This book explores the origins of American literary deconstruction in the light of the work of Russian philosopher Mikhail M. Bakhtin. To do so, the author offers a comparative reading of Bakhtin’s work and that of the literary critics who formed the so-called Yale School of Deconstruction: namely, Paul de Man, J. Hillis Miller, Harold Bloom, and Geoffrey Hartman. By resorting to Bakhtin’s challenging understanding of the dialogical nature of the world and his reworking of the notion of temporality in the literary work of art, the readings offered in this book provide the reader with a new point of departure for one of the most influential movements in twentieth century literary theory: literary deconstruction.

Taking a thematic approach, this new companion provides an interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, and international study of American literary journalism. From the work of Frederick Douglass and Walt Whitman to that of Joan Didion and Dorothy Parker, literary journalism is a genre that both reveals and shapes American history and identity. This volume not only calls attention to literary journalism as a distinctive genre but also provides a critical foundation for future scholarship. It brings together cutting-edge research from literary journalism scholars, examining historical perspectives; themes, venues, and genres across time; theoretical approaches and disciplinary intersections; and new directions for scholarly inquiry. Provoking reconsideration and inquiry, while providing new historical interpretations, this companion recognizes, interacts with, and honors the tradition and legacies of American literary journalism scholarship. Engaging the work of disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, African American studies, gender studies, visual studies, media studies, and American studies, in addition to journalism and literary studies, this book is perfect for students and scholars of those disciplines.

Until the 1940s, when awareness of Russian Formalism began to spread, literary theory remained almost exclusively a Russian and Eastern European invention. The Birth and Death of Literary Theory tells the story of literary theory by focusing on its formative interwar decades in Russia. Nowhere else did literary theory emerge and peak so early, even as it shared space with other modes of reflection on literature. A comprehensive account of every important Russian trend between the world wars, the book traces their wider impact in the West during the 20th and 21st centuries. Ranging from Formalism and Bakhtin to the legacy of classic literary theory in our post-deconstruction, world literature era, Galin Tihanov provides answers to two fundamental questions: What does it mean to think about literature theoretically, and what happens to literary theory when this option is no longer available? Asserting radical historicity, he offers a time-limited way of reflecting upon literature—not in order to write theory's obituary but to examine its continuous presence across successive regimes of relevance. Engaging and insightful, this is a book for anyone interested in theory's origins and in what has happened since its demise.

Literature teaching remains central to the teaching of English around the world. This edited text brings together expert global figures under the banner of the International Federation for the Teaching of English (IFTE). The book captures a state-of-the-art snapshot of leading trends in current literature teaching, as well as detailing predicted trends for the future. The expert scholar and leading teacher contributors, coming from a wide range of countries with fascinatingly diverse approaches to literature teaching, cover a range of central and fundamental topics: literature and diversity; digital literatures; pedagogy and reader response; mother tongues; the business of reading; publishers, adolescent fiction and censorship; assessing responses to literature; the changing definitions of literature and multimodal texts. The collection reviews the consistently important place of literature in the education of young people and provides international evidence of its enduring value and contribution to education, resisting the functionalist and narrowly nationalist perspectives of misguided government authorities. International Perspectives on the Teaching of Literature in Schools will be of value to researchers, PhD students, literature scholars, practitioners, teacher educators, teachers and all those in the extensive academic community interested in English and literacy around the world.

As a literary genre, the nonfictional reportage has particular implications for the role of the writer. Pascal Sigg shows how six U.S. American writers, including David Foster Wallace, George Saunders, and Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, reflect on themselves as human media in their reportage. The writers assert themselves in a postmodern way by scrutinizing their own mediation. As it also traces and develops the theorization of reportage as genre along the reporters' early concerns with technical media, this pioneering contribution to literary journalism studies paves a way for a new materialist approach in the under-researched field.

Recent academic research criticizes the effectiveness of traditional lecturing methods and instead shows the pedagogical effectiveness of active learning methods, especially discussion-based education. Drawing on the dialogic writings of Bakhtin, Freire, and Habermas, this study reviews the five primary themes cited in active learning research: improvements in student concentration; socialization in disciplinary norms; scaffolding towards higher critical thinking; inclusion of non-traditional learning styles; and reduction of student absenteeism. Testing these findings in a discussion-based undergraduate college education classroom, this study finds significant improvements towards higher critical thinking skills, increased student concentration, and reduced student absenteeism. However, the study finds questionable effectiveness of discussion-based teaching for socializing undergraduate college education students in disciplinary norms.

Posthumanism in the Novels of Kurt Vonnegut: Matter That Complains So re-examines the prevailing critical consensus that Kurt Vonnegut was a humanist writer. While more difficult elements of his work have often been the subject of scholarly attention, the tendency amongst critics writing on Vonnegut is to disavow them, or to subsume them within a liberal humanist framework. When Vonnegut’s work is read from a posthumanist perspective, however, the productive paradoxes of his work are more fully realised. Drawing on New Materialist, Eco-Critical and Systems Theory methodologies, this book highlights posthumanist themes in six of Vonnegut’s most famous novels, and emphasises the ways in which Vonnegut troubles human/non-human, natural/artificial, and material/discursive hierarchical binaries

John McGreal's three new books – It’s Reproduction, Contently, It’s Revolution, Actively and It’s Transformation, Contently – continue the ‘It’ Series published by Matador since 2010.

Unsurpassed as a text for upper-division and beginning graduate students, Raman Selden's classic text is the liveliest, most readable and most reliable guide to contemporary literary theory. Includes applications of theory, cross-referenced to Selden's companion volume, Practicing Theory and Reading Literature.

"The end of the twentieth century is marked by historic changes in nation-states and in the concepts of the nation and of nationalism. The ten essays in this volume give to the reader an inquiry into the problem of the nation with, and sometimes surpassing, the help of Russian philosopher Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved