Publications - Oregon English Journal
Call for Manuscripts
You are invited to submit manuscripts to the award-winning Oregon English Journal* for its Spring 2012 issue.
“Literature across Borders”
In her award-winning anthology This Same Sky: A Collection of Poems from around the World, Naomi Shihab Nye encourages readers to listen to voices from other lands, “for their same sky joins them to us.”
The spring 2012 issue of Oregon English Journal seeks manuscripts about teaching literature from many lands –literature that joins us to people in other places, literature that crosses our borders as readers, literature with voices and perspectives different than those from our comfortable home ground. Submissions could consider historic or contemporary texts in any literary genre, from beyond or within the borders of the U.S., that expand our understanding of other human beings living in different circumstances. Manuscripts might address questions such as these:
-What individual authors, texts, collections, or anthologies have proven particularly teachable for a unit or course on world literature?
-How might literary texts from other places or times inform the more modern texts typically used in our instruction, and how might they be paired for similarity and contrast?
-How do we place texts from other cultures in helpful, informative, accurate cultural and historical context?
-How can students who have immigrated to the U.S. or whose first language is not English contribute to a classroom understanding of literature that has crossed our border?
-How could students use writing (journals, essays, poems, scripts) to reflect on their own cultural perspectives of the world or as reflective pieces based on a literary work they are reading?
-How can we handle issues of stereotyping, racism, ethnocentrism, and other damaging judgments?
-Texts from around the world may present perspectives at odds with students’ received viewpoints, customs, and values. How can sensitive instruction meet these challenges and possible objections?
-Have you developed regional literature units or courses (e.g., on literature of the Middle East, or Latin American Magic Realism, or Caribbean writers, or postcolonial literature, or African fiction, or Asian poetic forms)?
-What would a comprehensive world literature course look like? How would it be organized? What rationale might you offer for teaching it?
In a world fractured by cross-cultural misunderstanding, how can literature bridge differences and help us learn about one another—our unique characteristics as well as our common characteristics, our fascinating differences and our shared humanity? How can we provide passports for our students to the “Literature across Borders?”
The OEJ welcomes varied manuscript formats, including debates, interviews, position papers, letters, point-counterpoint, satires, classroom ideas, program descriptions, reviews, and original poetry and fiction.
Submission Deadline: February 1, 2012
We suggest submissions of 1500-2000 words. Submit both an electronic copy in Word Doc format to the e-mail below, and two hard copies (with no author identification on them) double-spaced and titled to the address below. Please use a cover sheet for your name, address, e-mail, and a brief biographical sketch (2-3 sentences).
Submit electronically to: hardtu@pdx.edu, and a hard copy to:
Ulrich H. Hardt, Editor
Portland State University--GSE
PO Box 751
Portland, Oregon 97207-0751
*Since 1988, 22 issues of the OEJ have been selected by NCTE for national promotion and distribution.
