What the latest science of learning tells us about inspiring, effective, and inclusive teaching at the college level. College instruction is stuck in the past. If a time traveler from a century ago arrived on today's campuses, they would recognize only too well the listlessness of the lecture hall and the awkward silence of the seminar room. Yet we know how to do better. Cathy N. Davidson and Christina Katopodis, two of the world's foremost innovators in higher education, turn to the latest research and methods to show how teachers at every kind of institution can help students become independent, creative, and active learners. The New College Classroom helps instructors in all disciplines create an environment that is truly conducive to learning. Davidson and Katopodis translate cutting-edge research in learning science and pedagogy into ready-to-use strategies to incorporate into any course. These empirically driven, classroom-tested techniques of active learning-from the participatory syllabus and ungrading to grab-and-go activities for every day of the term-have achieved impressive results at community colleges and research universities, on campus, online, and in hybrid settings. Extensive evidence shows that active-learning tools are more effective than conventional methods of instruction. Davidson and Katopodis explain how and why their approach works and provide detailed case studies of educators successfully applying active-learning techniques in their courses every day, ensuring that their students are better prepared for the world after college.

Zitkala-Sa wrestled with the conflicting influences of American Indian and white culture throughout her life. Raised on a Sioux reservation, she was educated at boarding schools that enforced assimilation and was witness to major events in white-Indian relations in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Tapping her troubled personal history, Zitkala-Sa created stories that illuminate the tragedy and complexity of the American Indian experience. In evocative prose laced with political savvy, she forces new thinking about the perceptions, assumptions, and customs of both Sioux and white cultures and raises issues of assimilation, identity, and race relations that remain compelling today.

Undergraduate research has long been recognized as a high-impact practice (HIP), but has unfortunately been offered only to juniors and seniors, and very few of them (often in summer programs). This book shows how to engage students in authentic research experiences, built into the design of courses in the first two years, thus making the experience available to a much greater number of students. Research that is embedded in a course, especially general education courses, addresses the issue of how to expand undergraduate research to all students. Research has shown that students who have early experiences in undergraduate research are more likely to pursue further research prior to and after graduation. This is also an issue of social justice because it makes the benefits of undergraduate research available to students who must work during the academic year and in the summer. It is widely accepted that the skills developed through undergraduate research help prepare students for their future careers. The book addresses all aspects of the topic, including: - What are appropriate expectations for research in the first two years; - How to design appropriate course-based research for first- and second-year students; - How to mentor a class rather than individual students; - How students can disseminate the results of their research; - Possible citizen-science projects appropriate for the first and second years; - Providing additional resources available to support course-based research in the first two years. Designed for faculty at four-year and two-year colleges - and including examples from the sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities - the strategies and methods described can be adapted to disciplines not specifically mentioned in the book. Co-publication with the Council for Undergraduate Research (CUR)

Provocative and compulsively readable, lively, engaging, and brilliantly representative, The Oxford Book of Women's Writing in the United States presents short stories, poems, essays, plays, speeces, peformance pieces, erotica, diaries, correspondence, and even a few recipes from nearly one hundred of our best women writers.

Offering a unique perspective on the origins of American fiction, Cathy N. Davidson focuses not only on the early novels themselves but also on the people who produced, sold, and read them. She demonstrates how, in the aftermath of the American Revolution, the novel found a special place among some of the least privileged citizens of the new republic. Though now mostly forgotten, these early American novels enabled those who bought and read them--especially women and the lower classes--to move into the higher levels of literacy required by a democracy.

Combining rigorous historical methods with contemporary critical theory, Davidson brilliantly reconstructs the complex interplay of politics, ideology, economics, and other social forces that governed the writing, publishing, distribution, and comprehension of these early novels. She assesses the precarious business of the printer, the hardships endured by the traveling book peddler, the shortcomings of early American schools, and the lost lives of such women as Tabitha Tenney and diarist Patty Rogers. By exploring how Americans lived during the Constitutional era, Davidson presents the genesis of American literature in its fullest possible context.

