Most literature students are introduced to literary theory and writing about literature as separate subjects, though the two are intimately linked in the practice of literary scholarship. Literary scholarship is guided by literary theories and expressed through writing; it doesn’t make sense to learn each in isolation. Literary theories are intellectual models that scholars use to understand stories, novels, poems, plays, and other texts. Different theories prioritize different historical, social, or methodological concerns. The authors believe students of literature should learn about many literary theories so they can discover which interpretive tools work best for them when they write about literature in their classes (and beyond). This book aims to help students build up a personal toolbox of interpretive possibilities.

This is a collection of writing exercises, mostly (but not solely) aimed at high school and college classroom work. It is licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. You are free to copy and share its contents so long as you do so for noncommercial reasons and provide attribution.

Critical Expressivism is an ambitious attempt to re-appropriate intellectual territory that has more often been charted by its detractors than by its proponents. Indeed, as Peter Elbow observes in his contribution to this volume, "As far as I can tell, the term 'expressivist' was coined and used only by people who wanted a word for people they disapproved of and wanted to discredit." The editors and contributors to this collection invite readers to join them in a new conversation, one informed by "a belief that the term expressivism continues to have a vitally important function in our field."

a freely available textbook to learn language power techniques, such as metaphor, doublespeak, pronoun choice, and name-calling, and associated grammar, such as basic sentence structure, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and determiners. The book is for use in language arts, grammar, rhetoric, and English instruction at the high school, community college, and university levels, as well as by private individuals and groups.

A Handbook to Understanding College Composition, SP22 edition. Curated and/or composed by the English Faculty at Howard Community College.

Using a combination of the newest findings in hemispheric science, neuropsychology, and brain development, along with the long-established rhetorical algorithms for analyzing the structure of arguments, this course explores the boundaries of critical and creative thinking in pursuit of developing a clearer and more robust model for the construction and deconstruction of various forms of argument. A variety of "texts" are used to help students develop rhetorical analysis skills, critical thinking tools and a diverse, integrative apparatus for establishing the veracity of truth claims in both academic and cultural contexts.

The Digital American Literature Anthology is a free, online textbook that surveys American literature from its beginnings to the early twentieth century. It is available in multiple digital formats, though specifically designed for tablets, laptops, and e-readers. The textbook has links to unit introductions, and multiple supplemental online resources.

The Departure of Wolf brings together all the poems contained in ten of the eleven chapbooks in my Sun Series, spanning the period between January 2016 and January 2018. Each section of this compilation corresponds to a chapbook. Only Sun Series #5, “Four Sides of the Sun,” has been omitted. The four, seven-part poems in that work are closely integrated with illustrations by Molly Nagel in a fashion that doesn’t lend itself to the present format.

Design Discourse: Composing and Revising Programs in Professional and Technical Writing addresses the complexities of developing professional and technical writing programs. The essays in the collection offer reflections on efforts to bridge two cultures — what the editors characterize as the "art and science of writing" — often by addressing explicitly the tensions between them. Design Discourse offers insights into the high-stakes decisions made by program designers as they seek to "function at the intersection of the practical and the abstract, the human and the technical."

This project was funded by the MHCC Foundation OER Grant Program and published by MHCC Library Press. MARC record available at the end of the book.

For undergraduates following any course of study, it is essential to develop the ability to write effectively. Yet the processes by which students become more capable and ready to meet the challenges of writing for employers, the wider public, and their own purposes remain largely invisible. Developing Writers in Higher Education shows how learning to write for various purposes in multiple disciplines leads college students to new levels of competence.

This volume draws on an in-depth study of the writing and experiences of 169 University of Michigan undergraduates, using statistical analysis of 322 surveys, qualitative analysis of 131 interviews, use of corpus linguistics on 94 electronic portfolios and 2,406 pieces of student writing, and case studies of individual students to trace the multiple paths taken by student writers. Topics include student writers’ interaction with feedback; perceptions of genre; the role of disciplinary writing; generality and certainty in student writing; students’ concepts of voice and style; students’ understanding of multimodal and digital writing; high school’s influence on college writers; and writing development after college. The digital edition offers samples of student writing, electronic portfolios produced by student writers, transcripts of interviews with students, and explanations of some of the analysis conducted by the contributors.

