Literary attachment and the American spoken-word song: An interarts-based reading pedagogy

Abstract

Have we been teaching reading well? Close reading has been the signature practice in literary studies. More recently, however, postcritique has polemically revised this traditional mode of teaching reading. This essay proposes the initial framework for a novel arts-based pedagogy based on Spoken-Word Song, bridging critical literary interpretation and teacher-student co-created artistic performance. Spoken-Word Song is here cast as a privileged means for allowing university students to become intellectually and emotionally invested in poetry, following precepts of the affective turn in the humanities. Moving from theory to practice, this paper will contextualize Spoken-Word Song within three domains before describing the practical steps of my pedagogy: (1) its relevance to contemporary literary theory, (2) a brief overview of the American Spoken-Word Song and (3) Spoken Word pedagogies currently practiced in the American educational system.