Writing and Reading Differently: Deconstruction and the Teaching of Literature and Composition

Atkins, Douglas G.; Johnson, Michael L.

ISBN 10: 0700602836 / ISBN 13: 9780700602834

Published by University Press of Kansas, 1985

About this Item

This is the first book to explore the opportunities deconstruction opens up for the teaching of both composition and literature. It is a unique and timely response to crucial issues facing teachers oand university. The contributors, who include teachers of English, French, an Spanish literature and many of the best known and most influential deconstruction critics and theorists, address specific questions concerning the literacy crisis and the crisis in literary studies and offer a reasoned, balanced, and provocative account of the usefulness of deconstruction in solving at least some of the problems that beset the profession. These are groundbreaking essays, reporting the ideas and experiences of teachers at a a variety of institutions and in a variety of courses who have effectively employed deconstruction and its insights to teach writing and reading together.

Seller Inventory # R1887

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Writing and Reading Differently: Deconstruction and the Teaching of Literature and Composition
• Publisher: University Press of Kansas
• Publication Date: 1985
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0700602836
• ISBN 13: 9780700602834
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Fine

About this title

Synopsis

This is the first book to explore the opportunities deconstruction opens up for the teaching of both composition and literature. It is a unique and timely response to crucial issues facing teachers of composition and literature at all levels: high school, college, and university.

"The critical rage" (and likely to remain so), deconstruction is the most controversial and arguably the most promising critical-theoretical movement of recent decades. It has proven to be enormously influential as a strategy of textual analysis, thanks in large part to the enterprise of such critics as J. Hillis Miller, Geoffrey H. Hartman, Barbara E. Johnson, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, all of whom are contributors to this collection. The implications of deconstruction for the teaching of both writing and reading are just now being explored, however. These groundbreaking essays exemplify and assess that potential.

The scope of consideration is wide. The essays all discuss deconstruction, treat its pedagogical implications, and evaluate its impact upon the teaching of composition and literature. In doing so, the contributors address specific questions concerning "the literary crisis" and "the crisis in literary studies" and offer a reasoned, balanced, and provocative account of the usefulness of deconstruction in solving at least some of the problems that beset the profession.

About the Authors

G. Douglas Atkins is professor of English at the University of Kansas and author of Reading Deconstruction/Deconstructive Reading and The Faith of John Dryden.

Michael L. Johnson is professor of English at the University of Kansas and recipient of the Western Writers of America Spur Award, the Frederick Manfred Prize, and the Ben Franklin Award. His other books include New Westers: The West in Contemporary American Culture (also from Kansas), From Hell to Jackson Hole: A Poetic History of the American West, and Violence and Grace: Poems about the American West.