Deadline: July 1, 2020
Contact: Sean Heuston, Professor, Department of English, Fine Arts, & Communications, The Citadel
Email: sean.heuston@citadel.edu
Approaches to Teaching the Poetry of Robert Frost
(MLA Approaches to Teaching World Literature series)
Proposals are invited for a volume in the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching World Literature series
entitled Approaches to Teaching the Poetry of Robert Frost.
Essays in this volume could address teaching Frost’s work by focusing on topics such as science,
Darwinism and belief, gender relations/gender conflict, rural/urban life, politics, race/racism,
traditional media/new media, the natural and/or the supernatural, the formal innovations Frost
made with dramatic monologue, the sound of sense, or Frost’s engagement with
traditional verse forms. Contributors are invited to propose specific topics regardless of
whether those topics relate to the examples mentioned above.
Essays in the volume should range from 1500 to 3000 words. Some Approaches series volumes have a “short takes” section with very short essays (even shorter than 1500 to 3000 words) that present a class experience or exercise or some other topic, so that is also an option for contributors.
Because Frost’s poetry is so well known, so frequently anthologized, and taught in so many
different types of schools worldwide (including four-year colleges and universities, community
and technical colleges, high schools, and middle schools) and to an unusually wide range of
students (including large numbers of ESL students) essays that deal with teaching Frost’s poetry in non-traditional settings will be welcome, as will essays about teaching Frost’s poetry in
traditional settings, essays about teaching Frost’s poetry outside the U.S.and/or to nonAnglophone students, and essays about teaching Frost’s poetry in online courses (MOOCs and/or smaller online courses with more traditional enrollment and participation requirements). Essays by contributors from under-represented groups and essays that deal with teaching Frost’s poetry to students of color are especially welcome.
By bringing together essays by a range of accomplished teachers of Frost’s poetry, this volume will improve the quality of instruction and student learning for a great many teachers and
students, and will extend the ongoing critical recognition of Frost as a more challenging and
more experimental writer than simplistic popular notions of Frost would lead one to believe.
A brief survey for prospective contributors is available
at https://www.mla.org/Publications/MLA-Book-Publications/Contribute-to-a-Book-in-Development.
If you are interested in contributing to this collection, please submit a 500-word abstract to the editor (sean.heuston@citadel.edu) by July 1, 2020.
Posted on April 27, 2020
