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.