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In this volume experienced and new college- and university-level
teachers will find practical, adaptable strategies for designing or
updating courses in western American literature and western
studies. Teaching Western American Literature features the latest
developments in western literary research and cultural studies as
well as pedagogical best practices in course development.
Contributors provide practical models and suggestions for courses
and assignments while presenting concrete strategies for teaching
works both inside and outside the canon. In addition, Brady
Harrison and Randi Lynn Tanglen have assembled insights from
pioneering western studies instructors with workable strategies and
practical advice for translating this often complex material for
classrooms from freshman writing courses to graduate seminars.
Teaching Western American Literature reflects the cutting edge of
western American literary study, featuring diverse approaches
allied with women's, gender, queer, environmental, disability, and
Indigenous studies and providing instructors with entree into
classrooms of leading scholars in the field.
Popular American fiction has now secured a routine position in the
higher education classroom despite its historic status as
culturally suspect. This newfound respect and inclusion have almost
certainly changed the pedagogical landscape, and Teaching Tainted
Lit explores that altered terrain. If the academy has historically
ignored, or even sneered at, the popular, then its new
accommodation within the framework of college English is
noteworthy: surely the popular introduces both pleasures and
problems that did not exist when faculty exclusively taught
literature from anestablished "high" canon. How, then, does the
assumption that the popular matters affect teaching strategies,
classroom climates, and both personal and institutional notions
about what it means to study literature? The essays in this
collection presume that the popular is here to stay and that its
instructive implications are not merely noteworthy,but richly
nuanced and deeply compelling. They address a broad variety of
issues concerning canonicity, literature, genre, and theclassroom,
as its contributors teach everything from Stephen King and Lady
Gaga to nineteenthcentury dime novels and the 1852bestseller Uncle
Tom's Cabin. It is no secret that teaching popular texts fuels
controversies about the value of cultural studies, the alleged
relaxation of aestheticstandards, and the possible "dumbing down"
of Americans. By implicitly and explicitly addressing such
contentious issues, these essays invite a broader conversation
about the place of thepopular not only in higher education but in
the reading lives of all Americans.
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