Learning Literature in an Era of Change

Book excerpt: This book presents a range of teaching strategies developed by teachers of literature who have heard the call from students, employers, and academic administrators for more relevant learning experiences in an ever-changing world. Integrating critical theory and classroom experience, the contributors to this book demonstrate how they foster learning, collaboration and cooperation, and creative thinking. The book abounds with descriptions of successful non-traditional teaching strategies. We see teachers collaborating across disciplines and across colleges, in some cases across countries and grade levels, and demystifying literary studies for students brought up on visual media. Many of the contributors lead their campuses in the use of computer-mediated communication and multimedia to support instruction. The chapters exemplify the shift from understanding teaching as "making students see what the teacher sees," to inviting them to engage texts together, as a community, and to learn how, with their teacher, knowledge and authority are culturally and socially constructed. In Learning Literature in an Era of Change practicing teachers offer their peers in literature and composition, and faculty developers, an exciting range of new models where professors are partners in learning, and where education is not delivered but discovered and disseminated.