Approaches to Teaching Cather's My Antonia

Unlike many other great works of English literature, My Antonia is immediately accessible to today's students. "Cather's novel is so clear," Susan J. Rosowski says, "so apparently effortless, that it hardly seems art at all, and the challenge for instructors is to move their students beyond a surface reading to an understanding of the novel's art and its place in literary history." Yet few instructors have had training in fields relating to Cather studies. The aim of this collection of essays, then, is to provide background and ideas instructors have found most helpful in teaching My Antonia. This volume, like others in the MLA's Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, is divided into two parts. The first part, "Materials," reviews required and recommended student reading, reference works, background studies, and critical commentary. In the second part, "Approaches," twenty-five teachers share their strategies for presenting the novel in the classroom; their essays are arranged in four sections that focus on Cather's life and times, the novel's literary and philosophical traditions, teaching the novel in particular courses, and, finally, exploring specific aspects of the novel.