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Call for Essay Proposals for a Volume on Teaching French Neoclassical Tragedy

Calls

We invite proposals for a volume in the MLA Options for Teaching series entitled Teaching French Neoclassical Tragedy. A guiding question for the volume will be, Why teach French neoclassical tragedy, and why now?

Teaching French Neoclassical Tragedy aims to help faculty members in a variety of disciplines introduce French neoclassical tragedies to students in a manner that emphasizes both the corpus’s irreducible strangeness and its piercing relevance to our own troubled and transitional times. We are keen to showcase essays that seek to move past, or at least rethink, categories that in large part were imposed on this corpus during the past three hundred years. Essays that place the theatrical texts in productive dialogue with salon culture, the rise of the novel, or developments in philosophy and science are of particular interest, as are contributions that restore women to their status as full participants—as spectators, critics, and playwrights—in the theatrical conversation. In addition, we welcome submissions by scholars attentive to the newly emergent global history who draw attention to French neoclassical theater’s engagement with ideas and works from other national traditions, including European colonial expansion and francophone spaces beyond metropolitan France. In short, we hope to establish a conversation between specialists and nonspecialists that will open this compellingly complex corpus to new perspectives and audiences.

All the essays will have primarily pedagogical aims, and the volume will also dedicate a section to nuts-and-bolts issues in the classroom, with essays that outline successful assignments and practices. We will be careful to address a range of challenges and concerns pertinent to diverse institutional settings and various pedagogical formats: early modern courses, survey courses, first-year writing courses, comparative approaches to tragedy, seminars on politics and literature, and courses in translation. Finally, we hope to present innovative work on neoclassical tragedy in a variety of digital humanities approaches.

If you are interested in contributing an essay of 3,000–5,000 words, please send a two-page CV and 500-word proposal by 1 August 2016 to hbilis@wellesley.edu and ellenmc@uic.edu. Proposals should include the name(s) of the writer(s) you intend to discuss and the argumentative thrust of the proposed essay as well as clear pedagogic implications.

Please note that any quotations from student papers will require written permission from the students.

CALL FOR ESSAY PROPOSALS FOR A VOLUME ON Teaching Beat Generation Literature

Calls

Proposals are invited for a volume in the MLA’s Options for Teaching series entitled Teaching Beat Generation Literature, to be edited by Nancy M. Grace. The purpose of the volume is to highlight key issues and pedagogical strategies for teaching Beat literature. The volume will include information for specialists and nonspecialists alike who are teaching at the secondary as well as undergraduate and graduate levels. A section or sections devoted to teaching resources will include teaching with images and film; teaching with anthologies; using electronic resources; and using editions, reference guides, collections of correspondence, biographies, and single-author studies.

Possible topics include teaching the national and global contexts of Beat literature, major Beat writers, censorship and Beat literature, aesthetic lineages of Beat literature, Beats and the popular media, Beat fiction, Beat poetry, Beat drama, Beat film, Beat memoirs, gender and sex in Beat literature, race and ethnicity in Beat literature, Beat literature and the contemporary environmental movement, Beat writing and technology, the Beat road tale, the influence of music (jazz, in particular) on Beat writing, Beat composition philosophies and histories, drug use and Beat writing, spirituality and religious traditions in Beat writing, transhumanism and posthumanism in Beat writing, and the aesthetic and cultural legacies of Beat writing.

If you are interested in contributing an essay of 3,000 to 3,500 words, please send an abstract of 500 words in which you outline your approach or topic and how it might enhance the teaching of Beat literature to Nancy M. Grace (ngrace@wooster.edu) by 1 July 2016.

Please note that any quotations from student papers will require written permission from the students.

Contribute to an MLA Volume on Teaching the Works of Karen Tei Yamashita

Calls

Approaches to Teaching the Works of Karen Tei Yamashita, edited by Ruth Y. Hsu and Pamela Thoma, is now in development in the MLA Approaches to Teaching World Literature series. Instructors who have taught the works of Karen Tei Yamashita are encouraged to contribute to this volume by completing a survey about their experiences. Information about proposing an essay is available at the end of the survey. The deadline for completing the survey and submitting an essay proposal is 1 June 2016.

