Wendy Glenn
- Professor
- LITERACY STUDIES
- HUMANITIES EDUCATION
Miramontes Baca Education Building, Room 244C
University of Colorado Boulder
249 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309
Wendy J. Glenn is Professor of Literacy Studies and Past Chair of Middle and High School Teaching Plus Licensure (MHST+) and Secondary Humanities Undergraduate and MA+ Teacher Licensure. Her research centers on literature for youth and how story can be used to both foster connection and invite disruption. She served as President of the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of the National Council of Teachers of English (ALAN) and Senior Editor of the organization鈥檚 peer-reviewed journal, The ALAN Review. Dr.
Glenn was named a President's Teaching Scholar in 2023, a Those Who Can Teach Gold Award recipient in 2019, a University Teaching Fellow in 2009, and a Fulbright Scholar to Norway in 2009-2010. She worked with incredible young people as a middle and high school English teacher in the Phoenix metro area.
Education
- PhD Curriculum and Instruction in English Education, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences/ School of Education, Arizona State University, 2001
- MEd Secondary Education, School of Education, Arizona State University, 1994
- BA English, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences/Honors College, Arizona State University, 1992
I explore questions related to teaching and teacher education in the areas of young adult literature and anti-oppressive and identity-affirming pedagogies. My first line of research centers on young adult (YA) literature (fictional texts intended for readers, ages 12-18). I draw upon critical theories to engage in literary analysis of YA texts to highlight the affordances and limitations of literature published for young people and how it is and might be incorporated into curricula and classrooms.
My second line of research centers on work with preservice and practicing educators around learning to teach for equity and justice. These lines of research have merged in explorations of how story might be used to support teachers in recognizing, better understanding, and responding to power and privilege in their and their students鈥 lives in and out of the classroom.
My teaching is guided by the assumption that inviting classroom spaces and genuine student learning and development are predicated on the creation of a community in which each member feels valued, supported, and capable. When students and teachers work together to build trusting relationships growing from knowledge of and respect for individual needs and interests, opportunities for authentic learning, growth, and humanistic connection are fostered. As an English Language Arts teacher in Arizona, I worked with middle and high school students who held diverse identities connected to race, class, language, and gender. As a university faculty member, I am a teacher of teachers, one who works with both preservice and practicing educators to collaboratively design, implement, and study practices that encourage affirming student learning and connections to the self, others, and the world.
CU BOULDER
Boulder Faculty Assembly Intercollegiate Athletics Committee (BFA-IAC) 鈥lected Member and Chair
Faculty Athletics Fellows Program (FAFP) 鈥o-Chair (with Dr. Joe Jupille) and Faculty Fellow to CU Volleyball
Buffs One Read Selection Committee 鈥nvited Member
NATIONAL
Assembly on Literature for Adolescents (ALAN) 鈥resident-Elect, President, Past President 鈥enior Editor, The ALAN Review 鈥ounding Chair, Chair, and Past Chair, Amelia Elizabeth Walden Book Award Committee
National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) 鈥pecial Drafting Group, NCTE Statement on Classroom Libraries 鈥tanding Committee Against Censorship 鈥hair, Special Drafting Group, NCTE Principles for Defending Intellectual Freedom in Education
Glenn, W. J. (In review). Loving the self, loving the sport: Devotion and defiance in Furia. Literature.
Glenn, W. J. (In review). Girls and young women (re)crafting conceptions of self through sport in young adult fiction. International Journal of Young Adult Literature.
Glenn, W. J. (In press for 2026). Complicating the country: Rural identities and environmental values in youth fiction situated in rural spaces. International Research in Children鈥檚 Literature.
Caasi, E., & Glenn, W. J. (In press for 2024). (Re)inscribing ideologies: Examining ideological positioning of Black women athletes in nonfiction for children and young adults. Children鈥檚 Literature Association Quarterly.
Glenn, W. J. (2024). Authorial ideology and intention in presentations of place in YA immigration narratives. Ubiquity: The Journal of Literature, Literacy, and the Arts, 9(2), 9-33.
