Making Mark Twain Work in the Classroom

How does one teach Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn , a book as controversial as it is central to the American literary canon? This collection of essays edited by James S. Leonard offers practical classroom methods for instructors dealing with the racism, the casual violence, and the role of women, as well as with structural and thematic discrepancies in the works of Mark Twain. Addressing slavery and race, gender, class, religion, language and ebonics, Americanism, hoax, and textual issues of interest to instructors and their students, the contributors offer guidance derived from their own demographically diverse classroom experiences. By placing Twain’s work within the context of 19th-century American literature and culture, Making Mark Twain Work in the Classroom should interest all instructors of American literature. It should also provoke debate among Americanists and those concerned with issues of race, class and gender as they are represented in literature.