.  When Joe introduced the various critical lenses to his students during their early study of Heart of Darkness, he did reference how these lenses applied to their study of Hamlet.  He asked his There is one [lens] sanctioned by the College Board that we use all of the time, especially during Hamlet.  A  73  Of Mice and Men and The Catcher in the Rye (which will be discussed momentarily).   First, there is no sense of criticality or critical perspectives attached to this lens or approach; rather, the text, from this perspective, stands on its own as the only source for understanding it.  Hamlet, as it works to favor the text rather than to undermine it.  Hamletdespite, or rather in aPlacement test and curriculum.  While the College Board is careful not to deliberatanything AP syllabi before they can teach it)Hamlet aligns with a doctrine, dogma, tradition, or creed of, with, and around Hamlet  he follows through with what's accepted and expected with Hamlet (by using the preferred reading method), but, interestingly enough, not Heart of Darkness (in which he established a critical orientation).  With Hamlet, Joe insdiscipledsanctioned reading of a sanctioned text by a sanctioned author  a New Critical read of Hamlet by William Shakespeare.  Thus, Hamletthrough the method by which Joe teaches it, a method that values the authoritative voice of the text over the voices of the students; a method largely grounded in close reading, interpretation, and, quite possibly, religious tradition.  Why, then, even read Heart of Darkness, let alone in an un-sanctioned way, in their AP class?  The implicit curriculum fostered here  74 Heart of Darkness; it offers no t/Truths or sacred tradition, which is why Joe seeks for his students to critically undercut it.    novels across her classes, including The Crucible, Catcher in the Rye, and The Awakening.  When I asked her why she taught these books, she said, I think literature builds on your ability to empathize, and I think ultimately empathy is what creates better people because you are realizing that other people think like you or you can see where other people are coming from even if your circumstances are different.  settling in with [the students], that as they read it, they think about it a little differently, people in that manner or can relate other people to that. (Interview 2) will become better people.  Literature, she argues, develops empathy, an intimate understanding of other people, winterview took place in her room, and her room is covered with familiar and inspirational n  75  also came through the books she taught, and even from my first observation of her teaching, I saw how Lisa literally embodied this sentiment as she was wearing a purple t-slogan and an allusion to Atticus Finch, the heralded and esteemed hero of To Kill a Mockingbird  a literary figure who has b  In that moment, and as another English teacher, I as a teacher  it was the type of thing I would have done in my own classroom or encouraged my served as further evidence of  and even affirmation of  her participation in a type of non-literary canonicity-as-discourse.  The shirt, quite literally, (re)establishes Atticus as a Christ-like figure nch who might live in his tradition.  In other words, the shirt serves a similar purpose to her literary goals: to bring about a change in her students, to make better people of them, to follow in the way of Atticus, and to empathize with imple act of wearing this shirt shows how she embodies canonicity as a discourse.  Even despite extensive scholarship and recent popular media publication) which argues and points out that Atticus is not the anti-racist hero he has been portrayed to be, Lisa venerates the popular image  the canonized version of Atticus  and reifies To Kill a MockingbirdLisa and her students shape and are shaped by  indeed formed and transformed by  the canon.  76 I wonder, then, how canonical literature (like To Kill a Mockingbird) appears to serve as  treats her canonical texts much like a Gospel parable, where Christ told stories to inspire or illustrate a Christian value like compassion or, more specifically, empathy.  The purpose of these parables was to bring about a change in people or in His disciples, to better their lives through the sacred word that applied to their actual lives in a very practical way.  Lisa calls this change or  again quite literally, an inspired conversion that evokes, in Christian theology, a repentance a2016classroom and canonical curricula, then, seem to serve as important steps sacred literature they read, and her Atticus shirt is further evidence of this point.  Like Rachel, like sacred Scripture, the word (the text) acts as a means towards living a better life, and Lisa reinforces this point across her pedagogy, body, and classroom space.   them.  She loved The Crucible(Interview 1) and said that she taught it in a way tstudents.  In that text, the protagonist John Proctor is saved from evil and sin by sacrificing his life in the dramatic conclusion of the play.  As such, scholars have drawn literary parallels between his char 77  his Christian or Gospel values of sacrifice, service, repentance, or doing good deeds.  But the texts do not require a Christ-like figure for them to have power or to bring about a change in her students.  For example, for her final exam on Of Mice and Men, Lisa asked her students to write about euthanasia, arguing whether or not it should be acceptable for both humans and animals, using the novel as support.  Rather than ask the students to write about a literary aspect of the text, Lisa saw this more ethical dimension worthy of analysis and even evangelization, where the text taught a moral lesson and disciplined empathy (in opening up a space to understand why George killed Lennie) as a way to change her students for the better (more on this in a later chapter).  Thus, her pedagogy advanced a curriculum (and even tested students) on the merits of the text beyond its literary or typically school-subject-English value.  In an earlier interview with Lisa, when I asked her what she hopes her students get out of the literature they read together, she repliedbeings and become more empathetic and understanding because I think literature has that power and ultimately as a teacher I want to foster people to be smarter and better and do good things with their lives.  Here, Lisa states more directly her goal that students become human beings is required for salvation or entrance t 78 and a The Crucible and Of Mice and Men, two canonical texts, highlights this point in fairly obvious ways.  Sacred Practice and Canonized Pedagogy Lisa moved quickly through the texts she taught (a pedagogy she justified through the , and so I was able to observe her teach Of Mice and Men, Maus I and II, Catcher in the Rye, The Body, and The Joy Luck Club, and therefore, I saw the ways in which she framed, juxtaposed, and positioned these texts with and against each other.  Indeed, an analysis of her teaching across these texts highlights how canonicity operates as an approach, as an implicit curriculum, or as a form of sacred practice.  Specifically, though Lisa had a certain pedagogical style that relied heavily on dialogic practices, the type of questions and activities that she utilized varied across each text, and in the process, she advanced a curriculum that some texts carried more  literary, transformative, canonical  weight than others.  This became immediately apparent to me when I saw her approach to teaching Maus I and II, a contemporary graphic novel, after she taught Of Mice and Men.  With Of Mice and Men, Lisa had her students complete a detailed graphic organizer in which the students had to describe, This assignment required considerable time and effort from the students beyond a mere reading or even comprehension of the book.  Lisa echoed this notion in class one day when, after a Get with you partners, I hope re talking about principal appearance, behavior, personality, and then ultimately decide on 1-2  79 haracter details and quotations), and revealed, to a certain extent, the value Lisa sees or places on a canonical novel like Of Mice and Men, a text she will use to direct her focus on empathy, euthanasia, and fostering better peopledo good things with their lives (Interview 1).   Of Mice and Men chart, and the work it required, is made more apparent when juxtaposed with her assignment for Maus I and II, both of which relationship with his father who survived the Holocaust through graphic (comic) means.  those texts, Lisa had her students take notes on the graphics, the visuals.  When introducing the assignment, she said,  ave you guys jot down for each chapter just a couple symbols, images, graphics  whatever stands out to you.  Maybe they are obvious ones that represent something in that particular frame that you found  on the character than the frame you to over think it. (2.17)   limit to what they can and cannand openness in her approach to Maus Of Mice and Men, which characters.  With Maus, Lisa just wants them to jot down some graphics that may be   80 deference shown toward these texts, and I do wonder what role the visual nature of Maus plays into this difference for Lisa, let alone with canonicity associated with Of Mice and Men.  In over the visuals, images, graphic (i.e., in thinking about picture books versus chapter books).  Of Mice and Men like there is for Maus. Lisa reinforces this difference in deference when, soon after introducing their Maus assignment, she gave the students some background on MausArt [the author] is a d something he was dying to meant to legitimize (perhaps sanction) Maus Of Mice and Men as a/the legitimate text.  Maus, in other words, is something personal to the author, a memoir, and it does not attain the level of respect, power, or authority that Steinbeck or Of Mice and Men does even though both texts (and a graphic memoirHolocaust perhaps even more so, one could argue) may be used for non-literary goals like or assignments one would associate with the English classroom, like character and quotation analysis, with Of Mice and Men but not with Maus.  The canonicity associated with the former text engenders a canonical/ized form of pedagogy.  Similarly, at the end of her Of Mice and Men unit, Lisa gave her students a test on the novel, including the essay about euthanasia, but at the end of Mausyou  81 more personal and Of Mice and Men.  For that text, there was a test, there was a day to review for the test (along with a review sheet), and preparation along the way for what Lisa saw as important elements of the text, those that were worthy of close study for examination purposes.  None of this happened for Maus.  Rather, their final assignment with Maus text.   Furthermore, one day while teaching a scene in Of Mice and Men where a group of minor characters are gathered together in one room and make verbal attacks at one another, Lisa told Mausfuture success  their implied well-being, perhaps their salvation, one could imagine  to a reading, understanding, or interpretation of the text with this aside comment during class.  Perhaps Lisa , for their grade, or for their overall understanding of t sits heavily with students.  For whatever reason, they or we may infer, Of Mice and Men plays a role  and matters in their lives.  Of Mice and Men offers students a pathway to some T/truth or personal fulfillment in a way that Maus does not or cannot.  In moments like these, the metaphor (or curriculum) of Of Mice and Men carried through.   82  This implicit curriculum of canonicity was apparent later in the year as well, when Lisa The Body (a short story on which the movie Stand by Me was based) The Catcher in the RyeCatcher was the most different than her teaching around the other texts she taught in that the weight or status she placed on Catcher was most palpable, even more than Of Mice and Men, in my interpretation.  For example, for the first time in my observation of her teaching, Lisa gave regular reading quizzes of fill-in-the-blank and short answer questions to her students that tested their understanding of the text.  They also had, again for the first time I had seen, more involved discussions of literary devices like symbolism and hyperbole in the text, and, again for the first time, the students had to write analysis and argumentation essays about the significance of would argue, the more typical, standardized, or canonical/ized activities of the English before her teaching of The Catcher in the Rye.  In the case of Catcherheighted or valued more than those of her students through activities and assignments like those mentioned.  With the other texts I saw her teach (even with Of Mice and Men to a certain extent), her pedagogy was marked by a more reader response approach that heightened and valued the voices and experiences of her students more than a close reading, interpretation, or  Lisa was more vocal and explicit about this difference in her pedagogy with me than she was with her students.  For example, during one of my obThe Body, I saw student groups present on different parts of their reading, and I saw Lisa lead a  83 class was relaxed, light, and even fun at times (especially when the students shared stories about rivalries or childhood conflicts with their siblings).  After class, when I told Lisa how much I enjoyed her classns on the text for a Stephen King book like I do for Catcher.  The kids just want to talk about some of the good ideas that the book brings up, which is why their journal was about family today and why we Stephen King story, Lisa felt free to leave the realm of the text and talk about other themes or concepts that were tangentially related to the story, and she even allowed student groups to provide summaries of the reading, rather than herself, which she did throughout their two and a half week study of Catcher in the Rye.  Under my interpretation, this might be because there is no sense of canon or canonicity around King and The Body as not found a However, Lisa about a text like Catcher  the tried-and-true Catcher whose status and canonicity remains Hamlet, Catcher reinforces its sacred place in the classroom; students need to know about Catcher in a way that they do not need to know about The Body.  One is more sacred  On another interesting note, during one interview, Lisa leaned in closely to me and ke Catcherlike Catcher and even though she does not enjoy teaching it, she still does so because, in her own  84 words, hers may be required to teach something they do not like or enjoy, but who is telling Lisa that her students Catcher?  No one.  Lisa can choose not to teach Catcher (as she admitted to me) if she wants, but she feels beholden (no pun intended) to a text like Catcher because of some expectation, some notion, that .  A comment like this underscores Catcher unquestioned, sacred-like status .  She feels a compulsory allegiance to the text, the word, and her whispered tone to me, behind closed doors, might suggest that Lisa feels bad, perhaps blasphemous, for even uttering her dislike of such an esteemed text because such a sentiment runs counter to her perceived commandments of the English classroom.  And looking back, I imagine this moment  where we were seated in the middle of her classroom space, sur could have felt like a confessional for Lisa, where she was finally able to relieve herself of this secret that she has carried for long.   Conclusion This chapter advances the idea of canonicity as an approach, a creed tied to deeds, about the teaching of texts in the secondary English classroom.  In offering an interpretation of broad idea of canonicity to specific pedagogical encounters, where teachers often implicitly associated with each.  In the process, teachers naturalize a hierarchy or authority of and about the perception, teachers, it appears, worship or revere these texts as a type of sacred (or  85 authoritative) text rather than merely teach them.  Certainly, in teaching there is revering, but Catcher, these teachers believe that texts like Hamlet and Catcher carry some weight for students.  There is a desire on the t discipline or disciple students into the same model of thinking and doing around these texts.  To a certain extent, teachers and students, upon entering the classroom, enter into this frame of canonicity, where the discourse of and around these books as sacred texts is reinforced and maintained rather than challenged or critiqued, inhibiting critical engagement with those texts.     86 CHAPTER 4: THE ENGLISH CLASSROOM AS RELIGIOUS RITUAL   Hamlet as the icon of th (Rachel, Interview 2)   (Davies, 1998, p. 10)   Introduction The previous chapter discussed s is tied to their pedagogy of those texts, tracing the ways in which Rachel, Lisa, and Joe implicitly establish a hierarchy or authority of some texts over others.  Their sanctifying of certain texts was connected to their perception of the innate power or value of and in those texts, and I offered an interpretation of their instructional practices that likened the canonical texts they taught to a type of sacred Scripture.  In this chapter, I expand upon this idea and present an in depth illustration of Rathe ways in which a typical, secondary English classroom  the actual physical space and the day-to-day doings of teaching  can parallel religious practices and beliefs of a church mass, service, or experience, especially the general, broad features of a non-sectarian American flavored pan-Protestant Christianity associated with the Common Schools.   In order to provide this illustration, I isolate Rachel and her classroom space to show religiosity as a form of canonizing and to reveal the ways in an English classroom can serve as a space that canonizes.  Rachel, the teacher whose comments about Hamlet introduced the themes of the last chapter, expressed her love for Hamlet from my first interaction with her, and she come observe her during her teaching of Hamlet to her AP English seniors because she believed that her love for the text was obvious through her teaching of it.  In addition to her request, I  87 chose to focus only on Rachel in this chapter for a couple of reasons.  First, I was most intrigued tradition in the English classroom; she continually reiterated to her students and me that there were certain things that had to happen in an/her English classroom in order for .  The way she spoke about English class (and the text) in this way, and as I interpreted it, evoked a kind of religious rite of passage, even a baptism, into certain things Rachel believed all English students had to experience.  The teaching of English, in other words, is ritualistic.  One of those rituals, importantly, was a study of Hamlet, and based upon my observations in her classroom, I wonder the extent to which her love of Hamlet was actually a love of the tradition of Hamlet and its place in the English classroom and in her previous experiences (and formation) as an English student. Second, and on this note, Rachel encompasses, to the fullest manifestation, the phenomenon of canonicity that I wish to explore in this chapter, namely that the religious-like, and specifically the Protestant Christian-like, practices of the English classroom are a means to canonizing texts, the treatment (reading, teaching, or otherwise) of those texts, and the perceptions of students and teachers.  So, my interpretation in this chapter moves beyond Hamlet as a sacred text, the explicit subject in order to focus on the implicit Protestant Christian-like rituals that come with the reading and teaching  the canonizing  of Hamlet as a type of sacred text.  I argue that h classroom evokes canonicity through the ritual-like and religious-like discourses of the taken-for-granted, traditional (i.e., white, Anglo-Saxon, Christian, masculinist) assumptions of English teaching and the English classroom.   