Why do educators teach literature? The author thinks they can hear the answer in the voice of Huckleberry Finn and David Copperfield and Holden Caulfield and the omniscient narrator in "Beloved." It's the wonderful sound of those words, the gorgeous flow of those well-crafted sentences, and the marvelous way Twain and Dickens and Morrison and…

Bullying remains a wretched, pervasive problem in the society, especially for teenagers. Bullying is commonly defined as negative acts that occur repeatedly and involve an imbalance of power (Olweus 413); since this widely accepted definition excludes one-time acts of cruelty, the authors prefer to use the word "conflict" in their conversations…

Literary criticism in the form of the so-called book report, may, therefore, wrote Stephen Bloore in 1934, "be a most valuable aid to independent thought if it is not used merely to check up on the books supposedly read by a student". For a century, "English Journal" has been a map and a narrative of the discourse about teaching ELA as well as the…

In this article, the author focuses on her experiences with genre analysis. This is not a new idea or assignment. But gearing the analysis specifically toward thinking about purpose significantly narrows the focus of a typical "here's what this genre is and who uses it" essay. Genre analysis asks students to think in-depth about one particular…

Street fiction is a popular new genre of novels that focus on contemporary urban life. Marc Lamont Hill, Biany Perez, and Decoteau J. Irby introduce this genre, describing what it is, who writes it, and who reads it. They also offer critiques of the genre and strategies for linking street fiction to the English classroom. (Contains 1 note.)