Playing a Double Game: Authorial Reading and the Ethics of Interpretation

Students in English education typically have to live in (at least) two worlds: departments of English in which they receive their disciplinary training, and departments or schools or programs of education in which they work to develop the pedagogical content knowledge they need to teach in that discipline. Often those worlds are far apart. In this article, Michael Smith and Peter Rabinowitz, describe their own collaborative efforts as fruitful, mainly because of their differences. Smith is a Professor of Literacy Education, while Rabinowitz is a Professor of Comparative Literature. They share that they have always been able to work through their differences because they share a theory of literacy reading despite their different disciplinary norms. They write here that their work developing this theory has been important to both of them for it has allowed them to benefit from (rather than dismiss) each other\u27s perspectives as their exploration of two important ethical issues in the reading and teaching of literature moves forward. The authors conclude by saying their differences mirror the larger disciplinary differences that students in English education often experience. They wish to encourage classroom discussions of literature that are informed both by the head and the heart, discussions that see seemingly polar positions complementing each other in meaningful ways