I have a confession to make: I have now read the chapter on deconstruction in Deborah Appleman’s book Critical Encounters in High School English three times, and I still don’t get it. It seems to me that deconstruction is only about finding contradictions within a text…is that it? Don’t we do that with every literary [...]
“I want my students to think about the worlds these texts both represent and invoke. I want them to think about what set of beliefs drive these characters and, in some cases, help seal their fate. I want them to think about the author’s relationship to those set of beliefs. I think I sometimes forget [...]
I am probably most familiar with Reader-Response Theory. I have been using a reader-response approach to teaching literature since I first started teaching; In fact, I was using it before I knew what to call it. It is how I learned to approach literature and it is how I have most enjoyed dealing with literature, [...]
