1. Classroom Management: Teachers are responsible for a variety of tasks in a typical classroom, and one of the most important is classroom management. The ability to maintain order, respect, rules and procedures helps guide behavior and results in a properly functioning classroom. Creating an environment where students are engaged and comfortable allows students to flourish and learning to occur. [Marzano, Robert J., Jana S. Marzano, and Debra J. Pickering. Classroom Management That Works: Research-Based Strategies for Every Teacher. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2003. Questia.]
2. Learning Disabilities: Learning disabilities (LDs) represent a set of disorders that include difficulty in a variety of academic and social domains and can include reading, math or written language disorders. Through research focusing on a specific type of LD, such as reading, researchers have gained a solid understanding of the cognitive characteristics of specific disabilities along with evidence for genetic and brain bases for that LD. [Harris, Karen R., H. Lee Swanson, and Steve Graham, eds. Handbook of Learning Disabilities. New York: Guilford, 2003. Questia.]
3. Bullying: Recent movies and news features have highlighted the severity of bullying, especially in schools. However, sources site that bullying has been a societal problem for hundreds of years and occurs in the workplace, homes, prisons and nursing homes. The most common environment for bullying is in schools, and as many as 49 to 50 percent of all students will experience some form of bullying throughout the duration of their educational experience. [Sanders, Cheryl E., and Gary D. Phye, eds. Bullying: Implications for the Classroom. San Diego, CA: Elsevier/Academic, 2004. Questia.]
4. Educational Psychology: Educational psychology emerged in the late 19^th century and has evolved through three eras: the founding period (1890-1920), the rise to prominence period (1920-1960) and the modern period (1960-present). One of the most notable contributors to educational psychology is E.L. Thorndike, who transformed the study of education from the realm of speculation and philosophy into a science. “Thorndike was the first to offer a research-based conception of individual differences in intellectual ability that recognized the role of specific knowledge in intellectual performances,” (Zimmerman & Schunk 117). [Zimmerman, Barry J., and Dale H. Schunk, eds. Educational Psychology: A Century of Contributions. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2003. Questia.]
5. Early Childhood Education: Many researchers and psychologists believe that children go through sequential, predictable stages. Through these stages, children acquire learning techniques and develop necessary skills to interact with society. One of the most notable theories for early childhood education in Piaget’s “Piaget’s Theory,” which provided scientific vindication to the notion that young children are different, cognitively limited and go through predictable, sequential stages. [Yelland, Nicola, ed. Critical Issues in Early Childhood Education. Maidenhead, England: Open UP, 2005. Questia.]

Head over to Questia for even more quality research on popular education topics. Happy reading!

Summer literature (Photo by JPott)

Literature can do more than help you pass the warm summer afternoons. It can lead to a career in writing, publishing, library science or teaching. Can you imagine yourself in any of those roles? The study of literature can also serve as an excellent preparation for a career in law or communication. Literature helps us to refine our ability to speak, read and write as well as to perform critical thinking. It opens our minds to new ideas and to other languages and cultures. So, what are you waiting for? Try some of these summer break ideas and explore the many places literature can take you.

Explore the literature landscape

Literature can take you positively anywhere! You can travel into the past through the novels and short stories of greats like Ernest Hemingway or Edgar Allen Poe. Or, travel into the future with Jules Verne or H.G. Wells. Indulge your inner child with the treasures of children’s literature or get dramatic with the plays of Ibsen or Shakespeare. Whatever your interest, you can plummet its depths at Questia where you’ll find thousands of full-text books and articles.

If literature is your passion, then your major is likely be English. While your career path could easily take you to graduate school and then onto teaching, it might interest you to know that many literature and English majors ultimately find their place in such far flung specialties as: advertising, finance, public relations, business and international relations.

Why worship at the altar of literature?

According to Dan Colman, it’s because literature has value for civilization! In his August 22, 2011 post for Open Culture titled, “Ray Bradbury: Literature is the Safety Valve of Civilization,” Colman outlines science fiction author Ray Bradbury’s thoughts on the contributions of literature.

“For the author of Fahrenheit 451, literature has more than an aesthetic purpose. It has an important sociological/psychoanalytic role to play. Stories are a safety valve. They keep society collectively, and us individually, from coming apart at the seams. They’re the linchpin of civilization. And they provide a more immediate source of pleasure and wonder too,” Colman said.

Know thyself — Read

To augment your reading experience this summer, join a book discussion group where you can share your thoughts and experiences of the book with others. You’ll be doing yourself a big favor according to Brittany Allcorn. In her June 9, 2012 post for Changing Lives, Changing Minds (CLTL), titled, “Enter a New World with Deep Reading,” Allcorn describes the benefits of reading and sharing with others.

