Describes how "The Garden of Forking Paths" presents teaching challenges that ultimately yield benefits worth the effort for students and instructors. Discusses a three-tiered approach: spy story, family history and character, and ideas of time and timelessness. Concludes that the three layers provide a structure to get the discussion started and…

Describes a 4-week unit of study that focuses on Shakespeare's "The Tempest," a text that has been especially controversial in today's climate of increased multicultural awareness. Involves students in a larger conversation about the possibilities for reading and interpreting literature and prepares them to write mature analyses of the…

Focuses on making the distinction between aesthetics and pragmatics within the realm of design education, particularly architecture. States that aesthetics is typically associated with beauty, while pragmatics is a way to demonstrate that a frank approach has been utilized. (CMK)

Argues for the inclusion of works by women in United States public address courses and as models in public speaking courses. Recommends several speeches by women that represent the diversity of America's cultural history and that articulate opposing views on critical national issues. (KEH)

Discusses how narrators (distinct from authors) emerged in English prose works during the last decade of the sixteenth century. Reports that instances of the use of narrators can be found throughout the seventeenth century, but that it was another hundred years before the technique developed fully enough to constitute a recognizable narrative…

Examines Black men's negative responses and White women's positive responses to works by Black women writers. Suggests that by trying to understand how and why the works by Black women writers affect readers, readers can begin to strip away their own ethnocentrism, racism, and sexism. (MM)

Administered Revised Fear Survey Schedule for Children to 129 visually impaired children and 129 normally sighted children to determine whether visually impaired subjects reported greater fear. Found the two groups did not significantly differ on overall level of fearfulness, although sighted children expressed greater levels on fear of failure…

Argues that contemporary screenwriters have much to learn from journalism and from theater, especially in the move away from the linearity of the high-concept film to a richer, more complex screen story. Examines the writing skills and techniques of journalist and playwrights in developing both foreground and background stories. (KEH)

The curriculum is not a training ground for economic productivity. Curriculum should interact fully with students' world and encourage students' theoretical understanding of their social, emotional, and intellectual encounters. (10 references) (MLF)

Discusses how the aesthetic concerns of African Americans are reflected in the writing of Black women and introduces the characteristics of African culture as they relate to African-American culture. Emphasizes the intuitive musical quality of Black language as expressed in poetry and fiction. (FMW)

Describes the company profile case study approach to technical writing. Explains that groups of four students (1) select an industrywide classification, then select four firms from the chosen classification; (2) select audiences for their reports; (3) research individual companies and prepare group presentations; and (4) deliver group…

Develops a rhetorical account of how experts move fluidly among disciplinary criteria and use paradigms more as strategies than constraints. Analyzes how E. O. Wilson projects his sociobiology into several discourse frames, each presuming a different audience, purpose, and persona for himself as expert. Suggests that Wilson eludes disciplinary…

Presents an edited transcript of a discussion held in April 1989 between Jacques Derrida and a group of students and professors concerning Derrida's "Afterword: Toward an Ethic of Discussion." Discusses Derrida's views on "deconstruction" as a term and a movement, the idea of arguments and persuasion, and specific power…

Using the works of writers like Thomas Wolfe, Christopher Koch, Raja Rao, and Albert Wendt, it is demonstrated that memory is a central element in postcolonial narratives and is associated with two important domains of cognition--recall of childhood and awareness of exile. (57 references) (JL)

Examines the classical rhetoric revival that occurred in American English departments in the 1950s and 1960s. Identifies rhetorician Richard M. Weaver as a leader of this "First Rhetorical Awakening." Argues that Weaver's work draws a connection between philosophical rhetoric and cultural criticism. Encourages further exploration of the…