In 1986, Paul Friedman and Reva Jenkins-Friedman introduced "Fostering Academic Excellence through Honors Programs" by warning readers that "One might assume that the brightest college undergraduates feel well served during their years on campus and that procedures for educating them are common knowledge." The research on the importance of honors…

In the midst of disciplinary and public debates about education at open-access institutions, it's more important than ever that institutions set a clear path for inquiry and scholarship that will meet the needs of the professional community. This essay provides an assessment of the research achievements in two-year college English, particularly…

"Undergraduate research" (UR), the educational and comprehensive curricular movement that involves students as apprentices, collaborators, or independent scholars in critical investigations using fieldwork and discipline-specific methodologies under the sponsorship of faculty mentors, is becoming one of the hallmarks of undergraduate education. In…

This article presents a commentary exchange between authors Laurie Grobman and Richard C. Raymond regarding Raymond's article "Re-placing Lit in Comp II: Pragmatic/Humanistic Benefits." Grobman said that in her brief commentary on Raymond's article, she chooses not to explicitly address his thesis that literature belongs in a research-based…

As a teacher of technical writing, the author applauds the emphasis on the strategies of research and on documented, problem-solving writing across the curriculum and on bringing writing-for-the-workplace into the first-year writing classroom. However, as a teacher of literature, he rejects the notion that responding to literature has no practical…

Before the 2008 presidential election, when an African American friend asked him whether he thought whites would vote for Barack Obama, the author found himself answering by going back to the 17th century, to the invention of the white race as a buffer class to keep those at the bottom divided, and the way that his own white working-class people…

The advantages of introducing detailed scrutiny of metaphor into the college composition, creative writing, and literature curriculum are multiple. A number of researchers think an understanding of metaphor is important for cognitive development. This article establishes reasons for teaching metaphorical thinking and then goes on to argue that…

Given the current emphasis on disciplinary discourses, it's not surprising that so little recent attention has been devoted to identifying conventions that are universal in academic discourse. In this essay, the author argues that there are shared features that unite academic writing, and that by introducing these features to first-year students…

In this article, the author describes a text preview assignment that she gave to her students. Students completing the text preview assignment use multimodal design, introducing classmates to texts in ways that motivate and inform their reading. She discusses using previews to set the stage for reading and discussion and to deepen personal…

Using images in the classroom to help students find meaning in literature is not new. Although composition teachers have long used the visual arts as a source for stimulating student engagement, sometimes the subject matter can fail to achieve the desired result. Too often, students lack the vocabulary or frame of reference to be engaged in a work…

The experience of the combat soldier and the road back to civilian life are recurrent themes in American literature and cinema. Whether the treatment is tragic (Stephen Crane's "Red Badge of Courage", Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried", or Tony Scott's "Blackhawk Down"), satirical (Joseph Heller's "Catch Twenty-Two" and Robert Altman's…

While focusing on Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress," the author came up with the Interpretation Game, a game that had a simple set of rules designed to promote engaged academic discussion and, at the same time, to overcome problems that students have in class discussion about literature. In this article, the author narrates a few instances of…

In addition to such writers as William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullers, and Eudora Welty, a good course in modern Southern fiction should include black writers such as Zora Hurston, Nella Larsen, Jean Toomer, Richard Wright, Maya Angelou, and Alice Walker. (MKM)

Examines community college students' choices of favorite works after a one-year composition and literature course. Finds "Antigone" was the favorite. Claims Greek classical works put students in contact with a distant culture that they find intriguing. Suggests juxtaposing a classical work with one from another time and culture to avoid…

Describes how the author, in his sophomore world literature survey, uses the Homeric epics to introduce students to Valmiki's Indian epic, the "Ramayana." Describes how students look for likenesses between the two works, and for differences in cultural assumptions, content, and style. Notes students come to recognize and appreciate the…