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In 2020 our academic library, located in East Tennessee, created a student-focused book club designed to spark discussions around the concepts of race, gender, sexuality, social justice, and the systemic oppression of disenfranchised groups. Now in its seventh semester, our Diverse Characters Book Club has gained in popularity. However, while our book club is garnering more campus visibility and more administrative support, our state has passed, and continues to introduce legislation, that makes it increasingly difficult to teach about racism, homophobia, and sexism in public higher education institutions. We feel now is more important than ever to continue this discourse. Our book club provides a safe space for students to discuss these issues with the learning outcomes of recognizing racism, injustice, privilege, and the way these issues affect all our lives. Are you an academic librarian working in a state with laws against teaching divisive concepts? Are you worried you will no longer have the freedom to discuss diversity and inclusion with students? Join academic librarians from a university in Tennessee, who created a Diverse Characters Book Club to keep these conversations alive. You will leave this session with ideas on how create your own DEI book club, how to navigate divisive concepts laws, and how to continue the important work of diversity, equity, and inclusion even, and especially, in an atmosphere of censorship.

A whole class of people is largely missing in contemporary Anglophone literary studies: readers. This dissertation argues that readers matter to our understanding of literature and merit study as an independent object of analysis. I make the case for the value of studying readers through ethnographic analysis of reading communities across four contemporary organizations that claim to use literary reading and discussion for a particular social end. Changing Lives Through Literature (CLTL) is an alternative-sentencing program that claims to use literary reading and discussion to reform criminal offenders. Reflection Point is a professional training organization that claims to use literary reading and discussion to improve workplace productivity. The Reader is a charitable organization that claims to use literary reading and discussion to support people’s mental health. And Reese’s Book Club (RBC) is a media company that claims to use literary reading and discussion to empower women. By studying these communities of readers — by analyzing, as I call it, “literature in action” — we develop a clearer picture of literature as a social object. Neither, in absolute terms, autonomously resistant nor instrumentally reducible, literary texts are material forms with context-dependent yet medium-specific effects that are activated in particular contexts of reception. Literature is not simply whatever people do with it. However, at a time when literary scholars are making claims for the social value of literary forms even as “serious” literary reading seems to be becoming ever-more socially marginal, it is important to develop an understanding of how literature has effects and how literature is valued by readers now, if we are to make more substantiated claims about its social status and function. Through ethnographic research of these four reading communities, I show how readers — engaging with an aesthetically and generically broad range of literary texts — put literature to use in ways that diverge from the stated aims of their organizations and that complicate common assumptions about literature’s social value.

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För att kunna vidareutbilda sig, tillgodose sig samhällsnyttig information och delta i samhället fullt ut behövs en välutvecklad läsförmåga. Redan från tidig ålder är det viktigt att bygga denna grund. Syftet med denna studie är att bidra med kunskap om hur läsläxan i årskurserna F-3 kan utformas för att stärka samverkan mellan lärare och vårdnadshavare i arbetet med elevers läsutveckling. Vidare avser studien att synliggöra arbetssätt som kan stimulera elevernas läsintresse. En fallstudie genomfördes i en årskurs tre där eleverna läste ett kapitel ur utvalda skönlitterära böcker hemma varje vecka och därefter samtalade de på skolan om det lästa, i så kallade bokklubbar. För att få ett så omfattande resultat som möjligt undersöktes både lärarens, elevernas och vårdnadshavarnas uppfattning om bokklubbarna. Data insamlades genom semistrukturerade intervjuer med klassläraren samt nio elever. För att ta del av vårdnadshavarnas upplevelser distribuerades en digital enkät med öppna frågor till de vårdnadshavare som anmält intresse. Utöver detta genomfördes även en semistrukturerad observation av samtalen i bokklubbarna. Det sociokulturella perspektivet tillsammans med partnerskapsprincipen och isärhållandeprincipen var de teorier som låg till grunden för den tematiska analysen av det insamlade materialet. Resultatet visar att bokklubbarna som läsläxa bidrog till elevernas läsutveckling genom att de utvecklande sin språkliga förståelse i interaktion med varandra, läraren och vårdnadshavarna. Vidare uppskattade både elever och vårdnadshavare att diskussionsfrågor medföljde läsläxan. Resultatet pekar även på att elevernas läsintresse stimulerats av att de fått vara delaktiga i valet av böcker, medverkat i ett meningsfullt sammanhang och samtalat om det de läst. Sammanfattningsvis visar denna studie att bokklubbarna som arbetssätt engagerar både läraren, eleverna och vårdnadshavarna. Vidare gynnar den sociala kontexten elevernas språkliga förståelse och samtalen som förekommer har potential att bidra till utökat läsintresse. / To be able to get further education, understand the information provided, and fully participate in society, you need a well-developed reading ability. It is import to build this foundation already from young age. The purpose of this study is to contribute knowledge about how reading homework in grades F-3 can be designed to strengthen collaboration between teachers and guardians in the work with students' reading development. Furthermore, the study intends to present working methods that can stimulate students' interest in reading. A case study was carried out in a third grade, where the students read a chapter from selected fiction books at home every week and then talked at school about what they had read, in so-called book clubs. To get as extensive results as possible, both the teacher's, the students', and the guardians' perceptions of the book clubs were investigated. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with the class teacher and nine students. To take part in guardians' experiences, a digital survey with open questions was distributed to guardians who expressed interest. In addition to this, a semi-structured observation of the conversations in the book clubs was also carried out. The socio-cultural perspective together with the partnership principle and the separation principle were the theories that formed the basis for the thematic analysis of the collected material. The result shows that book clubs as reading homework contributed to the students' reading development by developing their language awarness in interaction with each other, the teacher, and the guardians. Furthermore, both students and guardians appreciated that discussion questions accompanied the reading homework. The results also indicate that the students' interest in reading was stimulated by the fact that they were allowed to participate in the selection of books, in a meaningful context and that they talked about what they read. In summary, this study shows that book clubs as a way of working involve both the teacher, the students, and the guardians.  Furthermore, the social context favours the students' linguistic understanding, and the conversations that occur have the potential to contribute to increased interest in reading.

