Gretchen Hohmeyer Published Book Chapter and Presented her work at Conferences Across the Country

Content

In January of 2024, Language, Literacy, and Culture PhD Candidate Gretchen Hohmeyer published a chapter in Building Civic Futures in K–12 Classrooms Volume 1, edited by Stephanie Robillard, Nicole Mirra and Antero Garcia. This work, “Grappling with the Glossary: Inspiring Civic Literacy Inquiry through Vocabulary Definitions,” analyzes definitions of plantation and enslave(d) in informational text biographies of George Washington. This chapter models possible inquiry strategies and gives strategies for educators to enact similar inquiries in their classrooms on various subjects. When we interrogate and contextualize these words with students, we fight for words and the better futures our students might create with these deeper understandings of history.

From this work, Gretchen was invited to present on a panel at the American Educational Research Association’s annual conference in Denver, Colorado, in April 2025. The panel, “World Building as a Balm for Civic Education: Graduate Student Research Perspectives,” highlighted some graduate work within the volume to bring forward students' work at various levels of PhD studies. 

Gretchen previously presented the work as a hour-long workshop for K-12 teachers at the National Council for History Educators March 2025 conference in St. Louis, MO, and has also been invited to share this work this summer at the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition’s Summer K-12 Teacher's Institute at Yale University.