Author Toni Morrison used fictional narratives to make readers uncomfortably aware of their collective role in perpetuating the culture of poverty and pitying its victims. In her first novel, "The Bluest Eye," she focused on the most vulnerable member of society -- a child -- to depict the consequences of extreme social isolation and…

Teaching and reading literature are commonly viewed as contributing to the cultivation of empathy. This article presents critical and pedagogical approaches to test this view and suggests a distinction between low-level, simple empathy inspired by the reading and teaching of "The Tortilla Curtain" and a more complex, self-critical…

The dialogic nature of human beings has widely been argued in the scientific literature. Language, as a cultural and psychological tool, has the potential to construct social meanings, including those related to love, attraction and desire. In these emotional dimensions of the self, people use 'the language of desire', defined as the capacity of…

This article describes a recent implementation of digital literacies in which high school literature students engaged in literary analysis of a novel using the video game Minecraft. Students who had previously expressed reluctance with reading and dissatisfaction with school experiences used their gaming skills to re-create scenes, respond to…

This article describes a self-study pursuant to a clash between a lecturer and a student concerning the teaching of literature in a politically fraught context. The learning group is composed of Arab and Jewish teachers at a college in northern Israel. The work read by the group expresses a Palestinian perspective. The incident, discussed with…

This paper argues that narratives, specifically literature and memoir, offer a way to build empathy and understanding by moving readers to deeper levels of text interpretation and critique. The paper examines a new literacy framework, Life Histories, that uses talk, collaboration, writing, and performance to understand the complex relationships…

Prior to her joining the California Writing Project's (WP) Improving Students' Academic Writing (ISA) program, the author relates how she used to get frustrated when she read her students' essays. As a result of her new understanding gained from her participation at ISA, the author boldly banished traditional literary analysis papers that asked…

A recounting of how the author's graduate training failed with everything he considered important. (JH)

Successful fantasies may either force us to look freshly at everyday things or expand our capacity to believe.

Discusses feminist literary theory and describes challenges the experience of feminist literary theory presented to high school English students and their teacher. Students found that feminist theory threatened heterosexuality, agency, the good girl image, and the feminist haven. Makes recommendations to teachers who choose to utilize feminist…

Recently, transactional reader response theory has been criticized for providing an inadequate theoretical guide for the study of multicultural literature. Some scholars argue that Rosenblatt assumes the reader and her response to literature are ideologically innocent and the continuum of aesthetic and efferent stance does not encompass critical…

Suggests that great literature is endangered by the critical dissections which graduate schools perform upon it and that a return to the study of literature for its own sake is essential. (TO)

This article describes a reading/writing strategy known as the "T Analysis" that encourages students to engage literary texts intensely without having to demonstrate that engagement with a formal paper. The "T Analysis" is named for a large "T" configuration that will appear on a student's paper when the exercise is completed. The "T" helps…

A replication of I. A. Richards' study of students' reactions to thirteen poems in the 1920s. (DD)

A study of students' reactions to four of the thirteen poems used in I. A. Richards' study in the 1920s. (DD)