Category: recitiatif

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Collaboration between the Author and Reader

This semester, I’m teaching Toni Morrison’s “Recitatif” again, and every time I teach it something new stands out to me. I read and thought about Morrison’s story in connection with the relationship between the author and her audience. Morrison invites her audience to become a co-creator of the text, and in this manner the author and audience engage within a dialogic where they each … Read More Collaboration between the Author and Reader

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“Why can’t we read this story as a universal text?”: Questions from the Classroom

Recently, I taught Louise Erdrich’s “The Red Convertible.” The story focuses on two Chippewa brothers, Henry and Lyman, and their relationship after Henry returns from the Vietnam War. During our discussion of the story in class, someone asked a question about the text and some of our previous readings that caused me to think well past the end of our session. The student posed … Read More “Why can’t we read this story as a universal text?”: Questions from the Classroom

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Language and Syntax in the Classroom

The day after the 2017 Boston Marathon, the marathon’s sponsor, Adidas, sent an email to participants who completed the race. The subject line read, “Congrats, you survived the Boston Marathon.” On the surface, nothing appears wrong with this line; however, given the events at the marathon on April 15, 2013, when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev detonated two homemade bombs close to the finish line killing … Read More Language and Syntax in the Classroom