Behind our contemporary experience of globalization, precarity, and consumerism lies a history of colonization, increasing literacy, transnational trade in goods and labor, and industrialization. Teaching British laboring-class literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries means exploring ideas of class, status, and labor in relation to ......
The greatest work of one of France's greatest writers, Victor Hugo's Les Miserables seemed stylistically and even politically out of date when it was published in 1862. But its indictment of injustice, concern for those suffering in misery, unapologetic embrace of the ideals of the French Revolution, and memorable characters have proved ......
Gertrude Stein studied psychology at Radcliffe with William James and went on to train as a medical doctor before coming out as a lesbian and moving to Paris, where she collected contemporary art and wrote poetry, novels, essays, and libretti. A trail-blazing modernist, she was attacked by more than one generation of critics and has influenced ......
A leader of the transcendentalist movement and one of the country's first public intellectuals, Ralph Waldo Emerson has been a long-standing presence in American literature courses. Today he is remembered for his essays, but in the nineteenth century he was also known as a poet and orator who engaged with issues such as religion, nature, ......
Praised by Voltaire and admired by Pushkin, Evariste Parny (1753-1814) was born on the island of Reunion, which is east of Madagascar, and educated in France. His life as a soldier and government administrator allowed him to travel to Brazil, Africa, and India. Though from the periphery of France's colonial empire, he ultimately became a member of ......
In the Nahda, or Arab Renaissance, from the early nineteenth to the early twentieth century, Arab culture and politics for the first time responded to European modernity and face the challenges to Arab power, tradition, and identity posed by the industrial, colonial nations of the West. In the process, Arab society both imitated and innovated, ......
First performed in 1964, Amiri Baraka's play about a charged encounter between a black man and a white woman still has the power to shock. The play, steeped in the racial issues of its time, continues to speak to racial violence and inequality today. This volume offers strategies for guiding students through this short but challenging text. Part ......
Caterina Albert i Paradis (1869-1966) began her career with a scandal. Her dramatic monologue ""The Infanticide,"" delivered by a young woman, won prizes and garnered the attention of the Catalan literary world, but its harsh theme drew outrage when the anonymous author was revealed to be a woman. In the tradition of George Eliot, George Sand, and ......
Understanding the complexities of Arab politics, history, and culture has never been more important for North American readers. Yet even as Arabic literature is increasingly being translated into English, the modern Arabic literary tradition is still often treated as other?controversial, dangerous, difficult, esoteric, or exotic. This volume ......
