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The Literary Agenda is a series of short polemical monographs about the importance of literature and of reading in the wider world and about the state of literary education inside schools and universities. The category of 'the literary' has always been contentious. What is clear, however, is how increasingly it is dismissed or is unrecognised as a way of thinking or an arena for thought. It is sceptically challenged from within, for example, by the sometimes rival claims of cultural history, contextualized explanation, or media studies. It is shaken from without by even greater pressures: by economic exigency and the severe social attitudes that can follow from it; by technological change that may leave the traditional forms of serious human communication looking merely antiquated. For just these reasons this is the right time for renewal, to start reinvigorated work into the meaning and value of literary reading. For the Internet and digitial generation, the most basic human right is the freedom to read. The Web has indeed brought about a rapid and far-reaching revolution in reading, making a limitless global pool of literature and information available to anyone with a computer. At the same time, however, the threats of censorship, surveillance, and mass manipulation through the media have grown apace. Some of the most important political battles of the twenty-first century have been fought—and will be fought—over the right to read. Will it be adequately protected by constitutional guarantees and freedom of information laws? Or will it be restricted by very wealthy individuals and very powerful institutions? And given increasingly sophisticated methods of publicity and propaganda, how much of what we read can we believe? This book surveys the history of independent sceptical reading, from antiquity to the present. It tells the stories of heroic efforts at self-education by disadvantaged people in all parts of the world. It analyzes successful reading promotion campaigns throughout history (concluding with Oprah Winfrey) and explains why they succeeded. It also explores some disturbing current trends, such as the reported decay of attentive reading, the disappearance of investigative journalism, 'fake news', the growth of censorship, and the pervasive influence of advertisers and publicists on the media—even on scientific publishing. For anyone who uses libraries and Internet to find out what the hell is going on, this book is a guide, an inspiration, and a warning.
Originating in a recent CIERA conference held at the University of Michigan, this book brings together the nation's most distinguished researchers to examine how readers understand text and how comprehension is assessed. The first part provides both national and historical contexts for the study of reading comprehension. The second part examines how vocabulary, motivation, and expertise influence comprehension, and it includes analyses of the developmental course and correlates of comprehension. Chapters in the third part consider how schools focus on comprehension for instruction and assessment. The fourth part includes chapters on large-scale assessment that analyze how test formats and psychometric characteristics influence measures of reading comprehension. At the end of each part is a commentary--written by an expert--that reviews the chapters, critiques the main points, and synthesizes critical issues. Key features of this outstanding new book include: *Integration of Research and Practice--provides a bridge between conceptual issues studied by researchers concerned with reading comprehension theories and practical issues addressed by educators concerned with classroom instruction and assessment. *Comprehension Focus--provides a thorough history and rigorous research-based analyses of reading comprehension. *Assessment Focus--provides innovative approaches to comprehension assessment that include the influences of vocabulary, decoding, and motivation. *Synthetic Commentaries--provides periodic summaries that analyze and synthesize research, practices, and issues discussed in each part. *Expertise--contributing authors and commentators are highly respected authorities on reading comprehension (see table of contents). This text is appropriate for educational and psychological researchers, reading educators, and graduate students in education and psychology. It is part of the CIERA series, which includes the following volumes: Taylor and Pearson: Teaching Reading: Effective Schools, Accomplished Teachers (2002) Van Kleeck, Stahl, and Bauer: On Reading Books to Children: Parents and Teachers (2003) Hoffman and Schallert: The Texts in Elementary Classrooms (2005)
First Published in 2006. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This book traces affinities between digital and medieval media, exploring how reading functioned as a nexus for concerns about increasing literacy, audiences’ agency, literary culture and media formats from the late fourteenth to the early sixteenth centuries. Drawing on a wide range of texts, from well-known poems of Chaucer and Lydgate to wall texts, banqueting poems and devotional works written by and for women, Participatory reading argues that making readers work offered writers ways to shape their reputations and the futures of their productions. At the same time, the interactive reading practices they promoted enabled audiences to contribute to – and contest – writers’ burgeoning authority, making books and reading work for everyone.
The Practice of Reading is a lucid and lively examination of the art of interpreting the novel in the context of recent developments in literary theory and criticism. Believing that reading is - or should be - a pleasurable, creative activity, the authors analyse a range of seven novels from the eighteenth century to the present, focusing upon the experiential dimensions of the reading process. What is the role of the reader? What happens when a novel is read? How far does meaning depend on the reader, and how far on the text? These and other related questions are explored in readings of novels as diverse as Tristram Shandy, Pride and Prejudice, Great Expectations, Daniel Deronda, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Beckett's Trilogy and Possession. In its insistence upon a return to the practice of close reading, the book represents a timely intervention in current literary debates. An accessible, informative and above all stimulating text for all university and college students of literature.
Based on what we now know about reading, this practical book offers strategies in a consistent format that is easy for teachers to incorporate in their daily instruction. This grab-bag of classroom-tested activities allows teachers to choose what they need to meet the diverse needs of students in grades 1 through 8. These strategies guide students through the reading process and build important comprehension skills through reading, talk, art, drama, and more. These innovative ways to use the best children’s books will inspire students to become enthusiastic and avid readers, and take the first giant step into becoming lifelong readers.
Reading as Democracy in Crisis: Interpretation, Theory, History explores the dialectic between historical conditions and the reading strategies that arise from them. Chapters covering Plato and Derrida; G.W.F. Hegel; Karl Marx; Ludwig Wittgenstein; Robert Penn Warren; Louise Rosenblatt; Theodor Adorno, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida; Judith Butler; and Object Oriented Ontology and Digital Humanities provide overviews of and arguments about each subject’s thought in its historical contexts, suggesting how the reading strategies adopted in each case were in part motivated by specific historical circumstances. As the introduction explains, these circumstances often involved forms of democracy in crisis, so that the collection as a whole is an engagement with the dialectic between democracies that are perpetually in crisis and the seemingly unlimited freedom of our reading practices.