Purpose: This paper aims to draw from work in the field of English that questions the "limits of critique" (Felski, 2015) in order to consider the limits of critical literacy approaches to literature instruction. The study focuses on the relational and affective demands that resistant reading places on readers and texts.…

In the fifteen years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in America, countless literary and artistic works have responded to the incident. This paper examines Amiri Baraka's literary response to this violent event through his most famous poem entitled "Somebody blew up America," which defies American orthodox responses to the attacks. The…

This article reviews Margaret Meek Spencer's body of work in relation to the various policies that she critiqued from the Bullock Report in 1974 to the National Literacy Strategy in 2004. She analysed increasingly conservative moves to promote a dominant, elitist version of school literacy. A Critical Realist perspective aligns with Margaret Meek…

Poetry is about the experience of meaning as well as the meaning of experience. To read a poem is to feel one's way into the inner workings of its language, rather than to peer through that speech to an extractable truth. Most students of literature today have difficulty in grasping the performative or rhetorical dimensions of the texts with which…

Given its stance against organised religion, it is perhaps not surprising that Philip Pullman's award-winning trilogy "His Dark Materials" has, alongside the plaudits and praise, invited controversy and debate. Jacobs ("The Weekly Standard, 2000"), for instance, views the "anti-Christian" theme in Pullman's work as both misleading and dishonest,…

Identifying the specific complexities and historical context of post-Mao Chinese literary women's rhetoric, along with ways they have been misread, the author argues in general that Western feminist critics need to be cautious about applying their concepts to non-Western women's literature. (Contains 7 notes.)

In research with young people about their experiences of rural and urban environments, the authors were struck by how participants in their rural case study used fiction to explain their experiences. The participants' use of fiction lead the authors to an additional rich vein of empirical material and analysis not foreseen at the beginning of the…

Over the last 50 years, certain ideas have become dominant that make learning to read different than it once was than the ideas that children are neurologically "wired" to use language "competently" in certain ways. Noam Chomsky has promoted the idea that there are certain "syntactic structures" hard-wired in the human brain. That view, the author…

Considers how although the influence of "Oprah's Book Club" has been well documented in the popular media, it has received little attention from the academic community. Examines the club as a literacy delivery system, asking how literacy takes its shape from the interests of both Winfrey and her readers. (SG)

Discusses and appraises the work of Nobel Prize winning black author Toni Morrison. Locates thematic and stylistic antecedents in the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Ernest Hemingway. Compares and contrasts Morrison's work with Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" and discusses the critical reception of black authors. (MJP)

Considers the correlation between the role of community in the life of Toni Morrison and her work. Morrison grew up in the close-knit, multiracial, steel mill town of Lorain, Ohio. Her work often evokes a strong sense of place coupled with a need for communal belonging. (MJP)

Claims Reader Response theories form the basis for helping students to enjoy reading and studying the classics. Discusses: (1) asking students to "step into" and explore the world of the text; and (2) helping students "step out" of the world of the text to consider it analytically. Presents drama activities to help students…