A Language for Literary Expertise: Epistemic Resources and Perceptual Transformation

This essay draws on accounts of expertise from the learning sciences and accounts of epistemic injustice from feminist epistemology to show how literature and literary study contribute to perceptual transformation. Methods central to literary scholarship and to the literature classroom share a commitment to the inductive discovery, application, and dissemination of epistemic resources that transform the way learners perceive literary texts and the experiences those texts elicit and represent. A shared understanding of this process positions us to challenge institutional and disciplinary hierarchies of value that impede us from democratizing the literature classroom and from doing justice to the arts.