The Challenge In my literature courses, I have three intersecting goals for students: 1) to gain knowledge about the rich traditions, history, and stories of cultures marginalized within U. S. society; 2) to learn about the pride of place and culture that shapes both the identities of people within marginalized groups and their activism to ensure the endurance of their beliefs, practices, and overall way of life; and 3) to develop an understanding of the web of institutions, ideologies, and representations that perpetuate oppression against marginalized groups within the U.S. Thus, the curriculum for my courses works to introduce students both to the oppression facing marginalized peoples and the success marginalized peoples have enjoyed in forging their own unique heritage, identities, and culture. A number of threshold concepts found my courses and provide new perspectives on margnalized peoples. These threshold concepts revolve around the themes of the construction of identity, the perpetuation of -isms, the structure of language, and the force of social institutions. Yet, this transformed curriculum presents its own problems. In order to understand the threshold concepts, students must have a basic knowledge of a range of oppressions and their societal function; a sense of the various influences shaping identity; and a fair understanding of both the values of the dominant and the marginalized culture. Thus, the threshold concepts present a number of challenges to students as well as instructors. Perhaps most importantly, in order to understand the positive aspects of marginalized cultures, at a foundational level, students must move beyond an insistence on stereotypes as well as a view of marginalized peoples as victims. In turn, there are numerous concepts that underlie each threshold concept and, thus, increased opportunities for students to misunderstand the curriculum. At this early juncture of my research, then, I aim to investigate the assumptions of my students as they come to the texts and, further, identify the misconceptions that hinder their full engagement with and understanding of them. Summer 2008

The Method I will gather data on student learning from the following activities: * D2L Discussion Board Posts; * Critical Essays; * Podcasts of Students' In-class Discussion; After collecting the data, I will assess students' misunderstanding by employing grounded theory. By using this theory to evaluate the data, I will be able to map the obstacles to students' understanding of the Threshold Concepts. In my courses, the curriculum consists of two major components: theoretical essays and literature. By teaching theory and literature together and forging assignments that ask students to put these in dialogue, I need to be aware of three levels of student understanding: 1) their direct comprehension of the ideas within the theory; 2) their interpretation of the theorist's position in relationship to the ideas; 3) their understanding of the creative writers' use of language and 4) their analysis of the creative writer's stance on these theoretical ideas within the literature. Thus, my project seeks to theorize the relationship between students' misconceptions about the threshold concepts and their level of skill at analyzing theory and literature, reading intertextually, and comprehending a writer's strategy for persuading the reader. Below are a number of links to essay assignments as well as prompts for D2L Discussion Boards. For all assignments, students have the option of following their own interests independent of the provided questions. Fall 2008 1st Two-Page Paper Assignment in the Gay and Lesbian Literature course 2nd Two-Page Paper Assignment in the Gay and Lesbian Literature course 3rd Two-Page Paper Assignment in the Gay and Lesbian Literature course Prompt Questions for D2L Discussion Boards on _Gut Symmetries_ Prompt Questions for D2L Discussion Boards on _Stone Butch Blues_

Summary of Project I collected data from students' assignments and class participation in my upper-division "Gay and Lesbian Literature" course. This course highlighted feminist and queer theory along with Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender (GLBT) literature. In the last twenty years, the word "queer" has emerged in the GLBT community as a term that signifies defiance of homophobia and a embrace of pride in GLBT identity, and I use "queer" to invoke those meanings here. I approached the data by assessing students' level of understanding of the threshold concepts central to the readings. These concepts include: Queer identity emerges through the embrace of new, unconventional, and positive meanings of queerness and gender transgression. Homopobia is rooted in binary oppositions that link the heterosexual with purity, life, and success and the queer with impurity, death, and ruin. Queer literature challenges the above binary oppositions in order to create alternative meanings for queerness. Homophobia is intimately intertwined with and reinforces racism, classism, sexism, ageism, and ableism (to name only a few). Social institutions serve to regulate identity and reinforce -isms. I then employed grounded theory to find patterns within the data that explained the cause of students' misunderstandings of these concepts and their strategies for dealing with their misunderstandings.

