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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’ 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 babyֱ��app 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) •Elected Member and Chair

Faculty Athletics Fellows Program (FAFP) •Co-Chair (with Dr. Joe Jupille) and Faculty Fellow to CU Volleyball

Buffs One Read Selection Committee •Invited Member

NATIONAL

Assembly on Literature for Adolescents (ALAN) •President-Elect, President, Past President •Senior Editor, The ALAN Review •Founding Chair, Chair, and Past Chair, Amelia Elizabeth Walden Book Award Committee

National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) •Special Drafting Group, NCTE Statement on Classroom Libraries •Standing Committee Against Censorship •Chair, 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’s 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’s 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). “It’s the forgetting that hurts most.”: 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). “Everything is in us”: Collaboration, introspection, and continuity as healing in #NotYourPrincess. American Indian Quarterly, 46(1-2): 25-63.

Midgette, L., & Glenn, W. J. (2022). “It never starts with machetes”: 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’s 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, 2006–2019. 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’ 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’s 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’s 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 “American” legacy: Female protagonists and the discovery of self in two novels for young adults. Children’s Literature in Education, 48(4), 378-395.

Glenn, W. J., & Ginsberg, R. (2016). Resisting readers’ 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’ counter-narrative (re)constructions of people of color in young adult literature. English Education, 44(4), 326-353.