This paper suggests how the "weird fiction" of H.P. Lovecraft might be mobilised within secondary English classrooms to examine aspects of visual literacy, literary style, narrative form and intertextuality. The approach that is outlined is characterised, after Lovecraft's famous monster, as a "Cthulhuic literacy" and is…

This study explores the impact of reading "Huckleberry Finn" through the lens of critical race theory for both teacher and students in a racially diverse urban high school environment. The teacher/researcher used narrative inquiry and creative non-fiction to examine student language usage, white privilege (including her own), and student…

The aim of this study is to investigate the occurrences of teacher revoicing as a discursive move in English Language Teaching (ELT) literature classes, and to identify its social and academic functions. Teacher revoicing refers to the restatement or incorporation of previous student comments into subsequent teacher statements and/or questions to…

This essay seeks to explore some of the common challenges facing teachers of multicultural American literature, particularly in the general education classroom. More specifically, the author addresses two typical student responses to this body of literature: the tendency to see the literature as entirely foreign and the tendency to universalize or…

Building on the groundbreaking research of the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media & Learning initiative, this book crosses the divide between digital literacies and traditional print culture to engage a generation of students who can read with a book in one hand and a mouse in the other. "Reading in a Participatory Culture" tells the story of an…

This dissertation attempts to explain how nineteenth-century American Spiritualist literature may have made readers feel like they were hearing voices, touching the dead, seeing celestial spaces, or enjoying other sensory proofs of the afterlife. Spiritualists believed that, while all human beings possessed faculties designed to perceive the dead,…

In this article the author tells the story of her experiences with a high school U.S. literature class composed of English language learners (ELLs). The students were from a variety of nations and cultures, spoke several different languages, and had a wide range of English proficiency levels. During their time together, the author and students…

Providing a gateway into the real literature emerging from the Middle East, this book shows teachers how to make the topic authentic, powerful, and relevant. "Teaching the Literature of Today's Middle East": (1) Introduces teachers to this literature and how to teach it; (2) Brings to the reader a tremendous diversity of teachable texts and…

This study focused on the effectiveness of standards-based testing and was designed to determine the relationship of student scores on the locally constructed, standards-based, criterion-referenced test (CRT) for approximately 280 eleventh grade students at a Midwestern, Class III district, operating a Class A high school, and the scores of those…

How can teachers help their students to meet high standards of reading and writing while also preparing them to become thoughtful and productive members of a multicultural society? And why is it important to do this? In her new book, Mary Dilg brings us into her high school English classroom, where we see students reach across the social,…

Within the last decade the phrase "redefinition of identity in the age of globalization" has become yet another rarely elaborated cliche prevalent in literary scholarship that addresses cultural identity politics. In my dissertation I analyze how post-1990s novels in American, Ukrainian, & Polish literatures narrate cultural identity formation,…

The purpose of this ethnographic study was to analyze seventh grade students' and teachers' perceptions of literacy learning in language arts and reading classes. This paper includes a report of a section of this study that focused on discussions about literature. The impact of this diverse school culture on teachers' literacy instruction and…

This article illustrates how literature can bring models to life in undergraduate courses on labor market economics. The authors argue that economics instructors and students can benefit from even small doses of literature. The authors examine excerpts from five American novels: "Sister Carrie" by Theodore Drieser (1900/2005); "The Grapes of…

This article presents an interview with Karl Kroeber that was originally published in "English Department Updates" (Fall 2009), a semiannual alumni newsletter of the Columbia University Department of English & Comparative Literature. In this interview, Kroeber, who taught at Columbia for 57 years, discusses the range of courses he taught during…

Though portrayals of bullying in children's books stretch back to Victorian public school stories, this article sees a new subgenre about bullying in young adult novels emerging in the post-Columbine years. Selected works by Jerry Spinelli, Walter Dean Myers, Jaime Adoff, Carol Plum-Ucci and Rita Williams-Garcia are examined, although the article…