Examines the interpretive beliefs, processes, and instructional experiences of eight ninth grade students, and the relationships among them that form their critical interpretive stances toward literary works. Reveals that students reason about literary works at an interpretive level, with largely textual inferences focusing on characters and…

Uses an informal survey to explore students' attitudes toward the study of English and literature. Concludes that an introductory course should keep literature in touch with the history of ideas, allow for the systematic take-up of critical issues and problems, and enable students to relate their reading to particular philosophical, moral, and…

Discusses the "crisis in representation" experienced in the humanities since the 1960s. Considers the relationship of academic knowledge to political power in terms of an ongoing struggle for representation. Recognizes higher education as a leading agent in redistributing access to representation in the public sphere. (HB)

Discusses the novel "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley and how it might be used in secondary English classes as a means of investigating contemporary issues of technology and morality. Describes how one teacher asked students to identify a social issue from the novel and investigate it in today's news media. (HB)

Presents the three different types of teachers that play an important role in Cynthia Voigt's novel, "Dicey's Song." Analyzes the three models of teaching behavior represented in the novel. Relates these models to Carol Pearson's psychological archetypes for heroic growth. (HB)

Proposes that responsible reading and literary criticism must begin with an understanding that communicating with language--and particularly with the language found in literary text--poses many challenges, and that the art of literary interpretation must always be informed with a deep respect for the complexities posed by language, culture, and…

Focuses on the paradoxical role played by exclusion in any attempt to create an inclusive space. Explores the nature of inclusion/exclusion dynamic in English Studies in general and more specifically in classrooms that use critical theory to address the need for social change. Concludes that the principle of exclusion is entangled with efforts at…

Discusses how to deal with "The Lord of the Rings" by J. R. R. Tolkien as a centerpiece for a course in science-fiction and fantasy literature. (RB)

Describes a method of teaching form in literature by having students write about the point of view, the setting, or the person in a story or poem.

The approximately 100 entries in this annotated bibliography comprise a list of reference sources useful for the study of United States literature, excluding drama and theatre. The entries are arranged according to the following categories: (1) guides; (2) literary handbooks, encyclopaedias, and dictionaries; (3) biographical sources; (4) indexes…

There are rich teaching possibilities in the comparative study of prose and film versions of the same story. (JH)

Although college teachers of English face a very real economic crisis, the current intellectual crisis is even more significant. The first failure of this intellectual crisis involves what we have done: we have replaced true scholarship with the new interpretation of texts, mistakenly believing that we need not know any outside knowledge of a…

When a woman is widowed, she automatically becomes a member of a community of isolated women who lack social status, economic power, and visibility in literature and the mass media. Literature by and about widows indicates four major reasons for this situation: there is no general recognition of the distinctive problems widows must face; except in…

Paper presented at Annual Convention of National Council of Teachers of English (Milwaukee, Wis., November 28-30, 1968).