Call for Essay Proposals for a Volume on Teaching Mexicana and Chicana Writers of the Twentieth Century

Calls

Proposals are invited for a volume in the MLA’s Options for Teaching series entitled Teaching Mexicana and Chicana Writers of the Twentieth Century, to be edited by Elizabeth C. Martínez. The goal for this project is to consider the publishing boom of women writers both in Mexico and the United States (of Mexican descent), whose narratives burst on the scene in the late twentieth century. Contributions will address connections and disconnections between women’s writing in each nation, and compare-contrast or study major authors. The volume will highlight key issues and pedagogical strategies for teaching contemporary literary narratives. It will include information on the diverse topics and artistic strategies of, and influences on, Mexicana and Chicana writers, as well as focus on teaching techniques and concepts.

Possible topics may include but are not limited to the influence of and markers made by early publications of the Mexican writer Elena Poniatowska and the Chicana writer Sandra Cisneros; the Jewish and Arabic Mexicana experience; intersectionalities and agency in Chicana writing; the impact of the best-selling novelists Laura Esquivel and Angeles Mastretta; the influence of feminist theory by Gloria Anzaldúa; teaching texts in translation; sex as literary tool in Mexicana novels; queering in Chicana novels; gender and critical race studies through Chicana texts; late-twentieth-century discourses of women’s writing; disability studies in Chicana and Mexicana novels; testimonial narratives; the strange and the normal in writings by Carmen Boullosa, Brianda Domecq, and Silvia Molina; precursors and early (invisible) works by Chicanas; female authors and the modern literary canon; early Chicana criticism in literary journals; Third World consciousness in Chicana fiction; patriarchal systems in Mexicana texts; symbols and codes in Mexicana and Chicana narratives; film adaptations and digital presentation of Chicana and Mexicana writing and other interdisciplinary approaches.

Proposals should mention and define, as appropriate, specific terms, concepts, techniques, and classroom contexts. They should indicate the value of the intended topic to a broad range of instructors and maintain a clear focus on teaching. Please note that any quotations from student papers will require written permission from the students.

For those interested in contributing an essay of 3,000 to 3,500 words for this innovative volume, please send an abstract of 500 words in which the approach and topic are outlined, including how it might enhance the teaching of Chicana and Mexicana literature of the twentieth century, to Elizabeth C. Martínez (emarti71@depaul.edu) by 15 May 2016.

Contribute to an MLA Volume on Teaching the Works of Cormac McCarthy

Calls

McCarthyThe volume Approaches to Teaching the Works of Cormac McCarthy, edited by Stacey Peebles and Benjamin West, is now in development in the MLA Approaches to Teaching World Literature series. Instructors who have taught the works of Cormac McCarthy are encouraged to contribute to this volume by completing a survey about their experiences. Information about proposing an essay is available at the end of the survey. The deadline for completing the survey and submitting an essay proposal is 1 May 2016.

Contribute to an MLA Volume on Teaching Austen’s Persuasion

Calls
Jane Austen's silhouette on a teapot
Jane Austen Teapot Cookie by Mischief Mari used under CC BY-SA 2.0.

The volume Approaches to Teaching Austen’s Persuasion, edited by Marcia McClintock Folsom and John Wiltshire, is now in development in the MLA Approaches to Teaching World Literature series. Instructors who have taught Persuasion are encouraged to contribute to the series volume by completing a survey about their experiences. Information about proposing an essay is available at the end of the survey. The deadline for completing the survey and submitting an essay proposal is 1 May 2016.

Contribute to an MLA Volume on Teaching Plum in the Golden Vase

Calls

The volume Approaches to Teaching Plum in the Golden Vase, edited by Andrew Schonebaum, is now in development in the MLA Approaches to Teaching World Literature series. Instructors who have taught this work are encouraged to contribute to the volume by completing a survey about their experiences. Information about proposing an essay is available at the end of the survey. The deadline for completing the survey and submitting an essay proposal is 1 March 2016.

Contribute to an MLA Volume on Teaching James Fenimore Cooper

Calls

The volume Approaches to Teaching Cooper’s Leather-Stocking Tales and Other Works, edited by Stephen Carl Arch and Keat Murray, is now in development in the MLA Approaches to Teaching World Literature series. Instructors who have taught these works are encouraged to contribute to the volume by completing a survey about their experiences. Information about proposing an essay is available at the end of the survey. The deadline for completing the survey and submitting an essay proposal is 1 February 2016.

