Options for Teaching
There are 56 products in Options for Teaching
Teaching the African Novel
What is the African novel, and how should it be taught?
The twenty-three essays of this volume address these two questions and in the process convey a wealth of information and ideas about the diverse regions, peoples, nations, languages, and writers of the African continent. Topics include
- Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s favoring of indigenous languages and literary traditions over European
- the special place of Marxism in African letters
- the influence of Frantz Fanon
- women writers and the sub-Saharan novel
- the Maghrebian novel
- the novel and the griot epic in the Sahel
- Islam in the West African novel
- novels in Spanish from Equatorial Guinea
- apartheid and postapartheid fiction
- African writers in the diaspora
- globalization in East African fiction
- teaching Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart to students in different countries
- the Onitsha market romance
The volume editor, Gaurav Desai, writes, “The point of the volume is to encourage a reading of Africa that is sensitive to its history of colonization but at the same time responsive to its present multiracial and multicultural condition.”
Teaching Anglophone Caribbean Literature
This volume in the Options for Teaching series recognizes that the most challenging aspect of introducing students to anglophone Caribbean literature—the sheer variety of intellectual and artistic traditions in Western and non-Western cultures that relate to it—also offers the greatest opportunities to teachers. Courses on anglophone literature in the Caribbean can consider the region’s specific histories and contexts even as they explore common issues: the legacies of slavery, colonialism, and colonial education; nationalism; exile and migration; identity and hybridity; class and racial conflict; gender and sexuality; religion and ritual. While considering how the availability of materials shapes syllabi, this volume recommends print, digital, and visual resources for teaching.
The essays examine a host of topics, including the following:
- the development of multiethnic populations in the Caribbean and the role of various creole languages in the literature
- oral art forms, such as dub poetry and reggae music
- the influence of anglophone literature in the Caribbean on literary movements outside it, such as the Harlem Renaissance and black British writing
- Carnival
- religious rituals and beliefs
- specific genres such as slave narratives and autobiography
- film and drama
- the economics of rum
Many essays list resources for further reading, and the volume concludes with a section of additional teaching resources.
Teaching Anglophone South Asian Women Writers
Global and cosmopolitan since the late nineteenth century, anglophone South Asian women’s writing has flourished in many genres and locations, encompassing diverse works linked by issues of language, geography, history, culture, gender, and literary tradition. Whether writing in the homeland or in the diaspora, authors offer representations of social struggle and inequality while articulating possibilities for resistance.
In this volume experienced instructors attend to the style and aesthetics of the texts as well as provide necessary background for students. Essays address historical and political contexts, including colonialism, partition, migration, ecological concerns, and evolving gender roles, and consider both traditional and contemporary genres such as graphic novels, chick lit, and Instapoetry. Presenting ideas for courses in Asian studies, women’s studies, postcolonial literature, and world literature, this book asks broadly what it means to study anglophone South Asian women’s writing in the United States, in Asia, and around the world.
Teaching Asian North American Texts
From the short stories and journalism of Sui Sin Far to Maxine Hong Kingston's pathbreaking The Woman Warrior to recent popular and critical successes such as Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Sympathizer, Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and Kevin Kwan's Crazy Rich Asians, Asian North American literature and media encompass a long history and a diverse variety of genres and aesthetic approaches.
The essays in this volume provide context for understanding the history of Asian immigrants to the United States and Canada and the experiences of their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Contributors address historical contexts, from the early enactment of Asian exclusion laws to the xenophobia following 9/11, and provide tools for textual analysis. The essays explore conventionally literary texts, genres such as mystery and speculative fiction, historical documents and legal texts, and visual media including films, photography, and graphic novels, emphasizing the ways that creators have crossed boundaries of genre and produced innovative new forms.
Teaching Australian and New Zealand Literature
Australia and New Zealand, united geographically by their location in the South Pacific and linguistically by their English-speaking inhabitants, share the strong bond of hope for cultural diversity and social equality—one often challenged by history, starting with the appropriation of land from their indigenous peoples. This volume explores significant themes and topics in Australian and New Zealand literature. In their introduction, the editors address both the commonalities and differences between the two nations’ literatures by considering literary and historical contexts and by making nuanced connections between the global and the local. Contributors share their experiences teaching literature on the iconic landscape and ecological fragility; stories and perspectives of convicts, migrants, and refugees; and Maori and Aboriginal texts, which add much to the transnational turn.