88 Icons and Iconization To most English educators, the teaching of Shakespearean plays is not revolutionary or even surprising because Shakespeare continues to be one of the most frequently taught authors in American high schools, and Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, and Julius Caesar tend to be classroom staples reinforced through the explicit curriculum.  Many English teachers, as previous English majors, also often enjoy Shakespeare.  Rachel is no different; her passion and excitement for the text, indeed her adoration of it and of Shakespeare, came through during her lessons, which were mostly characterized by question-and-answer style discussion during read alouds, as well as in casual conversations, interviews, and classroom observations I had with her.    Not only did Rachel refer to Hamlet Hamlet as we were talking about the play and her reasons for including it in her curriculum, she stated I kind of buy into Hamlet as the icon of the high school (Interview 1).  The general substance of this comment is also not surprising; many English teachers may express similar sentiments that Hamlet (or any number of other texts) may be a text all students should read in the English classroom.  For Lisa, as discussed in the previous chapter, it was Catcher in the Rye.  Lisa taught that book, even though she personally disliked it, because she believed her studen use of the word  implicitly underscore the canonicity thinking about Hamlet as a text for classroom study? In considering its religious roots, persons like Christ or a Christian saint.  These icons pervade most religious traditions and spaces  89 classroom is an interesting one, for it likens Hamlet to something held sacred.  In this case, a sacred text, one that all students must experience, worship, adore, or revere.  From this perspective, how can we re-f religious ritual, for the ways in which Hamlet -made-flesh (John 1:14), and Shakespeare, its author, the Author of the word?  Well, it comes as no surprise that a colorful poster of a place usually reserved for a crucifix in Catholic schools and a place that easily captures or Having sat all oveus and held our gaze.  This poster, I suggest, serves as another icon for Rachel and her students  their work in the classroom is done in service to Shakespeare, the mythical god of the English classroomthe earthly classroom floor.  While Shakespeare held this revered space, oroom as well  pictures of other famous authors like Poe, Whitman, Dickinson, and Steinbeck.  These icons, however, were pasted on the back walls or side cabinets.  Their place or status, in other words, lies somewhere between Shakespeare and the students; they are not quite as venerated as Shakespeare because they came after him or in his tradition, but they still maintain a status  Gregory of Nyssa, a bishop of the 300s, supposedly once pp. 83-84).  Considering this idea of icons, and the posters of the authors that were literally see that there was a clear sense of hierarchy in -order religious-like forces that demand the attention and adoration of the congregation, her students.  And these students enter  90 classroom with the expectation and understanding that they will revere Shakespeare through a study of his icons, his plays  and in this case, Hamlet.  The classroom, then, becomes more of space for worship rather than one for play or dialogic engagement.  Reverent-Bodies/d and Sacred Space  In addition to being an AP English classroom, where Shakespearean plays are curricular Hamlet because, having taught drama in years past, Rachel occupies the drama classroom as her designated classroom space.  So, her room is huge, as the intent was obviously to use the room as rehearsal space for school productions or to act out performances studied in or during drama class.  The dramatic features of the room make it an uncharacteristic or atypical school/English classroom (see Figure 3 from field notes).  For example, students enter the classroom through a set of double doors that swing out into the hallway, and there is a small, enclosed hallway that leads into the classroom space.  This classroom space is huge with high ceilings, so the room literally opens up as you come through the hallway, similar to the setup in a theatre, where patrons enter through side doors and into the open space of the theatre building.  In the hallwalk-in costume closet.  The door to this closet has a large window, so anyone can see that it is filled with costumes and props from productions past.  Costumes hang from four racks, two on each side of the closet, and various props are scattered about but mostly fill large shelves at the back of the closet.   The larger classroom space consists of four walls.  The wall with the entrance from the hallway has a small, raised platform built into it, clearly meant to be a stage with two angled sides and a straight edge that projects into the classroom.  This wall is covered with full-length mirrors, and the opposite wall has bookshelves, cabinets, and four classroom computers.   91 with large windows that lead to an outside patio.  The front wall has a small bulletin board and long whiteboard, while the back wall is covered in felt bulletin boards.  From this back wall is a use  At the time of my observations, Grease was in its final dress rehearsals and performances, so I saw a bit of movement among these rooms.   Figure 3 , from field notes.   92 shop, the costume closet, and the auditorium; thus, her room was clearly and originally meant as a staging/rehearsal space, and the drama instructor could have blocked scenes for school productions during drama class in her own room. int, and yet, none of them were for Rachel, expectations about certain texts  and the pedagogy associated with those texts  have become entrenched, normative, and tied to a tradition that Shakespeare must be read and studied in the English classroom, not performed or reimagined (even though Hamlet is dramatic literature).  In other words, that tradition contradicted, neglected, or betrayed the dramatic space and pedagogy of the classroom, where the physical space of the room acted as an invitation for   English class not being designated as a drama class only further legitimized the sanctioned practices that took place in the room.  The activity, as day after day, the students sat in their desks (arranged in a parallel u-formation), with their texts open, as a sort-of reverent-bodied, genuflection in the presence of Shakespeare (the poster that looms on the wall).  They stood only for the Pledge of Allegiance during morning announcements, and, ironicallyoften saw (and helped) Rachel and her students rearrange desks or put away drama items that had been left out the night before by students rehearsing for Grease.  One morning, upon coming into a particularly disheveled , field notes).  Comments like this one  93 reified the classroom as a sacred space, more like a cathedral rather than a theatre, and the expectations that come with it  sitting, listening, worshiping, etc.   There was some irony, of course, in all of this to me as there were plenty of opportunities for the students to use their bodies and the classroom space for a more active embodiment of the text than what was typical for their day-to-day read alouds and discussion of the text  in other words, to perform Hamlet themselves and in their own classroom space and as Shakespeare had intended.  This irony became more apparent on a regular basis when the students begged Rachel to see a local production of Hamlet, performing at the end of the school year, in a town not too far away and known for its productions of Shakespearean plays.  They offered to organize buses, collect money, order tifield trip  One day, after the students had eagerly inquired for several minutes about the possibility of the trip and shared their excitement to see Hamlet performed, Rachel said, You are so excited and that makes me happy, but we have to talk about the schedule and going to do Shakespeare.  On the front [of this handout, Appendix B to talk about today.  On the back of this going to walk you through this and tell you how we are going to study the text.  So some background.  This is his most discussed play and probably his most discussed character, Hamlet. Oh, this [handout] to you verbatim.  (11.5) In contrast to the active and performative nature of the text, Rachel explains to the students how they are going to do  What this method essentially amounteacher read   from a handout.  All of these aspects contrast with the active  94 elements of the play, and Rachel essenof the word through her introduction of the text.  Just as they may do during a Protestant church  view of Hamlet as a type of sacred Scripture, and this perception carried expectations that belied the dramatic nature of the literature and the classroom space with which they were engaging.  Class is like certain forms of Protestant Christian church services or ceremonies, and the students sitting in their seats is perhaps indicative of genuflection in a sacred space.  While logistics could easily prevent them from going to see Hamlet performed, nothing really prevented them from performing it for themselves in their very own classroom other than the canonized assumptions and notions about what should be done in the English classroom.  Truth and Knowledge Similar to many other English teachers (Applebee, 1974), Rachel has a deep understanding of what should be done in an English classroom that has been built upon her previous experiences as a student (in high school and college) and teacher.  In citing these experiences to explain her own classroom choices and perspectives, she regularly situated her beliefs and attitudes among a community of like-minded followers seen in data re/presented below) and couched them in pure, absolutist, or monologic terms.  This way of speaking and thinking is indicative of an authoritative discourse asserts the unitary Britzman,  95 1991, p. 61).  Rachel sees these past experiences as representing or, rather, as sources of certain truth, knowledge, and belief to which she pledges allegiance, much as one does to a god or set of religious creeds.  As such, Rachel accepts these aspects of English teaching as true or as functions of some divine truth and knowledge. For example, during her in-class introduction of Hamlet to her students, Rachel highlighted Hamlet as a source of official or sanctioned knowledge.  She said: Shakespeare is like this big, important guy creating all of these performances, and we are reading Hamlet, which is one of his plays that he is writing at the time it is performed and later, and we still tend to look at Hamlet as one of the greatest works of English literature. (11.4) comments may not seem all that surprising; indeed, it is an AP English class, and there certainly is an expectation that they may read Shakespeare.  However, how Rachel talks about Hamlet and Shakespeare appears to instill in her students a sense of  larger-than-, looming over them (literally  the poster  and metaphorically) and whose place is as unrivaled today as it was then.  He is responsible, her comment suggests, for  and with esteemed Hamlet, likewise, position it unequivocally or read (or studied, not performed) , in other words, sanctions and sanctifies Hamlet as a source of t/Truth and knowledge  it has been read, appreciated, and  96 accepted for over 500 years; it has been invested with an unnamed sacred authority.  Her use of  .  It demands unconditional allegiance; to challenge Hamlet would be to challenge a high-order authority, let alone years of tradition and recognized merit. ons about Hamlet construct and are constructed by Rachel as a subject, as an English teacher and former English student, and as a fan of the text and of Shakespeare.   This short excerpt also Her use of this pronoun is different than suggest that she is talking about herself in the plural sense, s, or even her specific English department at her school.  Rather, her usamong a community of believers, a congregation, presumably of dedicated English teachers and professors, who recognize Hamlet as ord (John 1:4), the literal substantiation of Shakespeare through whom all things were made (John 1:3).  In this sense, Rachel associates herself with the unnamed authority that authorizes and is authorized by Hamlet, and her use of herself as one with the masses who recognize and adore Hamlet as a source of t/Tamong students positions themselves as either with or against Hamlet-between: us  a communion of believers, 500 years of authority, Shakespeare , and t/Truth  or agaio, in this case, would challenge the former.  These comments, made in front of her students, were reaffirmed in interviews with me, and Hamlet unit.  During an interview she initiated, Rachel spoke about the pervasiveness of Hamlet and its place in the classroom.  She said,   97 I certainly fall into that casome cultural capital because they got to know something about Shakespeare.  They Shakespthat is tradition.  do.  (Interview 2) Rachel acknowledgement of the assumptions of compliance or duty for English teachers  that her teaching falls into a category of tradition.  This comment reveals a critical consciousness on her part because she recognizes that she is not that different from other teachers in her teaching of Hamlet; she follows a certain script by teaching the play.  However, she immediately qualifies the comment you kind of have to and with this line, she maintains her compulsory compliance and underscores the authoritarian nature of canons, canonizing, and canonicity.  Even with critical commentary around Hamlet Hamlet would be similar to an English blasphemy, perhaps even counter to the (English) rites, beliefs, and practices she serves.  Her specific use of words  you have to  suggests no other alternative; there are certain fixed, predetermined expectations for her and other English teachers, one of which is the teaching of Hamlet. w something about Shake.  In addition to echoing long-challenged notions associated with the canon (i.e., the idea that a reading or understanding of Shakespeare provides cultural  98 capital or cultural literacy),  notions of what English teachers or classes do: they provide students with food for the soul, cultural capital, or sanctioned knowledge that advances their place in this world or beyond Shakespeare is going to be referred .  And while she says cultural capital, that giving comes from an authority invested in Shakespeare or Hamlet, not her own.  The text acts as an authority itself, and Rachel has been in/formed by the very capital she claims to profess.  To know about Shakespeare, then, is to be part of an official, sanctioned tradition.  Conversely, to not know would be sacrilegious because all other texts are made in the image and likeness of Shakespeare.  Likewise, to teach ShakespeShakespeare, in this established tradition, is to sanctify or ordain  place in the world.  Rachel closes this short excerpt , referring  followers or disciples of the discipline, much as one might recite a religious creed amongst a congregation of like-minded believers.  Like that been done before.  In this sense, she reifies the notion of tradition and the inherited word  s considered true and sacred, much like a canon.  Discipline and Discipleship  While Rachel conveyed a strong sense of discipleship among her community of English teachers when explaining what, how, and why she taught, a similar sentiment was evident in the way she talked to her students about Hamlet and the canon more broadly.  That is, she expected  99 or assumed her students to follow in her footsteps, as she held certain knowledge or understood certain t/Truths that they did not yet understand.  Of course, may become English teachers, but, even if not, Rachel was training her students in becoming , just as she had been trained.  In this context, discipleship amounts to the idea tha-86).  This loop of English teaching, or discipleship, illustrates the role canonizing plays in sanctifying certain, accepted scripts and in shutting down possibilities for alternatives.  In short, Rachel, like any other teacher, passes on to her students not only knowledge of/about the actual text being studied, but the process by which one may read or study a text, and especially a text like Hamlet.  Thus, her pedagogy implicitly canonizes, or re/affirms, accepted ways of reading or being and makes disciples of the discipline who share and pass on the official word, similar to the way in which Jesus instructed his own disciples to therefore and make disciples of all the nations, 19-20).  ledge and experiences constitutes her singular, definitive perspective on the matter and constitute the implicit curriculum of her classroom.  For example, during her initial introduction of Hamlet to her students, Rachel explained involved detailed note-taking on the reading before coming to class, setting up five different homework each night.  During one class period, when some students groaned at the mention of these notes, Rachel said,  100 I know you may think these notes are additional work, but they are really going to benefit you in the long run.  And just a side note most college English classes cover Hamlet.  This is potentially something that you can use in college.  I used my Hamlet notes from high school when I took English classes in college, and I still have my cute little AP folder from high school and all my Hamlet stuff was very useful, so hang on to it!  (11.4) Rachel responds to stu groans by saying that their assigned note-taking should not be seen as additional work because it .  The combination of  here that these notes will do good or make good of the students at some point in the future, beyond where the students can see, beyond their own discipleship.  Besides the idea of note-taking for the purposes of longevity, these comments imply that taking notes on Hamlet actually helps their well-Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we  (Galatians 6:9).  That proper time may certainly be college  or their own, implied future classroom  if not their overall well-being.  As if to further encourage her students, Rachel tells them that they may use these notes in most college English classes cover Hamlet.  While this line is not qualified, she offers it, as she has before, as an undeniable t/Truth or belief, and in the process reifies (or canonizes) the notion of Hamlet as a worthy text, one taught in college.  Just as she mentioned salvation, or post-afterlife that they must earn through their hard work in her class.  101  The second half of this short excerpt reveals the way in which Rachel conceives herself to be disciplining her students.  Rachel reveals how she too, as a high school student, took notes on Hamlet college English classes.  In other words, Rachel trains or expects her students to follow in her own footsteps, just as Jesus did of future to achieve salvation  whether in college or in their future role as English teacher.  Furthermore, Rachel tells her students that she still has her high school/AP materials that have nts indicate that a successful reading of Hamlet is vital to their future success. With the idea of discipleship and tradition in mind, it came as no surprise to learn that t her own.  When I previous teachers creatednterview 1).  No doinheritance, could be one reason for the stable list of books taught in schools; teachers continue to teach what has been taught or what they have been taught in their own schooling experiences, just has Rachel indicated with Hamlet.  But might we also view this statement from a lens of canonicity?  