Strategies for Teaching World Literature Research with the MLA International Bibliography

Audience

First and second year undergraduate students taking introductory literature courses

Objectives

Students will apply research skills from the MLA International Bibliography’s free online course to learn basic and advanced techniques for using the database to research critical responses to literary texts and to explore the intersections of literature with film, folklore, art, and music.

Goals

• To expose students to relevant scholarly publications and to literary criticism in general
• To encourage intellectual curiosity and stimulate in-class discussion
• To develop research writing skills (e.g., the importance of using textual evidence to support your argument; how to use a work of literary criticism as a point of departure for original analysis)

Resources

• Online access to the MLA International Bibliography with Full Text
• Online access to Understanding the MLA International Bibliography: A Free Online Course

Approach

• Introduce the MLA International Bibliography with Full Text and its free online course in class. Students are asked to create accounts and view the introductory video.
• Class discussion with exploratory MLA International Bibliography searches
• Homework: Complete the introduction and unit 1 (including quiz) of the online course.
• Class discussion with exploratory MLA International Bibliography searches
• Repeat above until all units covered (week two or three).
• Start introducing research exercises and presentation assignments.
• Introduce students to other sections of the MLA International Bibliography, such as Dramatic Arts and Folklore, to demonstrate interdisciplinary approaches to literary analysis. Show how the bibliography is used in the study of literature to research film, theatrical, and musical adaptations as well as connections with folklore and other disciplines.

Exercises and Assignments

General Assignment: For Use with Any Work of Literature

• Identify 2–3 themes in the selected work. Using what you have learned from the MLA International Bibliography online course, search the full-text database for the selected work. Choose at least two full-text articles to read, taking special note of any discussion of the themes you have identified. Present a review of these articles and their critical discussion of the selected work, noting especially any focus on your chosen themes. How do these critical views of the work line up with your own?

Fiction and Film: Comparing Works of Fiction to Their Film Adaptations

• Example: Wise Blood (novel by Flannery O’Connor; film adaptation by John Huston).
• Use the MLA International Bibliography with Full Text to research critical approaches to Flannery O’Connor’s use of imagery in Wise Blood compared to the imagery used in John Huston’s film adaptation of this novel. How does Huston translate O’Connor’s use of animal and shadow imagery in his film adaptation, and to what effect? Compare O’Connor and Huston’s use of this visual technique to convey emotion, character, theme, and so on.

Fiction and Folklore: Exploring Modern Literature’s Connection with Folklore

• Example: Amos Tutuola’s The Palm-Wine Drinkard, Yoruba oral tradition, postcolonial literary theory and criticism.
• Using the MLA International Bibliography with Full Text, find critical support for analyzing Amos Tutuola’s The Palm-Wine Drinkard from a postcolonial perspective as a work of subversive literature, with a focus on its recasting of Yoruba folk literature to criticize Nigerian society within the context of its colonial legacy.

Poetry and Poetic Form

• Example: Using the MLA International Bibliography with Full Text database to find editions of primary works and to explore poetry’s connection with music and art.

• Find examples of specific poetic forms using the MLA International Bibliography with Full Text database (e.g., pantoums such as Paul Mariani’s “Pantoum for East Fifty-First”).  
• Research poetry’s connection with music and art (e.g., Jack Kerouac’s “American Haikus,” Denis Johnson’s “The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly”).

Submit Your Own Lesson Plans and Project-Based Assignments

The MLA International Bibliography Teaching Tools Group on Humanities Commons welcomes lesson plans and project-based assignments that innovatively engage the bibliography. To submit your work, please join the Teaching Tools Group, then click KCWorks, which appears in the top navigation of the group’s page. On the KCWorks page for the group, click Contribute above the search bar to add a work to the group’s collection. If you have any questions, please email bibcourse@mla.org.