interdisciplinary

CALL FOR PAPERSDemeter Pressis seeking submissions for an edited collection entitledMothering, Community, and FriendshipEditors: Norma I. Peña Rivera, Janet MacLennan, and Dorsía Smith SilvaDeadline for Submissions: August 15, 2017This edited collection aboutmotherhood, community,and friendship welcomescontributions not only fromacross interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives, but also from the spectrum of people whoexperience, create, construct, value, study, and change communities such as academics, community workers,activists, educators, urban planners, artists, and members of mothering groups. Considering a broad meaningof communities, it includes virtual and “analogous” (real) communities, in time and in space.

The last few decades have witnessed a growing interest in the benefits of linking the learning of a foreign language to the study of its literature. In fact, the emphasis on working with culturally authentic texts is one of the central claims for curriculum reform in EFL/ESL teaching nowadays. Moreover, the latest developments in text-based teaching point to a curriculum in which language, culture, and literature are taught as a continuum. 

Nevertheless, the incorporation of literary texts into the language curriculum is not easy to tackle. Many linguists refer to literary content as extremely demanding for both teachers and students. Not surprisingly, many teachers tend to avoid using literary texts for this reason. 

there is no singular ‘nature’ as such, only a diversity of contested natures; and that eachsuch nature is constituted through a variety of socio-cultural processes from which such natures cannot be plausibly separated.

Macnaghten, P. and Urry, J. (1998), Contested natures

Works of literature can be viewed from many angles or schools of critical thought and yield "meaning" dependent on through what school you choose to critique a text. Marjorie Garber closes her book The Use and Abuse of Literature stating

Literary interpretation, like literature, does not seek answers or closure. A multiplicity of persuasive and well-argued "meanings" does not mean the death or loss of meaning, but rather the living presence of the literary work in culture, society, and the individual creative imagination. To say that closure is impossible is to acknowledge the richness and fecundity of both the reading and the writing process.