This volume presents a wide array of writers—such as Patrick White, Janet Frame, Katherine Mansfield, Frank Sargeson, Witi Ihimaera, Christina Stead, Allen Curnow, David Malouf, Les Murray, Nam Le, Miles Franklin, Kim Scott, and Sally Morgan—and offers pedagogical tools for teachers to consider issues that include colonial and racial violence, performance traditions, and the role of language and translation. Concluding with a list of resources, this volume serves to support new and experienced instructors alike.
Teaching British Women Playwrights of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century
The considerable contributions of British women playwrights of the Restoration and eighteenth century, long unavailable, have now inspired numerous anthologies, editions, and modern-day productions. As these works continue to gain recognition and secure a more prominent place in college curriculums, teachers face the challenge of introducing these rediscovered works to students and explaining how they fit into the period’s dramatic tradition. This volume aims to help instructors present a clearer sense of this body of work in the undergraduate and graduate classroom.
The volume opens with background essays on the history of women in theater, including the first appearance of actresses on the stage, the earliest professional women playwrights, and their relationships with critics, audiences, and the theater manager David Garrick. Contributors then focus on individual playwrights, from Aphra Behn and Mary Pix to Hannah Cowley and Elizabeth Inchbald, and explore these women’s political, protofeminist, critical, and moralist agendas. Discussions of Frances Burney and Eliza Haywood, authors of both novels and plays, raise the question of genre. Comparative approaches offer ways of pairing plays in the classroom, following themes such as masquerade and cross-dressing through the works of female dramatists and those of their male counterparts. Other essays present methods for using these writers and their works in British literature and history courses, surveys of drama and theater history, and introductions to women’s literature.
Teaching Central American Literature in a Global Context
Central America has a long history as a site of cultural and political exchange, from Mayan and Nahua trade networks to the effects of Spanish imperialism, capitalism, and globalization. In Teaching Central American Literature in a Global Context, instructors will find practical, interdisciplinary, and innovative pedagogical approaches to the cultures of Central America that are adaptable to various fields of study. The essays map out classroom lessons that encourage students to relate writings and films to their own experience of global interconnectedness and to read critically the history that binds Central America to the United States, Mexico, and the Caribbean. In the context of debates about immigration and a growing Central American presence in the United States, this book provides vital resources about the region’s cultural production and covers trends in Central American literary studies including Mayan and other Indigenous literatures, modernismo, Jewish and Afro-descendant literatures, nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, and contemporary texts and films.
Teaching Children’s Literature
The thirteen essays that make up the first part of Teaching Children’s Literature highlight issues of canon, pedagogy, genre, and period. In part 2, fifteen course descriptions by experienced teachers offer a wealth of information on undergraduate courses, specific approaches to children’s literature, and workshops and graduate-level seminars. The remaining parts of the volume examine selected advanced programs of study throughout the United States and supply a variety of sources, including an extensive bibliography. The book concludes with a lively dialogue among Maurice Sendak, Dr. Seuss, and the volume editor.
Teaching Comedy
From Shakespeare to The Simpsons, comedy has long provided both entertainment and social commentary. It may critique cultural values, undermine authority, satirize sacred beliefs, and make room for the marginalized to approach the center. Comedy can be challenging to teach, but in the classroom it can help students connect with one another, develop critical thinking skills, and engage with important issues.
The essays in this volume address a rich variety of texts spanning film, television, stand-up, cartoons, and memes as well as conventional literary works from different places and times. Contributors offer theoretical foundations and practical methods for a broad range of courses, including guidance on contextualizing the humor of historical works and on navigating the ways that comedy can both subvert and reinforce stereotypes. Finally, the volume argues for the value of comedy in difficult times, as a way to create community and meaning.
Teaching Contemporary Theory to Undergraduates
Teaching Contemporary Theory to Undergraduates shows readers how theory can, in the words of William E. Cain, enable teachers and students “to illuminate anew the structure of texts, to write literary and cultural history with greater richness and depth, and to understand social and institutional relations more intricately.”
In twenty-one refreshingly readable essays, contributors discuss their techniques for introducing theory to students in classes on a range of levels. They describe how they overcame initial apprehensions about teaching theory to undergraduates and enumerate the ways that theory enriched both their and their students’ experiences. The theoretical methodologies covered include feminism, poststructuralism, deconstruction, African American criticism, new historicism, cultural studies, and film theory.
Intended for teachers who already use theory in their courses as well as for those who are teaching theory for the first time, the volume offers history, analysis, and practical advice.
