Service Learning and Literary Studies in English

Service Learning and Literary Studies in English
Author: Laurie Grobman
Publisher: Modern Language Association
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2015-02-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1603292039

Service learning can help students develop a sense of civic responsibility and commitment, often while addressing pressing community needs. One goal of literary studies is to understand the ethical dimensions of the world, and thus service learning, by broadening the environments students consider, is well suited to the literature classroom. Whether through a public literacy project that demonstrates the relevance of literary study or community-based research that brings literary theory to life, student collaboration with community partners brings social awareness to the study of literary texts and helps students and teachers engage literature in new ways. In their introduction, the volume editors trace the history of service learning in the United States, including the debate about literature's role, and outline the best practices of the pedagogy. The essays that follow cover American, English, and world literature; creative nonfiction and memoir; literature-based writing; and cross-disciplinary studies. Contributors describe a wide variety of service-learning projects, including a course on the Harlem Renaissance in which students lead a community writing workshop, an English capstone seminar in which seniors design programs for public libraries, and a creative nonfiction course in which first-year students work with elderly community members to craft life narratives. The volume closes with a list of resources for practitioners and researchers in the field.

Literature and Social Media

Literature and Social Media
Author: Bronwen Thomas
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 134
Release: 2020-01-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1000025853

From Instapoetry to BookTube, contemporary literary cultures and practices are increasingly intertwined with social media. In this lively and wide-ranging study, Bronwen Thomas explores how social media provides new ways of connecting with and rediscovering established literary works and authors while also facilitating the emergence of unique and distinctive forms of creative expression. The book takes a 360 ̊ approach to the subject, combining analysis of current forms and practices with an examination of how social media fosters ongoing collaborative discourse amongst both informal and formal literary networks, and demonstrating how the participatory practices of social media have the potential to radically transform how literature is produced, shared and circulated. The first study of its kind to focus specifically on social media, Literature and Social Media provides a timely and engaging account of the state of the art, while interrogating the rhetoric that so often accompanies discussion of the ‘new’ in this context.

Bourdieu and Literature

Bourdieu and Literature
Author: John R. W. Speller
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2011
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1906924422

Bourdieu and Literature is a wide-ranging, rigorous and accessible introduction to the relationship between Pierre Bourdieu's work and literary studies. It provides a comprehensive overview and critical assessment of his contributions to literary theory and his thinking about authors and literary works. One of the foremost French intellectuals of the post-war era, Bourdieu has become a standard point of reference in the fields of anthropology, linguistics, art history, cultural studies, politics, and sociology, but his longstanding interest in literature has often been overlooked. This study explores the impact of literature on Bourdieu's intellectual itinerary, and how his literary understanding intersected with his sociological theory and thinking about cultural policy. This is the first full-length study of Bourdieu's work on literature in English, and it provides an invaluable resource for students and scholars of literary studies, cultural theory and sociology.

Medieval Literature and Social Politics

Medieval Literature and Social Politics
Author: Stephen Knight
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2021-03-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 100034018X

Medieval Literature and Social Politics brings together seventeen articles by literary historian Stephen Knight. The book primarily focuses on the social and political meaning of medieval literature, in the past and the present. It provides an account of how early heroic texts relate to the issues surrounding leadership and conflict in Wales, France and England, and how the myth of the Grail and the French reworking of Celtic stories relate to contemporary society and its concerns. Further chapters examine Chaucer’s readings of his social world, the medieval reworkings of the Arthur and Merlin myths, and the popular social statements in ballads and other literary forms. The concluding chapters examine the Anglo-nationalist `Arctic Arthur’, and the ways in which Arthur, Merlin and Robin Hood can be treated in terms of modern studies of the history of emotions and the environment. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of medieval Europe, as well as those interested in social and political history, medieval literature and modern medievalism (CS 1099).

The Use of Literary Sources in Social Studies, K-8

The Use of Literary Sources in Social Studies, K-8
Author: Elaine M. Bukowiecki
Publisher: R&L Education
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2014-03-18
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1475809204

The Use of Literary Sources in Social Studies, K-8 is a resource for teachers who wish to include varied literary genres in their social studies instruction along with a required social studies textbook. The literature described and exemplified in this book includes fiction, nonfiction, biographies, autobiographies, historical fiction, poetry, fairy tales, folktales, tall tales, and legends. Throughout this book, different instructional suggestions are presented for inclusion with varied social studies topics and literature sources. Each chapter contains questions and pedagogical strategies for critically reading and responding to varied literary genres, modifications to meet the needs of diverse learners, assessment techniques, information tied to technology and the “new literacies,” and connections to the National Curriculum Standards for the Social Studies: A Framework for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment (2010) and the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social studies, Science, and Technical Subjects (2010). The final chapter of this book describes the development and implementation of a classroom library for social studies teaching and learning.

