Private Readings in Public

The Author: Dennis Sumara teaches in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. He is the author of numerous articles in the areas of curriculum studies, English language arts education, and qualitative research.

«In 'Private Readings in Public', Dennis Sumara artfully examines his relations to the reading and teaching of literary fictions. In conceptualizing literary texts, pedagogical practices, and curriculum as forms of embodied action, he generates intriguing spaces of indeterminacy where we might examine our own reading, teaching, and curriculum practices as relational and always in progress. This book is a must-read for anyone who wishes to produce imaginative and transformational possibilities in schools, and who is provoked by the question: What does it mean for a literary imagination and school curriculum to co-exist?» (Janet L. Miller, Professor, National-Louis University«If education can bear the idea that fiction jeopardizes knowledge, that fiction is curious about its own divisions, differences, wounds - indeed its own otherness - then I think we might begin to imagine what education can become when what is becoming is the relation, and when the relation refuses to distinguish between education and imagination. Dennis Sumara asks us to ponder such problems, to allow for a thought that can exceed its own limits, to tolerate what it does not know.» ('From the Foreword' by Deborah P. Britzmann, Professor, York University)«This is a unique book. It engages us as companions with the author and the group of teachers with whom he has worked. The book is meticulous, sensitive, and rich with layers of interpretations of reading and of curriculum.» (Kieran Egan, Simon Fraser University)