The idea of inheritance carries canonical importance, as it signifies a reception, owledge that is not challenged or faltered.  As with other aspects of her pedagogy, Rachel pledges allegiance to those truths, or texts, similar to [man] leaveth an inheritance to his children' 102 have considered herself to be rightly conceived of or invested as an ordained English teacher. But Rachel acted out this discipleship and disciplined her students about texts beyond those she taught in class, those she inherited from lists.  In fact, every Friday, she allowed her students to In looking around the room on these days, I was not surprised to see popular, contemporary and young adult texts like The Hunger Games or Divergent series or Manga.  But, what I thought interesting was that there was no accountability for books read during this time (no discussion, journaling, quizzes, etc.); Rachel just insisted that they read a book (as opposed to a magazine, comic book, etc.).  WhThese books don't necessarily correspond with the canon, but they correspond with habitual reading, reading for pleasure, and possibly are an avenue to look for the kinds o texts used for classroom study.  For Rachel, these other books, those generally seen as high-interest for students and young adults, ar(such as Hamletlife-long readers of students and have no place for classroom study  certainly an ironic I probably would have said as well as a secondary English teacher.  With this idea, Rachel draws a distinct line between inherited texts for classroom study  those that are and have been accepted and authored/ized like Hamlet  and those with doubtful authorship or authenticity (like contemporary, young adult fiction or graphic novels).  The latter texts exist literally on the  103 boundaries of her classroom, the first ten minutes of class once a week.  In generally acknowledging but ultimately not accepting these texts into the sanctioned space of classroom study time, Rachel treats these texts, from my interpretation, like the Apocrypha, as a set of books that is generally acknowledged but not necessarily accepted into the sacred space of canon or Scripture.  Rachel takes things a step further when she compare these texts to indulgences: they fleeting, gratuitous, pleasurable  all the makers of sin  while canonical texts are meant for close, careful study because of their perceived value and power.  Reserving canonical and contemporary texts in this way reifies notions of iconic or sacred texts, genres, and authors (let alone constructs of power, privilege, and elitism), and furthermore, places apocryphal texts in means to an end, and ultimately a way to valorize and serve the canonical, iconized texts.   Participating With the Word Canonized assumptions and traditions of the discipline made a disciple of Rachel and positioned her to do the same for her students.  We might imagine that the pedagogical Rachel and her students took turns reading from their sacred text, Hamlet, and listened to their teacher sermonize about its meaning, importance, and relevance to their lives.  Indeed, Rachel believed that Hamlet about it because you have this controversy: the uncle-father, the girlfriend that just dumped him because her daddy made her.  These are all on some level stuff that teens kind of feed off of and tried to build up this controversy, but, as her comments suggest, the text itself warranted its own  104 relevance or authoritythemes, messages, or stories.  This is part of the reason Rachel believed that her students have to know something about Shakespearehakespeare reveals her deep-seatShakespeare and his plays (especially Hamlet) for their future well-being.  In this case, their worship-like study of Shakespeare and Hamlet acts as a type of sacrament, a religious rite of passage, a baptism, where students attain the grace to survive in the real world and to become members of a larger community who knows about, reveres, and idolizes class, it seems to her, serves as an important stepping-stone for students; it is here where they are baptized into a community of Shakespeare believers or followers, or anointed in service to Shakespeare.  They, in other words, are part and parcel to canons and canonizing.  reinforced when Rachel explained specific activities, concepts, or passages that they were going to do each day as part of their study of the text.  For example, during their study of Act 3 of the play, Rachel began class with an overview of the day.  She said,  o spend a good chunk of time just talking about and digesting Act 3.  Then I have a great video on YouTube of five different perform to beand you guys are going to watch them and basically analyze who did it best and to do, that activity.  -up of that for Wednesday so tonight you have to catch up or start your write up. (11.10)  105 In this short directive to her class, Rachel implicitly makes several distinctions between the video activity and their usual reading time, and the distinctions carry implications for the ways in which the students discipline their minds and bodies in an English classroom.  First, she contrasts -  By favoring the text and referring to the performance and suggests that an understanding of the written word requires more time and effort than an analysis of the performed play.  This is not surprising, as long-held religious and idea  the sanctification of the word  is a larger point of this project.  Might we see, then, that the word parallels the sentiment that undergirds a (specifically Protestant and/or Catholic, even) Christian mass or ceremony, where a congregation is expected to listen to, read, and attempt to understand the holy Scripture (word)?  Their class  in terms of work, time, and effort  becomes a time to serve the word, just as it would during a formal religious ritual. -disciplined towards the sanctity and purity of the word as opposed to video, and with the word comes reverence and discipline of mind and body.  As I discussed previously, Rachel made a similar  106 distinction when she compared the canonical texts (like Hamlet) that are read for classroom and s.  In addition to the divisions Rachel establishes within this short directive, Rachel also distinguishes between the ways in which students do or should understand the word versus When it comes to video, there is the assumption that there is little effort required to determine or understand the video, in In other words, there is little struggle toward understanding these performances because the video or performance is not sacred  perhaps another reason why Rachel does not use or invoke the dramatic space of the classroom.  The analysis of the word, howev a  Furthermore, Rachel and her students must read and talk about the text, the word, together as a -their study of the text must be in the format of a study group, similar to group Bible study, the  Thompson, 2012, p. 87).  During this group study, disciples come to collective understandings about t/Truths and inherent meanings in and of the word.  or t/Truths that the text has to offer.  She and her students do not, obviously, actually eat or consume the text, but assimilate it mentally ().  There is a one-to-one relationship here between them and the text; they will internalize it, just as they may any other text in this  107 context.  But what if we were to read this comment through the lens of religious practice, supporting the notion of Hamlet as a sacre Protestant Christian (and even Catholic) religious rituals?  From this perspective, the word (and the meaning of the phrase) carries an entirely different meaning, as it connotes aspects of religiosity and the Catholic Many Christian traditions (e.g., high Protestantism and Catholicism) consume some sacramental bread  a communion wafer, host, or the Eucharist  during church services.  While different Christian traditions disagree on the actual presence of Christ in the wafer, they  (Catholicism), commemorate the death of Jesus, or more fully assimilate into the body of Christ  ritual.  She and her students consume Hamlet  the word-made-flesh, the bread of life, the actual manifestation of Shakespeare  in the hope of some divine understanding or to be more fully e front of the classroom.  Just as Rachel likened the reading of Hamlet to a type of baptism, here too, her comments echo another sacrament, the intimate encounter with Shakespeare, which informs and is informed by her understanding of how texts are and should be treated in English classrooms ones partaking in such an important ritual and testament to their beliefs.  Either way, the students have been pulled into the process of canonization, and their minds and bodies have been trained to participate in a study  a ritual  of the word on a regular basis.   108 Conclusion   manifest these ideas of Christian (and, by and large, Protestant) rituals, as a part of the broader construct of canonicity, most explicitly.  Other teachers and classrooms certainly also evoked  because of her strong sense of tradition and her intense feelings for Hamlet, served as a continuous illustration for me of the power of rituals and the role they play in canonizing.  In fact, I saw, over time, how canonicity not only acts discursively, but also acts as a type of frame (Goffman, 1974), where certain experiences, activities, and even discourses are expected and drawn upon because of prior situations, experiences, and  a type of frame allowed and prevented certain discourses (religiosity versus criticality, for example) from shaping the roles and expectations of the classroom space and of the players in that space.  At first, in my initial observations and even in my initial phases of analysis, I could only see the Hamlet reinscribed traditions and assumptions usually associated with texts and the teaching of texts, but a key part of this chapter also illustrates how Rachel, the teacher, and her students are called into certain roles and positioned in different ways that also reinscribe those same traditions and assumptions.  Teachers, students, texts, and practices are all part of the English classroom space that canonizes. In offering a depiction of the different features and markers of a religious mass or church ceremony in this chapter  the icons and iconization, the reverent-bodied reception and participation, the calls to discipleship, the baptismal and communion-like activities, and the adoration of the word  I hope to illustrate the Christian or religious character of the discipline of  109 English.  Further, these ritual-like traits are closely aligned and inform each other, for discipleship is connected to inheritance, iconization to t/Truth and knowledge, and reverence to participation with the word.  From this perspective, religiosity as a discourse plays a role in      110 CHAPTER 5: TEACHER PREACHER: AUTHORITY AND CANONIZING PEDAGOGY  itself Canonizing and authorit  "For God's love, let me hear!" (Hamlet, 1.2.205)     Introduction From our first meetingHamlet (Interview 1).  He considered it the highlight of his AP English class, and he taught it so near to the exam date to be sure that his students were well versed in it for the test.  When I pressed him to tell me why he saw this text in particular as such a central feature of his AP class, he said simply,  interesting that so much has been written about it, that the criticism about Hamlet is more than other text in the history of Western civilization.  I think around for so long (Interview 1).  Whereas Rachel, it seemed to me, was much more enamored with the actual content of Hamletcomments suggest to me that he loved Hamlet not only because of the nature of the text itself, but also because of the tradition and authority it carried as, Joe saw something authoritative or official in this literary criticism about Hamlet that authorized Hamlet as a type of sacred text or as an official source of something, perhaps of the type of literature expected in an AP classroom.  He did add peare for the last  like [Harold] Bloom said, nothing new has been written in the past three hundred years comment seems to suggest that all literature derives from a Shakespearean text like Hamlet; Hamlet is the origin/al text, and nothing else measures up.  111 In my observations of his teaching, and even during our discussions, Joe rarely  of the play.  Because of this, there were times when I felt like Joe thought Hamlet just came into existence one day, that it had been immaculately conceived or divinely inspired or produced.  It was, from this sense, timeless and just seemed to be.  Instead of acknowledging authorship, Joe focused mainly Hamlet the text and, importantly, its related scholarship.  Because he regularly invoked m that has been written about Hamleteven prominence, towards the text that warranted (or was the condition of) its canonization.  That Hamlet has been canonized, in other words, seemed to matter a great deal to Joe, and the way he talked about it seemed to evoke the way that someone may talk about some sacred Scripture: it i seemingly inspired, and held with   Again, Hamlet is the source of something: ideas, merit, sacredness, truth, etc. Because Joe seemed most taken with Hamlet history of scholarship, there was an added layer of esteem to the text, and I felt this in his classroom when Joe would make aside comments 2.42.3).  I think during his teaching of Hamlet, Joe felt invested with and invested by the authoritative voices of scholarship, of those who had come before him in the tradition of Hamlet.  perspective, these collective, canonized voices of and about Hamlet served as sources of truth, belief, and sacred knowledge, making Hamlet an untouchable and indelible part of his curriculum.  Hamlet was the epitome of canonicity and authority for Joe.    112 As some initial evidence to this point, I have already compared in Chapter 3  vastly different pedagogical approaches to Hamlet and Heart of Darkness.  With Heart of Darkness, Joe did not feel or see the same esteem as he did toward Hamlet.  In fact, from the outset of his Heart of Darkness unit, Joe sought to undercut that text rather than reify its status as a canonical text (or as a text frequently cited on the AP exam) as he did with Hamlet.  But Hamlet is different because of the undisputed status it garners, and Hamletperceptions of Hamlet and its scholarship all carried over into his classroom.  My goal in this chapter is to show how Hamletluences his teaching and how his teaching of that text in particular retains religious overtones of authority.   In focusing on Joe, this chapter shteach and the pedagogies associated with that engagement.  While the previous chapters focused on establishing the ideas of sacred texts and the rituals of the English classroom, this chapter expands upon those concepts (as well as on the other notions of canonicity: authority, tradition, discipline, and discipleship) to examine how teachers reap their authority, drawing from and invoking scholarship and their own histories to engage texts and, thus, to engage students with texts under a canonical frame.  This engagement, I suggest, likens teachers to a type of Christian preacher, who the biblical witness, and helps p. 88).  In this sense, the way in which Joe and the other teachers of this study present themselves as an authority or as an expert disciplines and forms their students in ways beyond the mere skills of reading and writing or beyond readers and writers. interactions with him how the phenomenon of authority  as connected to canonicity  was most  113 manifest.  Specifispoken word operated through him, acted as a source of t/Truth, and informed his notions of and reliance on the idea  or perhaps an application or limitation  of listening to, proclaiming, ouch has been written about the prominent role of lecture in thand a wilcanonized notions of pedagogy to engage with and teach Hamlet.  This type of engagement, via lectures, secured his own authority in his classroom and, in the process, disciplined his students in engaging with Hamlet in a specific way, much in the way a preacher may with his congregation.  In the data re/presented below, I use Christian pastoral techniques, beliefs, and practices (Brass, 2001; Maddix & Thompson, 2012) as a lens to portray Joe as an authority or interpreter (a type of preacher in a Protestant Christian tradition3) of a canonical text (Scripture) for his students (congregation).  Of Authority and Being Made to Listen As already stated, the scholarship around Hamlet seemed to have the greatest influence For example, his teaching of Hamlet was largely guided by online, audio lectures about the play from Martin Evans, a former Stanford University English professor.  Joe told me at one point during my time with him that these lectures were foundational for his own                                                  3 And, again, I acknowledge the raced, gendered, and classed identities or statuses that come with such a tradition.  114 study and understanding of tcompelling way of understanding Hamlet  In a follow-up interview after the students had listened to and were quizzed on the Evans lectures, Joe told me why he required his students to listen to the lectures:  I like putting [students] in touch with [the lectures] because as I was learning I was like, going to make them listen to it instead of trying to Hamlet.  He goes over a history of all the theories and categorizes them as three major ways of interpreting Hamlet and then he gives the last way, which I treally like the lectures.  (Interview 2) Joe values these lectures because of the way they engage Hamlet by going beyond Hamlet.  They added to his respect for the play and, importantly, for its history   In Hamlet, the lectures appear to serve as a source of t/Truth for Joe and place Hamlet within a larger scholarly conversation or, to borrow again from Maddix with  From this Hamlet, and tested on their knowledge of these lectures through quizzes  a way to produce truth from truth. comments and pedagogical practice of having the students listen to and be quizzed do not reveal  towards Hamlet as much as they do his allegiance to Evans as a professor and Hamlet as a way in which to engage Hamlet as an authoritative text.  I 115 lectures help Joe to understand Hamlet, but that they further reify Hamlet as a type of sacred, canonized text, one that needs to be or can be vitalized through some other authority.  What lectures and a Christian scriptural encounter, level of engagement with the chosen text [Hamlet] and with the Spirit [Evans] who enlivens the as indicative of the type of scholarship with which he was so impressed, served as the source of t/Truth and authority about the seemingly author-less Hamlet.  Evans lectures (the explicit curriculum) HamletEvans.  In keeping with the lens of religiosity that underscores this project, we might see how ned (are t authority as he sought to replicate this relationship  teacher and student, preacher and disciple, speaker and listener  with his own students by privileging the model of the teacher-preacher and advancing a curriculum that embedded the idea of listening to the spoken word with truth, authority, and power. As their introduction to Hamlet, JoeEvans lectures over a long weekend and take notes on them.  During one of my early visits to   So, their introduction to Hamlet consisted of lectures about Hamletr even their own reading of the play; indeed, rather than their own thoughts and interpretations.  Why?  Well, just as Joe learned about Hamlet from  116 discipleship happening here, where the students were introduced to an authoritative reading of an authoritative text, one that was predetermined from the outset and positioned as t/Truth, before their actual reading of the text.   