Call for Essay Proposals on Teaching Jewish American Literature

Calls

Essay proposals are invited for a volume in the MLA’s Options for Teaching series entitled Teaching Jewish American Literature, to be edited by Roberta Rosenberg and Rachel Rubinstein. The purposes of this volume are to link the innovative scholarship emerging on Jewish American literature to classroom pedagogies and resources; provide crucial academic and pedagogical background to faculty members who teach Jewish American studies without expertise in the field; reinvigorate the study of Jewish American texts and culture and create new audiences for stand-alone Jewish American literary courses; promote comparative literary studies of Jewish American literature in American mainstream and multicultural literature, Jewish studies, and contemporary literary theory; emphasize the global, multinational, multilingual nature of contemporary Jewish American immigrant and émigré literatures; offer pedagogical tools and resources that will enrich conversations on college campuses concerning challenging political and social issues; and develop new interest in teacher education courses that will rebalance the representation of Holocaust and Jewish ethnic literatures.

Possible topics may include but are not limited to

  • comparative and interdisciplinary teaching approaches to Jewish American literature, particularly that literature in comparison with other immigrant, multicultural, or multiethnic literatures (such as Asian American and Arab American literature)
  • teaching approaches that use gender and queer theory, sociology, religious studies, performance studies, popular culture, race studies, and so on in reframing Jewish American literature
  • multilingual and multiethnic approaches that focus on Yiddish and other non-English languages as well as on Sephardi and Mizrachi writers and writers with complex, hybrid identities
  • early American literature and Jewish literary history
  • approaches to teaching Jewish American literature in a variety of different kinds of institutions and to a diversity of students
  • transnational approaches to Jewish American literature, including links with Israel, Europe, and the Americas
  • rethinking canonical Jewish American writers and introducing countercanonical texts, including those by the youngest, postimmigrant generations
  • teaching representations of Jewishness and literary anti-Semitism
  • new approaches to teaching key texts
  • new approaches to teaching responses to the Holocaust in survivor, second-generation, and third-generation writing
  • genre approaches to teaching Jewish American literature that address poetry, drama, humor, graphic novels, literary journalism, memoir, and so on as well as fiction

Your abstract should make your intended topic clear and explain its importance to the field of Jewish American literature, indicate the pedagogy or literary theory that supports the topic and the types of evidence you will use (e.g., sample assignments from a class you have taught), and outline the theories you hope to explore. Please note that any quotations from student papers will require written permission from students. Your abstract should also address the value of your intended topic to a broad range of instructors and students in literature and cultural studies.

If you are interested in contributing an essay of 2,500–3,000 words, please submit an abstract of 350–500 words to Roberta Rosenberg, Christopher Newport University (rrosenb@cnu.edu), and Rachel Rubinstein, Hampshire College (rrHACU@hampshire.edu), by 15 February 2016.

Call for Essay Proposals for Volume on Teaching Contemporary Latin American Poetries

Calls

Essay proposals are invited for a volume in the MLA series Options for Teaching entitled Teaching Contemporary Latin American Poetries, to be edited by Jill S. Kuhnheim and Melanie Nicholson. The volume will include information and ideas for specialists and nonspecialists alike who are teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

We seek abstracts for essays in three broad areas.

  1. “Poetic Literacy and the Latin American Canon” will include essays that address fundamental issues surrounding the historical development of Latin American poetry and address approaches to teaching strategies for reading poetry. We hope to attract essays that highlight the excitement that poetry can generate and that articulate formal characteristics such as metrics and figurative devices in a broader understanding of the power of poetic language.
  2. “Traditional and Innovative Methods for Reading Poetry, Poets, and Movements” will deal with such topics as experimenting with form; reading difficult poetry and teaching the neobaroque; poetry, orality, and performance; poetry and music; poetry and adaptation to theater and film; poetry and new technologies; hybrid poetic forms; visual poetries; teaching indigenous poetries; teaching recent Afro-Hispanic and Brazilian poetry.
  3. “Different Contexts for Teaching Poetry” will include essays that consider poetry in the foreign language classroom; poetry and environmental studies; teaching trans-American poetries; new and old gendered issues; teaching poetry and translation and poetry in translation; poetry and cultural studies; poetry and human rights.

