Reddit reviews Texts and Contexts: Writing About Literature with Critical Theory (6th Edition)

Man, I wish there was a stronger Jung influence when I was studying critical theory. It took years for me to break out of studying archetypes through the binary obsessions of structuralism and postructuralism. The absence of Jung is a serious hamper to the structural and psychological (they use Freud ironically enough) sections of "Texts and Contexts: Writing About Literature with Critical Theory" (6th Edition).

Edit: Here's a link to the book. I don't know, I feel it still put my on the right path on the dangerous road of writing about Queer Theory.

I work at a community college, and we definitely have a significant number of students who are people of color and/or live in economic precarity. So, it sounds like we are interested in working with similar populations of students. Here are a few resources I've found helpful:

Reading on critical pedagogy for a theoretical framework. Freire and Giroux are where I'd start.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_pedagogy

The idea of backward design for semester-length planing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backward_design

I'm having trouble finding a good resource to link to quickly, but the idea of transparency in lesson design seems important to me.

"How Learning Works" and "What the Best College Teachers Do" for more day to day things:

https://www.amazon.com/How-Learning-Works-Research-Based-Principles/dp/0470484101

https://www.amazon.com/What-Best-College-Teachers-Do/dp/0674013255/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=F2A8M8CSVQKDBS14P2QC



"In The Middle" for a good outline of a workshop approach to teaching writing

https://www.heinemann.com/inthemiddle/

I haven't found a good single book that talks about teaching active reading, but there are a lot of resources online, and I've found teaching it explicitly and modeling it for my students as part of a whole class discussion to work pretty well.

As far as the critical theory aspect of reading (which I do think should be taught early on and even to people who are just beginning to read at the college level) I like "Texts and Contexts" and "Critical Encounters"

https://www.amazon.com/Critical-Encounters-High-School-English/dp/0807748927

https://www.amazon.com/Texts-Contexts-Writing-Literature-Critical/dp/0205716741

Hope that's helpful! Good luck to you!