Laura M. Jiménez
Associate Dean, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion
Senior Lecturer
Dr. Laura M. Jiménez, BU Wheelock’s associate dean for equity, diversity & inclusion and a senior lecturer in literacy education, has always been intrigued by the ways elements such as purpose, person, text, and context, of any given reading event interact to influence reading comprehension and meaning making in the classroom. Studying both literature and literacy with a social justice lens means she focuses on the ways teachers think about and understand not only the systems of inequity and privilege at play in education, but their own roles within those systems, as well as the texts and the ways those texts are used in the classroom.
Dr. Jiménez’s dissertation was a study motivated by questions around the ease of graphic novel reading. The findings have been published in the scholarly journals such as Journal of Literacy Research, and Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy. She teaches children’s literature courses within a literacy program and so her scholarship spans both literature and literacy. She is a founding advisory board member of Research on Diversity in Youth Literature (RDYL) and a member of the Article Award Committee of the Children’s Literature Association.
Dr. Jiménez believes it is her responsibility to provide a variety of avenues and opportunities for teachers to actively engage with children’s and young adult literature, to keep the growing diversity of students in the K-12 classroom in the forefront of her practice, and to critically evaluate the representation of mis- and undervalued communities within literature we teach children. Keeping students interested, engaged, and invested is paramount to learning; as such, modeling the kinds of classroom experiences that are cognitively flexible, vibrant, challenging, and fun is paramount in teacher education.
Her scholarship appears in the Reading Teacher, Journal of Lesbian Studies, and Teaching and Teacher Education. Her graphic novel reviews can be found on her blog, Booktoss.
Recent News
- Leading an Antiracist Classroom
- Books Are Being Banned Across the Country. What’s Really at Stake?
- Literature That Reflects the World
- Laura Jiménez Honored for Literacy Advocacy
- BU Wheelock Announces Fall Faculty Award Winners
In the Media
- Fanfare, Then Fallout at Antiracist Research Center Reveals Other Fractures
- How to Help Kids Become Better Readers
- Want to Find a Banned Book? Brookline Booksmith Has Some on Display
- 75 Years Later, Why Is Goodnight Moon Still Lulling So Many Children to Sleep?
- Books Are Being Banned. What’s Really at Stake?
Education
PhD, Educational Psychology and Educational Technology, with a Language and Literacy option, Michigan State University
BA, Humanities, with an emphasis on creative writing, New College of California
Research
Current Projects
Theorizing a framework to help teachers better understand the multiple dimensions at work in graphic novels.
Researching intersectional representations in graphic novels that feature female protagonists.
Working with a set of middle school teachers to develop lesson plans and other materials they can use in the classroom to leverage student engagement with multi-modal literature.
Selected Publications
Jimenez, L. M. (2014). “So, like, what now?”: Making identity visible for pre-service teachers. Journal of Language and Literacy Education, 10(2), 68-86.
Jiménez, L. M. and McIlhagga, K.K.A., (2013). Books for Young Readers: Strategic Selection of Children’s and Young Adult Literature. Journal of Education, 193(3).
Selected Presentations
Jiménez, L.M. (2014, April). Negotiating Graphic Novels: An Analysis of Expert Readers’ Metacognitive Strategies. An accepted paper presented at the AERA Annual Conference, Philadelphia, PA.
Jiménez, L.M. (2013, December) Inside the Box: Expert Readers Attention Patterns in Graphic Novels. Accepted paper to Literacy Research Association annual conference, Dallas, TX.
Jiménez, L.M. (2013, November) Going graphica: Diverse contexts, shared purposes. National Council of Teachers of English annual conference, Boston, MA.
Jiménez, L.M., Wargo, J., and McIlhagga, K.K.A. . (2013, November) “I Just Can’t Go There”: Examining Preservice teacher responses to LGBTQ Literature. National Council of Teachers of English annual conference, Boston, MA.
Jiménez, L.M. (2013, April) Visual attention mapping: Expert readers journey across the graphic novel page. Roundtable presentation AERA Annual Conference, San Francisco, CA.
Norman, R.R. and Jiménez, L. M. (2011, December). Readers Creating Narratives: Making a Story out of a Picture. Literacy Research Association, Jacksonville, Florida.
Jiménez, L. M. (2011, December). Applying research in the classroom: Beyond a common text. Alternative session presentation, Learning about Literacy in Pre-service and In-service Settings: Research and Developments from the Literacy Achievement Research Center, Literacy Research Association, Jacksonville, Florida.
Jiménez, L. M. (2011, April). Interest Matters: Fourth-Graders Reading Multiple High- and Low-Interest Texts. AERA Annual Meeting, New Orleans, Louisiana.
Jiménez, L. M. (2010, August). Accidentally stereotyping: White readers reading multicultural texts. The American Psychological Association, San Diego, California.
Jiménez, L. M. (2010, April) Comprehending Captain Underpants: A content analysis for good reading in bad books. Bright Ideas Spring Conference on the English Language Arts, East Lansing, Michigan.
Jiménez, L. M. (2010, March). Defending Captain Underpants. Michigan State University Graduate Academic Conference, East Lansing, Michigan.
Jiménez, L. M. (2009, October). Praise and vilification: A Comparative Reading of Ramona the Pest and Junie B. Jones. Midwest Popular Culture Association and Midwest American Culture Association Conference, Detroit, MI.
Jiménez, L. M. (2009, October). A Place for Inappropriate Literature in the Classroom. Midwest Popular Culture Association and Midwest American Culture Association Conference, Detroit, MI.