Written by influential scholar-critic and award-winning Daniel R. Schwarz, In Defense of Reading: Teaching Literature in the Twenty-First Century is a passionate and joyful defense of the pleasures of reading. This stimulating book provides valuable insights for teachers and students on why we read and how we read when we embark on "the odyssey of reading."Provides valuable insights into why and how we readAddresses issues and problems in the contemporary university and offers insights into the futureExplores the life of the mind, the rewards and joys of committed teaching, and the relationship between teaching and scholarship in the contemporary universityDraws on the author's forty years of teaching experienceFollowing his long term commitment to close reading and historicism, Schwarz shows how the best literary criticism must both respect text and contextContains insightful and important readings of a broad range of texts, including those by Joyce, Woolf, Conrad, Forster, Gordimer, and Spiegelman's Maus

Amazon.com Review: David Denby, New York city movie critic and journalist, entered Columbia University in 1991 to take the university's famous course in "Great Books." This is the course that, in preserving the notion of the western canon without apology to multiculturalists and feminists, has been an unlikely focus of America's culture war in recent years...read more

Product Description: Part epistolary memoir, part handbook, Teaching Life reflects on more than three decades of teaching literature and touching the lives of students. Both a reflection on a life in literature and a primer on teaching as a vocation, this soul-stirring work also provides behind-the-scenes stories of many of the authors who have influenced Dale Salwak’s career...read more

Each volume in the Novels for Students Series contains easily accessible and context-rich discussions of the literary and historical significance of 14 to 15 major works from various cultures and time periods, including concise synopses of plot, characters and themes; a brief author biography; a discussion of the story's cultural and historical significance; and excerpted criticism.

Product Description: Each volume in the Novels for Students Series contains easily accessible and context-rich discussions of the literary and historical significance of 14 to 15 major works from various cultures and time periods, including concise synopses of plot, characters and themes; a brief author biography; a discussion of the story's cultural and historical significance; and excerpted criticism...read more

Product Description: This book examines how community engagement reimagines academic work in the humanities, proposing new methodological and theoretical approaches to scholarship and pedagogy in literary studies. The chapter contributors--scholars of English and foreign language literature and cultural studies--respond to three questions: How can literary theory inform community-based learning (CBL)? How does community service transform our assumptions about literature and the literary aspects of everyday life? And finally, in what ways do current readings in cultural studies extend to the question of civitas, or the creation of a vibrant community life? By answering these questions, the contributors move literary studies beyond the lecture hall and certified competency in the reading of texts and toward the formation of learning communities without walls or borders...read more

A scholar and author of Teacher: The One Who Made a Difference argues that questions about the uses of literature are essential to a literary education and that reading not for only training and education, but also for pleasure, can change students' lives for the better. Reprint.

Includes entries for a variety of novels, containing biographical data, summary, character descriptions, themes, historical and cultural context, critical overview, critical excerpts, and an original critical essay.

Includes entries for a variety of novels, containing biographical data, summary, character descriptions, themes, historical and cultural context, critical overview, critical excerpts, and an original critical essay.

A scholar and author of Teacher: The One Who Made a Difference argues that questions about the uses of literature are essential to a literary education and that reading not for only training and education, but also for pleasure, can change students' lives for the better. 25,000 first printing.

Includes entries for a variety of novels, containing biographical data, summary, character descriptions, themes, historical and cultural context, critical overview, critical excerpts, and an original critical essay. (view table of contents)

Includes entries for a variety of novels, containing biographical data, summary, character descriptions, themes, historical and cultural context, critical overview, critical excerpts, and an original critical essay.

Includes entries for a variety of novels, containing biographical data, summary, character descriptions, themes, historical and cultural context, critical overview, critical excerpts, and an original critical essay. (view table of contents)

Product Description: Sometimes playful, always provocative, "Professions" is a collection of searching and candid conversations - ranging from dialogues to tongue-in-cheek diatribes - on the issues that face literary and cultural critics today. This volume bares professional concerns, relationships, ambitions, and insecurities about working in academe...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Includes entries for a variety of novels, containing biographical data, summary, character descriptions, themes, historical and cultural context, critical overview, critical excerpts, and an original critical essay. (view table of contents)

Product Description: Explores how shifts in the job market and changes in university culture and administration have influenced the "post-theory" generation of literary critics. This book explores how recent changes in university culture and administration have affected and will continue to affect the "next generation" of literary critics...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Includes entries for a variety of novels, containing biographical data, summary, character descriptions, themes, historical and cultural context, critical overview, critical excerpts, and an original critical essay. (view table of contents)