Discusses Eric Lomax's autobiographical book "The Railway Man." Notes how it chronicles his boyhood obsession with train-spotting and the subsequent ways in which his life has been freaked by railway co-incidences. Describes how the author invited Eric Lomax to come and discuss this work with his students. (SG)

Discusses the use of reading frames in teaching "The Waste Land" in India. Suggests that there is nothing more exciting in the classroom than a reading frame that affords correlated, intertextual recognitions. (RS)

Presents and discusses three sets of texts that are excerpted from essays written for a second-semester, first-year composition course at a regional public university. Considers the relationship of the linguistic and sociolinguistic markedness of texts. Explores what the sociolinguistic markedness should be in the writing classroom given the…

Describes how two teachers have translated scholarship in the fields of ritual and performance studies into classroom practices (for the college literature course) that engage students in ritual enactment of imaginative literature and in communal making of meaning. (SR)

Discusses reader-response theories and response-centered literature instruction. Outlines fundamental problems that impede the transfer of authority from teacher to community to reader, and offers suggestions for their correction. (PRA)

Describes the work of the Clothesline Project, which both commemorates and bears witness to victims and survivors of violence against women. Explores the social implications of the notion that curriculum must enable students in schools to explore the themes and most difficult problems of their lives. (SR)

Explores the possibility that literary theorists and reading researchers are unconscious of each others interests, goals, and assumptions. Seeks to explore how the gaps between these two areas might best be bridged. (EL)

Explores reading as discursive practice, assuming that all readings are produced by particular groups to represent their specific interests. Constructs a reading of English education over the past century, focusing on a humanist conception of individualism promoted through personal growth pedagogy, and on the shift toward a poststructuralist view…

Discusses some concrete examples of the kinds of conflicts that can surface when reader-response theory is actually practiced in the classroom, and considers some of the implications. Urges instructors to make room for contesting views and to facilitate serious, committed, personal interchanges. (MS)

Discusses the connections between the study of literary texts, language, and composition and the impact of these connections on English instruction and English programs. (SRT)

Proposes that literature can be examined to see how it works simultaneously as a constraint upon and liberating means for women. Discusses "Yellow Women" by Leslie Marmon Silko and "The Company of Wolves" by Angela Carter, exploring the role of a reader's context for understanding a story. (PM)

Asserts that reading logs actively involve students in the reading/responding process. Describes the way reading logs fit into the course, a list of topics to give students ideas, and how to grade reading logs. (MS)

Presents an in-class literature exercise to help students understand that there may be more than one "right" reading, more than one right answer, more than one right way of understanding literature. (SR)

Describes an in-class exercise in which students listen to a piece of music (without lyrics), and then write about their responses. Notes that students learn that responding to literature is as natural as responding to music, and that they all have valid and unique reactions and connections to literature. (SR)

Fifteen poets have created this guide to teaching the work of Walt Whitman from kindergarten to college level. In essays based on the personal experience of these imaginative writers, the guide presents practical ideas for fresh ways to read Whitman and to write poetry and prose inspired by him. The guide also includes three pieces on education by…