Undergraduate research has long been recognized as a high-impact practice (HIP), but has unfortunately been offered only to juniors and seniors, and very few of them (often in summer programs). This book shows how to engage students in authentic research experiences, built into the design of courses in the first two years, thus making the experience available to a much greater number of students. Research that is embedded in a course, especially general education courses, addresses the issue of how to expand undergraduate research to all students. Research has shown that students who have early experiences in undergraduate research are more likely to pursue further research prior to and after graduation. This is also an issue of social justice because it makes the benefits of undergraduate research available to students who must work during the academic year and in the summer. It is widely accepted that the skills developed through undergraduate research help prepare students for their future careers. The book addresses all aspects of the topic, including: - What are appropriate expectations for research in the first two years; - How to design appropriate course-based research for first- and second-year students; - How to mentor a class rather than individual students; - How students can disseminate the results of their research; - Possible citizen-science projects appropriate for the first and second years; - Providing additional resources available to support course-based research in the first two years. Designed for faculty at four-year and two-year colleges - and including examples from the sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities - the strategies and methods described can be adapted to disciplines not specifically mentioned in the book. Co-publication with the Council for Undergraduate Research (CUR)

We're living in a period of great upheaval-yet there hasn't been a corresponding change in our system of higher education. In The New Education, Cathy N. Davidson argues we need a new theory and practice of learning that emphasizes achievement not as a score on a test but as the ability to navigate a job market-and a world-in constant flux. Davidson offers lessons for remaking higher education for our own time, for every institution from the Ivy League to the poorest community college. Now with a new introduction that addresses the benefits and challenges of remote learning and an appendix that offers practical advice on how institutions can change, The New Education is essential reading for educators, parents, and students. Davidson deftly shows how we can teach students not only to survive but to thrive in the twenty-first-century economy.

The Coquette tells the much-publicized story of the seduction and death of Elizabeth Whitman, a poet from Hartford, Connecticut. Written as a series of letters - between the heroine and her friends and lovers - it describes her long, tortuous courtship by two men, neither of whom perfectly suits her. Eliza Wharton (as Whitman is called in the novel) wavers between Major Sanford, a charming but insincere man, and the Reverend Boyer, a bore who wants to marry her. When, in her mid-30s, Wharton finds herself suddenly abandoned when both men marry other women, she willfully enters into an adulterous relationship with Sanford and becomes pregnant. Alone and dejected, she dies in childbirth at a roadside inn. Eliza Wharton, whose real-life counterpart was distantly related to Hannah Foster's husband, was one of the first women in American fiction to emerge as a real person facing a dilemma in her life. In her Introduction, Davidson discusses the parallels between Elizabeth Whitman and the fictional Eliza Wharton. She shows the limitations placed on women in the 18th century and the attempts of one woman to rebel against those limitations.

Revolution and the Word is the classic study of the co-emergence of the U.S. nation and the new literary genre of the novel. The book remains the foundational study of reading, writing, and publishing in the new republic and provides a unique glimpse of the culture of early America. By looking at everything from publishers' account books to marginalia scrawled in eighteenth-century books to the novels themselves, Revolution and the Word provides an engaging social history of early American readership that is also informed by the most insightful aspects of literary theory.
With a backward glance at the culture wars and prognostications for what lies ahead, the comprehensive introduction of this expanded edition reframes Revolution and the Word for a new generation of scholars. It revisits topics of dissent in the early national period, the status of the Constitution as a document designed to quell the still-burning passions of the American Revolution, and the role played by the novel in publicizing and articulating complex desires not addressed at the Constitutional Convention. Cathy N. Davidson provides readers with a survey and critique of the controversial and productive thought in cultural, social, and political theory as it has evolved during the last twenty years. This astute and learned assessment of recent developments in literary and historical scholarship, colonial and postcolonial studies, race theory, gender and sexuality theory, class studies, cultural studies, and history of the book will make Revolution and the Word as urgent for this generation as it was for its original readers in 1986.

The Early American Women Writers series offers rare works of fiction by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women, each reprinted in its entirety, each introduced by Cathy N. Davidson, who places the novel in an historical and literary perspective. Ranging from serious cautionary tales about moral corruption to amusing and trenchant social satire, these books provide today's reader with a unique window into the earliest American popular fiction and way of life.
First published in 1801, Female Quixotism is a boisterous, rollicking anti-romance and literary satire. It takes place in the fictional village of L---, Pennsylvania, where its central character Dorcas Sheldon--who styles herself the romantic "Dorcasina"--sets out on a quixotic quest for the kind of romantic love portrayed in her favorite English novels. Having rejected the prosaic yet honorable advances of her first suitor, "Lysander," Dorcasina narrowly escapes marriage to a series of unscrupulous rogues interested mostly in her considerable fortune. Moving from one misadventure to another, the heroine's journey ends in a lonely old age bereft of romantic illusion.
Female Quixotism was written during a period of self-definition for the fledgling American republic, and offers a telling glimpse of gender, race, and class issues--as volatile then as they are today. Its woman's-eye view of the life and literature of the age provides a tragicomic parody of the limited choices available to women in a society dedicated to the principle that all men are created equal.

