Women in higher education and the consumer pressures they feel have implications for the quality of an education a woman receives. With college tuition rising, more and more college students are going into deeper financial debt than ever before (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2008). Popular culture influences on the college-going…

Much has been written about evaluating student writing in the composition classroom, but there is still a tendency, in the creative writing classroom, to enact unanswered assumptions about what makes a story or a poem "good." If experimental or postmodern fictional writing is not inherently apolitical, neither is it inherently political,…

Explores questions about the use of history in teaching literature and about the relation between academic reading (with its emphasis on form and the objectification of the reading process) and naive reading (which depends on a psychological identification with a character). Illustrates these issues through a discussion of a feminist reader's…

Proposes that the "Girl's Own Annual 1927" displays a distinctly Victorian construction of womanhood which was at odds with the views of "modern" girls in the 1920s. Examines tensions created by these differing social expectations and focuses on the intergenerational debate about the role of women in work and marriage. Suggests that the magazine's…

Responds to "new scholarship on women" perspective presented in previous article by Greiner, considering perspective particularly salient for student affairs educators who are responsible for conveying to future student affairs practitioners concepts associated with the new scholarship on women. Examines implications of each of six tenets of…

While there has been a great deal of debate about enlarging the canon, less attention has been paid to how students respond to "new" literary figures such as Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich, or to how instructors should incorporate them into an already cramped literature survey course. Instructors must consider some questions that…

Ruminates on and analyzes the author's experiences in teaching the first course in women's literature and feminist criticism at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Asserts that the course brought to consciousness the author's femininity, feminism, and a new understanding of feminist criticism. (MM)

Black feminist novelists continue to take issue with males who try to theorize about their artistic creations. Male attitudes toward black women's novels have been characterized as either apathetic, chauvinistic, or paternalistic. Black feminist writers should heed the call for collective racial progress and collective theoretical progress. The…

An extension of conversations that originally took place at summer institutes devoted to literary theory (sponsored by the National Council of Teachers of English), this book presents diverse critical perspectives on current topics of literature, such as post-structuralism, cultural criticism, reader-response theory, and issues of gender and…

Reflects on a thematic section on "The Status of Women" taught in a freshmen writing class. Discusses the resistance of the author and students and the angered and impassioned writing that arises when texts challenge the ideologies of readers. (MG)

Describes the creation of two anthologies of personal narratives by women. Explains how letters can stimulate students to become active readers using, as an example, letters written by a woman during the Civil War. (SRT)

Responds to Fong and Amatea's (1992) study of work stress exhibited by 141 academically employed women. Notes that, although it was found that single women had significantly higher levels of stress than did married-parent women, there are problems with definitions, sampling, assessment, and statistics that pose threats to both internal and…

To ask students to write and respond to each other's papers is one means of confronting the difficulties posed by radical texts such as Adrienne Rich's "When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Revision," an essay from her collection "On Lies, Secrets, and Silence." When an instructor assigns such a work, he or she places him- or…

Responds to "new scholarship on women" perspective presented in previous article by Greiner. Addresses individually each of six basic tenets involved in new perspective and examines perspective's assertions in terms of both women and men. (NB)

Focuses on the resonance and power of the Madonna, or the Virgin Mary, in literature and culture. Argues that the Madonna represents womanhood and feminism. Describes how the multiple readings of "The Scarlet Letter" charted one professor's changing relationship over 10 years with the Jesuit institution where she taught. (HB)