Faculty Directory
Arianna Banack, Ph.D.
Banack holds a bachelor鈥檚 and master鈥檚 degree from the University of Connecticut and a Ph.D. in literacy studies from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She began her teaching career in East Hartford, Connecticut, where she taught ninth-grade English language arts. At the 黑料爆料, Banack teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in English teaching methods, specializing in the integration of contemporary literature to engage young readers. Her courses emphasize providing future educators with practical tools and strategies to meet the diverse needs of their students.
Her research focuses on integrating contemporary youth literature to engage young readers. Through her research, she aims to support English teachers integrate youth literature through a variety of strategies such as adding excerpts, planning literature circles, or utilizing youth literature as whole class novels. Her research also emphasizes university partnerships through cross university and secondary collaborations. An emerging research area is surveying undergraduate students about the texts they read in high school and their engagement with those texts.
Arianna aims to develop partnerships between USF and secondary ELA teachers to integrate youth literature in the secondary classroom in pragmatic and meaningful ways. She collaborates with teachers across the country through research projects and practitioner partnerships in ways that support secondary teacher's and student's ever evolving needs. She would love to collaborate with more currently practicing teachers to provide resources and support as they update their curriculum.
She currently serves as a column editor for 鈥淭elescopes: Possibilities in YAL鈥� and previously completed a five-year term as co-editor of . In addition, she is an elected board member of , with her current term concluding in 2025.