Under this model, there is little room for debate, negotiation, or interpretation; the Evans lectures represented both the sanctioned and sanctified knowledge.  What student would question   an authoritative voice coming from outside of the classroom?  A parallel could be drawn here to a church congregation (either Protestant or Catholic, but I am reminded in particular of my own experiences as a Catholic Christian) who, vaguely familiar with scripture, is disciplined to listen to   the preacher.  The members of the congregation know they need to listen to and internalize (to not question or challenge) r understand the truth behind the text.  gs are constructed about texts as well as about the process of learning through the lecture or the spoken word.  This is the means to some type of textual enlightenment.  This is the implicit curriculum. But, even though Joe made his students listen to Evans, he too felt the burden of preacher and preaching, as a long held tradition in the English classroom or church, where students and follohroughout his Hamlet unit, Joe regularly played for his students pre-recorded, audio lectures of himself, accompanied by PowerPoint slides, that essentially made visible his thinking around key parts or homework sections of Hamlet.  The parallel here is obvious as Joe, the proper disciple, essentially stepped  117 -made-flesh, a disembodied voice like that of God, the living and active woThompson, 2012, p. 85) for the students.  From a Catholic perspective, this lineage (from Evans, to Joe, to the students) may be likened to the traditional hierarchy of the church, where the Catholic congregation (the students) place ultimate interpretative authority in the Pope (Evans) and then in the Cardinals, Bishops, and priests (Joe).  Similarly, not just a copying of the same method as Evans; rather, it is from Evans where Joe draws his own authority in teaching Hamlet.  J mere lecturing, and certainly was more than the mere expostulating of literary devices or plot  an exercise in authority, in obedience, discipline, and disciplining, statement about discipline and discipleship, in acting on or responding to the proclamation of the word and in following a specific tradition in the English classroom. When I asked Joe about these pre-recorded lectures, he responded by explaining his overall approach to teaching HamletWith Hamlet, there is an impression on the studenhalf of needing some help to understand it and that there should be some dedicated nterview 2).  While this comment reveals students and Hamlet as a text for classroom study and justifies his use of the audio-recorded lectures, I never heard his students say that they need help in understanding Hamlet.  Rather, one class day before playing his recorded lecture, Joe about 2 or 3 years ago that you wanted a little bit more input on Hamlet used this older request to justify his current use of lectures during his Hamlet unit.  He invoked the voices of his past  118  These notions udents and their learning and understands his own role in the classroom.  They also help me to advance the ees his students as needing his authority and knowledge of the text to fill some void in their lives.  -already makes them in need of him and his input and understanding.  Likewise, it positions Joe as the nurturer, the one who has the authoritgrace or enlightened understanding.  classroom parallels a Christian church ritual where Hamlet, not the Bible, serves a-sacred text that could be expounded upon by a licensed teacher/preacher to reveal entrance to the kingdom   Joe, in other words, makes his students complete, makes meaning for them, and puts them on the path to some greater understanding, some sermonize or preach even though the lecture is pre-anytime or anywhere.  But for Joe, the dedicated class lecture time is an important time for witnessing and listening to the word.   Towards (Building) Salvation    his role as preacher, his reliance on lecture, his beliefs about textual truths and authority  construct visions of his students and for the purposes of his class and lectures.  More specifically, they position the student as deficient and in need of  119 .  Joe, in this interpretation, positioned as the teacher-as-preacher who brings grace or understanding to the child, or at the very least, some type of fulfillment that they cannot receive on their own.   the AP test, college, or the hereafter  example, during one interview, I asked him to describe his teaching as a metaphor: immediately and with purpose, students] get in there and hsomething on their own. (Interview 2) In explaining his approach, Joe relies on the popular educational term that lessons and course objectives need be instrumental or arranged in a linear way so that students can progress in higher-order thinking skills and practices.  This is not a surprise.  But Joe means it in a very deliberate way, one in which impression they have not done things on their own; Joe has done much of the building, and his students, once they have listened to the word and once they  once again actualizes his role as teacher-as-preacher with his own metaphor of the scaffold and sees himself as an integral part of what the students can (and cannot) be able to do.  He is like the Christian for God, from the Scriptures, by the authority from the church, to ddix & Thompson,  120 2002, p. 88).  He brings things to life for his students.  But how does this happen on a day-to-day basis?  Moreover, for what end is this building or scaffolding? When Joe introduced Hamlet to his students, he explained their assignments, reading schedules, and his approach to the text.  During this time, he told them about his expectations for lecture, for their listening to the spoken word.  He said,  I am going to occasionally just go ahead and give a lecture. I am probably going to try to to see some of these things yourself.  That is the hope there. (2.4) This short directive to his students reveals the way in which teacher-preacher), of the text under classroom study, and of his students, inform and are informed by implicit discourses of religiosity.   Joe indicates how and what he thinks about them or, rather, what he   relief, some safe haven or fertile ground, much like salvation or heaven ().  Joe positions, then, his preaching of the word as a type of salvation, the end goal of any community of believerspreaching that the students may find refuge.  Quite literally, the implication here, of course, is that everything else in the classroom besides landscape   that they are studying as well as the practice of lecture as a means to that study.  He invests the text with a God-like authority, an authority that is difficult to ascertain by the average, common, perhaps child-like individual/student, and Joe is the one who must bring or make accessible to them oases.  Without him, the students are desert/ed  abandoned, forsaken, and destined to wander  121 in the difficult text.  There is a certain way of thinking embedded in this comment that, as I have already noted, positions his students as needing him, and it connects to long held assumptions and traditions in the secondary English classroom (as well as in religious practice), where the teacher (or preacher)   ally-literate individual, evokes images of Christ in the ,,comment, active positioning and reveals his students as deficient or lacking  they need the salvation that comes from the spoken word.  This comment suggests that Joe has an understanding of his students as only partly (developmentally, academically, spiritually, etc.) formed and in need of something: meaning, enlightenment, grace, or salvation, etc.  His lectures in this regard bring hope to the student and provide him or her with a means to salvation.  He echoes this notion  the hope his students will have been transformed and enlightened   and will be able to achieve salvation.  Much like the preacher who tends and cares for his congregation, so too does Joe as he nurtures them  through the spoken word  to attain glory or, rather, to save them because they are in need of saving.    those lectures rests on the assumption that the text is the word, which he brings to life.  The idea of Hamlet, spectoward literature instruction.  For example, Joe said during an interview that in teaching  122  that literature helps you to make [Hamletin existentialism as a philosophy, which focuses on the individual is held to be what he makes himself by the self-development of his essence through acts of the will (which, in the ).  instruction rest on canonized notions about sacred Scripture and literature instruction  one can find God through Scripture.  Joe plays an important role in this process because he is the one who elf as giving his students access to God  (an important theological point in both Catholic and Protestant traditions), and h.  This phrase, such a naturcomes right from the Bible as Jesus  He who is the Word  tells his student-disciples, I came   classroom is imbued with religiosity, and his words actually do something for him  they give, build, construct, and create a desirable end, purpose, or vision for preaching about Hamlet.  On Profess[or]ing The idea of saving or salvation is the assumption behind lecturing, preaching, or Christians.  In similar ways, when the Scripture is preached today, the hope is lives are changed  123 notion of himself as  the light, the truth, the meaning of the text  for themselves, with new eyes, and without him having to intervene.  A discourse of (Christian) religiosity is prevalent in  words and actions, and it canonizes his pedagogy and thinking about what his pedagogy is and who his students are. On that note, I wonder about the extent to which Joe saw his lectures as a type of sermon, an invitation for his students to listen to the word and come to their own enlightened understanding or undergo some sacred transformation or enlightenment (salvation).  Similar to the idea that his students needed input and understanding, I wonder about the role Joe felt his academic formation as learners.  In attempting to learn this from him, I asked him how he prepares for these audio lectures, and he said,  I reall already pretending to be a college So usually going through my sticky notes and noticing a couple things that they probably did not notice.  (Interview 2) expectations for himself and as a disciple of Martin Evans, who I have already argued can be considered his version of the Holy Spirit sees himself as a teacher of the highest ranking, someone who has specialized in a particular branch of learning ().  Here, it is in Hamlet 124 notions of the challenging nature of the text and the rigor and method required to understand it or udents did not, implicitly positioning himself, again, as a holder of some authority that he feels the need to share with his students, and Joe spoke about Martin Evans, and his idolization of Evans perhaps encouraged his own desire to  here is apparent, I think, when we think about Jesus and His disciples, preachers and their followers, etc.  Furthermore, Joe expects a disciplined, rigorous study of the text that leads to an enlightened understanding.  For him, this study is grounded in close reading, (sticky) note-taking, and unfettered review of those notes in order Hamlet (Interview 2).  A New Critical (or close reading) approach values the text above all else and posits that any meaningful interpretation of the text can be found within it.  As discussed earlier in this project, the link between New Criticism and (Protestant) Christianity has long been established (Guillory 1983; Scholes, 1998) and further constructs school subject English as an subscribes.   Of course, this method is also done in service to the traditional, or canonized, expectations of the college classroom or lecture hall (or hallowed halls of some monastery, for that matter), where it is the job of the (traditionally white, male, Christian) professor to profess the word.  Traditionally, the job of the professor was to profess, to lecture, to claim to have knowledge (() is still invoked today in variations of academic job titles and descriptions.   125 But Joe, interesting enough, fulfills this role in his own secondary classroom.  One day after came up to me at the back of the room and said,  supposed to do that, but I do enjoy sitting at the feet of a good professor  listening to that .  (2.11, field notes) reasons) someone who both supported and challenged the idea of the lecture stening to the  carries a tone of insurgency when he says he knows  doing it for hundreds of years implication of sacred tradition and expectation  canonized pedagogy  that justifies his practice.  In fact, this was the first time he linked what he was doing in the classroom to the notion of professing or professor-ing. On that note, som on Joe and his role as the preacher/teacher/professor in the classroom.  The word, of course, has religious roots in Medieval Latin, where it indicated someone who had taken the vows of a religious order or someone who openly professes the Christian faith (), no different than a preacher.  In this sense, might we see that efforts are in service to his (religious) order and the complex, authoritative, and divinely inspired text or word?  Under this interpretation, Joe  126 sees it as his duty  his canonized expectation  to profess that word.  His struggle hearkens to the notion that any human individual is limited in his understanding of the word  as in a sentiment attributed to St. Augustine that  cited in Johnson, 2011).  His role as teacher-as-preacher, however, gives him the apposite opportunity to make sense of the word for his own followers: just as a congregation needs a    allows me the possibility to, again, play with words and liken goodto  (a preacher?) who helps and nurtures his congregation by making sense of the word for them, relying on the Holy Spirit for the word to be actualized.  , his lectures not as an indicator or qualifier for change, but rather as an anchoring of his practice in canon, in sacred tradition.  In this case, tradition  that which is handed down from generation to generation, from Evans to Joe to his current students  is a sacred, accepted practice that firmly solidifies the purpose of the teacher-as-preacher and allows Joe to act on his canonized expectations of his role: professing, or professor-ing, the word. In carrying through the religious discourse, I want to suggest that his comments about himself, alone, ef and reviewing the word echo monastic traditions of monks who labor over the word, transcribe it, and eventually profess it.  And his s the people and children who would sit at the feet of Christ, listening to his parables.  Those parables  stories just like Hamlet   127 contain nuggets of truth and wisdom, and even His disciples struggled to understand them in their entirety at times.  These comments reify the author/ity Joe sees invested in himself, both in telling the story (the storyteller) he sees through the word and in understanding or seeing what his students, his congregation, cannot.  But these comments were also reified during class when Joe paced the room with his Hamlet book and clipboard cupped in his hand and at his side.  This was a daily standard during his teaching, even though he rarely, if ever, read directly from the book during class.  It reminded me of a pastor at my church when I was young who, during his homily, used to pace the church floor in front of the congregation while holding the Gospel under his arm.  I remember thinking that practice conveyed a powerful statement: though he was s idiosyncratic and regardless of whether or not he purposely meant to carry his Hamlet book around everyday, proved a similar and subtle indication of the word speaking through Joe, much like my own  it, and the word worked through him.  the text, and there was an implicit disciplining as well because the book was filled with the different colored me figuring it out, going through my sticky notes (Interview 2).  These bright green, orange, and yellow post- notes, I presume, marked important pages, passages, and quotations, and they were authority to evangelize Hamlet He sees this as his job, and his profess[or]ing is the result of his careful, deliberate, disciplined study of the text, pouring over it and making notes about its meanings and his interpretations.  Those notes represented the symbol of the intense and disciplined work required  128 Hamlet.  Joe disciplines his students (disciples) in this tradition, as they are required to take nightly notes on their reading, but the implication, as they come to class each day and are made to listen to the word, is that they are not yet capable of professing on their own; they are not yet professors.  That day will come when they, after intense study, take up the mantle of teacher-as-preacher, take their vows, and profess the word, Hamlet, on their own (as future teachers of English?).  Other Models of the Teacher-Preacher The vision of the teacher-preacher is not limited to Joe, of course; it looked similar in when she referenced the long tradition of reading Shakespeare in the classroom or when she mentioned to her students that she drew upon her own AP and college notes to assist in her teaching of Hamlet.  Rachel, like Joe, relies on these previous sources (indications of canonization and authority) to mark her own authority in the classroom because she sees them as a source of official knowledge.  Unlike Joe, however, these were personal sources of authority  her previous classes, not some third-party lectures.  Perhaps Rachel relied on handouts, reading aloud, and question-and-answer style discussion to teach Hamlet because those practices had been representative of her own experiences with the text.  She did not want her students to miss anything about the text, which is why so much reading aloud happened in her classroom. In addition to those examples in the previous chapter, I want to briefly share another instance where Rachel drew from these previous experiences to establish her personal authority, like Joe, in her classroom.  Upon introducing Hamlet to her students, she mentioned the  129 read so they could understand everything (i.e., the plot, the play on words, the metered language, etc.).  After making this comment, she ran to a bookshelf and pulled two, several-inch thick paperback books off of a shelf.  She told her students, Also, I bought these books when I was a wee thingdramatically slams books down on a desk], ny word that appears in any Shakespeare play, look it up, it tells you what the word means, and then it lists every [Hamlet], if there is something you really want to look up, I This short aside reveals another way that Rachel establishes her authority in the classroom, especially during her teaching of Hamlet.  Like Joe, she draws upon these other sources, in this case Shakespearean reference books, as sources of truth and authority in their pursuit of understanding Hamlet.  More importantly, however, drawing upon reference texts like these positions her as a type of preacher as well because it reveals that she has something the students need.  She as she says, but having already told her students that she studied Hamlet t the text, authority here, of method, where these other sources and experiences invest in and are invested by Rachel, and she makes this known to her students by drawing upon these books and her personal experiences.  During my observations of her Hamlet unit, no student, of course, ever asked for a definition from the books, nor did Rachel refer to them again, but her point was already made when she pulled them out this one time, as those books made more a statement about Rachel than they did about the text.   130 Relying on other sources, as Joe and Rachel do, is not the only way a teacher may draw his or her authority.  