Making connections for teachers between Shakespeare and his historical context on the one hand and secondary students on the other, this book presents background information, commentary, resources, and classroom ideas to enliven students' encounters with Shakespeare. The book concentrates on "Romeo and Juliet,""Julius…

Literature students can benefit by reading drama from an actor's perspective, using selected principles taken from Constantin Stanislavski's approach to acting commonly known as "the method." Susan Glaspell's one-act play "Trifles" accommodates itself well to Stanislavski's approach, which is based upon a play's…

Noting that the impressions left by the large, bold type of newspaper headlines have frequently resulted in libel suits, a study explored the individual and interactive roles played by defamatory headlines and news articles in a reader's perception of the contents. Four separate versions of a news article and its headline were prepared by the…

Two hypotheses in a study examining the influence of a dominant piece of art on the salience of a news story for readers, thus affecting their agendas, were as follows: (1) a story with dominant art will increase a reader's issue salience more than a story without dominant art; and (2) a story with balanced art will increase a reader's issue…

This paper is the introduction to an inquiry into the relationship of post-structural reader theories to cognitive theories in the study of educational media. Basic concepts in reader and cognitive theories are defined, including the notions of "meaning" and "learners." Similarities and differences in the theories are…

A study investigated whether fourth graders recall different amounts of information for passages of different emotional orientation, whether there is a relationship between their emotional response to the passage and the amount of information recalled, and whether they recall different relationships when they read passages of different emotional…

Reading is best understood as a dialectic process where the influence of reader and text are constantly merging to create a jointly produced and evolving understanding. What occurs as the reader and text come together during reading is similar in form to a dialogue, a model for the reader-text relationship that has not been explored in the reader…

A study was conducted to explore the influence of newspaper editorial campaign endorsements. The study examined the Louisville (Kentucky) "Courier-Journal," which tends to endorse Democratic candidates, and the Chicago "Tribune," which tends to endorse Republican candidates. It was hypothesized that readers would show higher…

Discusses ways to teach modern plays and poetry, using a reader response approach that makes the works more accessible to students. (HTH)

Responds to Spiegel's article cautioning elementary school counselors to be well-informed and avoid public hysteria surrounding child abuse by discussing the issues of unfounded versus false reports; backlash literature; a question of innocence; and the need for better education and training for child protective workers and those involved with…

Describes Kids of Survival, a changing group of minority students in New York City, who create art in response to their study of literature. Details how this response reflects the social, political, and ideological factors that affect their daily lives. (MM)

Argues that one way to investigate the relationship of text to story taker (reader or listener) is to compare how the writer has made the story to how the story taker has recreated the story. Indicates a resonance between the story taker's retelling and the original text. (RAE)

Presents three strategies for teaching the personal, operational, and cultural dimensions of literary response. (MM)

States that psychological models help shape students' responses to literature. Explains how a Freudian model can be used to explore the meanings inherent in Emily Dickinson's "A Narrow Fellow in the Grass." (MM)