Contrary to the “populist linguistic purism” of Remy de Gourmont, who believed in a “native” and primal language, as well as in a literature that “does not receive neither borrow anything” (Roussin), Proust moulds his novel in a “gloriously impure, lumberfilled” linguistic matter (Malcolm Bowie). Proust’s idea of language is radically opposed…[Read more]

Example of how to set up a policy of Oops Tokens to build flexibility into attendance policies. This idea comes from the book Specifications Grading by Linda Nilson via Flower Darby’s book Small Teaching Online.

To encourage classroom dialectic I often turn to the “quitting” structure of “The Canterbury Tales,” within which pilgrims offer requitals of previous tales that range from exuberant acclamations to
raucous attacks. Within these extremes lie productive forms of correction that emerge as subtle critiques, opposing arguments, and timely (or…[Read more]

Describes and provides examples of modules and assignments for a sophomore Brit Lit survey and an upper-division poetics class that responded to student demands for a more racially diverse canon. Includes a brief discussion of Lucius Henry Holsey, enslaved worker on the UGA campus, who claimed to have learned to read from Milton’s Paradise Lost…[Read more]

A literary analysis and summary of John Burnside’s poem “The Painter Fabritius Begins Work on the Lost Noli Me Tangere of 1652” (2,570 words)

Get tips on using the MLA International Bibliography to teach scholarly concepts and analytical skills.

For more than a hundred years the Modern Language Association, creator of the MLA International Bibliography, has worked to strengthen the study and teaching of language and literature. As part of that mission, the MLA has developed an online…[Read more]

The MLA International Bibliography is an essential tool for research in all aspects of modern languages and literature, but did you know that the MLAIB can be brought into the classroom and used as an effective teaching tool as well? Learn how the most powerful research tool in the humanities is being used in the virtual classroom to engage…[Read more]

In this paper, in a panel co-sponsored by the MLA Committee on Contingent Labor in the Profession and the Council of Editors of Learned Journals, I summarize some of the structural and practical problems that challenge contingent scholars when they try to publish their work in scholarly journals. I share the record of the online, multimedia,…[Read more]

This Spanish-language unit contains an excerpt of an Arabic treatise composed by ʿAlī ibn Ḥazm (d. 1063) to lament the capital of the province of Córdoba, a city in the southern Spanish region of Andalusia. This treatise was composed during the civil war (fitna) that started in 1009 and ended in 1031 with the collapse of the Umayyad Caliphate of C…[Read more]

This unit contains an excerpt of an Arabic treatise composed by ʿAlī ibn Ḥazm (d. 1063) to lament the capital of the province of Córdoba, a city in the southern Spanish region of Andalusia. This treatise was composed during the civil war (fitna) that started in 1009 and ended in 1031 with the collapse of the Umayyad Caliphate of Córdoba.

T…[Read more]

This course is a study of the literature of the U.S.-Mexico border from the 1980s to the present. We begin with Gloria Anzaldúa’s foundational texts, Borderlands / La Frontera, and her landmark feminist anthology, co-edited with Cherríe Moraga, This Bridge Called My Back: Radical Writings by Women of Color. We then consider the legacies and aft…[Read more]

This course is a study of Latinx literatures and cultures produced in the last two decades. We will concentrate our attention on how contemporary art works represent and participate in the upheavals of the twenty-first century—9/11, global economic and ecological crisis, mass migration and mass deportation, political and social mobilization, s…[Read more]