CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES TO (TEACHING) AMERICAN LITERATURE

Abstract

The paper aims to present some of the most important critical approaches to American literature in recent period and their potential application in the classroom. The first part briefly discusses some of the most important and influential twentieth and twenty-first century theoretical frameworks in the study of American literature, including New Criticism, Postcolonial Theory, Race, Ethnic and Minority Studies, Feminist Criticism. The second part of the paper is dedicated to the specific genres and forms of American literature, e.g., short story, drama, poetry and their treatment in theoretical literature. In the case of the short story, attention is dedicated to recent scholarly approaches to the form that try to re-examine traditional essential definitions by inspecting the short story in its historical and cultural context. The paper also outlines the treatment of American short story writers and their contribution to the development of the genre in theoretical literature.