In 1845, the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, and Written by Himself was published. In it, Douglass criticizes directly often with withering irony those who defend slavery and those who prefer a romanticized version of it.

Genre studies and genre approaches to literacy instruction continue to develop in many regions and from a widening variety of approaches. Genre has provided a key to understanding the varying literacy cultures of regions, disciplines, professions and educational settings. Genre in a Changing World provides a wide-ranging sampler of the remarkable variety of current work. The twenty-four chapters in this volume, reflecting the work of scholars in Europe, Australasia, North and South America, were selected from more than 400 presentations at SIGET IV (the Fourth International Symposium on Genre Studies), held on the campus of UNISUL in Tubarão, Santa Catarina, Brazil in August 2007—the largest gathering on genre to that date. The chapters also represent a wide variety of approaches including rhetoric, Systemic Functional Linguistics, media and critical cultural studies, sociology, phenomenology, enunciation theory, the Geneva school of educational sequences, cognitive psychology, relevance theory, sociocultural psychology, activity theory, Gestalt psychology, and schema theory. Sections are devoted to theoretical issues, studies of genres in the professions, studies of genre and media, teaching and learning genre, and writing across the curriculum. The broad selection of material in this volume displays the full range of contemporary genre studies and sets the ground for a next generation of work.

This collection uses primary sources to explore F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

This lesson sensitizes students to the similarities and differences between cultures by comparing Shakespearean and Bunraku/Kabuki dramas. The focus of this comparison is the complex nature of revenge explored in The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark and Chushingura, or the Treasury of the Loyal Retainers.

Since 1988, the U.S. Government has set aside the period from September 15 to October 15 as National Hispanic Heritage Month to honor the many contributions Hispanic Americans have made and continue to make to the United States of America. Our Teacher's Guide brings together resources created during NEH Summer Seminars and Institutes, lesson plans for K-12 classrooms, and think pieces on events and experiences across Hispanic history and heritage.

In a brief essay called Des espaces autres (1984) Michel Foucault announced that after the nineteenth century, which was dominated by a historical outlook, the current century might rather be the century of space. His prophecy has been fulfilled: the end of the twentieth century witnessed a ‘spatial turn’ in humanities which was perhaps partly due to the globalisation of our modern world. Inspired by the spatial turn in the humanities, this volume presents a number of essays on the ideological role of space in literary texts. The individual articles analyse ancient and modern literary texts from the angle of the most recent theoretical conceptualisations of space. The focus throughout is on how the experience of space is determined by dominant political, philosophical or religious ideologies and how, in turn, the description of spaces in literature is employed to express, broadcast or deconstruct this experience. By bringing together ancient and modern, mostly postcolonial texts, this volume hopes to stimulate discussion among disciplines and across continents. Among the authors discussed are: Homer, Nonnus, Alcaeus of Lesbos, Apollonius of Rhodes, Vergil, Herodotus, Panagiotis Soutsos, Assia Djebar, Tahar Djaout, Olive Senior, Jamaica Kincaid, Stefan Heym, Benoit Dutuertre, Henrik Stangerup and David Malouf.

This art history video discussion examines the "Mihrab" (prayer niche), 1354--55 (A.H. 755), just after the Ilkhanid period, Isfahan, Iran, polychrome glazed tiles, 135-1/16 x 113-11/16 inches / 343.1 x 288.7 cm (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).

This collection uses primary sources to explore immigration to the US and immigrant Americanization between 1880 and 1930. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

Students will learn about the impact of enjambment in Gwendolyn Brooks' short but far-reaching poem "We Real Cool." One element of this lesson plan that is bound to draw students in is a compelling video of working-class Bostonian John Ulrich reciting the poem.

International Women's Voices has several objectives. It introduces students to a variety of works by contemporary women writers from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and North America. The emphasis is on non-western writers. The readings are chosen to encourage students to think about how each author's work reflects a distinct cultural heritage and to what extent, if any, we can identify a female voice that transcends national cultures. In lectures and readings distributed in class, students learn about the history and culture of each of the countries these authors represent. The way in which colonialism, religion, nation formation and language influence each writer is a major concern of this course. In addition, students examine the patterns of socialization of women in patriarchal cultures, and how, in the imaginary world, authors resolve or understand the relationship of the characters to love, work, identity, sex roles, marriage and politics.This class is a communication intensive course. In addition to becoming more thoughtful readers, students are expected to become a more able and more confident writers. Assignments are designed to allow for revision of each paper. The class will also offer opportunities for speaking and debating so that students can build oral presentation skills that are essential for success once they leave MIT. The class is limited to 25 students and there is substantial classroom discussion.