Fiction and Social Reality

Fiction and Social Reality
Author: Mariano Longo
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 172
Release: 2016-03-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317135555

In spite of their differing rhetorics and cognitive strategies, sociology and literature are often concerned with the same objects: social relationships, action, motivation, social constraints and relationships, for example. As such, sociologists have always been fascinated with fictional literature. This book reinvigorates the debate surrounding the utility of fiction as a sociological resource, examining the distinction between the two forms of writing and exploring the views of early sociologists on the suitability of subjecting literary sources to sociological analysis. Engaging with contemporary debates in this field, the author explores the potential sociological use of literary fiction, considering the role of literature as the exemplification of sociological concepts, a non-technical confirmation of theoretical insights, and a form of empirical material used to confirm a set of theoretically oriented assumptions. A fascinating exploration of the means by which the sociological eye can be sharpened by engagement with literary sources, Fiction and Social Reality offers a set of methodological principles according to which literature can be examined sociologically. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology and literary studies with interests in research methods and interdisciplinary approaches to scholarly research.

Reading Beyond the Book

Reading Beyond the Book
Author: Danielle Fuller
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 371
Release: 2013-04-02
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1135080372

Literary culture has become a form of popular culture over the last fifteen years thanks to the success of televised book clubs, film adaptations, big-box book stores, online bookselling, and face-to-face and online book groups. This volume offers the first critical analysis of mass reading events and the contemporary meanings of reading in the UK, USA, and Canada based on original interviews and surveys with readers and event organizers. The resurgence of book groups has inspired new cultural formations of what the authors call "shared reading." They interrogate the enduring attraction of an old technology for readers, community organizers, and government agencies, exploring the social practices inspired by the sharing of books in public spaces and revealing the complex ideological investments made by readers, cultural workers, institutions, and the mass media in the meanings of reading.

Theory and Practice of Sociocriticism

Theory and Practice of Sociocriticism
Author: Edmond Cros
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 1988
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0816615802

Theory and Practice of Sociocriticism was first published in 1988. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. Edmond Cros is a leading French Hispanicist whose work is unique in Continental theory because it brings Spanish and Mexican texts into current literary debates, which have so far centered mainly on the French and German traditions. Equally distinctive is the nature of his work, which Cros terms sociocriticism. Unlike most sociological approaches to literature, which leave the structure of texts untouched, sociocriticism aims to prove that the encounter with "ideological traces," and with antagonistic tensions between social classes, is central to any reading of texts. Cros's method distinguishes between the "semiotic and "ideological" elements within a text, and involves the patient, exacting reconstruction of the concrete text from these elements, a process that enables the sociocritic to interpret its fault lines, its internal contradictions - in the end , its irreducibly social nature. As its title suggests, Theory and Practice of Sociocriticism is structured in two parts. Its opening chapters analyze sociological theories of discourse, including those of Foucault, Bakhtin, and Goldman; in the second part, Cros applies theory to practice in readings of specific works: the film Scarface, contemporary Mexican poetry and prose (Octavio Paz, Carlos Fuentes), and the picaresque novel of the Spanish Golden Age. In their foreword, Jurgen Link and Ursula Link-Heer differentiate sociocriticism from other social approaches to literature and show how Cros's method works in specific textual readings. They emphasize his resistance to the reductive modes and "misreadings" that dominate much of contemporary theory. Edmond Cros is a professor of literary theory and Hispanic studies at the Universite Paul Valery in Montpellier, France, and Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. Jurgen Link teaches at the Ruhr-Universitat Bochum and Ursula Link-Heer at the Universitat Siegen, both in West Germany.

Literature, Social Wisdom and Global Justice

Literature, Social Wisdom and Global Justice
Author: Mark Bracher
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2022-05-13
Genre:
ISBN: 9781032247694

This book responds to the pressing and increasingly recognized need to cultivate social wisdom for addressing major problems confronting humanity. Connecting literary studies with some of the biggest questions confronted by researchers and students today, the book provides a practical approach to thinking through, and potentially solving, global problems such as poverty, inequality, crime, war, racism, classism, environmental decline, and climate change. Bracher argues that solving such problems requires systems thinking and that literary study is an excellent way to develop the four key cognitive functions of which systems thinking is composed, which are causal analysis, prospection/strategic planning, social cognition, and metacognition. Drawing on evidence-based learning theory, as well as the latest research on systems thinking and its four cognitive functions, the book provides a comprehensive and detailed explanation of how these advanced thinking skills can be developed through literary study, illustrating the process with numerous examples from major works of literature. In explaining the nature and importance of these thinking skills and the ability of literary study to develop them, this book will be of value to literature teachers and students from introductory to advanced levels, and to anyone looking to develop better problem-solving and decision-making skills.