Selected Publications
available through the
Books:

Teaching Climate Change to Adolescents: Reading, Writing, and Making a Difference. Co-authored with Rick Beach and Jeff Share. I am the primary author of the first four chapters and co-author of the other chapters. Sets forward strategies for teaching about climate change in secondary English. Includes voices of many of my students and former students and endorsement by Bill McKibben. Special joint publication by ROUTLEDGE and NCTE PRESS, 2017. Chapter 1 reprinted in American Educator, 11-2019, journal of the American Federation of Teachers, circulation 800,000.

Teaching to Exceed the English Language Arts Common Core State Standards: A Critical Inquiry Approach for 6-12 Classrooms. Co-authored with Richard Beach and Amanda Thein. SECOND EDITION The second edition, much revised from the first and with a focus on critical inquiry instead of literacy practices. ROUTLEDGE, 2016.

Reclaiming English Language Arts Methods Courses: Critical Issues and Challenges for Teacher Educators in Top-Down Times. With Jory Brass. An edited collection of essays about leading approaches to preparing elementary and secondary English Language Arts teachers at universities across the country in ways that respond to new understandings of literacies and changes in student populations, technologies, and educational policies. ROUTLEDGE, 2015 .

Teaching to Exceed the English Language Arts Common Core State Standards: A Literacy Practices Approach for 6-12 Classrooms with Richard Beach and Amanda Thein. Theory, approaches, and strategy for meaningful standards integration emphasizing teacher decision-making and student literacy practices. ROUTLEDGE, 2012.

Teaching the Literature of Today’s Middle East. Addresses teaching contemporary Arabic, Turkish, and Iranian literature, film, and political, historical and cultural materials in college and secondary schools. Includes chapters on teaching about Islam, the causes of the Arab Spring, the experience of women in the Middle East, the history of European and American involvement in the region (including the Afghan and Iraq Wars), and the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Chapters also address the literature of Muslim and Middle Eastern immigrants in the West, teaching Muslim students, and connecting the British and American canon to the Middle East. ROUTLEDGE, 2012.

Teaching Literature in Virtual Worlds: Immersive Learning in English Studies. Edited collection of 11 essays examining the experience of using on-line virtual worlds as teaching tools for specific literary works. I am editor, author the introduction and one chapter. ROUTLEDGE, 2012.

The Doctoral Degree in English Education This collection of essays addresses a shortage of PhDs in this area and is vital reading for doctoral students and professors of English education and any public school teacher considering teaching at the college level. Also available through NCTE Press.

Literature and the Web: Reading and Responding with New Technologies  With Robert Rozema. Addresses the experience of teachers and students using digital archives and web 2.0 technology for the teaching and study of literature. HEINEMANN PRESS, 2008.

Literature and Lives: A Response-based, Cultural Studies Approach to Teaching English, NCTE Press, 2001.

Making Subject(s): Literature and the Emergence of National Identity, Garland, division of ROUTLEDGE, 1998. 

Teaching and Testimony, Rigoberta Menchú and the North American Classroom, SUNY PRESS, 1997. 

Sample Articles:

“The Climate Emergency and English Education.” A chapter in Engaging the Critical: Approaches from the Commission on Social Justice in Teacher Education. Peter Lang, 2020.

“Virtual Worlds for Literary Study: Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge in the Village of Umuofia and Other Literary Worlds.” In Research on Technology in English Education, Ed. by Carl Young. Information Age Publishing. 2012. pp. 153-184.

“Literature from the Modern Middle East: Making a Living Connection,” English Journal, January 2009.

“Digital Texts and the New Literacies.” English Journal, September, 2007.

“LiteraryWorlds.org: Virtual Reality Environments and Teaching Literature.” The Journal of Media Literacy, 53.2, Fall 2006, 46-52.

"National and Colonial Education in Shakespeare's The Tempest."  Early Modern Literary Studies, 5.1. (Online Journal-Full Text Available) 

"Teaching to the Contemporary Crisis". An article on African American literature and prisons in College Literature, 1995. Also available as a chapter in Order and Partialities:Theory, Pedagogy and the Postcolonial and via Literature on Line.

"Other-Fashioning : The Discourse of Empire and Nation" a chapter in Amerindian Images, U MINN PRESS, 1992. 

More Information:

Literary Worlds: Website created by a team of WMU faculty, doctoral candidates, and undergraduate students offering virtural worlds for literary studies. Research article on the project.

Colonial / Postcolonial Literary Dialogues website that I and my students have created includes resources for teachers who wish to bring multicultural perspectives to literature teaching and can serve students as an "electronic textbook.."

Vita