College English - Volume 59, Issue 2, 1997

Examines classroom dialog about arranged marriages in Ali Ghalem’s “A Wife for My Son” (as well as several other postcolonial, nonwestern texts) as a means of defining and sharing appropriate curricular and pedagogical modes for classroom discourse and discussion. Urges rethinking the boundaries of English studies and redefining the study of literature more broadly.

Examines assumptions of “oppositional” literary criticism, namely the assumption that older-style “objective” literary criticism must, in its political silence, be supportive of dominant ideologies.

Examines the effects of reading and writing multivocal texts and argues that writers need to assume interpretive responsibility for creating new forms of discourse.