Italo Calvino, whose works reflect the major literary and cultural trends of the second half of the twentieth century, is known for his imagination, humor, and technical virtuosity. He explores topics such as neorealism, folktale, fantasy, and social and political allegory and experiments with narrative style and structure. Students take delight in Calvino's wide-ranging and inventive work, whether in Italian courses or in courses in comparative or world literature, literary criticism, cultural studies, philosophy, or even architecture. Given the range of his writing, teaching Calvino can seem a daunting task. This volume aims to help instructors develop creative and engaging classroom strategies. Part 1, "Materials," presents an overview of Calvino's writings, nearly all of which are available in English translation, as well as critical works and online resources. The essays in part 2, "Approaches," focus on general themes and cultural contexts, address theoretical issues, and provide practical classroom applications. Contributors describe strategies for teaching Calvino that are as varied as his writings, whether having students study narrative theory through If on a winter's night a traveler, explore literary genre with Cosmicomics, improve their writing using Six Memos for the Next Millennium, or read Mr. Palomar in a general education humanities course.

Structurally innovative and culturally expansive, the works of Karen Tei Yamashita invite readers to rethink conventional paradigms of genres and national traditions. Her novels, plays, and other texts refashion forms like the immigrant tale, the postmodern novel, magical realism, apocalyptic literature, and the picaresque and suggest new transnational, hemispheric, and global frameworks for interpreting Asian American literature. Addressing courses in American studies, contemporary fiction, environmental humanities, and literary theory, the essays in this volume are written by undergraduate and graduate instructors from across the United States and around the globe. Part 1, "Materials," outlines Yamashita's novels and other texts, key works of criticism and theory, and resources for Asian American and Asian Brazilian literature and culture. Part 2, "Approaches," provides options for exploring Yamashita's works through teaching historical debates, outlining principles of environmental justice, mapping geographic boundaries to highlight power dynamics, and drawing personal connections to the texts. Additionally, an essay by Yamashita describes her own approaches to teaching creative writing.

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006, Orhan Pamuk is Turkey's preeminent novelist and an internationally recognized figure of letters. Influenced by both Turkish and European literature, his works interrogate problems of modernity and of East and West in the Turkish context and incorporate the Ottoman legacy linguistically and thematically. The stylistic and thematic aspects of his novels, his intriguing use of intertextual elements, and his characters' metatextual commentaries make his work rewarding in courses on world literature and on the postmodern novel. Pamuk's nonfiction writings extend his themes of memory, loss, personal and political histories, and the craft of the novel. Part 1, "Materials," provides biographical background and introduces instructors to translations and critical scholarship that will elucidate Pamuk's works. In part 2, "Approaches," essays cover topics that support teachers in a range of classrooms, including Pamuk's use of the Turkish language, the political background to Pamuk's novels, the politics of translation and aesthetics, and Pamuk's works as world literature.

A posthumously published collection of thirty-six essays offering Italo Calvino's invigorating and illuminating analysis of his most treasured literary classics.

Language and literature teaching are a keystone in the age of STEM, especially when dealing with minority communities. Practical methodologies for language learning are essential for bridging the cultural gap. Teaching Language and Literature On and Off-Canon is a critical research publication that provides a multidisciplinary, multimodal, and heterogenous perspectives on the applications of language learning and teaching practices for commonly studied languages, such as Spanish, English, and French, and less-studied languages, such as Latin, Gaelic, and ancient Semitic languages. Highlighting topics such as language acquisition, artistic literature, and minority languages, this book is essential for language teachers, linguists, academicians, curriculum designers, policymakers, administrators, researchers, and students.

David Foster Wallace's works engage with his literary moment--roughly summarized as postmodernism--and with the author's historical context. From his famously complex fiction to essays critical of American culture, Wallace's works have at their core essential human concerns such as self-understanding, connecting with others, ethical behavior, and finding meaning. The essays in this volume suggest ways to elucidate Wallace's philosophical and literary preoccupations for today's students, who continue to contend with urgent issues, both personal and political, through reading literature. Part 1, "Materials," offers guidance on biographical, contextual, and archival sources and critical responses to Wallace's writing. The essays in part 2, "Approaches," discuss teaching key works and genres in high school settings, first-year undergraduate writing classes, American literature surveys, seminars on Wallace, and world literature courses. They examine Wallace's social and philosophical contexts and contributions, treating topics such as gender, literary ethics, and the culture of writing programs.

Primo Levi, Holocaust survivor and renowned memoirist, is one of the most widely read writers of post-World War II Italy. His works are characterized by the lean, dispassionate eloquence with which he approaches his experience of incarceration in Auschwitz. His memoirs--as well as his poetry and fiction and his many interviews--are often taught in several fields, including Jewish studies and Holocaust studies, comparative literature, and Italian language and literature, and can enrich the study of history, psychology, and philosophy. The first part of this volume provides instructors with an overview of the available editions, anthologies, and translations of Levi's work and identifies other useful classroom aids, such as films, music, and online resources. In the second part, contributors describe different approaches to teaching Levi's work. Some, in presenting Survival in Auschwitz, The Reawakening, and The Drowned and the Saved, look at the place of style in Holocaust testimony and the reliability of memory in autobiography. Others focus on questions of translation, complicated by the untranslatable in the language and experiences of the concentration camps, or on how Levi incorporates his background as a chemist into his writing, most clearly in The Periodic Table.