Raymond, Richard C.

Dr. Richard C. Raymond is Professor and Chair of the Department of English at Mississippi State University, where he teaches literature, rhetoric, and writing. He completed his Ph.D. at Miami University of Ohio. Dr. Raymond has published articles on literary criticism and the teaching of writing and literature in The South Atlantic Review, Pedagogy, College Composition and Communication, and other journals.

Teaching American Literature at an East European University

2006 0-7734-5641-4
The book responds to literary and composition theorists who have called for reinventing English studies, uniting the study of literature and the study of writing in liberatory rhetoric. The first chapter situates this response in the Department of English and American Studies (EAS) at the University of Shkoder, Albania, a place where liberty has long been denied. The second chapter narrates efforts to teach American literature by using writing-centered strategies focused on theme of liberty; the third chapter does likewise, focusing on the teaching of Research Strategies to students previously trained not to ask questions. The fourth chapter explores collaborative work with the EAS faculty, who exchanged scholarship, developed interactive pedagogies, and shaped democratic principles for departmental governance and curricular change. Finally, the fifth chapter describes the partnership between the EAS Department in Shkoder and the University of Graz, the Austrian institution that has supported its Albanian partner for over a decade and provided a powerful model for rhetoricizing English studies, a concept explored in the last two sections of the chapter, which relate this microcosm to departments of English studies.