Routledge Teaching the Literature of Today's Middle East

Providing a gateway into the real literature emerging from the Middle East, this book shows teachers how to make the topic authentic, powerful, and relevant. Teaching the Literature of Today’s Middle East:• Introduces teachers to this literature and how to teach it• Brings to the reader a tremendous diversity of teachable texts and materials by Middle Eastern writers • Takes a thematic approach that allows students to understand and engage with the region  and address key issues • Includes stories from the author’s own classroom, and shares student insight and reactions• Utilizes contemporary teaching methods, including cultural studies, literary circles, blogs, YouTube, class speakers, and film analysis• Directly and powerfully models how to address controversial issues in the region Written in an open, personal, and engaging style, theoretically informed and academically smart, highly relevant across the field of literacy education, this text offers teachers and teacher-educators a much needed resource for helping students to think deeply and critically about the politics and culture of the Middle East through literary engagements. Review “This clearly unique book speaks to a timely and important topic that has simply not been addressed sufficiently by current pedagogy. A book that helps teachers to teach authentic texts by and about people from the Middle East [is] a welcome addition to our current resources on teaching literature.”―Amanda Haertling Thein, University of Pittsburgh “There is an obvious need for this book because of U.S. involvement in the Middle East―always pressing but currently precipitous….  Allen Webb demonstrates the experience and knowledge to address the dynamics of a constantly changing Middle Eastern situation and to meet the pedagogical challenge of building collaborative understanding in face-to-face and electronic classroom exchanges.”―Betsy Hearne, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (Emerita) About the Author Allen Webb is Professor of English Education and Postcolonial Studies at Western Michigan University.