Teaching the Works of Eudora Welty: Twenty-First-Century Approaches by Mae Miller Claxton


Teaching the Works of Eudora Welty: Twenty-First-Century Approaches
Title : Teaching the Works of Eudora Welty: Twenty-First-Century Approaches
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 1496814630
ISBN-10 : 9781496814630
Language : English
Format Type : Paperback
Number of Pages : 282
Publication : Published January 25, 2018

Contributions by Jacob Agner, Sharon Deykin Baris, Carolyn J. Brown, Lee Anne Bryan, Keith Cartwright, Stuart Christie, Mae Miller Claxton, Virginia Ottley Craighill, David A. Davis, Susan V. Donaldson, Julia Eichelberger, Kevin Eyster, Dolores Flores-Silva, Sarah Gilbreath Ford, Stephen M. Fuller, Dawn Gilchrist, Rebecca L. Harrison, Casey Kayser, Michael Kreyling, Ebony Lumumba, Suzanne Marrs, Pearl Amelia McHaney, David McWhirter, Laura Sloan Patterson, Harriet Pollack, Gary Richards, Christin Marie Taylor, Annette Trefzer, Alec Valentine, Adrienne Akins Warfield, Keri Watson, and Amy Weldon

Too often Eudora Welty is known to the general public as Miss Welty, a "perfect lady" who wrote affectionate portraits of her home region. Yet recent scholarship has amply demonstrated a richer complexity. Welty was an innovative artist with cosmopolitan sensibilities and progressive politics, a woman who maintained close friendships with artists and intellectuals throughout the world, a writer as unafraid to experiment as she was to level her pen at the worst human foibles.

The essays collected in Teaching the Works of Eudora Welty seek to move Welty beyond a discussion of region and reflect new scholarship that remaps her work onto a larger canvas. The book offers ways to help twenty-first-century readers navigate Welty's challenging and intricate narratives. It provides answers to questions many teachers will have: Why should I study a writer who documents white privilege? Why should I give this "regional" writer space on an already crowded syllabus? Why should I teach Welty if I do not study the South? How can I help my students make sense of her modernist narratives? How can Welty's texts help me teach my students about literary theory, about gender and disability, about cultures and societies with which my students are unfamiliar?

Teaching the Works of Eudora Welty: Twenty-First-Century Approaches Reviews

  • Laura

    I have come across Eudora Welty time and again in my classroom experiences. I am the type of reader/writer who appreciates learning more about the process and how to be a better reader as well as more about the writing process.

    I guess I had not considered Eudora Welty as a regional voice. I placed her among Southern writers, but this book gave me new insights and a better understanding of the writer as a whole.

  • J.D. DeHart

    This work demonstrates the power and reach of Eudora Welty’s work through a series of essays. I first encountered Welty decades ago in The Optimist’s Daughter and have adored her writing since then. She is an often cited figure in my composition courses.

    While I never considered her a regional writer per se, this book makes the case that she is far more than just a localized voice. Recommended for readers who read and most readily useable as a text in a course on Welty, women’s literature, gender and literature, or even composition. This was a finely crafted text.