English educators at all levels have endeavored to understand difference in their classrooms both in terms of the content that they teach and in terms of the social and cultural identities of students in their classrooms. However, although educators have come a long way in understanding identity as it is constituted by race and gender, much work…

In a six-week literature circle unit in a tenth-grade classroom, one group of students discussed Dorothy Allison's novel "Bastard out of Carolina." By criteria frequently used to judge the quality of discussion, this literature circle was successful. However, several key moments are highlighted that point to the limits of literature circles as…