2017 Teaching Literature Book Award Press Release

2020

In the discussion of teaching literature, one controversial issue has been whether professors should remain dispassionately objective to various political and philosophical ideologies in the classroom; or if they should influence their students with their political and philosophical views. On the one hand, some scholars argue that professors of literature cannot remain objective in their classroom because their choices of content, teaching methods, and ways of conducting classes not only reflect their ideologies but also influence their students. On the other hand, some others argue that professors should not influence their students with their political and philosophical views because the literature classroom is not a place for imposing professors' political agendas. Within this context, this paper examines the theories of teaching literature and seeks to answer this issue. Drawing on the works of Himmelfarb, Showalter, and McKeachie, this paper argues that although professors ...

2013

Literature and culture are involved with each other to mould the community and the style of life. Sometimes it is not easy mission to differentiate between literature and culture: who makes the other? Teaching literature requires unique skills that may mingle between two or more techniques or approaches and let them working together to motivate the students to participate in the class and stimulate their critical thinking. This article highlights the scio-cultural and personal experiences in the life of students of literature to encourage them to be creative and effective participants in the class and get them out of the traditional circle of teaching. No one can underestimate the influence of literature with its different areas: novel, short story, drama and poetry in shaping the personality of the students and reconstruct their identity according the cultural and social variables studied through literature courses. Through class room teaching models and different types of examination questions that lead the students to recognize well different types of questions and how to answer such literature questions of examinations. This article proves the significance of using appropriate approaches in teaching literature that assist in reconstructing the identity that matched with the cultural, social, religious values of the community. To depend on one technique or an approach would be ineffective to create a person comprehends literature and life. International Journal on Studies in English Language and Literature (IJSELL) Page | 10

2009

A graduate-level young adult literature course utilizing only graphic novels as the literary texts and within which main characters acted as "case studies" for students experiencing different types of "schooling" situations and adolescent cornerstones. See the accompanying figure to see our goals for tying together varying intriguing elements of literature, literacy, adolescence and school spaces.

2014

The AATE/Interface series comprises a range of books for teachers who are committed to researching their own teaching-teachers who work at the interface between theory and practice. Interface titles all have a practical edge, in that they include ideas developed in the classrooms, for use in the classrooms. Yet they are far more than a set of resources. The primary purpose of the AATE/Interface series is to address significant issues in English curriculum and pedagogy, and as such it represents a substantial contribution to our knowledge as English teachers and literacy educators. To date, the series consists of:

Research in the Teaching of English

Reading and English language arts function as a primary curricular space for "political interventions, struggles over the formation of ideologies and beliefs, identities and capital" (Luke, 2004, p. 86). For example, one urgent political intervention involves racial equity. Numerous literary texts provide opportunities for dialogue about race in our society. Novels like Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, plays like Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, and the work of poets like Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou have been part of high school English curricula in many districts and states for nearly a generation. However, in recent times, even this expanded canon has faced challenges from multiple fronts: the imperatives of neoliberal educational reform; corporate standardized testing that prioritizes "testable" curriculum; learning standards that squeeze out stories in favor of informational texts; and even the demands of critical and radical educators who, in efforts to further decolonize education, call multicultural classics into question, advocating instead for the teaching of literature that is more relevant to contemporary students' lives. When teaching literature for youth and young adults, many educators do so with the intent of creating ethical and literate citizens for a global society. Furthermore, in addition to the diversification of the literature that young people read, as the demographics of our classrooms, schools, and society shift, the application of critical lenses that are multicultural, diverse, decolonizing, and humanizing to all texts for youth and young adults will become even more essential (Botelho & Rudman, 2009). Some students of the social media generation are bringing their own critical lenses into our courses, while others are invested in nostalgia and more traditional ways of reading texts. Increasingly, there have been generational rifts, informed by social media, regarding which texts to use in the curriculum and how to teach them. As instructors of students coming from many different perspectives, it is our task to encourage discursive pluralism, even if this means leaning into pedagogies of discomfort (Boler & Zembylas, 2003). We do this in hopes that creative tension around the selection, evaluation, and teaching of literature will, as Dr. King noted in his famous letter from a Birmingham jail, lead to equity, justice, and social change.

2018

's spatial shifts in The Things They Carried (1998); the verse form of Patricia McCormick's Sold (2006); the temporal shifts in Pam Muñoz Ryan's Echo (2015); the point of view in. E. Lockhart's Fly on the Wall: How One Girl Saw Everything (2006). These books invited me into different places, times, and experiences while I was grieving the loss of my dad. At times, I was escaping. At times, I was comforted. But all the time, my relationship with words was changing. I think this is the psychology of books. Jesus, one of my students (all student names are pseudonyms), sketched panels inspired by G. Neri's Yummy (2010) and devoured Todd Strasser's If I Grow Up (2010) in one day, which inspired him to write an advice piece for his younger brother. Last year, Erin read Marilyn Hilton's Full Cicada Moon (2017) followed by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's We Should All Be Feminist (2015), after which she wrote a TED-like talk about women in science and how she is going to change the world. Books plus readers equal a synergistic effect that defies measurement. When teachers make choice the reading and writing curriculum, students learn about books, writing, and life, as well as the writers and readers we are and are becoming. We read and we write to make sense of our lives, to stretch moments, to imagine conversations, to remember smells and sounds, and sometimes, to reimagine memories with new endings. Writing is a way of bearing witness to our lives, and I think many authors write as a way of witnessing humanity and making accessible to readers the This article is also available in an online format that allows direct access to all links included. We encourage you to access it on the ALAN website at http://www. alan-ya.org/publications/the-alan-review/the-alanreview-columns/.

Routledge Companion to World Literature, 2011

An argument about the pedagogy of world literature based on my experience editing the Norton Anthology of World Literature.

During the 99th Annual Convention of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), November 19-24, 2009, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, awards were presented to authors, researchers, and teachers of English at all levels of education. The list below gives the name of the award, information on the winner, and a hyperlink to more information on the award on NCTE's website.