Reading publics and a curriculum in literature

Abstract

AbstractThe notion of reading publics has a secure place in the sociology of Literature but its place in the educational literature around curriculum studies is relatively sparse. Here I address the question of reading publics in a curriculum context by examining school subject curricula whose very raisons d'etre are the creation of a reading public, viz. the curricula in Literature that usually sit inside high school English/Language Arts. I am interested in the extent to which ‘reading publics’ can themselves be ‘read off’ such Literature curricula and also in the kind of reading publics that are imagined as being created through such curricula. Under examination are two senior years courses from the Australian Curriculum: English which imagine two quite different ‘beneficiary publics’ which I argue as class‐based differences, but which nevertheless both represent what I call a ‘weak’ version of an imagined beneficiary public. I conclude by asking how a curriculum might imagine a more socially oriented reading public.