Using the framework of Rita Felski in her 2015 book "The Limits of Critique," this essay offers a postcritical analysis of William Carlos Williams' 1915 poem "The Young Housewife." Its intention is to show how Williams' poem or any poem can be approached through a variety of critical lenses, but that these may get in the way of…

Beginning with the question of the usefulness of Rousseau's "Émile" for contemporary education, this article explores the fantasy held by educational thinkers and practitioners regarding Rousseau's concept of Natural Education. Using French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan's theory of fantasy, which is based on a relationship between the…

Reading is an integral part of scholarly practice, though we do not often discuss how our approaches to reading differ, and how these approaches may ultimately make interpretive impact on our research. This essay considers approaches to reading in light of the concepts of proximity and orientation. Though formal "close reading" is a…

This article discusses and elaborates on the insights gained from the teaching of a course in "Environment, Literature and Culture" at a university in the north of Thailand. The course was designed as an invitation to English major students to develop sustain-abilities (vulner-abilities, attend-abilities, and response-abilities). In an…

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…

This article discusses the relevance and construction of the concept of 'literariness' within pedagogy for an effective engagement with works of literature and literary theory. By juxtaposing Mikhail Bakhtin's dialogic mode of understanding, with Bhartrhari's doctrine of the "dhvani" and the "sphota," this article attempts to…

Bringing real-life cases to the educational environment and presenting them to students is one of the main goals of psychology. However, this is unfortunately not as easy as it is said, both ethically and practically. Since the educational materials to be offered to students on this subject are insufficient, academics and lecturers recommend that…

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…

Purpose: This study aims to explore the authentic questioning practices of English Language Arts teachers. Although language arts (LA) education emphasizes the value of authentic questions in discussions about literature, teachers still tend to ask known-answer questions that guide students toward one literary interpretation. However, outside…

This case study shares the experiences of 24 students in an urban high school in the U.S. Midwest who spent 6 weeks learning about, and applying tenets of, critical race theory (CRT) to their analysis of the canonical "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." Students created a visual essay reflecting their understanding of CRT in the novel…

Today, teaching literature has an established place within the school and university curricula in Western and East Asian countries. This seems so natural that we take the educational role of literature for granted. However, history teaches us that elevating literature to an academic subject required a defense of literature against the critical…

The article analyses in detail two lessons that were part of a larger research project on English teaching in Canada, England and Scotland. It considers whether the two English lessons are by their nature both dialogic and formative in practice. The research undertaken was carried out using arts-based criticism. It found that Eaglestone's notion…

Purpose: This paper aims to examine how evangelical teachers' religious identities influence their interpretation and teaching of texts in high school English Language Arts classrooms. Further, this paper examines how evangelical teachers make choices about how to balance the demands of their religious and teacher identities as they interact with…

In this study, we explore discussions of literature in a high school English Language Arts (ELA) classroom, examining how students read rhetorically. Reading rhetorically considers the ethical effects of narrative content as it is mediated through character dialogue and action, narrator discourse, and the author's organization: a narrative as a…

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…