“Narratives have a literal meaning that all readers can understand, but they can also be manipulated by individual readers who develop their own meaning and interpretation of a text based on their own experiences. The meaning readers develop from a text is important because it leads to a better understanding of the self,” Allcorn said.

Allcorn maintains that engaging in “deep reading” is when one asks questions about the story and discusses the text with others in order to “make meaning out of their personal and collective experience.” By understanding yourself better, you will also gain a greater understanding of your interconnections with others. If you can’t find a group that you like, try starting your very own!

Resources for literature students

For even more inspiration to help you get your lit on this summer, check out these sites:

• Voice of the Shuttle: Make your way through the many links to literature resources compiled from universities across the world.
• Blog of the Western Literature Association (WLA): If you love westerns, this is the site for you.
• Nobel Prize in Literature at NobelPrize.org: Get into the head of a Nobel Laureate author.
• Shmoop: In spite of the funny name, this site is a wealth of resources for students.
• DMOZ Writers Resources Chats and Forums: This is your jumping-off point to forums and online communities centered around writing.
• Library of Congress Poetry and Literature site: No list of resources would be complete without the LOC and its wealth of text and images.

Happy reading!

Novelist Virginia Woolf

As LGBT Pride Month comes to a close, we’re honoring the accomplishments of the LGBT community by sharing a few interesting facts on the five most researched LGBT novelists in our library. To celebrate, we’ve opened up our library to make reference works on each novelist free for a whole month. Continue the celebration with a newer face in writing by checking out the Books on the Radio blog post, “Amber Dawn Wins Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBT Authors” covering 2012′s winner of the award for emerging LGBT writers.

1. Virginia Woolf: Born on January 25, 1882 as Adeline Virginia Stephen, Woolf was homeschooled, spending a great deal of time reading books picked from the library of her father, Leslie Stephen. Her mother Julia passed away when Virginia was 13, and her father when she was 22. Both of their deaths “but especially her father, influenced her work as well as her character in no small degree” (Hafley 3). Woolf wrote her first novel, The Voyage Out, in 1906, though it was not published until nine years later. Virginia married Leonard Woolf, a journalist and political figure, in 1912, and shortly thereafter became involved in the “Bloomsbury Group,” a collection of writers and intellectuals. In addition to nine novels, Woolf was the author of many short stories, lectures, biographies and essays. Woolf committed suicide in March of 1941, drowning herself in the River Ouse. [Hafley, James. Glass Roof: Virginia Woolf as Novelist. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1954. Questia. Web.]
2. Truman Capote: Born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1924, Capote is known for his Southern gothic short stories and fiction in an innovative style which he referred to as the “nonfiction novel.” His most famous piece, In Cold Blood, came out in 1966 and established Capote as “a leader in the new fiction” (Shuman 233). In his twenties, Capote landed a brief stint at The New Yorker before returning to his home of New Orleans to work on Other Voices, Other Rooms, released in 1948. The piece became a best seller and caused a great deal of controversy due to a controversial dust jacket photo of Capote, an experience that taught him that “his private life could generate as much publicity as his writing, and perhaps more” (Shuman 234). He had a long term relationship with Jack Dunphy from the late 1940s until the late 1960s, when Capote’s life and career began to decline. After authoring multiple novels and screenplays, Truman Capote passed away in August of 1984 in Bel-Air, California at a friend’s home. [Shuman, R. Baird, ed. Great American Writers: Twentieth Century. Vol. 2. New York: Marshall Cavendish, 2002. Questia. Web.]
3. W. Somerset Maugham: During the final years of his life, W. Somerset Maugham, the acclaimed but very private novelist and playwright, burned his private affairs and asked friends to destroy all letters he had sent to them. In his will, he even instructed his literary executor not to “authorize the publication of any of his unpublished writing or to cooperate with any biographer,” or allow his daughter Liza or his lover, Alan Searle, to give any information (Calder). After his death, Liza and Alan went against Maugham’s wishes and allowed numerous private documents to be published. “Maugham often challenged sexual conventions; that his homosexuality, like that of Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt, had taught him how to be an undercover agent; and that his frequent use of clichés, for which he was much criticized, was a narrative strategy to match his narrator’s diction with that of his characters” (Calder). Maugham was also one of the first modern English writers to cover China and Spain. [Calder, Robert L. "Meyers, Jeffrey. Somerset Maugham: A Life." Studies in the Novel 37.3 (2005): 360+. Questia. Web.]
4. James Baldwin: In August of 1924, James Baldwin was born to an unwed mother in Harlem. At the age of three, his mother married a fundamentalist Baptist minister with whom she had eight children. Baldwin’s step-father became increasingly violent and abusive as he grew older, and as a step-child, Baldwin became a target for the anger. The abusive relationship haunted Baldwin for years. For three years as a teenager, Baldwin became a minister who preached in and around Harlem, an experience that “left its unmistakable imprint” on the writer (Nelson 12). Baldwin moved to New Jersey as a laborer after high school where he experienced brutal racism and hostility before returning to New York to work and write. As he gained more attention for his writing, his “everyday encounters with racism, coupled with his growing awareness of the personal and political implications of his homosexuality, left him deeply unsettled” (Nelson 13). This feeling of exclusion, both racially and sexually, led Baldwin to purchase a one-way ticket to Paris at the age of 24, where he fell in love with Lucien Happersberger and continued to develop as a writer. Race and sexuality are two common themes in many of Baldwin’s works, including 1953’s Go Tell It On the Mountain. After a long and fruitful career, James Baldwin passed away in Paris in December of 1987. [Nelson, Emmanuel S., ed. Contemporary African American Novelists: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999. Questia. Web.]
5. William S. Burroughs: Born in 1914, William S. Burroughs was a postmodernist known for his controversial life and works, as well as his involvement with the Beat movement, among many other things. “These factors are also the source of extreme emotional responses that have often prevented critics from looking at the work itself” (Lydenberg and Skerl 3). In the 1950s, Burroughs produced a handful of unpublished manuscripts, including “In Search of Yage,” which would go on to become the basis of one of his most celebrated pieces, Naked Lunch. His close friendships with both Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac helped lead to the development of his “underground reputation” (Lydenberg and Skerl 3). Much of Burroughs work, including Naked Lunch, was attacked on questions of morality, as critics claimed that his work was obscene in the sense of his “immorally ambivalent stance toward the world of violence, sexuality, and drugs” (Lydenberg and Skerl 6). Burroughs passed away in 1997. [Lydenberg, Robin, and Jennie Skerl, eds. William S. Burroughs at the Front: Critical Reception, 1959-1989. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991. Questia. Web.]

