In the light of recent attempts to construct 'literature pedagogy' for cosmopolitan, 'globalizing', political ends, this article provides here some stark reminders about the educational, not to say political, risks of confining the aims and purposes of literature to the aims and purposes of politics, or using a literary-political aesthetic as…

Culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris, 2012) has emerged as an essential way to value the evolution of culture among diverse learners. Discussions around teaching in a culturally sustaining manner in the English language arts classroom, specifically when teaching literary analysis, often address the need to incorporate multicultural literature so…

Help students to explore the intertextuality of literature and to think more deeply and compassionately about the world. This book shows high school teachers and college instructors how to foreground a work's cultural context, recognizing that every culture has its own narrative tradition of oral and written classics that inform its literature.…

Recent debates among scholars in Literature education have led to polarizing views about the aims of the subject. The debate reignites ancient quarrels about the aesthetic and political values of literary study and relatedly, the different pedagogical approaches to teaching. In the first part of this paper, I explore the aesthetic-political divide…

This article examines the educational work towards tolerance by analyzing two opposed social views in children's stories: "The ugly duckling" by H.C. Andersen and "Raspberry Juice" by H. Shenav. "The ugly duckling" depicts a social state based on the evolutional ladder, where the white entity is at the top, and the black one is at the bottom,…

Author Sue Monk Kidd, who is white, employs stereotypes of African Americans and problematically appropriates features of black writing in her novel "The Secret Life of Bees." Nevertheless, this book is worth teaching, not only because it has acquired much cultural capital but also because it offers students a way to examine relationships between…

We explore the nature of knowledge and education and how Islamic traditions have shaped understanding of these matters. We contrast this with contemporary images of "Taliban-like" schools full of rote repetition and harsh, authoritarian literalism. Some of the history of Islamic scholarship venerates a much more generous relationship to…

Language arts are at the forefront of education these days. Instructors at all levels are being encouraged to teach writing in their courses, even if those courses cover subjects other than English. Literature instructors have long used fiction to teach composition. But because the novel reflects a broad range of human experiences and historical…

Reviews the books ETHNIC CHANGE, AMERICA WITHOUT ETHNICITY, ETHNIC IDENTITY: STRATEGIES OF DIVERSITY, and THE ETHNIC PHENOMENON. Evaluates their contributions to the quest for clarity and fresh perspectives on ethnicity. Concludes that much is to be gained by scholars who realize that ethnicity is an issue that transcends both disciplinary and…

Argues that the combined lessons of critical theory, classroom practice, and contemporary history dictate not only a revision of the curriculum and pedagogy of "American" literature courses, but a forceful uprooting of the conceptual model defining the field itself. Suggests the construction of a multicultural and dialogical paradigm for…

Argues that literary theory is a fact of professional life in English departments and that differences of intellectual concern will always remain. Discusses what should be the object of critical analysis, and questions whether answering such a question is even possible. (HB)

The authors provide a multicultural feminist analysis of picture books for children by looking at the illustrations and listening carefully to themes of oppression and resistance in 33 picture books that focus on characters that are on the powerless side of some powerless/powerful social dichotomy. The authors find many images that either depict…

Examines the child protagonists of "The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm" as they move within their own culture. Concludes that what could be a novel of understanding and acceptance turns out to be a terrific adventure story, but rather typical in that any culture that is not the protagonist's own is dangerous and inferior. (SG)

This opening address at the annual conference of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS) introduces a community of ethnic scholars who make a considerable contribution to American Literature. The focus of the conference and the organization is to show that American literature does not have to be…

In 1993, "Applied Linguistics" published an issue on theory construction in second-language acquisition, including papers by Beretta and Crookes, Gregg, and Long. The article argues that these papers and the rationalist understanding of scientific research exemplified in them, have become the object of misguided critiques, including Block (1996).…