Understanding Red Reading
Tuesday, March 26, 2024
1:30-2:30 p.m.
Online via Microsoft Teams
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As early as 1998, Mi’kmaw scholar Marie Battiste warned that “mainstream knowledge has not been questioned or reconsidered; rather the Other is acknowledged as a knowledge, not the knowledge, as in the case of academia’s special case studies such as Women’s Studies, Native Studies or Black Studies.” Since then, academia has continued to work towards disrupting the canon. How then can we avoid recolonizing our inclusive, diversified syllabi?
We can do so by changing not only what is taught, but how it is taught as well. This 1hr virtual session introduces the concept of Red Reading, wherein a non-Indigenous text is read from Indigenous perspectives, methods, and approaches. We will breakdown the development of Red Reading as a literary theory and how to incorporate the method in your classroom. Our workshop mindfully considers Cherokee scholar Scott Andrews’ argument that Red Reading is for people of all backgrounds, “but the reading should be native-centric; the reading process should be grounded in issues important to native communities and/or native intellectual histories or practices.” In fact, Andrews encourages Red Reading as a “useful exercise of non-natives reading [non-native] texts as a native mock reader, using a native perspective to defamiliarize their own cultural texts.” We will discuss how educators and students can respectfully and responsibly carry Indigenous approaches into their classroom.
Presenter
Brenna Duperron, Department of English, Dalhousie University
Intended Audience
- Open to all
- Event is open to external attendees
Time
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