For further tribute to LGBT Pride Month, take a look last week’s blog post honoring the work of famous LGBT painters!

Young Helen Keller with teacher Anne Sullivan

In honor of Helen Keller’s birthday today, June 27th, we’re granting access to the following books for free for an entire month—the top five most researched narratives about Helen Keller. For information on the many ways Helen Keller has inspired young people to make a difference in the world, check out the June 26, 2012 post, “Who Stole Helen Keller?” from the Media dis&dat blog.

1. The Story of My Life: The Story of My Life is one of the most memorable works chronicling the amazing life of Helen Keller. Written by Keller herself, the book recounts her journey through life living without the ability to see or hear, as Keller lost her hearing and sight at a very young age. She notes, “illness which closed my eyes and ears and plunged me into the unconsciousness of a new-born baby” (Keller 7). It was her teacher, Anne Sullivan, who would make a huge impact on her life. Perhaps one of the most enlightening moments in Keller’s memoir is when she begins to attach meaning to the words that she has learned. “As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other hand, water, first slowly, then rapidly. I knew then what “w-a-t-e-r” meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand” (Keller 23). [Keller, Helen, and John Albert Macy. The Story of My Life. New York: Doubleday, Page, 1903. Questia. Web.]
2. Helen and Teacher: The Story of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan Macy: This book delves into the relationship between Helen Keller and her teacher Anne Sullivan. Authored by Joseph P. Lash, the book explores the pasts of both Anne and Helen. Anne was diagnosed with “trachoma when she was about five” (Lash 4) which left her vision impaired. Both women came from different backgrounds but the impact they made on each other’s lives is evident through the pages of this book. [Lash, Joseph P. Helen and Teacher: The Story of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan Macy. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Pub., 1980. Questia. Web.]
3. The Radical Lives of Helen Keller: Authored by Kim E. Neilsen, The Radical Lives of Helen Keller delves not only into her education and her relationship with Anne Sullivan, but it also talks about Helen Keller’s other interests. “Joining the Socialist Party of America in 1909, Keller became an advocate of female suffrage, a defender of the radical Industrial Workers of the World, and a supporter of birth control and the unemployed. She became an inveterate fundraiser and political lobbyist. She followed international politics closely, never failing to form strong opinions on international matters. She became one of the nation’s most effective but unofficial ambassadors, visiting over thirty countries” (Neilsen 7). [Nielsen, Kim E. The Radical Lives of Helen Keller. New York: New York University Press, 2004. Questia. Web.]
4. Helen Keller, Public Speaker: Sightless but Seen, Deaf but Heard: This book, authored by Professor Lois Einhorn “removes from mind the lingering image of the young Keller and supplants it with that of a mature, still highly tenacious woman who lived her life with vigor and courage” (Einhorn xvii). This novel explores some of Keller’s most famous speeches and how the power of the spoken word from one individual can make a huge difference. [Einhorn, Lois J. Helen Keller, Public Speaker: Sightless but Seen, Deaf but Heard. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998. Questia. Web. 20 June 2012. Roethke, Theodore. The Lost Son, and Other Poems. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1948. Questia. Web.]
5. “The Celebrity of Helen Keller” in Booknotes: Stories From American History: This work is a compilation of various stories about our American history. “The Celebrity of Helen Keller” was written by Dorothy Herrmann and explores the fascinating life of one of America’s most beloved women. Herrmann’s written work outlines her various relationships with the deaf community, primarily her relationships with Alexander Graham Bell (who had a deaf mother and wife) and Michael Anagos, director of the Perkins Institute for the Blind (the first school for the blind in the country). [Herrmann, Dorothy. "The Celebrity of Helen Keller." Booknotes: Stories from American History. New York: Public Affairs, 2001. null51-184. Questia. Web.]

