College English - Volume 65, Issue 4, 2003

Illustrates how significant numbers of college students are "lost": they are unsituated in academic space. Suggests a rigorous exploration of the changing academic space outside of school offices and off campuses. Presents 4 assignments that provide a conceptual place (a topic) while also prompting students to make meaning out of the people–places that constitute their daily lives.

Investigates questions of what the New London Group calls "multiliteracies." Looks carefully at various texts associated with the television show "Felicity" and considers what they have to say about contemporary popular literacies. Considers how "Felicity" acts as a kind of core sample, extracted from the broader soil of popular culture to help explore some workings of contemporary literacies. Discusses implications for the English classroom.

Argues that issues of generic hybridity embody multicultural literature while promoting another kind of multiculturalism that reflects the current debates about literary canons in general and the field of American literature in particular. Considers how a reading of texts that relies on all of their component parts allows literature to perform a vital function, to foster an informed and compassionate vision of the different.