- Home
- Language Arts
- American Literature and Rhetoric
American Literature and Rhetoric
First Edition| ©2021 Robin Aufses; Renee Shea; Katherine E. Cordes; Lawrence Scanlon
A book that’s built for you and your students.
Flexible and innovative, American Literature & Rhetoric provides everything you need to teach your course. Combining reading and writing instruction to build essential skills in its four opening chapters and a uniqu...
A book that’s built for you and your students.
Flexible and innovative, American Literature & Rhetoric provides everything you need to teach your course. Combining reading and writing instruction to build essential skills in its four opening chapters and a unique anthology you need to keep students engaged in Chapters 5-10, this book makes it easy to teach chronologically, thematically, or by genre.
Institutional Prices
Engaging with the past, framing the present
A book that’s built for you and your students.
Flexible and innovative, American Literature & Rhetoric provides everything you need to teach your course. Combining reading and writing instruction to build essential skills in its four opening chapters and a unique anthology you need to keep students engaged in Chapters 5-10, this book makes it easy to teach chronologically, thematically, or by genre.
Features
Built for You & Your Students.
In reserching this book, we surveyed hundreds of American literature teachers about how you teach the course and what you want to see in an American literature book. Here is what you told us.
- There’s more than one way to teach this course. Many teach chronologically, but approaching American literature thematically and by genre are also popular methods.
- American literature teachers want to bring more modern texts into the classroom. Overwhelmingly, the teachers we surveyed reported that they wanted to teach a chapter on twenty-first-century American literature.
- It’s a struggle to find the time to teach contemporary literature. Most teachers we surveyed reported that they only reached the 1970s or 1980s by the end of the school year.
Flexible and innovative, American Literature & Rhetoric provides everything you need to teach your course. Combining reading and writing instruction to build essential skills in its four opening chapters and a unique anthology you need to keep students engaged in Chapters 5–10, this book makes it easy to teach chronologically, thematically, or by genre.
Opening chapters introduce key reading and writing skills for the American literature course.
Chapters 1–4 teach the reading and writing skills key to success in the American literature course. With equal attention to nonfiction and literature, these chapters provide scaffolded step-by-step instruction, activities, tips for revising, and model student essays. Each chapter culminates with an essay assignment that lets students apply what they have learned.
Anthology chapters revolutionize the American literature course.
The anthology chapters provide a unique combination of chronological and thematic approaches to American literature. They are organized to work for you regardless of how you approach teaching this course.
- Chapter 5: Redefining America (2001-present)
- Chapter 6: A Meeting of Old and New Worlds (Beginnings to 1830)
- Chapter 7: America in Conflict (1830-1865)
- Chapter 8: Reconstructing America (1865-1913)
- Chapter 9: America in the Modern World (1913-1945)
- Chapter 10: The Rise of a Superpower (1945-2000)
Chapter 5: Starting with the present to frame the past.
The first readings chapter of the book is Chapter 5: Redefining America (2001 to the Present). Beginning with contemporary texts immediately engages students with timeless themes and enduring issues — and also helps teachers solve the age-old problem of how to stop American literature from being stuck in the past.
A focus on the themes that define America.
All of the readings in the book connect to at least one of eight fundamental themes in American literature:
- American Ideals: Is America the Land of the Free?
- American Identity: What Does It Mean to Be American?
- Civil Rights in America: Liberty and Justice for All?
- The Immigrant Experience: What Is the American Dream?
- America at War: How Has Conflict Shaped America?
- Church and State: What Is the Role of Religion in American Life?
- Nature and the Environment: Is America the Land of Plenty?
- Prosperity and Inequality: Is America the Land of Opportunity?
Talkbacks: Highlighting voices and ideas that matter.
The diverse readings and innovative structure of American Literature & Rhetoric show students how the literature of the past connects to the present, inviting them to think critically about why those connections matter. Talkbacks threaded throughout the book pair classic and challenging pieces with modern and thought-provoking responses.
Giving students the tools to understand connections between American history and American literature.