Before he trailed off into the wilds of Mexico, never to be heard from again, Ambrose Bierce achieved a public persona as "bitter Bierce" and "the devil's lexicographer." He left behind a nasty reputation and more than ninety short stories that are perfect expressions of his sardonic genius. Brought together in this volume, these stories represent an unprecedented accomplishment in American literature. In their iconoclasm and needle-sharp irony, their formal and thematic ingenuity and element of surprise, they differ markedly from the fiction admired in Bierce's time. Readers familiar with the classic "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" will want to turn to Bierce's other Civil War stories. Also included here are his horror stories, among them "The Death of Halpin Frayser" and "The Damned Thing," and such tall tales as "Oil of Dog" and "A Cargo of Cat."

"A rich resource for readers interested in the study of American culture."--'South Atlantic Review. '"The essays are noteworthy in their own right, and the collection overall is unified and coherent...'Reading in America' shows a field in its early stages that is attracting a group of extremely talented scholars."--'Journal of American History.

Our current system of higher education dates to the period from 1865 to 1925, when the nation's new universities created grades and departments, majors and minors in an attempt to prepare young people for a world transformed by the telegraph and the Model T. As Cathy Davidson argues in The New Education, this approach to education is wholly unsuited to the era of the gig economy. From the Ivy League to community colleges, she introduces us to innovators who are remaking college for our own time, by emphasizing student-centered learning that values creativity in the face of change above all. The New Education ultimately shows how we can teach students not only to survive but to thrive amid the challenges to come.

"As scholarly as it] is . . . this book about education happens to double as an optimistic, even thrilling, summer read." --"The New York Times"

A brilliant combination of science and its real-world application, "Now You See It" sheds light on one of the greatest problems of our historical moment: our schools and businesses are designed for the last century, not for a world in which technology has reshaped the way we think and learn. In this informed and optimistic work, Cathy N. Davidson takes us on a tour of the future of work and education, introducing us to visionaries whose groundbreaking ideas will soon affect every arena of our lives, from schools with curriculums built around video games to workplaces that use virtual environments to train employees.

In 1980 Cathy N. Davidson traveled to Japan to teach English at a leading all-women's university. It was the first of many journeys and the beginning of a deep and abiding fascination. In this extraordinary book, Davidson depicts a series of intimate moments and small epiphanies that together make up a panoramic view of Japan. With wit, candor, and a lover's keen eye, she tells captivating stories-from that of a Buddhist funeral laden with ritual to an exhilarating evening spent touring the "Floating World," the sensual demimonde in which salaryman meets geisha and the normal rules are suspended. On a remote island inhabited by one of the last matriarchal societies in the world, a disconcertingly down-to-earth priestess leads her to the heart of a sacred grove. And she spends a few unforgettable weeks in a quasi-Victorian residence called the Practice House, where, until recently, Japanese women were taught American customs so that they would make proper wives for husbands who might be stationed abroad. In an afterword new to this edition, Davidson tells of a poignant trip back to Japan in 2005 to visit friends who had remade their lives after the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995, which had devastated the city of Kobe, as well as the small town where Davidson had lived and the university where she taught.36 Views of Mount Fuji not only transforms our image of Japan, it offers a stirring look at the very nature of culture and identity. Often funny, sometimes liltingly sad, it is as intimate and irresistible as a long-awaited letter from a good friend.

Focusing on intersecting issues of nation, race, and gender, this volume inaugurates new models for American literary and cultural history. Subjects and Citizens reveals the many ways in which a wide range of canonical and non-canonical writing contends with the most crucial social, political, and literary issues of our past and present.
Defining the landscape of the New American literary history, these essays are united by three interrelated concerns: ideas of origin (where does American literature begin?), ideas of nation (what does American literature mean?), and ideas of race and gender (what does American literature include and exclude and how?). Work by writers as diverse as Aphra Behn, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, Frances Harper, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Herman Melville, William Faulkner, Harriet Jacobs, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Bharati Mukherjee, Booker T. Washington, Mark Twain, Kate Chopin, Americo Paredes, and Toni Morrison are discussed from several theoretical perspectives, using a variety of methodologies. Issues of the frontier and the border as well as those of coloniality and postcoloniality are explored. In each case, these essays emphasize the ideological nature of national identity and, more specifically, the centrality of race and gender to our concept of nationhood.
Collected from recent issues of American Literature, with three new essays added, Subjects and Citizens charts the new directions being taken in American literary studies.Contributors. Daniel Cooper Alarcon, Lori Askeland, Stephanie Athey, Nancy Bentley, Lauren Berlant, Michele A. Birnbaum, Kristin Carter-Sanborn, Russ Castronovo, Joan Dayan, Julie Ellison, Sander L. Gilman, Karla F. C. Holloway, Annette Kolodny, Barbara Ladd, Lora Romero, Ramon Saldivar, Maggie Sale, Siobhan Senier, Timothy Sweet, Maurice Wallace, Elizabeth Young

The `Sentimental Novel' was extremely popular in America after the Revolution, Written in a tradition established by Samuel Richardson, they told tales of vice and virtue based on true stories. Charlotte Temple and The Coquette by Hannah W. Foster (see below) were two of the most successful novels of the period. Reissued in paperback editions with new introductions, they offer a glimpse of the earliest American popular fiction. Both are also announced in the Oxford General Books catalogue for Autumn 1987.

