This paper attempts to provide a new understanding of the gutter and how it is used to significant effect in Gene Luen Yang's, Boxers & Saints. This research draws upon the work of Scott McCloud to establish a framework for the theoretical applications of the gutter. Most prior research focuses on the gutter within the page. This article…

In this article, the authors use the O. Henry story Transients in Arcadia to illustrate how readers can make a text more meaningful by connecting it to themselves, to other texts, and to the world. Transients in Arcadia is a celebrated ironic commentary about the desire of everyday men and women to experience wealth. The authors have leveraged…

Bridging the gap between an author's works based on real life and historical accuracy can be a challenge for literary sites that symbolize both fiction and reality. Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House, the home of the Alcott family and the place in which she wrote her most famous novel, "Little Women," also served as the setting for the…

This article discusses how, following in the footsteps of United States imperial children's writers Jacob Abbott and Edward Stratemeyer, Mary Hazelton Blanchard Wade (1860-1936), the original author of the "Our Little Cousins" series (1901-1905), contributed to the American culture of empire. Wade was one of the most prolific and popular…

Teacher lack of knowledge outside British and American literature is a major obstacle in teaching World Literature. This article offers the experiences of three teachers teaching the Bhagavad Gita and suggests ways to overcome lack of teacher knowledge when reading cross-culturally.

American short stories are a window into a larger tradition of U.S. literature--and the cultural history they represent. They do not require the same sort of time commitment that reading a novel might. Classic American short stories are widely available on the internet and even accessible through American English Publications. Often in the public…

For many secondary-level teachers working with adolescent language learners, one of the motivations for choosing English teaching as a profession is a shared love of reading short stories. At its best, entering a narrative is a sensory experience: engaged readers see, hear, and feel the words of a story and imagine themselves within its pages.…

This article urges educators to responsibly teach, discuss, and read against "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee for fear that it may otherwise perpetuate subtle racist ideologies in generations of students who continue to read it in schools. One way to do this is through a comparative lens of old and new racism.

This essay illustrates the application of reception study, the subfield of literary history that emphasises the historical experiences of readers, to pedagogical contexts by investigating the teaching of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" (1925) in American high schools during the 1980s. Focusing on the episode in which Jay Gatsby…

This article considers the function and value of the university through the close reading of Tom Wolfe's 2004 novel "I am Charlotte Simmons". Comparing the neoliberal university with an idealized university committed to intellectual inquiry, the article argues for a consideration of the academic values lost in the contemporary…

The idea of writing to the next generation about one's struggles to overcome poverty, discrimination, and repression dates back more than 200 years in American history and offers many perspectives on the American experience. Focusing on the literal and psychological journey to freedom in Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,"…

At the risk of painting with too broad a brush, it is a rare thing in education scholarship to speak directly to the problem of whiteness. As one of the primary conduits for racial stratification in society, the structure of schooling provides heavy doses of racialized harm, but much of this harm is obscured through the race-blind, well-worn…

When Ana, a student in Miss Jerome's American Literature course, watched a makeup tutorial instead of completing her assigned work, it became a critical incident highlighting how one educator used student counterscripts to critically center students' ways of knowing and ways of being in the English curriculum. Using culturally sustaining…

James M. Cain used his literary skills to incorporate business and business law concepts into a best-selling novel, "Mildred Pierce." Set in the Great Depression era, "Mildred Pierce" tells the story of a divorced woman who raises two daughters on her own, while building a restaurant and bakery business. Even in today's popular…

"The Color Purple" is a work in art. Its dramatic overtone recognizes the essence of African American culture. "The Color Purple" brings to light the cultural heritage of black origin. Its work translates the poetic story of how black women embrace the thrust of the social conditions of our heritage. The spiritual conviction…