The current literary tradition observes a canon of hierarchies, a ranking of great writers and genres, that tends to exclude or downgrade women and lower caste males. The response of feminist scholars to this state of affairs falls into two general categories: the first is to find great women authors to fit into the canon on its own terms; the…

Reader-response journals were successfully employed in a "Reading Shakespeare" course for non-majors, making literary tradition accessible to students untrained in classical rhetoric. Students were encouraged to employ any combination of four approaches. First, students were invited to ask questions about the language, sequence of…

A study investigated the effects of writing in a personal and a formal mode on students' understanding of literary text. Formal text-based and personal reader-based writing samples produced by 65 tenth grade students in response to two stories from D. Sohn's "Ten Modern American Short Stories" were analyzed for quality of response,…

There appears to be a problem in the way students in introductory, nonmajor literature courses read poetry that affects the way they write about it. One widely accepted belief among students is that there is a hidden but identifiable meaning in the poem that they are supposed to discover. The problem with this strategy is that most students lack…

Using a college course on William Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" as a case study, this book presents an alternative approach to teaching poetry. Divided into seven sections with 19 chapters, the book describes how students can develop and exercise an historical imagination in the…

Explores briefly the New Criticism that dominated literature instruction until recently and then provides an overview of reader response theory and how response approaches can be used in the classroom to enhance reading. (NKA)

Provides a background of response theory, two Canadian perspectives on response theory, a description of transactional response theory and response-centered curriculum, a discussion of the concepts of participant and spectator roles in literature and of the idea of narration and storying as literature, and a discussion of analysis and criticism.…

Argues that when involving students in activities that require them to explore texts creatively, teachers should also make them inquire into their own reading processes--especially since the reading of literature helps the students to become aware of their own intellectual process if attention is focused on them reflexively. (HOD)

An instructor teaching a 20th-century fiction course was surprised by her students' response to a series of stories she asked them to read about the South. Apparently representing the feelings of many in the class, one student said, "These people are weird. And we don't like them." Though they were used to encountering differences in…

Anne Frank's "The Diary of a Young Girl" is the most widely read text about the Holocaust, yet it represents only one example of the tragic consequences of the Nazi policy to eliminate the Jews of Europe during World War II. This casebook enriches Anne Frank's remarkable personal account with a variety of historical documents that…

The appeal of the novel "The Red Badge of Courage" is both historical and universal. It is historical in its Civil War setting and universal in its relating of the experiences of a young man who is thrust into a situation he does not understand and cannot cope with. This collection of historical documents, collateral readings, and…

This curriculum project, a lesson plan for a thematic literary study of war and its effects, has five goals: (1) to have students read various selections of literature on the theme of war from both the Middle East and the West; (2) to teach students to analyze the differences and similarities between wars fought in the Middle East as compared to…

Discusses the manipulation of various grammatical devices in a Spanish short story. Points out that variations in the use of verbal aspect mark stages in the development of the plot and that modal and lexical choices reinforce its reflexive and repetitive nature. Argues that this story exemplifies creative use of grammatical choices. (13…

Examines how literary criticism exploits and marginalizes the poem as printed artifact. Argues that the author-centered, phonocentric premise of close reading neutralizes spatial dynamics and reduces material identity to the status of a transparent medium. Suggests that appreciation of silent visual form is a convention of post modernist writing.…

Describes a study of seventh graders learning to make and share meaning about literature through "sketch-to-stretch," an interpretive strategy involving the creation of symbols and pictures and other nonlinguistic signs to signify ideas generated through reading. Supports teaching that provides such shared opportunities for students. (TB)