We set out to investigate Miller's curious assertion--curious for a deconstructionist committed to a critique of the old metaphysics of presence--that literary works preexist their being written down. We find a basis for this sense of the preexistence of the literary work in Miller's insights about the performative dynamics of reading and writing.…

"Empathy" is a much-discussed term in the humanities these days. While some critics value it and argue that literature desirably promotes it, other critics worry that appeals to this emotion will neglect important matters of social context. In the literature classroom, the best approach is to take time to consider how texts complicate the impulse…

Teaching postcolonial literature to American college students involves taking them through a dialectical process of thinking about identification. In the first stage, students are encouraged to note similarities between their own lives and those of the work's characters. With the second step, students examine how the work's cultural and historical…

The Goshen College International Literature course is organized around the coming-of-age theme. (JH)

This essay examines the kind of culinary memoir that chronicles the growth and development of the memoirist through the lens of food memories, in narratives that either begin with childhood or that interpose frequent flashbacks to earliest formative experiences. The author examines some of the key elements of this subgenre of the memoir, this…

Discusses the current view of literature and of criticism by students and faculty and suggests improving this view by increasing the attention given to the fundamental principles of criticism as a rational discipline. (TO)

The white critic's role is to demonstrate the intertwining of Western and African elements in black literature. (JH)

Even the best university students reject serious modern literature in favor of science fiction and other popular fictions that present favorable, heroic versions of mankind. (JH)

Examines how training in literature improves the vocational skills of English majors and discusses how teaching and counseling may improve these skills. (DD)

Defines "literature" as including such expository works as "The Theory of the Leisure Class" and "The Lonely Crowd" and encourages development of college courses in expository modes of writing. (DD)

The Bible still offers artists their basic myths and patterns for interpreting the American experience.

The rhetorical strategies used to justify "new" readings by thematic critics reveal the essentially trivial nature of the thematic approach.