The author spent significant time over the past year developing a course that would examine sports themes and analyze the literary techniques authors, directors, and others employ when converting this seemingly facile facet of contemporary life into art. He worked his way through what are at times perfunctory preparatory tasks with an uncommon…

Explains why courses on adolescent and children's literature are valuable additions to the college English curriculum. Outlines the content for both courses offered at Youngstown State University in Ohio. (MM)

Describes the author's use of John Milton's "Paradise Lost" in a college freshman composition course. Argues that focusing on significant works of imaginative literature can revitalize and reinvigorate freshman writing courses. (MM)

Shows how teachers can increase students' general appreciation of literature and improve students' writing skills by studying literature with legal issues and images of the law. Cites several examples of such literature, including Geoffrey Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," William Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure," and Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's…

Discusses how the nonfiction genre of natural history literature (particularly by women writers) provides a valuable addition to the college English curriculum. (MM)

Describes how "jigsawing," a teaching method using two types of group inquiry in sequence, is uniquely suited to the classroom analysis of literature with multiple perspectives. Outlines the procedure with examples from lessons on Judith Guest's "Ordinary People." (MM)

Argues that Jewish literature and the Jewish perspective should be given some representation in college world literature courses. (MM)

Argues that it is not enough to teach students the techniques of interpreting literature, but that it is necessary to demand that students develop cultural literacy. States that college teachers need to show students that they too read literature for its bearing on the common life. (MM)

Uses the writing of women authors to reflect on the value of women's domestic world. Suggests that far from being inferior, women's traditional perspective is a source of much needed humanism for both men and women. (MM)

Relates a literature class's analysis of a work. Notes student discovery that meaning in a fantasy work resided in a matrix of the author's structuring of the text, the reader's re-creation of that structure internally, and the subsequent development of agreed upon meaning within the group. (MM)

Reviews current department efforts to emphasize the service functions of English. Suggests that the search for students must be tempered with the demand for quality in instruction and performance, whether the pursuit be of literacy or of literature. (MM)

Presents findings of a survey of undergraduate reading preferences. Notes that only female science and nonscience majors read significant amounts of writing by women and that much of this reading is done outside of class. (MM)

Presents Gregory Corso's poem, "Poets Hitchhiking on the Highway," as an intellectually profitable assignment graphically illustrating the metonymic and metaphoric modes. (MM)

Describes students' assumptions about the nature of literature and presents teaching strategies to counter these assumptions and engage students in creative and analytical writing appropriate to a range of literature courses. (MM)

Relates one teacher's experiences while teaching literature and composition to prison inmates. (HOD)