James Coleman

James Joshua Coleman (Josh) is a Doctoral Candidate in the Reading/Writing/Literacy program at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. His dissertation project, Restorying Painful Histories, considers the counter-storytelling practices of queer educators and advocates for the integration of affect studies into critical literacy scholarship. He additionally pursues research and criticism addressing intersectional issues of representation in queer Young Adult literature. His general academic interests include critical literacy, affect studies, queer studies, and Children’s and Young Adult literature.
Josh's Rackin Graduate Student Award supported research "Rereading Adolescence: Using Young Adult Literature to Rewrite Gender Inequality and Queerphobia in Schools” is a project that weaves together humanities and social science traditions to invite queer educators to “restory” their affective lives. Addressing concerns of an “imagination gap” in adulthood, queer educators of varied gender, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds are revisiting adolescence as they responded both orally and in writing to representations of queer adolescence in Young Adult literature. Based upon this literature, participants chose a “painful history” from their personal or educational past and are rewriting it in myriad ways, each time changing one element of their story in a process called “restorying.” Revealing and expanding the contours of the imagination, this project is taking place over the course of an academic year and seeks to understand how extended engagement with one’s affective life as well as with the memories and feelings one holds in classrooms, might support queer educators’ wellbeing and retention, while also challenging gender inequality and queerphobia in US education.