Known for their fully drawn characters, artistic complexity, and a multifaceted engagement with social issues, the plays of Euripides inspire divergent critical views. While some scholars find that the dramatist writes from a traditional Greek perspective, others see a radically innovative artist who criticizes Athenian politics, the treatment of women, and the Olympian gods. Readers will find both views in this collection of essays designed to help teachers present Euripides and his plays to today's students.

The distinctive voices of Renaissance playwrights can make a classroom come alive. This volume explores the compelling dramatic technique and rich language in a wide variety of well-known and less-familiar Renaissance plays. The essays collected here challenge teachers to help students, whose experience is usually limited to reading Shakespeare or seeing movie versions of his plays, see beyond the initial strangeness of Renaissance drama. A series of reading, performance, and research tools are outlined for teachers who wish to encourage students not only to understand the English Renaissance...

Anna Karenina is probably the most often taught nineteenth-century Russian novel in the American academy. Teachers have found that including this virtuoso work of art on a syllabus reaps many rewards and stirs up heated classroom discussion -- on sex and sexuality, dysfunction in the family, gender roles, society's hypocrisy and cruelty. But translation and transliteration problems, the peculiarity of Russian names and terms, and the unfamiliarity of Russian geography and history present a range of pedagogical challenges.

This volume seeks to enrich teachers' and students' understanding of the fictional world Louise Erdrich creates and to address the challenges of teaching her novels and poetry. The first part of the book provides background readings that establish a context for teaching Erdrich and acquaint teachers with Native American traditions, history, customs, and culture--especially those of the Ojibwe, or Chippewa. In the second section, experienced teachers of Erdrich discuss the strategies they use to engage students in a sometimes unfamiliar world. Essays provide information on Erdrich's tribe, the...

Now at ninety-three volumes, this popular MLA series addresses a broad range of literary texts. Each volume surveys teaching aids and critical material and brings together essays that apply a variety of perspectives to teaching the text. In these essays, experienced teachers discuss approaches and methods they have found effective in keeping classroom discussions lively.