Purpose This paper features artwork and artists’ statements by middle school students who participated in a research collaboration that involved co-authoring critical literacy curriculum for Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus: A Survivors Tale (1986) with teacher candidates from the University of Toronto. Design/methodology/approach Youth explored personal and social justice issues through writing and artwork produced in response to Maus. In the process, they navigated what historian Dominick LaCapra (1998) has referred to as the “delicate relationship between empathy and critical distance” (pp. 4-5), between closely identifying with the agonizing experiences Spiegelman documents and using their inquiries to cultivate more critical positionalities and assume activist stances on historical and contemporary social justice issues. Findings As they describe in their brief statements included alongside their artwork, creating these projects allowed youth to bear witness to a terrible moment in human history and to envision how they can make a difference in their own communities. Originality/value This work suggests how the arts can be mobilized in critical literacy as a vehicle to interrogate difficult historical moments and multifaceted identity issues.

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This presentation shares findings from a collaborative inquiry involving six occasional teachers, myself included, who came together over five months to explore our experiences navigating a teacher labour market ruled by teacher surplus, job shortages, and increasing employment precarity. Together we took an inquiry stance on occasional teaching (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009) and explored the consequences of precarious teacher employment for teaching, learning, working, and living. Findings illustrate the myriad ways precariousness shapes not only our career trajectories but also our everyday experiences of practice, our professional identities as educators, and our engagement in political action and institutional change efforts.

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Drawing on perspectives from cultural studies, affect theory, and critical literacy, this article explores comics made by three eighth-grade students in response to Art Spiegelman’s Holocaust memoir Maus. Students’ comics were developed through participatory research alongside their classroom teacher, a research team, and teacher candidates from a local university. These three students, Stella, Maisie, and Naomi, reacted strongly to the content of Maus and the comics medium, and raised questions around identity, representation, and the legibility of their often-intense emotional responses. We trace their affective engagements to explore how comic-making allowed students to represent feelings that are often difficult to make visible in school spaces. Our analysis highlights how affective critical literacy orients teaching and research toward working-through rather than resolving complicated emotions, allowing educators to recognize unanswered questions as forms of critical engagement.