Carry Me Over the Threshold: Using Popular Romance Novels in Women’s and Gender Studies Classes to Teach Disciplinary Threshold Concepts
Start Date
22-4-2020 9:00 AM
End Date
22-4-2020 10:00 AM
Proposal Type
Individual Presentation
Abstract
Romancelandia is increasingly engaging with feminism; I’m especially interested in the ways that some novels explicitly and implicitly challenge limiting gender norms, navigate issues of consent, and reflect our diverse world. Recent scholarship has also focused an increasingly feminist analytical lens on the genre, even suggesting, as Catherine Roach does, that “the romance story is a reparation fantasy of the end of patriarchy” (167). As a feminist literary scholar who teaches in both the English and Women’s and Gender Studies Programs, I teach romance novels in women’s and gender studies classes. I use novels like Alyssa Coles Duke by Default and Alisha Rais’ Wrong to Need You to introduce students to disciplinary threshold concepts. Threshold concepts, a framework developed by Jan Meyer and Ray Land, “can be considered as akin to a portal, opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something. [...] As a consequence of comprehending a threshold concept there may thus be a transformed internal view of subject matter, subject landscape, or even world view” (1). Threshold concepts are particularly important in Women’s and Gender Studies, as students grapple with new concepts that explain their experiences and identities; romance novels are ideal texts to showcase these concepts. This presentation shares my course design as well as results from a two-year long IRB-approved Scholarship of Teaching and Learning study on teaching romance novels in Women’s and Gender Studies classes, and advocates for using romance novels to help students better learn complicated disciplinary concepts.
Works Cited
Meyer, Jan H.F. and Ray Land. "Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge:
Linkages to Ways of Thinking and Practising within the Disciplines." Improving Student Learning –Ten Years On. C.Rust, ed. Oxford, 2003.
Roach, Catherine. Happily Ever After: The Romance Story in Popular Culture. Indiana
University Press, 2016.
Carry Me Over the Threshold: Using Popular Romance Novels in Women’s and Gender Studies Classes to Teach Disciplinary Threshold Concepts
Romancelandia is increasingly engaging with feminism; I’m especially interested in the ways that some novels explicitly and implicitly challenge limiting gender norms, navigate issues of consent, and reflect our diverse world. Recent scholarship has also focused an increasingly feminist analytical lens on the genre, even suggesting, as Catherine Roach does, that “the romance story is a reparation fantasy of the end of patriarchy” (167). As a feminist literary scholar who teaches in both the English and Women’s and Gender Studies Programs, I teach romance novels in women’s and gender studies classes. I use novels like Alyssa Coles Duke by Default and Alisha Rais’ Wrong to Need You to introduce students to disciplinary threshold concepts. Threshold concepts, a framework developed by Jan Meyer and Ray Land, “can be considered as akin to a portal, opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something. [...] As a consequence of comprehending a threshold concept there may thus be a transformed internal view of subject matter, subject landscape, or even world view” (1). Threshold concepts are particularly important in Women’s and Gender Studies, as students grapple with new concepts that explain their experiences and identities; romance novels are ideal texts to showcase these concepts. This presentation shares my course design as well as results from a two-year long IRB-approved Scholarship of Teaching and Learning study on teaching romance novels in Women’s and Gender Studies classes, and advocates for using romance novels to help students better learn complicated disciplinary concepts.
Works Cited
Meyer, Jan H.F. and Ray Land. "Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge:
Linkages to Ways of Thinking and Practising within the Disciplines." Improving Student Learning –Ten Years On. C.Rust, ed. Oxford, 2003.
Roach, Catherine. Happily Ever After: The Romance Story in Popular Culture. Indiana
University Press, 2016.