Classroom environment can be thought as an absolute place to practice and improve translation skills of students. They have the possibility to brainstorm and discuss problematic points they face with each other during a translation activity. It can be estimated in the same way in a literary translation class. Students who are supposed to become…

The location of tension in the text of "A Streetcar Named Desire" is accomplished by close readings of traditional sources, particularly notes on Kazan's "Production"; Williams' thoughts on his script and Kazan's "Production"; and Williams' personal relationships. By logical twists the analysis supports, in this case,…

A brief reading of "Desire under the Elms" by Eugene O'Neill illustrates how a conventional Oedipal reading of the playscript opens up spaces within the text for deconstructive free-play. In this case, a tension is identified and foregrounded between this conventional application of the Oedipal complex and Freud's interpretation of the…

An assessment of Black Elk's poetry reveals that Indians' attitudes toward words differ from ours. For example, on certain occasions Indian songs become instruments which bring an influx of energy into a whole society or draw rain or heal sickness. Words which recreate or conjure the agents of the poet's vision are relevant because they uplift the…

The Anglo-American Imagist movement, begun in England by Ezra Pound in 1909 and flourishing through 1918, claimed to have drawn inspiration from Chinese and Japanese poetic forms. The promoters of Imagism, which included Hilda Doolittle, John Gould Fletcher, Richard Aldington, and later, Amy Lowell and William Carlos Williams, were attempting to…

The present expansion in the American literary canon has largely overlooked one of the richest sources for new material: authors who were known and respected in their own time but have been unjustly neglected or forgotten, and important literary material which is either unknown or forgotten because it exists only in back issues of unexplored…

For one Fulbright lecturer teaching Herman Melville's novel "Benito Cereno" at the University of Tunis (North Africa), the setting appeared to be ideal for a United States novel course. "Benito Cereno", for the most part, takes place on a large ship carrying slaves. Eventually, the slaves revolt against their Spanish masters…

In John Ehle's "The Winter People," the goddess Persephone is with Hades, and winter is upon the Appalachians in full force. Ehle's novel begins as Wayland Jackson and his daughter, Paula, arrive at the home of Collie Wright and her baby, Jonathan. The Jacksons' truck has broken down on their way from Pennsylvania to Tennessee following…

Describes the conflict between teaching women's literature and teaching the traditional American literature curriculum. Points out the neglect of H.B. Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in most American literature courses. (AEA)

As an English teacher who has been teaching nearly 10 years in a college of southern Taiwan, the presenter reports his successful experience on a course, titled "Selected Readings from American Literature." In this try-out study, the presenter adapts a multigenre-response model via which he encourages Taiwan college students to bravely…

It is time that English teachers bring the important work of ecologically informed literary criticism to their students. If English teachers feel that environmental issues are important, and that environmental writing merits the attention and study of all students, then the teachers need to bring the study of nature writing into literature survey…

The novels of Robert Lipsyte are excellent for use in a middle school or secondary school classroom. His 1967 classic, "The Contender," and its sequel, "The Brave," are both strong on characterization, plot, and theme. Focusing on "The Contender," students can explore contending characters, forces, and themes. Related…

American literature has served not only to help establish, define, and reinforce the American Myth, but has been used to question, to challenge, and to redefine it as well. The dialogic relationship between the literature and the myth thus can become the starting point for a course that encourages closer examination of the process of…

A study focusing on the history of reading, or the uses of literacy, in the first years of the American republic examined the subscription list and content of "The New York Magazine; or, Literary Repository" for 1790. Data for the study were taken from the magazine's subscription list and from various biographical sources, such as the…

To consider Frederick Douglass as an autobiographer, it is useful to examine each of his three autobiographical texts with a view to drawing some conclusion about their relation to one another, and about the relation of the author to each one. It seems likely that the shifting of Douglass' narrative stance is an index of his intellectual…