Helping students recognize the value of humanistic inquiry can be challenging, especially in required courses. This essay presents a solution: an assignment in which students were asked to pitch one of the required readings to Netflix for adaptation. Through close readings of student responses and an analysis of the "so what" component…

"A Farewell to Arms" by Ernest Hemingway in his early creative time, has been rated as "the representative classic in the Lost Generation" for its particular narrative strategies. This paper gives a systematic analysis of its narrative order, narrative voice and narrative situation so as to achieve a better interpretation of…

With the growth in popularity of young adult (YA) literature over the past few decades, novels such as John Knowles's 1959 classic "A Separate Peace" deserve to be analyzed for typical YA themes, such as sexuality, identity, dysfunctional family units, and coming of age motifs. This paper evaluates "A Separate Peace" from a…

The purpose of this essay is to examine Harper Lee's insights about education, particularly as found in "To Kill a Mockingbird." Lee apparently relied on reflections of her own experiences as the narrator, Scout, describes her first day in school in chapters two and three. But, it should be kept in mind that the narrative is fiction, a…

Literature in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) contexts is used for language development and intercultural understanding. However, the role of literature, specifically short stories (SSs), in shaping cultural representations of the U.S. in EFL teacher preparation programs (TPPs) remains unclear. This study examines how U.S. SSs in an English…

The authors of this paper argue that to promote multicultural education, multicultural literature can be a very useful tool. Since the ultimate goal of multicultural education is to achieve a more equal and more inclusive society, the literature of Southeast Asia, regarded as the true "minority" literature, should be seriously taken into…

This paper explores how two short stories from very different backgrounds conclude in a significant epiphany for the characters. Raymond Carver's short story "Cathedral" and Alice Walker's "Everyday Use" are studied to see how the husband in Carver's work is blinder than his visually-impaired overnight guest, and the…

This paper is aimed at interpreting Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Masque of the Red Death' (1842) and its portrayal of death in relation to the Holy Qur'an and Arabic literary heritage. This reading provides new insights into the understanding of the story. The paper argues that Poe's story and its depictions of death allows for a transtextual analysis…

In this article it is argued that students can gain a better understanding of both inter- and intra-disciplinary boundaries by inquiring into a single salient point where two disciplines may only partially intersect. Building on Marton's variation theory and Vygotsky's notion of articulation, a teaching model is presented and exemplified by…

The year 2017 will mark the 75th anniversary when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 or EO 9066 on February 19, 1942. EO 9066 led to the mass incarceration of approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans into ten racially segregated concentration camps throughout the U.S. This article discusses the educational and literary…

Argues that first- and second-generation Jewish American writers had an ambivalent relationship with educational success. Jewish American immigrants and their children have been stereotyped as exceptional educational achievers, with attendance at prestigious universities leading directly to professional success. In "College Bound," Dan…

Over the course of history, various groups have challenged, banned, and burned texts out of fear and the desire to control the thoughts and beliefs of a populace. Dictatorial regimes such as Hitler's Nazi-controlled Germany used "bonfires [to] 'cleanse' the German spirit of the 'un-German' influence of communist, pacifist, and, above all,…

Negotiating human conditions is an emblematic critical impetus of diaspora informed by multiple cultural possibilities practiced through the creation of multiple spaces that cross the realm of the "self" to that of the "other." It offers a locale to cross from the oppressed "self" to an understanding of an oppressor…

Born in England, to Bengali parents, and raised in America, Jhumpa Lahiri (1967) has been variously labeled as Indian-American, post-modern, post-colonial, and Indian writer. Naming Lahiri has been a long and intricate process. However, the identity she chooses for herself is something different. She wants herself to be simply recognized as an…

Flem's economic reformation especially his replacement of credit business by cash business in Varner's Store in "The Hamlet" marked the social transition from a more traditional, closer and bonded community to a rather detached, rational and mechanical commercial society. The description in "The Hamlet" to a certain extent…