The abstract should clarify your intended topic, its importance to the field of poetry pedagogy, and the types of evidence (e.g., sample assignments from a class you have taught) or theories you hope to explore. It should also mention and define specific terms, concepts, techniques, and classroom contexts. Please note that any quotations from student papers will require written permission from students. Your abstract should address the value of your intended topic to a broad range of instructors in the field as well as to students.

If you are interested in contributing an essay of 3,500–4,500 words, please submit an abstract of 350–500 words to Jill S. Kuhnheim, University of Kansas (jskuhn@ku.edu), and Melanie Nicholson, Bard College (nicholso@bard.edu), by 15 November 2015.

Contribute to an MLA Volume on Teaching Eliza Haywood

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The volume Approaches to Teaching the Works of Eliza Haywood, edited by Tiffany Potter, is now in development in the MLA Approaches to Teaching World Literature series. Instructors who have taught these works are encouraged to contribute to the volume by completing a survey about their experiences. Information about proposing an essay is available at the end of the survey. The deadline for completing the survey and submitting an essay proposal is 1 November 2015.

Call for Essay Proposals for Volume on Teaching Young Adult Literature

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Proposals are invited for a volume entitled Teaching Young Adult Literature, to be edited by Karen Coats, Mike Cadden, and Roberta Seelinger Trites. This volume in the MLA series Options for Teaching aims to bring together a variety of articles describing innovative and successful approaches to designing and teaching stand-alone young adult (YA) literature courses at the postsecondary level, as well as incorporating young adult texts into other undergraduate and graduate courses relevant to MLA members and faculty members in education and library science.

This volume will be a resource for teachers, both new and experienced, of YA texts. It will provide suggestions for supplementary materials and pedagogical activities for a variety of student audiences in many college settings. Abstracts that use specific YA texts as examples to demonstrate how to teach genres in YA literature (e.g., graphic narrative, historical fiction, the verse novel) are welcome, as are abstracts that focus on themes, topics, methods, and problems in teaching YA literature.

Your abstract should clarify your intended topic; setting; its relevance to the subject of YA literature pedagogy; the texts, genres, or theories you expect to explore; and the value of your intended topic to a broad range of instructors and students. Please note that any quotations from student papers will require written permission from the students. Contributors to a volume must be members of the MLA from the time that their contribution is submitted in the final, approved manuscript to publication.

If you are interested in contributing an essay of 2,000–3,000 words, please submit an abstract of 350–500 words to Karen Coats (kscoat2@ilstu.edu) by 1 November 2015.

Call for Essay Proposals for Volume on Anglophone South Asian Women’s Writing

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We invite proposals for a volume in the MLA Options for Teaching series entitled Teaching Anglophone South Asian Women’s Writing, edited by Deepika Bahri and Filippo Menozzi.

This volume seeks meaningful responses to the following questions: What do we teach when we teach South Asian women’s writing? How do we teach it in a variety of contexts? How is our pedagogy changing in response to new developments: digital contexts, emergent genres, changes in the publishing industry, and growing anxiety about the underrepresentation of nonanglophone writing? Click Detailed Description for more information about the proposed volume.

Send 300-word proposals for essays of 3,000–3,500 words to teachingsaw@gmail.com. Proposals should include the name(s) of the writer(s) proposed for discussion and the argumentative thrust of the proposed article. Proposals will be revised and reviewed on the project Web site as the volume is shaped interactively. The final deadline for proposals is 1 August 2015, but we will close the call for proposals earlier if we receive an overwhelming number of responses. Please send any initial queries to teachingsaw@gmail.com.

Call for Essay Proposals for Volume on Teaching Modernist Women’s Writing in English

Calls

Essay proposals are invited for a volume entitled Teaching Modernist Women’s Writing in English, to appear in the Options for Teaching series published by the Modern Language Association. The purpose of the volume is to meet the needs of instructors seeking pedagogical strategies for teaching modernist women’s writing in English and the ways in which women were vital creators and participants in the works and networks of modernism. The volume aims to capture the multiplicity of artistic, political, and social networks of which women writers were a part, crossing gender, class, and national boundaries, and to share ways to teach these connections and concepts from a wide range of contributors who work from different critical orientations and in different types of institutions and classroom settings. The volume will include material relevant for specialists and generalists who are teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels, as well as in alternative classroom and institutional situations. The teaching resources to be shared will include current scholarship, readings, and digital tools.