"No More Separate Spheres "challenges the limitations of thinking about American literature and culture within the narrow rubric of "male public" and "female private" spheres from the founders to the present. With provocative essays by an array of cutting-edge critics with diverse viewpoints, this collection examines the ways that the separate spheres binary has malingered unexamined in feminist criticism, American literary studies, and debates on the public sphere. It exemplifies new ways of analyzing gender, breaks through old paradigms, and offers a primer on feminist thinking for the twenty-first century.
Using American literary studies as a way to talk about changing categories of analysis, these essays discuss the work of such major authors as Catharine Sedgwick, Herman Melville, Pauline E. Hopkins, Frederick Douglass, Catharine Beecher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, W. E. B. Du Bois, Sarah Orne Jewett, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Maria Ampara Ruiz de Burton, Ann Petry, Gwendolyn Brooks, Cynthia Kadohata, Chang Rae-Lee, and Samuel Delany. "No More Separate Spheres " shows scholars and students different ways that gender can be approached and incorporated into literary interpretations. Feisty and provocative, it provides a forceful analysis of the limititations of any theory of gender that applies only to women, and urges suspicion of any argument that posits "woman" as a universal or uniform category.
By bringing together essays from the influential special issue of "American Literatur"e of the same name, a number of classic essays, and several new pieces commissioned for this volume, "No More Separate Spheres " will be an ideal teaching tool, providing a key supplementary text in the American literature classroom.

"Contributors." Jose F. Aranda, Lauren Berlant, Cathy N. Davidson, Judith Fetterley, Jessamyn Hatcher, Amy Kaplan, Dana D. Nelson, Christopher Newfield, You-me Park, Marjorie Pryse, Elizabeth Renker, Ryan Schneider, Melissa Solomon, Siobhan Somerville, Gayle Wald, Maurice Wallace

In 1980 Cathy N. Davidson traveled to Japan to teach English at a leading all-women's university. It was the first of many journeys and the beginning of a deep and abiding fascination. In this extraordinary book, Davidson depicts a series of intimate moments and small epiphanies that together make up a panoramic view of Japan. With wit, candor, and a lover's keen eye, she tells captivating stories-from that of a Buddhist funeral laden with ritual to an exhilarating evening spent touring the "Floating World," the sensual demimonde in which salaryman meets geisha and the normal rules are suspended. On a remote island inhabited by one of the last matriarchal societies in the world, a disconcertingly down-to-earth priestess leads her to the heart of a sacred grove. And she spends a few unforgettable weeks in a quasi-Victorian residence called the Practice House, where, until recently, Japanese women were taught American customs so that they would make proper wives for husbands who might be stationed abroad. In an afterword new to this edition, Davidson tells of a poignant trip back to Japan in 2005 to visit friends who had remade their lives after the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995, which had devastated the city of Kobe, as well as the small town where Davidson had lived and the university where she taught.36 Views of Mount Fuji not only transforms our image of Japan, it offers a stirring look at the very nature of culture and identity. Often funny, sometimes liltingly sad, it is as intimate and irresistible as a long-awaited letter from a good friend.

"Closing is the best kind of documentary — telling a specific story about specific people in a large context that means something. . . . In a better world, Closing would be on the reading lists of every corporate board and business school." — USA Today

The story of the White Furniture Company — a century-old, family-owned business that was bought out by a huge corporate conglomerate and later closed — puts a human face on the economic realities of the 1990s. Bill Bamberger took his revealing and powerful photographs during the last four months of operation on the factory floor, working side by side with the White employees. Cathy Davidson's text focuses on six people who represent every economic level in the American workforce: CEO, executive assistant, middle manager, supervisor, skilled artisan, and manual laborer.

"Here is a stupendous book, a complete answer to any who believe that all that counts in a company is its bottom line, and that the only people with a stake in it are its shareholders." — The Economist

"An unflinchingly fair analysis. Hard-edged and realistic. Closing . . . issues a bold challenge to 'business as usual.'" —New York Times Book Review