In Fall 2020, I taught a course in Modern World Literature. Designing my curriculum around four novels by women of color, I was frustrated to find that although these are celebrated works of literature, teaching resources for them were less readily available than I would have expected. I decided to publish the reading questions and assignment prompts I developed to serve as a resource for other instructors.
Continue readingTeaching Resources
_Dreaming in Cuban_ by Cristina Garcia | Study Questions and Assignment Prompts
Last semester, I taught a course in Modern World Literature. Designing my curriculum around four novels by women of color, I was frustrated to find that although these are celebrated works of literature, teaching resources for them were less readily available than I would have expected. I decided to publish the reading questions and assignment prompts I developed to serve as a resource for other instructors.
Continue reading_Americanah_ by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | Study Questions and Assignment Prompts
Last semester, I taught a course in Modern World Literature. Designing my curriculum around four novels by women of color, I was frustrated to find that although these are celebrated works of literature, teaching resources for them were less readily available than I would have expected. I decided to publish the reading questions and assignment prompts I developed to serve as a resource for other instructors.
Continue reading_Breath, Eyes, Memory_ by Edwidge Danticat | Study Questions and Assignment Prompts
Last semester, I taught a course in Modern World Literature. Designing my curriculum around four novels by women of color, I was frustrated to find that although these are celebrated works of literature, teaching resources for them were less readily available than I would have expected. I decided to publish the reading questions and assignment prompts I developed to serve as a resource for other instructors.
Continue readingMini-Course Assignment for Advanced Students
The following is an assignment that I’ve used as a final project in my graduate-level Intro to Literary Criticism courses. I think it could be a useful template for upper-division undergraduates as well, since it not only prepares students for later teaching experiences, but also provides a new angle for students to research and explore a topic.
I generally give my grad students the choice between the mini-course assignment below and writing a traditional research paper for their final project; I’ve been surprised to find that an overwhelming majority of my students choose this option.
Rhetoric Recap: What is ethos?
With our 21st century penchant for planned obsolescence, you start to feel like anything that’s more than a couple years old is past its prime and headed for oblivion. But before you toss out your Blackberry, recycle all your CDs, and delete your MySpace page, consider this: pretty much everything we now know (or believe) about communication is derived from some ideas written down over 2000 years ago. Continue reading
Engaging with the Ideas of Others: Using Reporting Language
What is “reporting language,” and why do I need it?
One of the most important modes of speaking and writing is referencing and responding to the ideas and views of others. Doing so situates your own writing within a larger conversation, which helps your interlocutor (whomever you’re communicating with) to understand why your discourse matters, and also gives him/her a frame of reference to interpret your meaning.
It’s essential to always clearly identify when you are restating the ideas of others by using reporting language, that is, sentences that explicitly attribute ideas to another source. In the first place, you should always give credit where credit is due. Furthermore, consistent use of reporting language is critical to the clarity of your own discourse; it helps you to distinguish your own position from that of others. Failure to use consistent reporting language can confuse your interlocutor as to what your own argument is. Continue reading
Homer-ward Bound
The history and culture of ancient Greece, a.k.a. Hellas, is rich and varied, and totally worth studying for its own sake and for the major influence it had on Western culture that continues to be felt in societies throughout the world today.
But if you’re short on time, here’s the key things you absolutely need to know about hellenic history and culture before you read the Homeric epics – the Iliad and the Odyssey – to get what Homer is talking about. Continue reading
Resources for teaching… Zombies (A Beginner’s Guide)
In my course on Fables and Tales, a large lecture class that most students take to meet a general education requirement in the humanities at San Francisco State University, I include a unit on horror tropes in folklore (and their interpretation in literature, film, and other cultural production). It’s an introductory survey course, so I try to give students a smorgasbord of materials – a little taste of a lot of different things – and we only have time to scratch the surface of these tales of terror. But I have the chance to give students a brief introduction to the folkloric roots of vampires and zombies, and some examples of how we have adapted those ancient figures to reflect our own cultural concerns.
Aesop’s Fables
Use this gallery to explore Aesop’s fables. Each picture represents one of the fables; captions provide the morals taught by each fable. Does one of the images catch your eye? Does one of these stories teach a lesson that intrigues you?
criticalreading.net 