Deranging English/education

A 19th-century merman, a 17th-century poet and nun, an aspiring magician with a box cutter poised over a classic of 20th-century poetry, and a group of inquiring teachers turned classroom researchers join together with an assortment of textual and classroom artifacts to offer a vision of what “English” can be for 21st-century schools. Deranging English/Education brings these and other hybrid figures to bear on the troubling institutional and theoretical divisions between the fields of English studies and English teacher education. In a series of case studies drawn from his own experiences as a professor of English education and American literature, John Staunton shows us what can happen when we “derange” traditional perspectives on research, teaching, and the curriculum. Throughout this journey, Staunton continually invites us to see the enterprise of English/Education from the range of subject positions with stakes in the future of English. Preservice teachers, classroom teachers, teacher-researchers, and teacher educators all get a chance to speak to what it means to live and work on that border between English and Education.