Although a growing body of research and practice in reading strategy instruction in secondary education has identified specific and successful methods for encouraging metacognitive awareness, there is little published research connecting these findings to post-secondary literacy education. Consequently, a gap remains in the conception, and teaching, of "reading and interpretation". The author examines intersections between teaching literary theory and teaching reading strategies as a means to bridge the pedagogical gaps between secondary and postsecondary, as well as between compensatory and mainstream literacy/literature instruction. To illustrate this intersection, the author highlights similarities in the research of reading theorist Kenneth Goodman and literary theorist Wolfgang Iser. The author suggests theory as a means for extending reading strategy instruction into secondary and postsecondary literature curricula and, consequently, bridging the pedagogical and ideological gap between "teaching reading" and "teaching literature" as components of comprehensive literacy curricula.