unit on Of Mice and Men, I saw how she positioned herself and her students in similar ways but through an entirely different pedagogy.  The day after the students completed their test on the novel, Lisa had them sit in a circle on the floor in order to non-personal focus on character development had been throughout their study of the text.  Whereas her teaching of the novel was mostly grounded in the means of professing the text, like Joe or Rachel, this ending conversation, I would suggest, was grounded in a method of confessing, where Lisa encouraged her students to provide personal narratives and stories to substantiate their claims.  Confessing, too, carries religious connotations and also refers to a sacrament of confession, where one declares or admits his or her sins to a priest for absolution or forgiveness.  The act of confessing is a wpriest who confers the absolution.  Confessing, like professing, relies on the pastoral, allows for the teacher to reify his or her role as preacher, and serves as an authoritative source of knowledge.  How so?  Well, Lisa followed her  [in their pre-discussion journal time] euthanasia is ok for animals but not for humans.  Some of you said, well you know my uncle had terminal cancer, and I think it invites students to draw from personal stories to answer this question that is tangentially related to the text.  After taking some time for partner talk and then a whole group discussion on this topic and its connection to Of Mice and Men, Lisa ended the discussion by saying,   131 Some of you talked about euthanasia with pets, and, you know, Seabiscuit [the horse], would never have gone on years later to beat the record and win the Santa Anita if he had been  hear human stories like that too when, you know, people miraculously come out of comas and stuff like that.  So I can understand why some of you hav This short summary statement on their discussion looks nothing like anything Joe ever said to his students during their study of Hamlet, but like Joe, Lisa plays a role that positions herself as a teacher-preacher and disciplines her students towards a certain engagement   with the text, in light of the non-literary aspect of the topic under discussion, euthanasia.  In this case, she uses a student example of the famous horse Seabiscuit, who was almost euthanized With this, she implicitly advocates and encourages the students stance that she also implicitly suggests carries compassion.  Again, though this type of discourse Hamlet, might we still see that Lisa is indeed using these student stories, or confessions, to preach?  Tstudents not necessarily the right interpretation of Of Mice and Men but the right perspective about euthanasia in Of Mice and Men.  In filtering their interpretation through her own lens,  sets them on a path to some greater understanding about the book and about life in general.    132 offering snippets of confession.  For example, at the beginning of their study of the novel, when introducing what life was like during the Great Depression, Lisa told the students: were just these little things that would happen while I was growing up where he would never use a full paper towel piece.  I would use like two at a time, and he would cut them in quarters and save the other pieces for later.  He would never use the whole thing, and growing up we were never allowed to chew a full piece of gum.  We would always have .  These are things that trickled down from my grandparents, to my parents, and to me, and even  Like her comments about euthanasia, this short story to her class carries an implicit disciplining, where Lisa confesses some part of her life to offer some truth and to aid in  understanding about the topic at hand.  In this sense, she uses the story of her grandfather to illustrate how she is not wasteful.  In turn, she is also preaching to her students to consider their wastefulness, perhaps setting them on the right path in the tradition of her grandfather.  And, of course, this is all done in the context of Of Mice and Men.   both cases, the religiosity that undercuts their engagement with the texts they teach, and the canonized pedagogies (sacred traditions) associated with that engagement allows them to carry out their role in pastoral ways that discipline students beyond certain skills associated with the English classroom.  It canonizes a type of reading and thinking of and about texts and positions  133 themselves  in different ways  as an authority in the classroom that can help or guide the  Thompson, 2012, p. 88).   Conclusion  The goal of this chapter is to extend the notions of canonicity offered in the previous two chapters and to more tightly link what we do in the English classroom to the religious traditions that have come before and shaped the discipline.  Here, I offer the idea that the teacher-preacher canonizes and is canonized by certain pedagogies and discourses fueled with religiosity, and it from these pedagogies and discourses that the teachers use and draw an authority in teaching the texts they do.  For Joe in particular, he has canonized expectations as to what an English teacher should be  a professor  and what his students are or need  children in need of enlightenment.  And this is especially evident during his teaching of Hamlet, rather than Heart of Darkness, because of the canonicity that Hamlet, in particular, carries.  Because of these notions, Joe relies lectures are audio-recorded and quizzes are given via online means.  This is simply the wolf in  (Christian)  thinking and practice reifies the traditions and assumptions that have always existed in the English classroom and to a large extent  critical engagement with the text.  Indeed, notions of canon and canonicity instruct Joe as to how to approach or teach a canonical text like Hamlet.  Joe, though a very good teacher and respected by his students, is somewhat pedagogically constrained through canonicity as the teacher-preacher.    134 CHAPTER 6: ON CANONICITY    of the world anew, not just in random ways but in a manner that undermines   (Kincheloe & McLaren, 2002, p. 124)  Introduction  There might be an inclination to critique the teachers of this study for their seemingly natural approaches in the English classroom and to literature instruction, but this project is not In fact, the previous chapters provide only brief glimpses into the pedagogy of the three participants, and even in pointing out what some may consider expected, normal, or traditional pedagogical practices  practices that to me as secondary English teacher seemed expected and obvious  I want to reiterate that these three teachers were widely respected leaders by their colleagues and their students at their respective schools.  I saw the ways in which they patiently and graciously interacted with their students, and I likewise saw how much the students enjoyed coming to class on a regular basis.  Furthermore, this project is not an attempt to critique the canon and to enter into the tired canon debate about what canonical texts should or should not be taught in secondary English classroom.  Rather, on its most basic level, the analysis of pedagogy being offered in this project serves as a means to theorize and illustrate what canonicity is as a broad construct or approach and to argue as to how it works in secondary English classrooms.  I began this project with the following, over-arching question: How do ideologies of the canon, particularly religious ideologies, play out through pedagogy?  I will use this chapter to address that question and to discuss how seeing canonicity as a discursive frame may deepen English Education conversations about and critique of the canon as only a list of books.    135 Towards a Theory of Canonicity Revisited The previous chapters reveal to a certain degree how the concept of the canon may be embedded in curricula and pedagogy beyond its typical (natural, normative, expected, obvious, etc.) understanding or definition as a list of books.  While this project does engage scholarly conversations around the literary canon as a list of books, especially those linked to ideas of text selection, variation, and diversification across the English curriculum, it also seeks, at the same time, to expand, reframe, shift, deepen, and challenge those conversations by focusing on the broader concept of canonicity.  In order to do this, all three data chapters offer an examination of pedagogy that explores different facets of canonicity.  Chapter 3 examined how teachers think about, teach, and treat texts like a type of sacred Scripture.  Chapter 4 reimagined the English classroom as a type of religious ritual.  Chapter 5 drew parallels between teachers and preachers and illustrated how they positioned themselves and texts through different aspects of sacred authority.  These chapters help to illustrate that traditional conversations and debate around the canon have focused on the canon as a list of books.  In one sense, focusing on the canon as a list has proven to be a red herring as this project considers the unchallenged and familiar practices, modes of thought, and ways of being in the English classroom that entrench the ideology of the canon and canonicity in ELA curricula and pedagogy beyond its typical understanding as the list of books.  This project serves as an initial attempt at making canonicity visible in classroom walls and in handouts, and through their everyday classroom practices.  Indeed this project illustrates how canonicity is woven into the very fabric of English teaching, especially around the teaching of canonical texts.  136 I have argued throughout this project that canonicity operates as a macro and micro construct and in an implicit and discursive way to frame the English classroom.  Here, I will break down this positioning of canonicity, in light of the previous data chapters.  In the tradition of a Critical English educator like Appleman (2009), I want to more explicitly offer canonicity as a critical lens for seeing one way in which pedagogy may work in an English classroom. Theorizing canonicity as frame allows me to situate it as a discourse, as a type of curriculum, and as micro and macro constructs in English classrooms.  As already mentioned, In this sense, the frame serves as a filter to the discourses that may or may not permeate the classroom, and while multiple frames may operate in any one context, a frame also implies consensus and complicity.  The cases presented in the previous chapters illustrate just that  a normative and consensual orientation on the part of teachers and students toward the teaching of canonical texts in the English classroomHamletHamlet, Catcher and Of Mice and Mensynchronized (Goffman, 1974) activity around these texts that comes across as normed behavior or pedagogy in the English classroom.  Looking at this pedagogical behavior as a frame of canonicity suggests that there are rules and principles that guide these pedagogical encounters in the secondary English classroom.  Those rules include an assumed approach toward teaching and studying canonical texts in the classroom  formal assessments, lecture, analysis and interpretation, an aura of reverence and worship, a strong work ethic, etc.  These rules amount to a set of preconceived events and experiences that frame the classroom.  Indeed, this frame pre-students enter this frame, this certain mindset, reality, and expectation of behavior that prepares  137 them for an engaged (canonical) study of a canonical text.  This canonical frame, it turns out, is authority, and the expectation of discipline.  Through the process of English, and the specific process of literary study, the teacher and the students have sub/consciously come to define themselves under this frame; they are limited in what they see and do through canonicity.  At the same time, they are complicit in establishing and reaffirming it. Drawing upon Eisner (1985), I have suggested that canonicity (and religiosity) is never t.  There is never a direct reference to it or a teaching of some religion, religious belief, or sacred Scripture.  Rather, unspoken and underlying what they do wrapped up in their classroom ethos, routines, and methods for studying canonical texts.  It invites particular forms of pedagogy and ways of knowing.  In fact, during initial phases of my data analysis, I hypothesized that canonicity acted as a type of the hidden curricula, rather than the implicit and implied.  While both terms imply the (perhaps) unintended transmission of beliefs, values, and norms through the classroom and learning, I realized during my data analysis that the canonicity of the classroom was not hidden.  The previous chapters showed that canonicity and a discourse of religiosity pervaded specific things said and done.  It was an ever-present value and expectation laced in with little explicit resistance or challenge.   Dictionary offers another definition of the word, and one tied to, of course, the Church: the  138 ecclesiastical Latin fides implicita, or implicit faith ().  This term refers to a faith in spiritual matters that is subordinate to, or resting on the absolute authority of, the Church, such as implicit faith, implicit reverence, implicit obedience, or even implicit confidence.  In other words, implicit as  direct reference to the Church or religion in the classrooms I observed, there was an implicit expectation across these cases of what was supposed to be done in the classroom.   an encourages her to teach Hamlet and to teach it in a certain way.  This obedience is part of the reason she  like Lisa and Joe  have not changed their texts for classroom study to much degree even though they could change texts if they wanted to.  I never heard a teacher rationalize his or her teaching of a text by saI also saw little resistance in the classrooms from the , which does not mean that it was not there (students not paying attention, r(or teacher, for that matter) question why they were doing what they were doing or reading what they reading.  Teaching and studying these canonical texts the way in which these participants did was an assumed, unquestioned, and taken-for-granted aspect of the English classroom, no doubt the cause and result of  previous experiences and expectations in other English classrooms and with other canonical texts. From the perspective of discourse, canonicity is linked to words and actions and to regimes of truth that are exercised as a type of control or form of discipline.  Canonicity, as a discourse, in other words, constitutes a discipline of power that regulates and controls the  139 production and circulation of rule-governed statements and actions.  As indicative of a discursive by that social context, and which contribute to the way that social context continues its ogy studied for this project, canonicity created rules and regulations about the discipline of the school subject English, where certain religious-like ways of being, thinking, doing, feeling, etc. were connected to literary study.  As I have argued, considering canonicity as a discourse allows us to see how the idea of the canon created what Rachel, Lisa, and Joe (and even my former self) consider to be the discipline of English and the methods of instruction that accompany literary study.  The participants in this study have been in/formed by the canon just as much as they reaffirm the canon and canonicity; they (and their students) use and are used by canonicity, as canonicity justifies and warrants certain pedagogical encounters but also pre-conditions the situation for canonicity. -whole Manning & Hawkins, 1990, p. 207), canonicity acts as a micro and macro construct.  Canonicity works at the micro level, as illustrated in the classroom examples, through interactions and the self-presentation of teachers, and in the learning experiences of the students.  Canonicity is constructed  created, reinforced, perhaps even deconstructed at times  as something authoritative and normative in and through discourses and practices.  But canonicity also operates at a macro level in that it comes from regulated, authoritative experiences and understandings of what should be done in the English classroom or,  what these teachers cite as their own previous experiences with the texts in college and high school, the AP curricula,  140 departmental and local standards and mandates, etc.  These experiences, along with the canonicity they reflect and support, are likewise raced, classed, gendered, religioned, and even languaged.  upon entering the classroom, that they are mindless duds trapped in a canonical system.  In fact, I want to argue the opposite: positioning canonicity as a frame helps us to see the discourses and expectations at play in the English classroom.  Based upon this analysis, I also want to suggest canonical texts and toward the means in which they are taught.  In each case, there was some for the book he or she chose to teach.  Both Joe and Rachel inherited their syllabi and have barely taught.  Their rationale for teaching these texts  even though they have the room, resources, and opportunity to change books  is beyond reason; it is not necessarily ir-rational but extra-rational  it is beyond explanation for these teachers, much like religious faith, creed, and practice are to religious followers.  In this sense, canonicity is something that cannot be logically or rationally explained because of thclassroom.  Canonicity goes deeper than logic or rationality; it is something perhaps transcendent to which teachers pledge allegiance and serve, like religion, religious faith, or God.  This might be one reason why conversations on the canon have remained relegated to texts and lists of books  fields of social science like English Education and Critical English Education are firmly grounded in reason and rationality and canonicity is not (more on this below).   141 Secondly, in considering all of these conceptual frames together, I want to suggest that canonicity may serve as a hegemonic (Gramsci, 1971-house of The sacred thinking about and around these texts influences the pedagogy associated with these texts  and it seems self-imposed.  Certain pedagogical encounters are opened up and shut down because of the ways in which we think about texts, the English classroom, perhaps even the role of the English teacher.  As I have already theorized, there is a consensual nature and complicity to the pattered activity that is the teaching of a canonical text across these cases (my own included).  Teaching the canon, quite simply, looks similar across these cases.  Further, Joe, Rachel, and Lisa all teach canonical texts that they either did not choose to teach (but can change if they want to) or texts they do not care for but feel compelled to teach.  There is no mandate that they teach these texts; rather, they feel that the canonical nature of the texts warrants their inclusion in their class and warrants a certain pedagogy that goes along with the text.  That pedagogy at times prevented, blocked, or impeded critical thinking and engagement.  In this sense, Rachel, Joe, and Lisa show their active they implicitly perpetuate it in and through their own pedagogy (as I did in my teaching career), and they did so most religiously when teaching canonical texts as opposed to the teaching of lesser or non-canonical texts when they infused more criticality, playfulness, and voices.  There were times when I wondered what sense of agency, if any at all, they felt they had in their own classrooms when teaching canonical texts because I saw agency in other units of pedagogy, such as Joe with Heart of Darkness and Lisa with The Body.  Most of all, no one was explicitly telling them what they could or could not do  or even what they could or could not teach!  