Maria Eisenmann - Böcker

Learning with Literature in the EFL Classroom provides a comprehensive, in-depth and state-of-the-art introduction to literature learning in EFL contexts. Paying attention to both theoretical and practical concerns, the study focuses on a wide range of literary genres, different age and ability groups and new topics for literature learning. The 18 contributions discuss present-day challenges for literature teaching in the light of current theoretical debates and offer a balance between theory and practice by combining theoretical input with practical work in the classroom. The volume offers many suggestions for the future of the field and has a varied readership in mind, comprising language teachers, university students and academics.

This the first extensive study of the graphic narratives of Alison Bechdel, one of the most renowned and influential cartoonists and graphic novelists of our time. Over the last few decades, a wealth of publications on the growing medium of graphic fiction has become available. The contribution of this volume to this body of work is to explore Bechdel’s oeuvre from her earlier cartoons to her contemporary full-length graphic memoirs, particularly chronicling her formative years. Employing a number of case studies from Bechdel’s work, this publication shows how Bechdel plays with the medium-specific characteristics of graphic narratives in order to trace back the complex relationship with her parents and the development of her own gender identities.

This book is mapping the fields of modern output-oriented teaching, intercultural learning, and drama methods in the foreign language class. It explains that drama-based language learning transcends the usual learning scopes in its practical relevance and its far-reaching contextual implications. By including (inter-)cultural aspects, as well as human and civil rights issues, modern teaching can provide students with new frames of references and shifts their attention from an individualistic worldview towards a more tolerant perception of «the other.» The term of «cultura franca» hints at a liberation of cultural restraints and this is exactly what is indispensable in order to educate students to become the interculturally adept speakers our modern time needs.

The book deals with the question how students in multicultural EFL-classrooms can be prepared for their role as world citizens. The author shows that teaching English offers important potentials for cosmopolitan education due to its role as a «lingua franca». The study develops the construct cosmopolitan communicative competence as a theoretical framework. It also presents a teaching approach that combines students’ life-writing with the discussion of literary texts to advance the associated knowledge, skills and attitudes. The potentials of this approach are evaluated through the assessment of students’ competence development.

Gender diversity and the fact that gender is subject to perpetual renegotiations have become part of teachers’ and students’ lives. This volume tackles this issue by showing particularly innovative ways of teaching gender in the EFL classroom. Thus, the contributions include a broad variety of gender realities, such as trans* and cisgender, a cornucopia of texts and other media, a variety of literary genres, graphic novels, films and TV shows. The authors also illustrate cutting-edge approaches to teaching both literature and gender in the contemporary student-centered EFL classroom with different age groups.

Der vorliegende Band setzt sich mit der didaktischen Implementierung Shakespeares Werk auseinander. Im Fokus stehen dabei die in jüngster Zeit radikal veränderten medialen sowie literatur- und kulturwissenschaftlichen Bedingungen unter Berücksichtigung neuester didaktischer Erkenntnisse. Darüber hinaus verfolgt der Band das Ziel, neue interdisziplinäre Einblicke in verschiedene aktuelle Themen und Ansätze der Lehre Shakespeares im (Hoch-) Schulunterricht zu ermöglichen. Der Fokus ist darauf gerichtet, Theorie und Praxis zu verbinden, um so Studierenden, Wissenschaftler/innen und auch Lehrer/innen grundlegendes Wissen im Bereich der heutigen Shakespeare-Rezeption sowie praktische Beispiele, die sich in verschiedenen Unterrichtssituationen bewährt haben, zu vermitteln. This volume deals with the methodological implementation of Shakespeare's work. The focus is on the recently radically changed media, literary and cultural studies conditions, taking into account the latest research findings in EFL methodology. In addition, the volume aims to provide new interdisciplinary insights into various current topics and approaches for teaching Shakespeare to all ages. The focus is on combining theory and practice to transmit profound knowlegde to university students and lecturers as well as to teachers. The essays in this collection try to account for both perspectives by giving an overview of contemporary Shakespeare scholarship as well as practical examples that have proven successful in a wide range of classroom situations.

This book updates reader-response criticism as the foundation of aesthetic reading in the classroom by bringing it in line with cognitive theories in literary studies and linguistics. With the help of Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner‘s conceptual integration theory, which shares a surprising number of correspondences with Wolfgang Iser‘s The Act of Reading, it is possible to flesh out the latter‘s model of narrative meaning-making. In turn, this allows for a consistent reader-response approach to the medium of comics and auto/biography as one of its dominant genres. The fragmentation of comics narratives, but also of human lives and identities, requires such a theory that can explain how different perspectives and experiences can be blended into an experiential whole.

This volume comprises articles by scholars from three disciplines – literary studies, TEFL methodology, and history – from three universities – University College Cork (UCC), Katholieke Universiteit Leuven/Leuven Centre for Irish Studies (KU Leuven/LCIS), and Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg/Irish Studies Würzburg (JMU/ISWÜ) – in three European countries – Ireland, Belgium, and Germany. The contributors explore Irish ‘history in stories’ from the vantage point of their national and disciplinary contexts, emphasizing cultural knowledge and historical lessons to be drawn from ‘texts’ from and about the Irish past.