"Literature and Lives" by Allen Carey-Webb Ascertaining the efficacy of reader-response and cultural studies in the classroom.

When it comes to the teaching of literature, there are, perhaps, as many didactic methodologies as there are literary genres. Until recent decades, literature has primarily been taught as a lecture course, the teachers apprising students of timeless truths about what literature means, and students eagerly soaking up those "truths", taking them at face value and never thinking about the variable criteria, such as authorial intent, social constructions of reality, both contemporary reactions and those …

…themselves of their negative "feelings" - a catharsis that is deleterious to their reading and writing abilities. Students need to immerse themselves in language. When they do so, they cannot go wrong. When these "sub skills", which are the building blocks of reading and writing, are consistently integrated with the foregoing approaches, students become proficient learners, profound thinkers, and productive members of society. Finis Works Cited Carey - Webb, Allen. Literature and Lives.NCTE Ill, 2001.