Instead, there seemed to be some self-disciplining on their part, that they might be committing some sin  142 or sacrilege for not doing what they thought was expected of them as secondary English teachers.  These notions of sacrilege and self-disciplining (perhaps even guilt) also evoke religiosity in pedagogy.   On this note, I want to reiterate my argument that the idea of the canon  the notion of canonicity  has produced and constructed expectations for what English Education is and what it might be, rather than, despite popular belief, that English Education produced and constructed the list of the canon.  These cases illustrate that the religious-more than) teachers have taught the canon. While their teaching of these texts seemed more constrained, traditional, or constricted than innovative or original, I do not mean to imply that Rachel, Joe, and Lisa were not innovative or original at all.  In fact, Lisa and I composed a manuscript for English Journal based upon her innovative approach to teaching literature circles and the power she leveraged in making those circles happen (see Appendix C for this manuscript.  I will return to the idea behind this manuscript in my Epilogue as well).  Though Rachel and Joe also showed some small moments where they played with the canonicity that permeated their room or a certain text, there was, nonetheless, an exercise of normative violence (Butler, 1993; Mills, 2007) that affirmed what has always been done in the English classroom and excluded what has always been excluded: those classroom.  Examining canonicity as a frame surfaces these ideas and highlights its religious-like and discriminatory strength.     143 Cross Case Discussion In theorizing canon, I have suggested that we might think about the process of canonicity as an approach (or type of engagement) to teaching and learning in the English classroom that reveals how a canon as a source of power may function through pedagogy.  In this case, just as a canonical list of books acts as a source of power, so too does the canonicity associated with identification of a list of books, the previous chapters illustrate how English pedagogy can implicitly authorize, discipline, and sanctify certain ways of being, thinking, knowing, and doing in the English classroom.  At its very least, canonicity authorizes some texts over others (such as, in these cases, Hamlet over Heart of Darkness or Of Men and Men over Maus), and at its most, canonicity prescribes or associates certain activities and means of engagement with certain texts (such as formal tests and assessments with Catcher in the Rye or lectures and analysis with Hamlet).   But these distinctions are only one part of the story of canonicity, as canon is inherently linked to notions of religiosity and Christianity; a religion cannot exist without some canon or without something being canonized.  With its Christian origins and as implied through its connotative words like power, authority, discipline, official, and sanctity, the idea of canonicity carries explicitly religious roots and connotations.  English education is certainly not a religion, but this project suggests that it has similar elements to a religion, and a religious-like discourse not only pervades the pedagogy and classrooms discussed in this study, but it also appropriates the style, structure, and ideas of religiosity.  Religion and Christianity can be seen in and through the pedagogy of the participants in this study even though religious terms and constructs are not explicitly or literally mentioned or idolized.  Thus, in the previous chapters I have likened  144 and around canonical texts to sacred beliefs and practices, religious rituals, and pastoral authority.  The metaphor of religion also helps to show how teachers and students become complicit in reifying unquestioned traditions and assumptions of the secondary English classroom where certain texts and textual practices are held with greater authority or sanctity than others.  English pedagogy, in other words, disciplines and makes disciples of teachers and students: the teachers implicitly reinforce a hierarchy, an importance, about texts and about the ways in which students must engage those texts.  Those canonical texts studied in the English classroom woether it be in an AP class, in college, or in some assumed social standing thereafter.  Regardless of what the text can do to or for students basic knowledge of or experience with these texts is a type fundamental ritual of the English classroom or even a prerequisite for being an informed, good citizen or person.  In addition to knowing about these texts, the pedagogy ascribed to these texts suggests that they need to be approached with a reverence, a certain work ethic, and a willingness to know and understand  to comprehend and interpret  the details of their plot and literary merit.  But canonicity lingers esteem and need to be approached with rigor and reverence.  The students most likely walked away from these experiences with an implicit understanding that Hamlet and the like will matter much more in their lives than anything else they may choose to read on their own, whether  145 young adult or multicultural literature, other genres or types of text, etc., just as I observed during choice read times.    The religious relations of canonicity are further evident in the way that some texts across these pedagogical cases are open for critical engagement while others are not.  Hamlet in particular holds redoubtable strength and esteem that is reaffirmed and bolstered in the classroom; whereas texts like Maus, The Body, and Heart of Darkness are undercut in different ways.  And, while there is a casual approach to texts like Maus and The Body, there is a deliberate, in-depth, and almost ritualistic approach to Hamlet, Catcher, and Of Mice and Men through quizzes, tests, reading checks, interpretative exercises, and lectures.  Thus, not only does canonicity serve as an invitation to what has always been done in the classroom, but its religiosity also influences, even constrains, pedagogy.  In some cases, the air of religiosity prevented or foreclosed critical engagement and notions associated with texts, and rather than innovation, these pedagogical encounters seemed to be defined by customs, rituals, traditions, specifically Christian traditions, foundations, influences, and legacies tied to literacy and English education (Applebee, 1974; Graff, 1987; Collins & Blot, 2003; Brass, 2011; Brandt, 2004) seem just as strong today in forming, informing, and, perhaps, regulating the discipline.  The pedagogy described herein suggests that what we do in the English classroom today is what we (as a people) have always done when we consider the religious and social foundations of schooling: include and exclude and discipline and disciple.     146 English Education and Critical English Education  Continued conversations in English Education will most assuredly find their way to questions about texts, just as Rush & Scherff (2013), Lapp, Fisher, and Frey (2013), and Groenke (2012) have framed and continue to frame these questions around the canon and text selection.  But as this study points out, questions and conversations about texts are always linked to canon(s) and thus, to power, leading to a circuitous debate that keeps the literary canon (as a list) at its center of critique or esteem.  In othas a list of books.  Perhaps this is one reason why there has been so little movement around or change to the required reading lists over time (Applebee, 1993; Stallworth et al., 2006; Stotsky, 2010; Stallworth & Gibbons, 2012)    the canon as a list.  But rather than ask what should be taught or included, this project suggests that the question to be asked is: How does our perception of a certain text allow or disallow certain ways of thinking, being, doing, and feeling in the classroom?  How are the ideas and ideology of canon embedded in pedagogy?  Because more than considering the ideology of texts, this project reveals how the ideology of the canon plays out beyond a list of books.   English education scholars like Arthur Applebee, Robert Scholes, and David Kirkland have called for similar shifts, but to little avail at least in the context of the cases studied for this proclassroom.  This has resulted in a reliance on, or tradition of, the canon and the canon as opposed to something else that is non-traditional canon (i.e., multiculturalism, contemporary YA, etc.).  -in- 147 participate in those [traditions] of the presegrounded in the heteroglossic and dialogic rather than the authoritative and monologic that seem to characterize the classrooms in this study.  Scholes (1998, 2011) and Kirkland (2008, 2013) have gone so far as to offer a complete rethinking of what we in English Education mean by pedagogies.  Scholes said decades agoteaching the right ideas in the classroom and not concerned enough with teaching the most And Kirkland has long-riculum.  But despite these decades-old calls for shifts, the cases in this study seem to suggest that tradition, normativity, and status quo persist in the secondary English classroom, especially in the context of teaching canonical texts. As previously mentioned, the participants in this study did align themselves (as do I), however generally or vaguely, with notions of criticality, critical literacy, or Critical English Education.  While Critical English Education comes close to engaging with canonicity, it also misses the mark in considering the ideologies beyond a list of books and the somewhat extra-rational pedagogical attachments these teachers have.  For example, in regards to Black male youth, Kirkland (2011) has suggested tors tailor books to fit youth like a seamstress would mend clothesthe center of the English classroom.  Using an example case study, he argues that students did not respond to a traditional unit on Beowulf but excelled during a unit on The Iliad.  The difference was that the teacher brought in Batman and X-Men comic books as a way to frame their study of The Iliad and as a model for re-writing The Iliad in their own words and as a graphic novel.   148 Whereas the unit on Beowulf focused on comprehension and interpretation and formal quizzes and tests, Kirkland argues that the pedagogical encounters the teacher made around The Iliad (by bringing in comic books and re-brought it more in line with the pragmatic reading ideologies of contemporary populism  This example, I think still assumes a hierarchy on the part of the teacher, where the comic books are used as a means to an end in sanctioning and perhaps understanding The Iliad, the canonical text.  In other words, while the ideology associated with The Iliad may be challenged or undercut, there is still an attachment to The Iliad as the text to be studied; the comic books do not stand on their own as a text to be sanctionedThe Iliad.  This example again classrooms.  Students brought in their own books to read for ten minutes of class time, and I saw many students reading graphic novels like Batman and X-Men.  But like the classroom Kirkland discusses, there was no real engagement of those texts as texts themselves.  They never quite make it into the classroom for their own merit.     , however, holds promise and certainly offers one way to challenge and resist or build upon the canonicity and religiosity associated with certain texts in the classroom.  Elsewhere, Kirkland (2008, 2013) has argued that texts like graffiti, body art, hip-hop, billboards, clothing, and even a small box might serve as examples of literacy and of artifacts of student life in the classroom that would and could shake canonical foundations.  Granted, I see that this example still pins the conversation of the canon to the realm -canonical texts (one in which I describe below) would begin to strip canonicity from pedagogy.  Nonetheless, a curriculum of student artifacts sanctions those things as having some type of meaning or merit.  149 English classroom.  Indeed, in addition to critiquing the ideologies of texts, Critical English ; Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008) remain the center of the classroom, no matter what text is taught.  This seems to be the very premise of Critical English Education, even though it completely undermines the spirit of critique and criticality because notions and methods rely on the canonical.  For example, Morrell (2004; Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008) argues that inclusion of non-canonical texts like pop culture and media texts in the English classroom can foster academic potential, literacies, and contexts, informed and defined by standards, universities, and even the AP literature curriculumto engage what might be considered the extra-rational, or the religious-like attachments and engagements I have previously discussed, and the idea of academic literacy  including the comprehension, analysis, and interpretation of literary texts  is woven into a broad construct like canonicity, where canonical texts and methods are continually justified based upon their historical antecedents and traditions .  Furthermore, while one aspect of Critical English Education calls for the inclusion of non-traditional texts in the English classroom, such as media-based youth pop culture, as Morrell (2005) suggests, these texts are used for inclusion with canonical texts.  They, like the aforementioned Batman and X-Men comics, serve a means to an end, and a hierarchy is established about texts, not to mention a pedagogy that  and, as such, canonicity.    150 Imagining Non-Canonical Pedagogy This project seeks otherwise, imagining what English education might look like on it own, without establishing non-canonical texts and methods for some other purpose.  While I do not claim to have an answer to the perfect model of what this may look like in the classroom, I want to offer and theorize two examples from my own experiences. First, I recall working with two of my own students who struggled with the normed expectations (the canonical frame) of my classroom and of the college-prep school at which I worked more generally.  Both of them wanted to pursue art degrees or graphic design majors in developed at the school in which I worked.  I remember feeling awkward in requiring them to do the expected literary analysis papers because those papers were going to play little to no role on their future as an artist.  Sofie asked me early in the semester if she could supplement her work with renderings that were inspired by class discussions or books read in class.  Eventually, and upon seeing the superior artwork she had created, I allowed her to submit her artwork instead of papers.  We met to talk about what this might look like in the context of class, but she seemed thrilled that she could develop her own skills and interests towards the class rather than write papers that had little impact on her career goals. recently reconnected via email and he filled me in about his experiences.  While Sofie could play school and earn good grades aside from her artwork, Kevin could not.  Before having me for class, he failed his previous English class by one point and felt entirely disconnected at the college prep school where he was enrolled and where his mom worked.  He, like Sofie, knew he wanted to go to art school after high school and generally struggled in his classes.  In a recent  151 was very down on myself, and I didn't think I would be cut out for school.  I remember meeting and working with him early on so he could feel a sense of accomplishment and efficacy in writing papers or reading the canonical novels he was assigned.  Like I did with Sofie, I allowed him to be more creative than what was expected in the canonical frame of my classroom because I knew that if I did not, Kevin might have done something drastic, as both he and his mom shared some of their personal concerns with me.  In the same email to me, he said,  Seriously though, if it wasn't for you and your class, I would have dropped out of school. creative with my writing and took time to talk to me about what I needed to do to improve.  I want to thank you for that! Anyways I graduated from the American Academy of Art last April. During my time in school I had an internship which later led to being hired as a graphic designer/illustrator/architectural renderer. I have never been more happy.  I'm glad I got in touch with you, and if you have a request for a painting I would love to make you one (free of charge). Just let me know.  because I thought I was doing him a disservice by not requiring him to work within the normative frame of my English classroom  work that built upon academic literacies and instituted canonical ways of engaging with the word.  There was a sense of guilt on my part that I was not preparing him for his future.  His email to me showed, in a sense, what a non-canonical approach allowed him to do.  These brief examples from my previous experiences as a secondary school teacher center  152 of the curriculum.  While I most certainly maintained a hierarchy and authority with the texts and textual practices I valued in the cl help me to see how it is possible to break the canonical frame in the classroom  and how guilty I felt at doing so, even -canonical approach and helped me begin to imagine what such a classroom might look like.  They also help me to see how committed I was (like Rachel, Joe, and Lisa) to a canonical mindset to the point that I felt guilt if I did otherwise. Second, my own young adult literature class that I teach in the College of Education has been fundamental in helping me think about what a non-canonical curriculum and pedagogy might look like.  For the first time in my career as a teacher, I was given an opportunity where I was not required to teach canonical texts or for literary analysis and academic literacies.  Instead, the course was grounded in culturally-diverse, contemporary young adult literature and examined the representations of difference and diversity in these texts.  The implicit goal of the class is to read culturally diverse literature as a vehicle to build an awareness and understanding of issues connected to difference, identity, and multiculturalism so that the future teachers enrolled in the course might become more critically and culturally conscious in their own classrooms one day.  So, we talk about stereotypes, privilege and oppression, identities, and single and counter stories  aspects that were never really part of the explicit curriculum of the secondary English classes I used to teach; aspects that, importantly, not many would characterize as indicative of academic literacies.  This literature challenges us to think differently and for the way it challenges and affirms  in fact illuminates  contemporary, relevant conversations in the news and popular media.  153 For example, we read books like Openly Straight, American Born Chinese, and Absolutely True Diary of a part-Time Indian, all of which wrestle with complex adolescent identity issues.  But these texts are read alongside news articles, popular media, and cultural texts to nuance the stories or narratives being told on both sides.  One text is not necessarily held in higher esteem than the other or is used as a bridge to a different text.  For example, we read Openly Straight with a recent New York Times article about studies connected to sexual attraction and fluidity and several online articles, including the associated commentary through comments sections and Twitter posts, about a recently outed Olympic free-skier.  We used all of these  to analyze the stereotypes and counter stories embedded across the stories being told.  