Read and admired throughout the world, Shakespeare's plays and poetry have been the guiding light of statesmen, of authors, and of artists. His writings are the indispensable foundation for understanding English literature, language, and rhetoric. Yet less than 8% of the nation's top universities require English majors to take even a single course…

Rhetorically challenging literature can be made to serve the purposes of first-year composition in new ways. Excerpts from the novels of Marcel Proust that focus on the author's characteristic scrutinizing, reflexive attention to style work successfully as models for assisting writers in acquiring the habits of reading and re-reading, and of…

Advocates teaching lesser known plays from different historical periods and teaching popular contemporary plays in addition to the plays traditionally included in drama anthologies. (MKM)

Offers suggestions for seeking out neglected writers from all literary periods and advocates teaching the works of these writers along with the works of accepted great writers. (MKM)

Discusses the career and achievement of the British writer Matthew Arnold. Focuses on Arnold's status as a symbol of conservatism in the current culture wars. Argues for a recuperation of a true representation of Arnold's achievement. Illustrates the dangers of misrepresenting major literary figures invoked in cultural disputes. (HB)

Discusses the historical and current position of writers in the university. States that, as a higher proportion of writers learn their craft and make their living in the university, it is inevitable that U.S. literature will embody a narrower range of settings, occupations, and social classes. (PRA)

Considers the role of the visiting writer in encouraging and supplying useful writing advice to student writers. Proposes some principles for the art of writing that writers offer composition students, especially related to the art of writing over its craft. (HB)

Questions the death of the author and of authority and, by implication, the theoretical erasure of the authority that constitutes the student writers that teachers face in the classroom everyday. Proposes a dialogic model of authority that infuses authority with an "ethic of care." (HB)

Discusses the poststructural impulse to displace authority over texts and their meanings from the author. Questions whether poststructuralists practice an anti-intentionalist impersonalism regarding their own writings. Describes the reactions of Jacques Derrida to readings of his own work by other critics. (HB)

Discusses the findings of an extensive research study of the authors and writing most frequently assigned in college-level English survey courses. Finds that similar historical periods and authors are considered in the survey courses offered by college and university English departments. Finds that traditional authors continue to be taught in…

Provides a complete text of David Bartholomae's speech on the debate with compositionist Peter Elbow regarding the pros and cons of teaching either academic discourse or personal writing modes to undergraduates. (HB)

Provides a complete text of Peter Elbow's speech on the debate with compositionist David Bartholomae regarding the pros and cons of teaching either academic discourse or personal writing modes to undergraduates. (HB)

Suggests women writers as alternatives to traditionally taught male writers, identifies women writers as representatives of parallel tradition and genres not usually studied in a survey, and discusses some of the best feminist scholarship and criticism. (MM)

Describes the difficulties of defining basic writers and basic writing. Argues that Michel Foucault's concept of the "author function" is applicable to academic and literary discourse and shows how it serves to organize curriculum and define the object of study in English departments. (HB)

As Latin American literature progressively enters into the English curriculum, two writers deserve special commentary for their representative contribution to the literary world. Through their works, the Columbian author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and the Peruvian author, Mario Vargas Llosa clearly convey the Latin American writer's desire to be…