Visit our topic page on special education for additional research on learning and developmental disabilities.

Title page of the first edition of John Milton’s “Paradise lost” from 1668.

Questia honors National Poetry Month with free online access to popular poems from the Renaissance to today

While students focus on poetry this National Poetry Month, we at Questia are helping them access free poems and poetry criticism. We’ve released a list of our library’s top ten most researched poems from the Renaissance through today, and made reference works on each of them free for all of April.

1. Paradise Lost by John Milton: Paradise Lost details one of the most famous stories in history: Adam and Eve’s banishment from the Garden of Eden, and the fall of mankind through Satan’s temptations. [Miner, Earl and William Moeck and Steven Jablonski. Paradise Lost, 1668-1968: Three Centuries of Commentary. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2004.]
2. The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot: In this complex poem, Eliot discusses the moral decay of European society after World War I. Several themes and topics are discussed in The Waste Land including war, death, cynicism, religion, history, and politics. [Bloom, Harold. T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. New York: Chelsea House, 1986.]
3. The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser: The Faerie Queene is an allegorical poem written in Spenserian stanza that accounts the journeys of several knights in Medieval Times. [Parker, M. Pauline. The Allegory of the Faerie Queene. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960.]
4. The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope: In The Rape of the Lock, Pope uses satiric language and a mock-heroic tone to convey the vanities found within 18^th-century British society. Essentially, the poem explores “how the mighty have fallen,” through the cutting of a lock of hair. [Pope, Alexander and Thomas Marc Parrott. The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems. Boston: Ginn, 1906.]
5. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The poem recounts the epic seaward voyage of a Mariner and his crew, and the dangers they faced along the way. [Gibbs, Lincoln R. A. M. Selections from Coleridge: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Christabel, and Kubla Khan. Boston: Ginn and Co., 1916.]
6. The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost: The Road Not Taken is a narrative poem written in iambic pentameter. The poem is a metaphor for the difficult life decisions everyone must face, and which path they choose to take. [Juten, Nancy Lewis and John Zubizarreta. The Robert Frost Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001.]
7. Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath: Lady Lazarus is a Holocaust poem about oppression and death during World War II in Nazi Germany. [Annas, Pamela J. A Disturbance in Mirrors: The Poetry of Sylvia Plath. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988.]
8. The Prelude by William Wordsworth: The Prelude is an autobiographical poem highlighting Wordsworth’s own poetic development throughout his life. [Potts, Abbie Findlay. Wordsworth's Prelude: A Study of Its Literary Form. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1953.]
9. The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe: Perhaps one of Poe’s most famous works, The Raven, tells the story of a raven that visits a mourning soul who just lost the love of his life. However, the more the man divulges to the raven, the quicker he descends into madness until ultimately his existence becomes “nevermore.” [Kennedy, J. Gerald. A Historical Guide to Edgar Allan Poe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.]
10. Because I Could Not Stop for Death by Emily Dickinson: The poem is about the narrator’s carriage ride to the afterlife with Death, personified as a gentleman caller. [Ford, Thomas W. Heaven Beguiles the Tired: Death in the Poetry of Emily Dickinson. University, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1966.]

