Research has called for nuanced scholarly investigations that synergise, complicate, and advance social theories of literacy. Accordingly, this study melds critical literacy, critical race theory, and multiliteracies to distil students' involvement with the canonical "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," investigating: What are…

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…

The effectiveness of distance learning primarily depends on the motivation and engagement of students. The aim of this article is to determine whether the developed online course enhances students' motivation to read and their engagement with contemporary American literature. The methodology is based on an experimental design. A mixed-methods…

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…

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…

"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…

Even as environmental scholars agree on the urgency of climate change, the crisis is less often linked to the US education system itself, which continues to operate as if we were not in the midst of a planetary emergency. As more environmental educators advocate for substantive change, little attention has been paid to how the study of literature…

The study and characterization of the literary uses of non-standard American English writing systems was once a topic of research central to the study of American literature. "Speech as Writing: Literary Dialect Orthography in the United States 1790-1930" argues that the emergence of new computational tools and theoretical insights…

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…

Reading is one of the crucial aspects of the learning process. The learning efficiency depends on the motivation and involvement of students. The paper aims to determine whether the developed online course enhances student motivation and engagement in contemporary American literature. For this purpose, questionnaires were used. The sample…

This study investigates extra causers, their types, and their application in "Angels and Demons," a novel by Dan Brown. This study also attempts to establish the function of extra causers in constructing a mysterious conflict between religion and science throughout the various stages of the novel. The study was conducted using a…

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…

This paper looks at the phenomenon of upward mobility through education from a comparative and historical perspective. Pierre Bourdieu referred to upwardly mobile individuals in France as the miraculous ("les miraculés"), oblates ("oblats"), or, less often, defectors ("transfuges"). A difficulty with applying a theory…

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…

This case study, which investigates twenty-four 11th-grade students of American literature, asks: What successes and challenges did students experience when reading "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" through a critical race theory (CRT)/critical Whiteness studies (CWS) lens? Findings reveal that applying a CRT/CWS lens helped students…