Through their interpretation of primary documents that reflect Victorian ideals, students can learn the cultural expectations for and limitations placed on Victorian women and then contemplate the writer Charlotte Brontes position in that context. Then, through an examination of the opening chapters of Jane Eyre, students will evaluate Jane's status as an unconventional Victorian heroine.

This course provides an overview of Asian American history and its relevance for contemporary issues. It covers the first wave of Asian immigration in the 19th century, the rise of anti-Asian movements, the experiences of Asian Americans during WWII, the emergence of the Asian American movement in the 1960s, and the new wave of post–1965 Asian immigration. The class examines the role these experiences played in the formation of Asian American ethnicity. The course addresses key societal issues such as racial stereotyping, media racism, affirmative action, the glass ceiling, the "model minority" syndrome, and anti-Asian harassment or violence. The course is taught in English.

Studies important twentieth-century texts from Spain and Latin America that represent the principal fictional genres--poetry, theatre, short story, and the novel. Includes works by Bombal, Lorca, Neruda, Vallejo, Machado, and GarcĚ_a MĚÁrquez. Taught in Spanish. Subject offered Spring 2003 and Fall 2004.

Introduces prose narrative, both short stories and the novel. Examines the construction of narrative and the analysis of literary response. This course investigates the uses and boundaries of fiction in a range of novels and narrative styles--traditional and innovative, western and nonwestern--and raises questions about the pleasures and meanings of verbal texts in different cultures, times, and forms. Toward the end of the term, we will be particularly concerned with the relationship between art and war in a diverse selection of works.

This subject examines the ways in which we read. It introduces some of the different strategies of reading, comprehending and engaging with literary texts developed in the twentieth century, paying special attention to post-structuralist theories and their legacy. (What poststructuralism means will be discussed often in this course, so don't worry if you don't know what it means right now!) The course is organized around specific theoretical paradigms. In general, we will: (1) work through selected readings in order to see how they determine or define the task of literary interpretation; (2) locate the limits of each particular approach; and (3) trace the emergence of subsequent theoretical paradigms as responses to the achievements and limitations of what came before. The literary texts and films accompanying the theoretical material will serve as concrete cases that allow us to see theory in action. For the most part, each week will pair a text or film with a particular interpretative approach, using the former to explore the latter. Rather than attempting a definitive or full analysis of the literary or film work, we will exploit it (unashamedly -- and indeed sometimes reductively) to understand better the theoretical reading it accompanies.

This class explores ways that writers portray human experience in their short stories, poems and plays. Through class discussions, lectures and creative responses, students will gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of literary works.‰Ű In this course, students develop and express their own analytic responses to a variety of works of literature, paying special attention to the ways that literary works are crafted and also to the ways that readers‰ŰŞ understanding of literature is subject to your personal perspectives and various theoretical frameworks.Login: guest_oclPassword: ocl

This collection of free, authoritative source information about the history, politics, geography, and culture of many states and territories has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Our Teacher's Guide provides compelling questions, links to humanities organizations and local projects, and research activity ideas for integrating local history into humanities courses.

This course surveys both cinematic and literary representations of diverse eras and aspects of Japanese culture such as the classical era, the samurai age, wartime Japan and the atomic bombings, social change in the postwar period, and the appropriation of foreign cultural themes, with an emphasis on the modern period. Directors include Akira Kurosawa and Hiroshi Teshigahara. Authors include Kobo Abe and Yukio Mishima. Films shown have subtitles in English. Taught in English.

Students align original FSA photographs from the 1930s and the author's own journal entries, to trace parallel elements John Steinbeck then incorporated into passages in The Grapes of Wrath.

The Folger Shakespeare Library provides the full searchable text of "Julius Caesar" to read online or download as a PDF. All of the lines are numbered sequentially to make it easier and more convenient to find any line.