This is an important book for researchers and graduate students in multiple fields. Those in writing studies get an overview of other longitudinal studies as well as key questions currently circulating. For linguists, it demonstrates how corpus linguistics can inform writing studies. Scholars in higher education will gain a new perspective on college student development. The book also adds to current understandings of sociocultural theories of literacy and offers prospective teachers insights into how students learn to write. Finally, for high school teachers, this volume will answer questions about college writing.

Anne Ruggles Gere is Director of the Sweetland Center for Writing, Professor of English, and Professor of Education at the University of Michigan.

These resources will allow you to investigate the key themes of Dickens's novels alongside original source material from the British Library. Literary manuscripts, newspapers, letters, workhouse menus and other collection items will help students open up the social, cultural, and political context in which Dickens was writing. This website includes performances by Simon Callow and discussions by Professor of English, John Mullan, filmed at the Charles Dickens Museum, London.

Discovering Literature brings to life the social, political, and cultural context in which key works of literature were written. Enjoy digitized works from the British Library's collection, newly commissioned articles, short documentary films and teachers’ notes.

Explore the ways in which key 20th-century authors experimented with new forms and themes to capture the fast-changing world around them.

In this lecture, Professor Paul Fry examines trends in African-American criticism through the lens of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Toni Morrison. A brief history of African-American literature and criticism is undertaken, and the relationship of both to feminist theory is explicated. The problems in cultural and identity studies of essentialism, “the identity queue,” expropriation, and biology are surveyed, with particular attention paid to the work of Michael Cooke and Morrison’s reading of Huckleberry Finn. At the lecture’s conclusion, the tense relationship between African-American studies and New Critical assumptions are explored with reference to Robert Penn Warren’s poem, “Pondy Woods.”

This text is intended for students and instructors of Academic Advanced Writing for English Language Learners. Support for this Open Educational Resource was provided as a portion of a sabbatical project by Howard Community College in Columbia, Maryland, USA.

Editing is a foundational skill for taking your writing to the next level. The editing process ensures that the key ideas that you present in your writing can be understood clearly by your reader, allowing your message to have a higher impact. This workshop outlines a process that takes you through editing content and organization, through to editing grammar and smaller details in your paper. It also includes information that will support you in the editing process if you are writing in a language that is not your mother tongue.

EmpoWord is a reader and rhetoric that champions the possibilities of student writing. The textbook uses actual student writing to exemplify effective writing strategies, celebrating dedicated college writing students to encourage and instruct their successors: the students in your class. Through both creative and traditional activities, readers are encouraged to explore a variety of rhetorical situations to become more critical agents of reading, writing, speaking, and listening in all facets of their lives. Straightforward and readable instruction sections introduce key vocabulary, concepts, and strategies. Three culminating assignments (Descriptive Personal Narrative; Text-Wrestling Analysis; Persuasive Research Essay) give students a chance to show their learning while also practicing rhetorical awareness techniques for future writing situations.

EmpoWord is a reader and rhetoric that champions the possibilities of student writing. The textbook uses actual student writing to exemplify effective writing strategies, celebrating dedicated college writing students to encourage and instruct their successors: the students in your class. Through both creative and traditional activities, readers are encouraged to explore a variety of rhetorical situations to become more critical agents of reading, writing, speaking, and listening in all facets of their lives. Straightforward and readable instruction sections introduce key vocabulary, concepts, and strategies. Three culminating assignments (Descriptive Personal Narrative; Text-Wrestling Analysis; Persuasive Research Essay) give students a chance to show their learning while also practicing rhetorical awareness techniques for future writing situations.Shane Abrams is the original author. Doug Bourne and University of Alaska Anchorage Writing Department adapted his work to develop this text.