Approaches to Teaching Thoreau’s Walden and Other Works
- Editor: Richard J. Schneider
- Pages: xi & 223 pp.
- Published: 1996
- ISBN: 9780873527347 (Paperback)
“Schneider has assembled a rich set of tools for teaching Thoreau to a spectrum of students, from the engineer to the English major.”
—American Literature
“This volume should enable teachers, from the community college level on through graduate school, to convey to their students those factors that make Thoreau an indispensable part of America’s literary heritage.”
—Philip F. Gura, author of The Wisdom of Words: Language, Theology, and Literature in the New England Renaissance
In a recent survey of college teachers, Walden was mentioned more frequently than any other work as a text regularly included in nineteenth-century American literature courses. Today’s students are as likely to encounter Thoreau in freshman composition classes as they are in upper-level environmental literature seminars. “The challenge of teaching Thoreau, then,” Richard J. Schneider says, “is how to make most effective use of his obvious appeal amid the variety of possible course structures, critical theories, and pedagogical methods.”