We did the same with Absolutely True Diary, where we talked about contemporary mascot controversies, culturally appropriated Halloween costumes and clothing, and Native American portrayals in media and film.  Again, none of these texts was given more authority than the other, but we used all of them to consider a story that is being told through contemporary culture about Native Americans. While these are brief examples, what we were doing in these cases was a constant, iterative reading of word and world, and the students brought d with these timely topics across social media and news articles.  One final project of the course required them not just to read some conversation but to become a participant in it, positioning themselves as critical producers of knowledge  nascent social activists or agents of change  rather than simply consumers of culture or, worse yet, mere writers of literary analysis paper.  This way, they question the world around them and tell a story with their digital footprints.  I do not offer this brief illustration just to point out the non-canonical texts that are used but to also consider a pedagogical approach that values the  154 dialogic and seeks to challenge or rupture normativity, authority, hierarchy, and perhaps even hegemony.  This type of pedagogy, however, might not have been possible had I been assigned to teach a course of canonical literature.  Despite any efforts otherwise, the canonicity surrounding the canonical text would have superseded other texts offered in the course.  In other words, for me, it required a complete shift to  an entirely different frame of  a class that did not mandate the teaching of canonical novels. I do not mean to suggest that these two examples from my own experiences are fully-imagined representations of non-canonical pedagogy or classrooms where the canonical frame is broken, but I do offer them as an initial attempt, along with those of Kirkland, Applebee, and Scholes, at beginning to imagine classrooms without canonicity (or at least classrooms where canonicity is minimized) or where teachers and students feel they are invested in power relations that allow them such room and agency to sidestep canonical expectations.  Implications Most of all, I am interested in the notion of canonicity as a lens for future research and for considering ways in which the construct of canonicity I offer here may be carried forwarded and deepened through future research.  In the tradition of Critical English Education, using canonicity as a lens offers another perspective, among a plurality of perspectives, for understanding how things work in the English classroom, other classrooms, or in schools more generally.  I see this as most pressing as I move forward in my own career, where I will be working with pre-service teachers largely like me: white, religious, and committed to teaching in Catholic schools.  It took me stepping out of the Catholic English classroom and observing other, non-religious classrooms to see what I could not otherwise see: how my teaching of the  155 discipline looked like or was modeled on the religious models and rituals to which we subscribed.  This project will inform my work with these new teachers as they begin to navigate the discipline.  But I do wonder, however, about my own positioning as a teacher educator in this context as I enter a new position of familiar territory (ACE and the Catholic classroom): Will I jettison these notions of canonicity and comfortably settle into a space where canonicity is the norm?  Or, will this context provide me the apposite opportunity to further nuance and call out canonicity when and I where I see it? On this note, from a pedagogical perspective, this project may suggest that the religiosity of the English classroom should be extracted or, quite simply, kept separate from the English classroom.  In other words, where the church is a place for religion (and religiosity and canonicity), then perhaps the classroom is a place for democracy and the dialogic  lives, as Kirkland says.  If this were to happen (as was the case, I would like to think, with my young adult literature class), then there may be a more open regard for non-canonical texts and pedagogies to permeate English classrooms  and varied modes of communication to become the living curriculum of the classroom. On this note, I appreciate that the notion of canonicity as a lens can be applied to what we do  to ourselves and to our teaching  in the classroom rather than (as with  literary lenses) to literature.  In other words, canonicity turns the lens on ourselves-as-teachers and implicates us by only using it as a lens to read or interpret books.  This is a critique I have of the critical literacy and Critical English Education movements; they seem to be so focused on critiquing the ideologies of texts that they neglect the ideological implications of pedagogy, even pedagogy that seems to espouse critical means and objectives.  In fact, maintaining the critique of canon as  156 a list of books allows us English educators to excuse ourselves from implication or complicity with a canonical system.  Critiquing the list of books, or using critical literary lenses that allow us to critique the ideology of books, excuses us and instead points the finger to people, decisions, English educators in a place of power to make changes to their own pedagogy and approach.  And so, I wonder about what other aspects of the English classroom may be canonical besides the ones described in this project.  How might canonicity work in other implicit or hidden ways that maintain the status quo and reify dated traditions?  At the same time, I wonder about those classrooms where teachers are successfully and innovatively undercutting canonical texts or using non-canonical or multicultural texts as part of their curricula.  How might canonicity still be at play (or not!) in those situations?  Finally, I am also interested in notions of canon and canonicity in community spaces other than English Education or the English classroom (e.g., different music traditions have different canons, I presume).  For example, I mentioned gaming and comic book communities earlier in this project and their uses of and adherences to their canons.  How might their attachments and engagements with what is considered canon in their community be similar or different to those in English classrooms described in this project?   On another note, while colleges and universities may no longer have the strong influence over the secondary English curriculum they once did (Grossman, 2001; Applebee, 1974), this project does see ways in which things like the Common Core or, perhaps most egregiously, the AP Curriculum are instituting new canons that reaffirm, reinstitute, and reify canons of ages past,  157 where the same texts and the same methods (New Critical, literary analysis) continue to inform and form pedagogy.  The teachers in this project all referenced and looked to the AP test and curriculum as a model of sorts or, worse yet, a type of end goal for their students.  A recent analysis of the texts referenced on the AP English exam showed that AP relies heavily on traditional, canonical texts (Miller & Slifkn, 2010).  This is problematic as more and more schools move toward AP classes for college readiness and credibility.  Whereas Mills (2013) worries that the CCSS might reinstitute the canon, the teachers in this study seemed to reference pedagogical (not simply curricular) decision-making.  induce a particular (and canonical) pedagogical approach.  Thus, I echo Thein & Beach (2013) in looking at and critiquing the AP curriculum  and importantly, the methods encouraged through the AP curriculum  for reifying canonical curricula and pedagogy.   Another implication of this project is seeing secondary English as a religious-like experience where not just the subject matter is held as a type of sacred Scripture, but the learning experiences of students, including their (in)abilities to be critical, are reinforced through religious-like practices.  Thus, this project joins a recent and budding call (Burke & Segall, 2011, 2015; Juzwik, 2014; Skerrett, 2014) to investigate the lingering legacy of religion in schooling more generally and English education more specifically  to see how it operates and how it is embedded in traditions, practices, and pedagogy.  This investigation could hold some potential in reframing English Education and in moving beyond or at least further theorizing the engagements, attachments, experiences and expectations of English teachers and students in the English classroom.  For example, imagine non-Christian or non-religious students who do not come to the classroom with religious literacies or with the religious experiences that make  158 familiar the secondary English practices described in this project.  They may be disadvantaged or disenfranchised as they are required to learn not only the content but also to familiarize themselves with the means and methods towards learning that content.  In some ways, the religious-like pedagogy associated with canonicity may be an asset to the religiously-literate student who is already familiar with these approaches through religiously-ingrained experiences at their home, Church or Sunday school.  Indeed, a major limitation of this study (and a possible site of future investigation) is the lack of student voices, and I do wonder how or if students feel or experience the canonicity I have described in this project. With that, ever my intention throughout this project has been an effort toward imagining otherwise and providing an opportunity for teachers, students, and scholars to consider or imagine other possibilities for English Education. To imagine a classroom space without hierarchies or where students and teachers deconstruct the canonical power that is exercised outside books and lists of books.  But also to expand  educational imagination, perhaps to break free of long-held assumptions and traditions that go beyond simply changing a list of books.  In order to do this, the teacher education classroom, which tends to keep English content separate from English pedagogy, might consider that relationship between curriculum and pedagogy more broadly, to consider how pedagogy specifically interacts with canon.  These cases seem to suggest that ons and perceptions of their curriculum certainly elicited a particular type of pedagogy.  Finally, I hope this project shifts the discourse around the canon in English Education to a discourse that implicates our pedagogy and ourselves.  Teacher education classrooms might be the space to explore the (perhaps unconscious or unacknowledged) beliefs or values we carry and hope to carry into the classroom and the ways in which discourses and classroom space may  159 influence or alter critical aims, objectives, and intentions.  Certainly more focused attention can be given to the canonical frames that influence pedagogy and practice.  Conclusion I began this project with my own story as I looked back at my own schooling and in reifying not only canonical texts but canonical ways of thinking and doing in the classroom as a student and as a teacher.  In order to theorize these experiences, I turned to Bye Bye Birdie, a campy musical that in no way represents the type of canonical literature expected as part of the curricula taught or studied in the English classroom.  But I once again use this text to sincerely yet playfully  and to non-canonically  theorize my complicity with canonicity.  Like the character that sang that song, I recognize now that I was seduced, so to speak, by the perceived cultural capital that comes with being an English teacher of canonical works of literature.  I know I was complicit in reifying the canonical frame of my English classroom, and I let it shape my life, my values, my ideas and those of my students.  But at the same time I came classroom and with deep questions about my teaching and learning experiences that haunted me and continue to do so.  While this project pedagogy in the secondary English classroom, the project as a whole has been a challenging and difficult one for me because it offers an interpretation that certainly challenges my professional and personal foundations, as for me, canonicity was not only wrapped up in what and how I taught but who I am as a religious, White, heterosexual man  indicators of a canon, no doubt.  But, theorizing canonicity through this project provides for me, in a sense, an opportunity for a  160 new relationship with my pedagogy and practice: for always seeking out the opportunities to challenge, examine, and investigate who I am and what I do as a teacher educator and, most of all, as an English teacher.     161 EP  Novelist[s] not only put down a story, but they are the story.  They are each one of the  characters in a greater or lesser degree.  And because they are usually moral in intention and honest in approach, they set things down as truly as they can.  They are limited by their experience, their knowledge, their observation, and their feelings.   A novel may be said to be the person who writes it. (as appropriated from Steinbeck, 1976, p. 326)4 5   It would seem standard practice for such a project as this one that I should dedicate some as a researcher as well as into the lives of the teachers who so graciously permitted me to enter their classrooms and observe their teaching without limitations.  These brief musings offer a peak into the untidiness, the unresolved, the grayness to which I referred in my Prologue.    Early in my graduate career, I had delusions of being an objective researcher who sat at the back of the classroom and recorded the findings to my questions.  But I learned early on that research is largely about chance, finding the right participants, and making the data say what I  and so much of who I am now and how I think as a researcher has been marred, in a sense, by my experiences and initial With Robert, I wondered soon into my observations with him whether or not he was performing for me.  That, even though I sat quietly in the back of the                                                  4 This is not a direct quotation because Steinbeck used the masculine pronoun throughout. 5 At various points in this project, I have used quotations from canonical texts and/or authors to begin a chapter and to capture its overall themes.  Assigning canonical quotations certainly gives this project and me, its author, more credence, authority, and power, but I use these authors to help me make my points because they were part of the curricula I observed in Rachel, Joe, and however, I hope my use of a lyric from Bye Bye Birdie as the thread throughout this project undercuts, or at the very least levels, the canonicity that might be associated with authors like Steinbeck or Shakespeare.  Finally, I am fully aware that this write-up meets canonical expectations of what a write-up of this nature should do and look like.  This is a tension I continue to consider throughout my work.   162 in some explicit way, he saw me and saw that I looked like him (a White, heterosexual, male English teacher) and thus he felt free or encouraged to say and do things that, to me, contradicted his critical intentions and orientations.  While I presume he says and does these things on a ching, I simply had to wait for the right moment for him to say something or do something that would count as a project.  And indeed, these moments happened quite frequently in the grand scheme of data collection. another participant like Robert who would say the things I wanted him or her to say so I could more easily analyze and theorize his or her comments for their themes or intended and unintended consequences.  To a large extent, that did not happen here, and I realized that unless I wanted to spend years observing teachers in the classroom, I needed to mine my data for the story I wanted to tell.  In other words, while there was a deeper sense of data analysis this time around for this project than there was for my projects with Robert, there was also a good deal of ot the case.  I went into this project somewhat unsure of what canonicity looked like and how it operated, so I had to let the data tell to make the story I wanted to tell work.  While I cannot control what comes out of my write the story I want my readers to read.  For example, Appendix C consists of a manuscript written with Lisa and under review with the English Journal that highlights an innovative aspect  163 of her pedagogy.  That manuscript takes an angle of innovation and examines a brief unit of her pedagogy not discussed herein.  The story I tell in this project, of course, is different, even though I do credit Lisa with innovative aspects to her approaches and content in the classroom.  Neither one of the two versions of Lisa is false, but they are incomplete.  The readers of the manuscript of Appendix C will not see this project, will not see other aspects of her pedagogy, project.  Thus, I act as a novelist, choosing what story to tell when and where.  Writing about this somewhat deviant or  dare I say  non-canonical methodology in this project that determines my future is somewhat dangerous, for it outs me as a researcher who believes that, to a certain extent, any type of research is like a novel, a work of fiction.  Methodology (and this formal write-up with expected categories and chapters) is just another to what we do.   I have been asked many times over if I have ever sought out Robert and shown him my  or somethingAnd I will probably say the same about Joe, Lisa, and Rachel.  While this response is indeed true, it is also only part of the answer because Robert, just like Joe, Lisa, and Rachel, do not really exist as they do in this project, in this story.  While their words and actions are theirs, I have created them as characters, in a sense, andata chapters that I want my readers to see.  I have chosen what moments, events, or episodes to include and exclude.   164 More than anything else, though, this project is about me, and specifically about me as a teacher because I have always thought about myself as a teacher and seen teaching as  and still do.  Long before I began working on this project, I have always considered my teaching in vocational terms, a term that is likewise inherently imbued with religiosity.   So, as I indicated in the Prologue, this project helps me come to terms with who I was and am as a secondary English teacheran exercise of the confession(another practice grounded in religiosity), as it is my self-disciplining or my opportunity in producing the truth that was my experience as a high school English teacher and my attempt at absolving my canonical practices, which now seem trite or silly considering their historical antecedents and their potential effect on my students.  In this sense, this project has been a difficult story to tell because I have seen so much of my former self in Robert, Lisa, Rachel, and Joe  or, rather, I am Robert, Lisa, Rachel, and Joe, and this story is an attempt at absolution for following the canonical ways of being, thinking, knowing, and doing that defined who I was in the classroom.  As I move forward with my life and career, what I have learned through this project will resonate mostly with me as a teacher because my identity as teacher takes on new meaning and purpose, as I continue to think, learn, and theorize about the ways in which canonicity constantly and consistently attempts to frame the type of teacher I desire to be.  One Final Note In light of this project and the broader work I have done around the canon, I have been repeatedly asked about my stance on the canon by a number of different people  former and current colleagues, friends, advisors, strangers, family members, people at conferences and job  165 visits, and so on.  