Francis Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911)      Contributing
Editor: Elizabeth Ammons      Classroom Issues and Strategies
Two primary issues in teaching Harper are: (1) the high-culture
aesthetic in which students have been trained makes it hard for
them to appreciate Harper and find ways to talk about her; (2)
most students' ignorance of nineteenth-century African-American
history deprives them of a strong and meaningful historical
context in which to locate Harper's work.      To address the
first issue, I ask students to think about the questions and
methods of analysis that they may bring to the study of
literature in the classroom. What do we look for in "good"
literature? Their answers are many but usually involve the
following: It should be "interesting" and deal with "important"
ideas, themes, topics. It should be intellectually challenging.
The style should be sophisticated--by which they mean
economical, restrained, and learned without being pretentious.
It should need analysis-- i.e., have many