Contrasts the complaints of a class of gifted students about Dickens' novel "A Tale of Two Cities" with their teacher's discomfort at sitting through the long and tedious movie "Brazil." (NKA)

This unit seeks to teach Shakespeare's "Hamlet" in a way that the students will have a full understanding of the play. The unit's introduction is designed to get the students acquainted with Shakespeare's language, to motivate them to read the play, and to make them feel confident about approaching the play. Lessons in the unit are fun,…

A founding co-editor of Bryn Mawr Classical Review (BMCR) examines the costs and benefits of networked electronic communication for scholars. Some of the tools that have the potential to change the way scholars work include: online reference; online productivity information; e-mail as a productivity tool; and formal online publishing endeavors. A…

The use of three new handbooks to study Russian classics in advanced college Russian classes is described. The handbooks are an effort to help students with vocabulary, cultural information, and idioms found in the original texts. (MSE)

Teachers often insist that certain "great books" must be taught, although they can seldom agree on a list of titles. But restricting students' reading to the classics only produces boredom. Students deserve widely-read literature teachers, who can bring them knowledge of and excitement about all kinds of literature. (SJL)

Describes an individualized instructional unit on Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" that focused on students' responses to the novel's plot, character, theme, and structure. Reports that students wrote good quality essays, performed well on a test of the novel, and engaged in serious discussion of the novel during student…

Shows how to help students fill in textual "gaps" to interact more fully with contemporary texts, classics, and myths. Presents examples of this approach for studying (1) Shakespeare's "Hamlet" with Tom Stoppard's "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead"; and (2) George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion" with the…

A national survey revealed that college English professors still rely heavily on traditional literary texts but are adding new books, asking new questions, and using new teaching approaches. A majority of respondents said a goal was to help students understand the influence of race, class, and gender in literature. (MSE)

Describes training strategies developed to introduce Web-based instructional projects to an assistant professor of drama and a senior professor of classics, both of whom had limited computer skills but were interested in including multimedia technology and the Web in their courses. Suggestions for incorporating these ideas into current training…

The debate over teaching the "canon," a collection of great books authored by Homer, Plato, Shakespeare, Kant, Darwin, and others that has traditionally represented the Western intellectual tradition, as a core of the college curriculum, is examined. Discussion begins with a description of how the canon has been taught from ancient…

A study compared the results of a 1986 survey on the opinions of preservice teachers with those of a survey conducted in 1984 by William Bennett (at that time chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities). Bennett's survey asked respondents to list 30 works that students should be expected to read before high school graduation.…

The articles in this journal issue suggest techniques for classroom use of literature that has "withstood the test of time." The titles of the articles and their authors are as follows: (1) "The Storytelling Connection for the Classics" (Mary Ellen Martin); (2) "Elizabeth Bennet: A Liberated Woman" (Geneva Marking);…

Intended for teachers of grades 4-8, this book presents a flexible format for reading, designed to be used with students who have different backgrounds and experiences with reading literature. The book's first 3 sections, "Character,""Setting," and "Plot," proceed step-by-step through the recognition of these basic…

This teacher's guide for public television's 6-part adaptation of George Eliot's "Middlemarch" provides information that will enrich students' viewing of the series. The guide includes a wide range of activities to help students further explore the novel's universal themes. The guide suggests that students read the informational…

This study guide discusses the world premiere of two made-for-television movies of classics of English literature: "The Hound of the Baskervilles" and "Hamlet." The guide first provides a synopsis of the story of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" and gives a brief biography of the author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It…