Essays responding to four general areas through the lens of pedagogical theory and practice are sought: teaching modernism or modernist studies, thematic concerns, genre or form, and theoretical or methodological approaches. Contributions might cover topics related to issues and definitions in modernist studies, particularly as relevant to the study of women writers. These essays might focus on contexts and conceptual questions important to modernism and highlight the importance of women writers therein. Some essays might take up the teaching of a specific theme (e.g., trauma, colonialism, globalization, race, class, sexuality) or topic (e.g., suffrage, war, empire, socialism, communism, fascism, the workplace, little magazines, the literary marketplace). Other essays might look at the ways women writers used particular forms and genres (fiction, documentary, journalism, life writing, poetry, pamphlets or manifestos, “the middlebrow,” genre fiction, working-class writing, film, drama); these might consider teaching the tension between tradition and the avant-garde or the noteworthy contributions that women made to the avant-garde. Finally, essays might describe and exemplify teaching informed by particular critical or methodological approaches, such as theoretical perspectives (postcolonial studies, queer studies, narrative theory), interdisciplinary work (art, music, dance, science, technology) or intertextuality, the digital humanities, and the teaching of writing or multimodal pedagogy. A balance is sought among writers from the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as writers working in English from other regions of the world (e.g., the Caribbean, India).

Proposals should mention and define specific terms, concepts, techniques, and classroom contexts as appropriate. They should describe the intended topic, particularly the pedagogical approach taken to teaching modernist women’s writing, including methodology, evidence, theoretical or critical framework, and significance for those teaching in the field. The proposal should indicate the value of the intended topic to a broad range of instructors and should maintain a clear focus on teaching. Please note that any quotations from student papers will require written permission from the students.

Proposals of 500 words (for potential completed essays of 3,000–3,500 words) should be sent to Janine Utell (janine.utell@gmail.com) by 1 December 2015.

Call for Essay Proposals for Volume on Teaching the Harlem Renaissance

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Proposals are invited for a volume in the MLA’s Options for Teaching series entitled Teaching the Harlem Renaissance, edited by Venetria K. Patton. The volume aims to bring together original essays exploring the diversity of debates and discussions about the period as well as novel pedagogical strategies. It will include essays representing both innovative and traditional approaches from contributors who participate in different fields, institutions, and classroom contexts. It will be a resource for veteran and novice instructors teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate levels and across a variety of disciplinary locations. In addition to the essays, a resource section on current scholarship and reference material will be included.

Proposed essays should fit under one of these broad headings: “Background for Teaching the Harlem Renaissance”; “Critical Concerns in Teaching the Harlem Renaissance”; and “Authors, Works, and Genres.” The first section will explore historical contexts and debates in the field and might include essays addressing nomenclature, modernism, gender and sexuality, the New Woman, African American periodicals and newspapers, white patronage, and transnationalism. The second section will include essays regarding classroom contexts such as disciplinary location, institution, and course level, as well as essays presenting particular approaches and methodologies. Potential topics might include but are not limited to teaching the Harlem Renaissance with digital humanities, blues and jazz, and visual art; a variety of theoretical approaches are welcome. Essays in the third section, addressing specific authors, works, and genres, should consider well-known figures of the period as well as lesser-known figures and texts. Possible authors to consider include but are not limited to Jessie Redmon Fauset, Angelina Weld Grimké, Langston Hughes, Helene Johnson, Nella Larsen, Claude McKay, Richard Bruce Nugent, and Willis Richardson, among others. As part of the Options for Teaching series, every essay should make explicit how it will apply to the needs of teachers and students.

If you are interested in contributing an essay of 3,000–3,500 words, please send an abstract of 350–500 words to Venetria K. Patton, Purdue University (vpatton@purdue.edu), by 1 August 2015.

Please note that any quotations from student papers will require written permission from the students.