Christian Ehret
Associate Professor
Ph.D. Vanderbilt University, Learning, Teaching, and Diversity, with specialization in Language, Literacy, and Culture
M.Ed. University of Georgia, English Education
B.A. (Hons) University of Georgia, majors in English and Comparative Literature
- Literacy
- Writing
- Digital media and learning
- Affect and social theory
Professor Ehret develops social theory toward more affective, material, and embodied understandings of literacy and learning with digital media. He develops social theory from an ecological perspective, which stresses the importance of concepts like affect, culture, social organization, distribution, and identity to how people grow and develop. Professor Ehret's research therefore attends to the multiple contexts that enable and constrain learning and development, and to the anthropological design of opportunities to learn in communities where such opportunities have been institutionally and systematically constrained. These projects have included funded work alongside communities and in contexts that include: children’s hospitals, public schools, public libraries, and currently a SSHRC funded project on learning in the context of Esports, or competitive videogaming.
“Designing equitable urban learning ecologies for prosocial development with digital media.” Low, B. co-applicant. Halverson, E., Hollett, T., Rowsell, J., Squire, K., academic collaborators. Funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Partnership Development Grant. 2020-2023
“Génerer et soutenir des opportunités pour apprendre de l’ingéniosité de jeunes des Premières nations avec les médias numériques dans leur vie quotidienne.” / “Generating and sustaining opportunities to learn with digital media from the everyday lives of First Nations youth.” Funded by the Fonds de recherche du Québec, Société et culture. 2019-2022
Books
Leander, K.M. & Ehret, C. (Eds.). (2019). Affect in literacy teaching and learning: Pedagogies, politics, and coming to know. New York, NY: Routledge.
Journal editing and editorials
Ehret, C. & Rowsell, J. (Eds.) (2021). Literacy, affect, and uncontrollability. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(2), 197-372.
- Editorial: Ehret, C. & Rowsell, J. (2021). Literacy, affect, and uncontrollability. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(2), 201-206.
Hollett, T. & Ehret, C. (Eds.) (2019). Affective potentials in informal, technology-enhanced learning settings. British Journal of Educational Technology, 50(4), 1529-1614.
- Editorial: Hollett, T. & Ehret, C. (2019). Affective potentials in informal technology‐enhanced learning settings. British Journal of Educational Technology, 50(4), 1529-1531.
Articles in refereed journals
*student co-author
Ehret, C. & *Čiklovan, L. (2020). How speculative designs produce new potentials for education research in digital culture. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 41(5), 708-722.
Ehret, C., *Ehret, L., Low, B. & *Čiklovan, L. (2019). Immediations and rhythms of speculative design: Implications for value in design-based research. British Journal of Educational Technology, 50(4), 1603-1614.
Hollett, T. & Ehret, C. (2019). The idiocultural sensibilities of spothunting in action sports culture: Affect, desire, change. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 26(2), 121-137.
Ehret, C. (2019). Proliterate rhythms of screen time and homework. The Reading Teacher, 74(2), 533-538.
Ehret, C., *Boegel, J., & *Manuel-Nekouei, R. (2018). The role of affect in adolescents’ online literacies: Participatory pressures in BookTube culture. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 62(2), 151-161.
Ehret, C. (2018). Moments of teaching and learning in a children’s hospital: Affects, textures, and temporalities. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 49(1), 52-71.
Leander, K.M, Aziz, S., Botzakis, S., Ehret, C., Landry, D., & Rowsell, J. (2017). Readings and experiences of multimodality. Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, 66(1), 95–116.
Hollett, T. & Ehret, C. (2017). Civic rhythms in a media-rich, informal learning program. Learning, Media and Technology, 42(4), 483-499.
Ehret, C., Hollett, T., & Jocius, R. (2016). The matter of new media making: An intra-action analysis of adolescents making a digital book trailer. Journal of Literacy Research, 48(3), 346-377.
Ehret, C. & Hollett, T. (2016). Affective dimensions of participatory design research in informal learning environments: Placemaking, belonging, and correspondence. Cognition and Instruction, 34(3), 250-258.
Hollett, T. & Ehret, C. (2015). Bean’s World: (Mine)crafting affective atmospheres for gameplay, learning and care in a children’s hospital. New Media & Society, 17(11), 1849-1866.
Ehret, C. & Hollett, T. (2014). Embodied composition in real virtualities: Adolescents' literacy practices and felt experiences moving with digital, mobile devices in school. Research in the Teaching of English, 48(4), 428-452.
Ehret, C. & Hollett, T. (2013). (Re)placing school: Fifth-graders’ counter-mobilities while composing with mobile devices in a digital media enrichment class. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 57(2), 110-119.
Book chapters and other academic publications
Ehret, C., Johnston, K, Rowsell, J. (2021). Why affect theory is not critical theory: Power and politics in poststructural literacy research. In J.Z. Pandya, R.A. Mora, J. Alford, N.A. Golden & R.S. deRoock (Eds.), The Critical Literacies Handbook. New York, NY: Routledge.
Ehret, C. (2019). Propositions from affect theory for feeling literacy through the event. In D.E. Alvermann, N.J. Unrau, M. Sailors (Eds). Theoretical Models and Processes of Literacy (7th Edition) (pp. 563-581). New York, NY: Routledge.
Ehret, C. & * D'Amico, D. (2019). Encountering writing during and after the Holocaust: Why a more human literacy studies must be posthuman. In K.M. Leander & C. Ehret (Eds.), Affect in literacy teaching and learning: Pedagogies, politics, and coming to know. New York, NY: Routledge.
Hollet, T. & Ehret, C. (2017). Relational methodologies for mobile literacies: Intra-action, atmosphere, and rhythm. In C. Burnett, G. Merchant, A. Simpson & M. Walsh (Eds.), The Case of the iPad: Mobile Literacies in Education (pp. 227-244). London: Springer.
Ehret, C. (2017). Children’s hospitals. In K. Peppler (Ed.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Out-of-School Learning (pp. 84-85). Thousand Oaks CA: SAGE.
Ehret, C. (2016). Mapping place, affect, and futures in an adolescent’s new media making: Schizoanalytic cartographies. In R. Parry, C. Burnett, & G. Merchant (Eds.), Literacy, Media, Technology: Past, Present and Future (pp. 93-108). London: Bloomsbury.
Ehret, C. (2016). Moving off-screen: Pathways for understanding an adolescent’s embodied experience of new media making. In G. Enriquez, E. Johnson, S. Kontovourki, & C. Mallozzi (Eds.), Literacies, Learning, and the Body: Bringing Research and Theory into Pedagogical Practice (pp. 136-152). New York, NY: Routledge.
2016: Promising Researcher Award, National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)
2014-2015: Peabody Pre-faculty Fellow, Vanderbilt University
