The reading practices of young women and the production of gendered subjectivity

Abstract

This thesis examines the possible connections between the reading practices of young women and the production of gendered subjectivities. It examines the relationship between the texts and readings of teen mystery-horror-romances by four women and the social contexts of these readers' lives. This study provides an analysis of a sample of the writings of Christopher Pike, interviews with four grade eleven women students, and this writer's pedagogy-in-practice surrounding readers and writers. Viewing reading practices through feminist post-structuralism provides an opportunity to identify reading, subjectivity, and pedagogy as cultural practices imbued with relations of power. Possibilities for transformation and disruption of these relations are the focus of this exploration of reading, texts, and subjectivities -- their construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction.