NEW ENGLAND BEYOND CRITICISM “Elisa New’s book is a remarkable achievement. It is very rare that a critic manages to ask what seem exactly the right questions, then to answer them in a lively, brilliant, evocative, and supremely intelligent prose.” Charles F. Altieri, University of California “Elisa New is a refreshing voice among critics and historians of literature. She has a keen sense of the nature of New England and its deep spiritual resources, reaching back to the Puritans, moving through the great nineteenth-century expressions of interior landscapes and visions. This is a book I welcome and celebrate.” Jay Parini, Middlebury College Literary criticism of the past thirty years has undercut what the canonizers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw as the fundamental role of early New England in the development of American literary culture. And yet, a determination in literary circles to topple perceived Ivy League elitism and Protestant cultural creationism overlooks the continuing value, beauty, and even practical utility of a canon still cherished by lay readers around the world. This Manifesto raises questions about how academic specialization and the academic study of New England have affected enthusiasm for reading. Using a range of interpretive practices, including those most often deployed by contemporary academic critics, Elisa New cuts across firmly established subfields, mixing literary exegesis with autobiographical reflection, close reading with cultural history, archival and antiquarian inquiry with experiments in style, and lays bare editorial orthodoxies, raising to question the whole hierarchy of values now governing the study of American and other literatures. Taking New England as a test case for a wider, more accessible set of critical practices, New England Beyond Criticism demands that the domain of literary study be opened further to the tastes of the general reader.

Performance assessment is a hot topic in school systems, and educators continue to analyze its costs, benefits, and feasibility as a replacement for high-stakes testing. Until now, researchers and policymakers have had to dig to find out what we know and what we still have to learn about performance assessment. Beyond the Bubble Test: How Performance Assessments Support 21st Century Learning synthesizes the latest findings in the field, and not a moment too soon. Statistics indicate that the United States is in danger of falling behind if it fails to adapt to our changing world. The memory and recall strategies of traditional testing are no longer adequate to equip our students with the skills they need to excel in the global economy. Instead teachers need to engage students in deeper learning, assessing their ability to use higher-order skills. Skills like synthesizing information, understanding evidence, and critical problem-solving are not achieved when we teach to multiple-choice exams. Examples in Beyond the Bubble Test paint a useful picture of how schools can begin to supplement traditional tests with something that works better. This book provides new perspectives on current performance assessment research, plus an incisive look at what’s possible at the local and state levels. Linda Darling-Hammond, with a team of leading scholars, bring together lessons learned, new directions, and solid recommendations into a single, readily accessible compendium. Beyond the Bubble Test situates the current debate on performance assessment within the context of testing in the United States. This comprehensive resource also looks beyond our U.S. borders to Singapore, Hong Kong, and other places whose reform-mindedness can serve as an example to us.

In Beyond Deliverance, Corinne Taylor continues the emotionally riveting and historically intriguing true story begun in her 2012 book, Deliverance from Evil. So beautiful was the sight of Florence in her wedding gown as she walked down the aisle on the arm of her father in the Congregational Church that the thousand guests waiting in hushed conversations gasped in awe. Once an admired debutante in high society of Washington D.C., Florence is humiliated by another collective gasp at scandal just six months after her fashionable wedding was highlighted on the society pages of Washingtons newspapers. Florence now attempts to rebuild her lifejust at the time when the world is rocked by war and epidemic. If she recalls with wrenching pain the girl she used to be, it is because she knows the idealized romanticism of the time before 1915 can never be restored. Once she idealized, now she questionsher own motives as well as the motives of her suitors who again queue up outside her apartment at the Cairo Hotel with impressive credentials, appealing physical form, and flirtatious flattery. Will she settle for friendship in marriage or will she hold out for the passion she desires? This story is about how Florence regains hope in her future, and the irony of her choice in men.

In a unique study of Anglo-Jewish writers in the post-war period, Dr. Sicher traces through their works the story of the rise of the Jewish community from slum poverty to suburban affluence. This period is one of crucial social change in Britain. At the same time, Dr. Sicher raises serious questions about the modern writer’s cultural and ethnic identity. In this process, Dr. Sicher advances the thesis that, under the impetus of the Holocaust, the more traditional conflict between Jewish roots and assimilation has been succeeded by a reassessment of identity and morality. Dr. Sicher’s perspective on this particular period of literature is a highly original one and it should provoke creative reconsideration of other contexts and times as well.

Six short stories, psychic in character.