By: Disha Acharya “So, these women were risking their life for reading books? For literature?”“Wow! Sometimes I don’t even take school seriously but these women were going to these discussions even when they were not obliged to!”“We take our own schooling so casually sometimes and we should realize our own privilege.”“I don’t know if I … Continue reading Teaching Global Literature in the Classroom of the Deep South →

Marisol Brito, Metropolitan State University This essay was adapted from the MELUS 2019 panel presentation Teaching Shannon Gibney's Dream Country, the Neo-Slave Narrative, and the "Hidden Histories" of Slavery, Racism, and US/Liberian Migrations: An Interdisciplinary Conversation with the Author Philosophy is a profoundly whitewashed and male-dominated discipline. In terms of gender representation, it is worse … Continue reading Philosophy Has Been Whitewashed →

Emily Ruth Rutter, Ball State University With Tiffany Austin (1975-2018), Sequoia Maner, and darlene anita scott, I recently co-edited Revisiting the Elegy in the Black Lives Matter Era (Routledge 2020), a collection of scholarly essays and contemporary poetry that showcases elegiac, anti-racist responses to the state-sanctioned killings of Black men, women, and children. As we … Continue reading The Pedagogical Affordances of Black Lives Matter Elegies →

BY: Laura Vrana Months ago, in the early days of COVID-19 beginning to heavily influence daily American life and teachers’ pedagogy, I often found my mind wandering to what to teach “after.” Perhaps I was seeking distraction from the feelings of inadequacy generated by all-online teaching. Perhaps, too, I wanted to squeeze the situational lemons … Continue reading Queries About Teaching African American Literature (To and For Whom?) Amid “Unprecedented” Times →

By: Leah Milne One question I ask students on the first day of my Young Adult Literature course is to define the field itself. As we craft a broad definition of Young Adult (YA) literature, one of the characteristics that always inevitably comes up has to do with relatability or being able to see oneself … Continue reading Discussing Difference in Young Adult Literature →

By: Karen Chandler In teaching Virginia Hamilton’s Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush in an introductory course for prospective English majors, I redress what I see as a limitation in the materials marketed for such courses: neglect of children’s texts. Youth literature is largely absent from anthologies like The Norton Introduction to Literature and Approaching Literature, except … Continue reading Text and Context in Teaching Virginia Hamilton’s Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush →

Donelle Dreese  I have been assigning the autoethnography essay in my inclusive literature courses for several years. Prior to this, I would occasionally struggle with the idea that class discussions in these courses examined social justice matters as if their expression and manifestation took place primarily outside the classroom. In general, my students always approached … Continue reading The Autoethnographic Essay as Contemplative Practice and Pedagogy →

By: Sara Austin and Kaylee Jangula Mootz   During the Q&A after our panel "Teaching Multi-Ethnic Children's Literature" at the 2019 MELUS conference in Cincinnati, an audience member asked about teaching children's or young adult literature, which students may think that it doesn't qualify as "Literature." A fruitful conversation ensued, but even after the conference … Continue reading Using Popular and Youth Culture to Tackle Constructions of Race →

Jennifer Ryan-Bryant Today I am reflecting on students’ responses to my second course on the literature of lynching, which concluded in May 2019. Now that I have taught both a graduate seminar and a capstone course for our undergraduate English majors on this topic, I feel slightly more confident about the texts I have chosen … Continue reading Teaching Three Times Over: Listening to Anti-Lynching Poems →

By: Fred Gardaphe, Queens College/CUNY I came up with this idea when I used to teach four classes per semester and was going to graduate school at the same time.  I was dreading the mid-term examination I usually gave to my literature courses because of the hours I would have to spend grading them.  I … Continue reading The Reverse Midterm →