While I do share my thoughts on that question throughout this project, in some ways, this project allows me to coyly deflect that question because, as I have argued, it is not be to undercut the theoretical work that this project sets out to do.     166            APPENDICES             167 Appendix AHeart of Darkness Handout Figure 4    168       169       170      171 Appendix BHamlet Handout Figure 5 Hamlet Handout    172  Figure 5      173 Appendix C: Manuscript written with Lisa for the English Journal. This manuscript, written with Lisa, one of the teacher-participants for my project, literature circles in her classroom and the power she leveraged in making those circles happen.  Its purpose, as we explain, is to highlight how teachers might be innovative in using diverse texts for classroom study despite their seemingly powerlessness in choosing texts for classroom study.  It also offers evidence, in the context of this larger project, that the teacher-participants of this study can be  and indeed are  innovative and playful in their pedagogy by recognizing what is possible for literature instructionng these literature circles reaffirms the argument of my larger project: that though these teachers may be able to do other things or be more critical or innovative with certain texts, a canonical text incurs a canonical pedagogy.  Though she uses literature circles and book-club-like discussions here (with non-canonical texts),  units on Catcher in the Rye and Of Mice and Men (texts she deems canonical), for example, are dictated by whole-group study, formal assessments, and even lecture.  THE CALL: Visible Teaching: Open Doors as Resistance Submission Deadline: March 15, 2016 Publication Date: November 2016 Under pressure to adhere to a scripted curriculum or to conform to standardized instructional practices, educators might choose to adhere to a pobecause it denies the agency of teachers, as professionals, to effect change in their schools. It willfully conceals alternative instructional practices that might otherwise benefit students, and it ignores the role that shared knowledge can play in sustaining a community.   Alternatively, teaching with our doors open establishes agency where the system has denied it; offers direct alternatives to the practices we reject, especially those that are not supported by the evidence of our field; and models for students how professionals behave.   This issue of English Journal  174 interpreted as a form of empowerment and an act of resistance. It acknowledges teachers as standardizing forces and disciplinary mechanisms that are intended to promote conformity and compliance.  Contributors might consider questions such as: What conditions prompt teachers to teach behind closed doors, and how can they productively be addressed? How do you negotiate space to teach with your door open, and what advice would you offer others interested in doing so? How have you engaged with colleagues who respond differently to mandated and prescribed practices that you feel are not valid or effective? If you have experienced a transformative momentmoving from teaching with your door closed to teaching with your door openhow did that look and what advice can you offer those interested in making the same transition? How can teachers work with school leaders to create a school culture that values the open exchange of ideas and embraces evidence-based practices that push against mandates? We welcome educators to share experiences that investigate this important topic in the context of scholarly literature.  We invite manuscripts of 2,500-3,750 words, written to an audience of educators in grades 7-12 English classrooms.   Respectfully Rethinking Resistance  The History of Sexuality)  powerment and oppressors, the cogs in the wheel of the machine.  For some, this may be an apt metaphor when considering the plentitude of policies and practices mandated or imposed through standardized to mention the varied standardized tests that students must endure (state-wide and national, ACT, AP, SAT, etc.) and the responsibility teachers feel to prepare students for them.  We (English teachers as a whole) are forced to choose (in word or in pedagogy) which policies, mandates, or  Conceiving of teaching from this perspective, that teachers could or should resist these impositions and be empowered in their work, places teachers in a precarious situation.  They  175 become, quite simply, the Katniss to the Capitol, the Thomas to the Maze, the Jonas to the Community, and are immediately thrown into the chaos of plots that, despite small wins and of our favorite dystopian novels, in these cases, the rebellious are rarely victorious as the system continues to antagonize the protagonists through subsequent sequels, and more often than not, only further displaces teachers and automatically pits them against some other, more powerful entity like the Common regime of power, a source of truth, something to which teachers must re/act.  In this case, teachers will always be powerless, will always be playing catch-up, and will always find themselves subject to the rule of others who directly or indirectly claim they know better about best for students. This point is no better illustrated than in research conducted over the last several decades confirming that canonical texts have long been and continue to be staples of the English classroom (Applebee; Stotsky; Stallworth).  This fact is not surprising to English teachers, even though recent efforts and the rise in popularity of young adult literature (as a market) have attempted to shake those canonical foundations.  However, in visiting with and observing exceptional teachers of high school English classes, I have seen how teachers include student choice (which often includes YA and non-canonical texts) reading time throughout their weeks and courses.  I have been glad to see students pull from their backpacks books from various dystopian series, graphic novels, and even contemporary texts like The Martian, We Were Liars, or All the Light We Cannot See.  The wildly popular The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time  176 Indian has actually made its way into the official curriculum, as a text for whole-class study across several schools in the area.  Sadly, however, True Diary is more the exception than the prime opportunity to share reading habits and recommendations with peers.  Thus, these often high-interest books are left on the boundaries of the classroom  literally, in backpacks and bookshelves  which is no doubt the result or perhaps the condition of the current CCSS-continue to valorize the same texts that have always been taught in English classrooms.  Many administrators and districts see and use that exemplar list as indicative of required reading, an exercise of power, as a source of truth that must be taken into account in classrooms across the country.  That list, in other words, continues to push contemporary, young adult, and high-interest literature to the boundaries and perpetuates the assumption (or tradition) that the only texts worthy for classroom discussion or study are the ones that have always been assigned or taught.  This may not be a bad thing, but it does limit what is possible in the English language arts classroom, as teachers feeit (teach something else, invite other texts into classroom discussion, etc.).  Again, from this perspective, teachers are positioned as powerless against a system that is always the one power.   In order to move beyond this simple binary  you can or cannot, you resist or comply, you do or do not  we need to rethink teachers, teaching, and resistance so that teachers are positioned and portrayed as already vested in and with power and not necessarily always responsive or reactionary to or rebounding from some higher ordered power, like the CCSS.  In other words, we need to think of teachers as already empowered, agentive, and working in a  177 regime of power of their own, rather -there is no single locus of great Refusal, no soul of revolt, source of all where someone must be imposing and someone must be resisting, such as between the rulers and the ruled or between those at the top and those at the bottom.  Power, he says, does not belong to only certain groups of people or structures.  Instead, Foucault suggests that power is everywhere: in situations, in relations, and, most importantly, in what is possible.  So, rather than seeing possible power and resistance, then teachers need not be rendered as the eternally plagued dystopian protagonist; they could be a protagonist in a power network of their own accord with the likes of the CCSS or even mandated curricula constantly vying for their attention  those things become    Open Door As Acts of Love  Shifting from popular dystopia to popular Disney, in the recent animated film Frozen, two characters connect (and sing, of course) over their past, where they have felt consistently -so-subtle  178 nod to the motif running throughout the film: open and closed doors and their emotional implications on its protagonist, Anna.  At the end of the film, Elsa tells Anna that they are never closing the gates to the castle again, and Anna beams with joy.  The statement, in the context of the rest of the film, serves as an act of love towards Anna, toward Elsa herself, and toward the people of the kingdom: an open door means love, acceptance, openness, and, quite simply, a   What if we rethink open doors as acts of love  toward ourselves, our profession, and most importantly, toward our students?  Toward what may be possible in the English classroom?  This model makes known our intentions that our first priority in the classroom is a care and love for all of our students, for cultivating their interests and their empathy for others.  It completely changes the CCSS conversation and relegates standardizing forces, rather than teachers, to the low man on the totem pole. Conceiving of open doors as an act of love is not as far-fetched (or cheesy, given the Disney context) as it seems and may help us to move beyond the general idea of resistance as well as the notion of power as a simple binary.  Walter Benjamin, the philosopher and cultural critic, sought to resist certain labels people attached to objects.  In particular, he wanted to move --terms mean exactly what they say: objects are only appraised or valued for utility or  what's it worth and what status does it bring me?  Everything, from this perspective, has some purpose connected to utility or need that serves a larger system or individuals (sounds like The Hunger Games, no?).  179  -- concern with what might be best for a certain group of students in a certain context.  Students, in other words, are positioned as objects of a certain exchange-value, calculating their worth according to a third--value model in mind, however, objects, rather than being useful or exchangeable, can be seperspective into our classrooms, where we approached teaching from a love-value with doors wide open? Love-Exemplar I saw this model of teaching  teaching for and with love and possibility rather than use, exchange, or resistance  in my observations of Lisa, a high school English and film teacher of ten years.  Though I had been observing several teachers at several different schools, Lisateaching was always the most different, and her class was the one I looked forward to most of all.  Lisa teaches a diverse group of students in a somewhat rural area, and as I visited her classroom on a regular basis, I was amazed at how easily Lisa was able to have her students participate not only about the different texts being studied, but about their own lives and opinions.  She held whole-group discussions on the floor, each lesson centered on some activity connected to the text they were reading, rarely was the topic focused on disciplinary terms or jargon, and I never once saw Lisa lecture.  Further, Lisa taught and welcomed high-interest texts in her classroom.  While she still taught mandated texts like The Awakening, The Crucible, and Catcher In the Rye, she  180 also found the time and space for graphic novels such as Maus I & II and Fun Home, and The Body. I saw LisaSimply, I saw on her part an act of loempathy over mandates, the CCSS, and even the scripted curricula of her own department.  And, of course, she did all of this with her door open. I asked Lisa to share a bit about her thinking and teaching around one specific area: her     Including Diverse Texts Fortunately, as an English department, we have been very receptive to adding new texts across the curriculum, and importantly, my colleagues and administration trust me enough to let me alter my curriculum as I see fit or necessary.  I recognize that not everyone may have this freedom, but I have found my chair and administrator receptive to my ideas when I approach them with a plan for including other texts.  In all honesty, when choosing texts for classroom study, I keep the canon in mind in the sense that I have researched (very recently and over my career), what typical regular, Honors, and AP courses include.  Just this year, I introduced five new texts into my African-American literature circles (aka Book Clubs).  Logistically speaking, it seemed too rushed for my students to read part one of Black Boy and all of Their Eyes Were Watching God leading into our research final on dialect.  Philosophically speaking, book clubs work well when the texts have commonality, especially in regards to themes and histories.  Quite frankly, my honors classes are comprised of mostly white girls, with a few white boys and a few minority students (Asian, African American, and Hispanic).  Growing up in a smaller, very white, rural communityas a middle-class white girl, as wellit would have been great to have  181 been introduced to more diverse texts, so I keep that in mind now that I have control over which texts I place in front of my students.   So, I found a way to combine existing English Department texts and (with some small, allocated funds) some additional texts I read recently to try a new book club unit with the following options for students: Harlem Hellfighters (graphic novel) & Brown Girl Dreaming (poetic memoir), The Secret Life of Bees, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Black Boy, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, and Colored People.  Not once did I think about what the Common Core would suggest, although I know two of these three texts (TEWWG and BB) would probably qualify as canonical, and the CCSS speaks a bit to reading for pleasure, discussing literature with peers, and learning (via reading) about other cultures and history, etc.  While my students may sit in my classroom with less than stellar diversity apparent on the surface, they are exposed to a variety of cultures throughout the year (Native American, Asian American, African American, Jewish American, etc.).  What I enjoy most, however, is not force-discussions about characters or real-life persons (in the case of non-fiction texts) and watching students connect with them, regardless of their cultural backgrounds.  Certainly, we discuss and gain respect for differences among us, but the real learning and growth seems to happen when students realize that struggle and triumph are universal human experiences.  For fear of sounding dismissive, sometimes focusing on the similarities among humans is more positive and productive.   The students and I loved this unit for all of those reasons.  It was so low-key and therefore enjoyable.  Although I required written discussion tasks for each of the six meetings, I allowed the students to decide on their own topics for half of them.  Students were able to read  182 synopses and choose texts (fiction and non-fiction) that sounded most interesting and relatable.  Choice is important and great starting point.   Freedom is a great thing.  For teachers and students.  This is why I care about including literature circles as often as possible.  In my American literature class, the literature circles center around outcast or on-the-fringes characters.  We decided as a departmentat the inception of our lit circles projectthat thematic connections among the texts were important.  Simply speaking, creating activities for up to ten different texts would be a logistical nightmare, if we er themes and topics.  Also important was the ability to have cross-textual discussions among book clubs, with students sharing about character motivations and plot progression and themes that would easily mirror another text.  High interest texts were a must, teenagers in general, can feel alone at varying times as young adults, so they can relate to our characters/people in these texts experiencing isolation.   Thus, we chose books like Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, The Secret Life of Bees, Wintergirls, Into the Wild, The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Looking for Alaska.  I had been enjoying graphic novels (a recommendation of my students and school librarian) and other non-fiction texts of late, so I decided to add into the mix: Unbroken, Seabiscuit, Running with Scissors, American Born Chinese, Persepolis, Fun Home, and Tomboy.  Variety within genre is just as important as variety within plots.  Since we were fiction heavy, I wanted to add four graphic memoirs, a prose memoir, and two biographies.  While between having too many choices, but every text except two were chosen by students in my regular American  183 a few minutes with the options, take positive and negative notes, and make a thoughtful decision about which text(s) speak to them and which ones they want to read.  The promise is that students will get one of their top three choices.  Overall, it was very successful, as my students were grateful to read stories that mattered to them.  In Considering Open Doors as Acts of Love  Lisad one aspect of her classroom reveals that her pedagogical somewhere much deeper  from her own experiences, from a desire for empathy, from a love for  interests, concerns, and well-being in the world.  No doubt, there are many teachers like Lisa over the interests of mandates, the CCSS, etc.  Further, Lisarcefulness to imagine and act on what was and is possible in her classroom, rather than to see herself trapped in some power binary, moves her beyond the metaphor of resistance.  Instead, Lisa found ways to work within the system to accomplish her own goals with her students in mind and through progressive .  Again, just like many other teachers, Lisa teaches with her door open as a sign of love and respect for her students, her profession, and the texts she teaches.  Teaching, for Lisa, is a   Of course there were other ways this metaphor of an open door as an act of love played out in Lisaers across the country.  Lisa welcomes people (like me) into her classroom on a regular basis, and she willfully serves as a mentor teacher to pre-service teachers.  Rather than seeing herself as an authority in this position, she sees these beginning teachers as equals and encourages their new ideas; she even incorporates  184 their plans into her own teaching, even years down the road, as I have observed.  Lisa, too, is committed to a student-centered classroom, where students discuss, facilitate, interact, and respond to each other will little imposition from her.  And, Lisa establishes a comfortable, respectful classroom environment from the first week of school so students may be open to new ideas and willing to share them. Lisa and I are certainly of the miwhen we feel they are not right for our students, and I hope that highlighting one aspect of Lisateaching through this essay does that.  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