Annotated Bibliography Broadbear, James T. "Essential Elements of Lessons Designed to Promote Critical Thinking." The Journal of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. 3: 3 (2003): 1-8. This article emphasizes that lesson plans must include facets that encourage students not only to think critically but to understand the criteria necessary to think critically. In turn, this criteria should lead students into self-assessment as well as improvement of their critical thinking skills. Campbell, Jennifer. "Teaching Class: A Pedagogy and Politics for Working-Class Writing." College Literature 23 (1996): 116-130. This essay provides strategies by which instructors can bring students to a greater awareness of their own class status. Chang, Yin-Kun. "Through Queers' Eyes: Critical Educational Ethnography in Queer Studies." The Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies. 27 (2005): 171-208. Yin-Kun Chang argues for a careful consideration of the ways in which education, from the classroom to the texts to the teachers, participates in the creation of a homophobic discourse that functions to marginalize queers from education. Gillman, Laura. "Beyond the Shadow: Re-scripting Race in Women's Studies." Meridians: Feminims, race, transnationalism. 7:2 (2007): 117-141. Gillman takes to task current trends in Women's Studies that tend to hierarchize discussions of white privilege over explorations of women of color's experience. Gillman calls for a pedagogy that makes women of color's narratives about the affect of white privilege on them the major focus of the course. Simpson, Jennifer S. "Reaching for Justice: The Pedagogical Politics of Agency, Race, and Change." The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies. 28 (2006): 67-94. Jennifer Simpson explores a dispute in her class over the meaning of the death of Amadou Diallo, an African American man who was shot 41 times by four white police in New York City despite the fact that he was unarmed. Simpson explores the means by which instructors can simultaneously preserve all students' access to agency within the discussion and stand for social justice by employing central concepts from cultural studies. Tucker, Terrence. "Teaching Race to Students Who Think the World is Free: Aging and Race as Social Change." Pedagogy. 6:1 (2006): 133-141. Terrence Tucker explores strategies by which to engage students about issues of race despite the fact this generation of students believes that racism no longer exists. Ongoing

Preliminary Results, Findings, Conclusions, & Implications The collected data revealed that students repeatedly had difficulty comprehending those threshold concepts that coded as positive queer identity and transgression of gender norms. A significant pattern emerged showing that students frequntly linked queer identity with immaturity, death, impurity, an obstacle to be overcome, and a discomfort with the body. These misunderstandings of the course's threshold concepts had four main causes: 1) reading the theory as endorsing stereotypes rather than questioning them, 2) believing that the author's representation of a character's actions or fate simplistically reflected the author's opinion, 3) insisting on the truth of previously-held stereotypes, and 4) needing to interpret the interaction between two or more -isms in the literature. When students' confusion about the theory and literature was high and their analytical skills minimal, students relied on the following strategies to negotiate the assignment or discussion: repeat points within the theory without reflection, assume that the author believes what a character says or does, justify their own stereotypes by asserting that the writer believes it, avoid providing specific evidence, and simplify the complex layerings of the literature. There were two major outcomes of students' strategies for negotiating their misconceptions. On the one hand, students' actual misunderstanding of the threshold concepts was heightened. On the other hand, since students seemingly found their negative associations with queer identity confirmed within the literature, they maintained a sense that their persistent negativity about queers was corroborated by queer writers themselves. Thus, my research exposes a central paradox in teaching those threshold concepts which encourage students to re-think marginalized identities in positive ways. Through various strategies, students minimize their confusion about alternative ways of seeing marginalized identities by falling back on conventional notions of marginalized identities as rooted in negation and victimization. Yet, their belief is that these negative conceptions of marginalized identities are promoted in the literature and are not a product of their own imagination. Spring 2009

Career Relevance & Impact As a Wisconsin Teaching Scholar, I was able to re-invigorate and re-direct both my scholarship and teaching. My participation in OPID's Faculty College and Summer Institute introduced me to a range of new literature, innovative pedagogical strategies, and alternative methodologies for conducting classroom research. As a professor in the humanities, I came to the Wisconsin Teaching Fellows and Scholars Program without a background in the collection and interpretation of data. However, the Program focused on introducing faculty to strategies for conducting research within the classroom as well as familiarizing participants with qualitative and quantitative approaches to data. Thus, I was able to gain the skills necessary to collect and analyze data in keeping with SoTL standards. I benefitted from many aspects of the OPID Program and particularly appreciated the opportunity to collaborate with other faculty across the UW System, to receive constructive feedback on my project that helped to shape it, to learn the ethos of SoTL from the directors, and to discuss at length innovative and proven teaching strategies. Ongoing