Visit our topic page on poetry for further quality research on poems and poets.

Finding your focus

The topic of literature is rich with possibilities for exploration in a term paper. Start early because you’ll want to allow yourself plenty of time to explore before settling on your topic. Not sure where to begin? Go to the literature topics section of Questia, the world’s largest online library of over 77,000 books and 4 million journal, magazine, and newspaper articles. Broad topics in literature include:

• Literature of Specific Countries
• Fiction
• Drama
• Poetry
• Nonfiction
• Language

An exploration of the topic African American Literature will lead you to hundreds of books and articles. Among them you will find Language and Literature in the African American Imagination, Edited by Carol Aisha Blackshire-Belay.

Regarding the subject of African American literature, Belay said, “African American language and literature are the twin generators of a productive cultural thrust into American literature. Language is the means by which we understand ourselves and the societies in which we play a part. Language is also pertinent to resolving some of the problems and tensions that arise from human interaction.”

Free resources

You can dress up your research paper or create a media-rich slide show presentation with free resources from the government at Free.ed.gov. Once you arrive at the site, go to Language Arts where you can follow several tracks. If you choose Literature and Writers, then Other Literature, you will find a link to American Notes: Travels in America, 1750 – 1920.

This website “provides 253 narratives describing travels in the colonies and U.S. The collection includes works by authors not widely known as well as by Matthew Arnold, James Fenimore Cooper, Dickens, Washington Irving, Sir Charles Lyell, Robert Louis Stevenson, and other major figures. The collection is searchable and can be browsed by not only by author and title, but also by subject.”

That’s just one example of the kind of resources at Free.ed.gov, which come in many formats such as text, audio and images. The resources are from the many collections maintained by the government including:

• The Library of Congress
• The National Museum of Art
• Department of Education
• National Endowment for the Arts

Related topics

If you decide to do your research on a topic related indirectly to literature, then be sure to check out the TeleRead blog maintained by Chris Meadows. The blog covers news and opinions on the world of libraries, publishing and other related topics.

In his post on January 25, 2012 titled, “Classic literature: ‘Boring’ or relevant?” Meadows addressed dueling blog posts from BookRiot that discussed the idea that reading classic literature is boring because of a lack of sex or violence. The opposing view stated that though muted, such depth of human experience existed in the literature nonetheless, often in the minds of the characters. Moreover, many works considered classics have become so because they focused on social causes and highly charged issues of their day such as slavery and women’s rights.

“Of course, one more excellent reason for reading the classics is that, in this era of agency priced DRM-locked e-books, most of the classics are in the public domain and available free on-line. There are so many amazing books out there to be had at no charge, it’s like having a library of the wisdom of the ages instantaneously at your beck and call,” Meadows said.

Additional resources

Other resources on topics related to literature:

• The Open Library
• The Internet Public Library
• American Libraries Magazine
• Shmoop.com, a site that aims to make “learning and writing more fun and relevant for students in the digital age.”
• English Literature Links, a massive site maintained by Ian Mackean since 2000.
• The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) American Collection

A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens’s famous Christmas tale of redemption, A Christmas Carol, was published in 1843 and is the must-read of any Christmas season. As Ebenezer Scrooge battles with his cruel past and his imminent doom, three helpful ghosts teach him the error of his ways in this classic English novella.

Old Christmas

Written by Washington Irving in the 1800s, Old Christmas contains five holiday stories: Christmas, The Stage Coach, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and The Christmas Dinner. They portray the warm-hearted English Christmas celebrations he experienced in Birmingham, England and helped to change the image of the Christmas season in America.

Christmas Stories

The stories in Charles Dickens’s Christmas Stories were written between 1850 and 1867 for Christmas editions of weekly journals. Included are The Cricket on the Hearth, Chirp the Second, Chirp the Third, The Seven Poor Travellers, The Story of Richard Doubledick, and The Road. The tales range from haunted houses, travels in Europe, and childhood stories.

Christmas Holiday

Christmas Holiday is a haunting tale written by W. Somerset Maugham in 1939 about a young man’s thrilling trip to Paris where he meets a troubled but passionate woman who is homeless and pining away for a murder.

A Wreath of Christmas Poems

A Wreath of Christmas Poems is a compilation of seventeen Christmas poems ranging from Virgil’s The Fourth Eclogue from 70 B.C., to Chaucer’s Second Nun’s Tale, to William Carlos William’s The Gift.

Which holiday stories are on your own reading list for winter break? Let us know in the comments below. Happy Holidays!

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