This website is an experimental exercise in the design of a literature course for community college students. It represents an attempt to incorporate theoretical principles of teaching literature into a structure intended to maximize student learning outcomes.
This design was developed based on an introductory literature course - English 237 Fiction: Shorter and Longer Forms - offered at Grand Rapids Community College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The course information that I used was the summary course description and the required texts. For the purposes of my experimental course, I have retained three of the four texts used in the original course; the texts provide rich material for the exploration of literature and their selection seems to be the result of a thoughtful consideration of diverse perspectives. My focus is on the methodology of exploring the texts as much as the texts themselves.
The shared texts for my hypothetical course - Introduction to 20th Century American Literature – are: The Best American Short Stories of the Century, edited by John Updike and Katrina Kenison; A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines; and The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. The original course design included a fourth work, Frankenstein. My course replaces Frankenstein with a work of student choice in order to heighten student engagement. In addition, this change narrows the focus of the class to 20th century American Literature.
This design was developed based on an introductory literature course - English 237 Fiction: Shorter and Longer Forms - offered at Grand Rapids Community College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The course information that I used was the summary course description and the required texts. For the purposes of my experimental course, I have retained three of the four texts used in the original course; the texts provide rich material for the exploration of literature and their selection seems to be the result of a thoughtful consideration of diverse perspectives. My focus is on the methodology of exploring the texts as much as the texts themselves.
The shared texts for my hypothetical course - Introduction to 20th Century American Literature – are: The Best American Short Stories of the Century, edited by John Updike and Katrina Kenison; A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines; and The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. The original course design included a fourth work, Frankenstein. My course replaces Frankenstein with a work of student choice in order to heighten student engagement. In addition, this change narrows the focus of the class to 20th century American Literature.