Audrey Fisch

The Cambridge Companion to the African American Slave Narrative (Cambridge Companions to Literature)

The slave narrative has become a crucial genre within African American literary studies and an invaluable record of the experience and history of slavery in the United States. This Companion examines the slave narrative's relation to British and American abolitionism, Anglo-American literary traditions such as autobiography and sentimental literature, and the larger African American literary tradition. Special attention is paid to leading exponents of the genre such as Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, as well as many other, less well known examples. Further essays explore the rediscovery of the slave narrative and its subsequent critical reception, as well as the uses to which the genre is put by modern authors such as Toni Morrison. With its chronology and guide to further reading, the Companion provides both an easy entry point for students new to the subject and comprehensive coverage and original insights for scholars in the field.

The Cambridge Companion to the African American Slave Narrative

Esther H. Schor

Anne K. Mellor

Although Frankenstein is now widely taught in classes on Romanticism, little attention has been paid to the considerable corpus of Mary Shelley's other works. Indeed the excitement of the last decade at feminist approaches to Frankenstein has ironically obscured the persona of its author. This collection of essays, written by a preeminent group of Romantic scholars, sketches a portrait of the "other Mary Shelley": the writer and intellectual who recognized the turbulent interplay among issues of family, gender, and society, and whose writings resonate strongly in the setting of contemporary politics, culture, and feminism. By analyzing a previously neglected body of novels, novellas, reviews, travel writing, essays, letters, biographies, and tales, and by emphasizing Mary Shelley's shrewd assessment of Romanticism, the essays in this volume offer a ground-breaking evaluation of one of the foremost cultural critics of the nineteenth century.

Beyond Frankenstein

The Other Mary Shelley

Susan Chenelle

The Common Core State Standards mean major changes for language arts teachers, particularly the emphasis on “informational text.” How do we shift attention toward informational texts without taking away from the teaching of literature? The key is informational texts deeply connected to the literary texts you are teaching. Preparing informational texts for classroom use, however, requires time and effort. Using Informational Text to Teach Literature is designed to help. In this second volume (the first volume is on To Kill a Mockingbird), we offer informational texts connected to Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. Readings range in genre (commencement address, historical and cultural analysis, government report, socioeconomic research study, and Supreme Court decision) and topic (housing discrimination past and present, abortion, the racial and cultural politics of hair, socioeconomic mobility and inequality, the violence associated with housing desegregation, and the struggle against the legacy of systemic racism). Each informational text is part of a student-friendly unit, with reading strategies and vocabulary, writing, and discussion activities. Teachers need to incorporate nonfiction in ways that enhance their teaching of literature. The Using Informational Text to Teach Literature series is an invaluable supportive tool.

Audrey Fisch

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