A dream literature class grew into an artistic and critical garden in which students' and instructor's thinking flowered.

Discusses Margaret Atwood's "provocative and funny" short story "Rape Fantasies," and describes how, when teaching this story the author encourages students to sympathize with Estelle (the narrator) before they judge her (instead of rushing to achieve closure and begin interpretation). (SR)

Considers the issue of literary canons, raised in the context of a week-long series of lectures and discussions on "the Victorians" in an Elderhostel program, with participants for whom these texts were the product of their parents' generation and of their own childhood reading. Raises substantive questions about the meaning of a…

Notes that students can begin to learn that literature is not a dead art with no relevance to them by studying works that provide a wider context that will allow readers a new sense of the cultural milieu in which texts are written and read in conjunction with the ones in their course anthologies. (SC)

Describes how the author uses reading response journals in her composition classes. Shows how it actively engages students in the reading/writing process, and how students learn careful, active reading and develop confidence generating ideas and formulating opinions via the structure, freedom, enhanced comprehension, critical thinking, and…