Alayne Sullivan Ph.D.

Alayne Sullivan is deeply curious about what it means for teenagers to read a literary text aesthetically. It is especially important to her that those deemed as struggling experience an aesthetic, transactional engagement with literature, and that they are thus afforded an opportunity to live through texts before they must learn to analyze them, as one might say, efferently.

• Ph.D., English education, McGill University
• M.Ed., literacy and reading, Mount Saint Vincent University
• B.A., literature and psychology, Mount Saint Vincent University

Research and writing are divided between two areas/genres at this time. Sullivan has just completed a historical fiction novel and submitted it to an appropriate publisher in Canada. On another front, she has completed data collection for a qualitative, phenomenological study that explored doctoral student writing experiences over three years.

• Adolescent and adult literary engagement
• Literacy education
• Struggling readers and literary responses
• The teaching of literature, aesthetic reading, and arts-based approaches

• American Education Research Association (AERA)
• International Reading Association (IRA)
• National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)