Glenn, W. J. (2024). 鈥淚t鈥檚 the forgetting that hurts most.鈥: Home in a narrative of forced emigration. The ALAN Review, 51(3), 42-51.
Glenn, W. J., (2023, online). Fictional girls who play to play: Pushing on narratives of competition in YA sports literature. Sport, Education and Society, 1-16.
Glenn, W. J., & Caasi, E. (2023). Teaching with disruptive aims: Countering narratives of Black women athletes in sports nonfiction for young people. The ALAN Review 50(2), 32-47.
Glenn, W. J. (2023). Designs of home: Living spaces as identity-shaping places. English Journal, 112(3), 64-70.
Ginsberg, R., & Glenn, W. J. (2022). 鈥淓verything is in us鈥: Collaboration, introspection, and continuity as healing in #NotYourPrincess. American Indian Quarterly, 46(1-2): 25-63.
Midgette, L., & Glenn, W. J. (2022). 鈥淚t never starts with machetes鈥: Interrupting Intergenerational Transmission of Biases Through Speculative YA Fiction. The ALAN Review, 49(2), 30-41.
Glenn, W. J., & Caasi, E. (2021; 2022). Gendered assumptions in the framing of fitness in sports nonfiction for young adult readers. Children鈥檚 Literature in Education. .
Durand, S., Glenn, W. J., Moore, D., Groenke, S., & Scaramuzzo, P. (2021). Shaping immigration narratives in young adult literature: Authors and paratextual features of USBBY outstanding international books, 2006鈥2019. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 64(6), 665-674.
Glenn, W. J., & Ginsberg, R. (2020). Tensions between envisioned aims and enacted practices in the teaching of Muslim young adult literature. Teachers College Record(122)2, 1-44.
Ginsberg, R, & Glenn, W. J. (2020). Moments of pause: A model for understanding students鈥 shifting perceptions during a Muslim young adult literature learning experience. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(4), 601-623.
Glenn, W. J., & Moore, D. (2020). The authorial mediation of religious tensions in YAL narratives of immigration. The ALAN Review, 48(1), 13-27.
Glenn, W. J., & King-Watkins, D. (2020). Fictional girls who play with the boys: Barriers to access in the transition to male-dominated sports teams. Children鈥檚 Literature in Education, 51(3), 309-331.
Hernandez, M., Torres, F. L, & Glenn, W. J. (2020). Centering immigrant youth voices: Writing as counter-storytelling. English Journal, 109(5), 35-42.
Torres, F. L, & Glenn, W. J. (2020). The journey stories of young adult authors: Complicating contemporary immigration narratives. The ALAN Review, 47(2), 25-36.
Glenn, W. J., & King-Watkins, D. (2019). Being an athlete or being a girl: Selective identities among fictional female athletes who play with the boys. Children鈥檚 Literature Association Quarterly, 44(3), 290-309.
Glenn, W. J., Ginsberg, R., & King, D. (2018). Resisting and persisting: Identity stability among adolescent readers labeled as struggling. Journal of Adolescent Research 33(3), 306-331.
Glenn, W. J. (2017). Space and place and the 鈥淎merican鈥 legacy: Female protagonists and the discovery of self in two novels for young adults. Children鈥檚 Literature in Education, 48(4), 378-395.
Glenn, W. J., & Ginsberg, R. (2016). Resisting readers鈥 identity (re)construction across English and young adult literature course contexts. Research in the Teaching of English, 51(1), 84-105.
Glenn, W. J. (2016). Vying for position: The role of sport in postcolonial young adult literature. SIGNAL: International Literacy Association, 39(2), 28-33.
Glenn, W. J. (2015). Understanding unfamiliar literary aesthetics: White preservice teachers examine race through story. Action in Teacher Education, 37(1), 23-44.
Glenn, W. J. (2014). To witness and to testify: Preservice teachers examine literary aesthetics to better understand diverse literature. English Education, 46(2), 90-116.
Glenn, W. J. (2012). Developing understandings of race: Preservice teachers鈥 counter-narrative (re)constructions of people of color in young adult literature. English Education, 44(4), 326-353.