Increased accountability in contemporary public elementary schools requires that teachers provide evidence they are using research-based strategies that reinforce skills assessed on standardized tests. There is a need to provide empirical evidence that literature circles can reinforce skills assessed on these tests. A literature circle is a research-based strategy that is common in language arts classrooms. This study investigates the connection between these skills and student discussion that takes place during literature circles. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of skill-focused minilessons on students' independent use of reading skills. The study investigated whether application of skill-focused minilessons prior to literature circles would have an effect on students' independent use of reading skills within student discussions during literature circles. Sixteen students participated in the study. The study also investigated the impact that minilessons prior to literature circles had on students' scores on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) in reading. Students were randomly assigned to the researcher's fifth grade class in the 2008/2009 school year. All students read the same material and received the same treatment. During the course of the study, students first took the FCAT diagnostic in reading and then engaged in five literature circle meetings, each preceded by a minilesson. Students then engaged in five literature circles with a different book and without skill-focused minilessons, followed by the administration of the reading FCAT. The data, which included content analyses of transcriptions of students' discussion and the collection of FCAT scores, yielded several findings. / The two skills most commonly used by students in independent literature circles were analyzing character and discussing plot. The two least commonly used skills were describing conflict and using context clues. Each skill within student discussion.The way in which students transferred the use of these skills to literature circles not preceded by skill focused minilessons varied. Multiple modes of transfer were identified for each skill. A dependent t-test for the FCAT scores did not indicate a statistically significant increase in the use of the five skills identified for this study when minilessons preceded literature circles. / by Gail Kennedy. / Abstract page (p. v) has author's name as Gail Sigelakis. / Thesis (Ed.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Although literature has extensively documented the stereotypes of developing learning communities in schools through book clubs— especially to improve literacy— little is revealed about varied indicators of improvements, such as student self-identification, authentic dialogues, and transforming small groups into learning communities. In this respect, formal efforts on adopting book clubs to improve literacy in Saudi Arabia are simply absent. This thesis presents research findings that seek to explore the effect of book clubs on improving literacy and building a learning community among seventh-grade, under-performing students in Canada. This thesis is contextualized through a thorough review of related literature and discussion of findings from classroom observations, and students’ interviews. The completion of this thesis indicates positive, causal relationships between using a book club as a learning tool and building a learning community, thus improving literacy. The research concludes with implications for using book clubs in Saudi Arabia.

Although literature has extensively documented the stereotypes of developing learning communities in schools through book clubs— especially to improve literacy— little is revealed about varied indicators of improvements, such as student self-identification, authentic dialogues, and transforming small groups into learning communities. In this respect, formal efforts on adopting book clubs to improve literacy in Saudi Arabia are simply absent. This thesis presents research findings that seek to explore the effect of book clubs on improving literacy and building a learning community among seventh-grade, under-performing students in Canada. This thesis is contextualized through a thorough review of related literature and discussion of findings from classroom observations, and students’ interviews. The completion of this thesis indicates positive, causal relationships between using a book club as a learning tool and building a learning community, thus improving literacy. The research concludes with implications for using book clubs in Saudi Arabia.