- Illustrated chapter introductions provide essential context for the major events and social forces that define each time period, drawing connections to the specific pieces within the chapter.
- Key Context notes accompanying most texts help young readers navigate unfamiliar contexts that come with literature from other time periods and provide a sense of the bigger picture. This support is key for developing readers and English Language Learners.
Conversations reinforce evidence-based argument skills.
Because students’ ability to synthesize multiple sources is a primary concern of college composition courses — as well as a skill that must be demonstrated on the AP® Language Exam — the Conversation in each chapter provides source material and guiding questions to help students use the words and ideas of others to develop their own arguments. Each Conversation is centered on an enduring issue that continues to be a subject of debate today. In joining these Conversations, students investigate how the past continues to shape the present and develop positions on how to approach the future.
Visuals and outside texts engage students and enrich the study of American literature.
- Extending Beyond the Text features: Encouraging exploration and inspiring new ideas. This feature provides ways to both challenge well-prepared students and engage reluctant readers by giving students the opportunity to explore how the ideas of a piece connect with real-world issues and other texts.
- Emphasizing visual analysis: Images with a purpose. We believe that visual literacy is crucial to being able to understand and analyze our world, which is why American Literature & Rhetoric includes visual texts that accompany nearly all of the readings in the book. These images are carefully chosen — each one has a clear, authentic pedagogical purpose and a critical thinking question. We made it our goal to carefully select images that inform the reading of a print text, suggest new ideas, or provide additional context.
Comprehensive, in-depth questions provide targeted practice for key reading and writing skills.
The in-depth questions and writing prompts that follow each reading enable students to link reading with writing, guiding students from understanding what a text is about to analysis of how the content is presented and why — the rhetorical strategies.
- Understanding and Interpreting questions lay the foundation for analysis — these questions guide students to an understanding of the content and move them toward an interpretation.
- Analyzing Language, Style, and Structure questions ask students to look at craft — how the writer’s choices create meaning.
- Topics for Composing questions include extended essay and project ideas. These range from rhetorical analysis, literary analysis, and argument prompts to research and multimodal projects to creative writing and speaking and listening prompts for discussion.
Grammar instruction that meets students where they are.
- An appendix containing Grammar Workshops takes students from a basic understanding of a concept, to identification of errors, to application of the concept in context, and ultimately back into real writing to revise.
- End-of-chapter Grammar as Rhetoric and Style sections give concrete instruction on how grammar contributes to rhetorical purpose or stylistic effect. Using examples from the readings and culminating in scaffolded exercises, this feature focuses on one issue per chapter — such as coordination, parallel structures, or use of pronouns — and explores how what might seem a mechanical point can, in fact, be approached rhetorically.
End-of-chapter writing practice reinforces key skills.
Suggestions for Writing at the end of each chapter guide students toward written responses that connect multiple pieces within the chapter or extend to pieces beyond the chapter or even beyond the book. Expanding on the skills introduced in the opening chapters, these prompts give students the opportunity to practice writing in many modes, including but not limited to rhetorical analysis, argument, and synthesis.
New to This Edition


American Literature and Rhetoric
First Edition| ©2021
Robin Aufses; Renee Shea; Katherine E. Cordes; Lawrence Scanlon
Digital Options

LaunchPad
Get the e-book, do assignments, take quizzes, prepare for exams and more, to help you achieve success in class.
Learn About LaunchPad Schedule LaunchPad Demo Go to LaunchPad


American Literature and Rhetoric
First Edition| 2021
Robin Aufses; Renee Shea; Katherine E. Cordes; Lawrence Scanlon
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 | Rhetorical Analysis
Chapter 2 | Evidence-Based Arguments
Chapter 3 | Analyzing Fiction
Chapter 4 | Analyzing Poetry
Chapter 5 | Redefining America: 2001 to the Present
Chapter 6 | A Meeting of Old and New Worlds: Beginnings to 1830
Chapter 7 | America in Conflict: 1830-1865
Chapter 8 | Reconstructing America: 1865-1913
Chapter 9 | America in the Modern World: 1913-1945
Chapter 10 | The Rise of a Superpower: 1945-2000


American Literature and Rhetoric
First Edition| 2021
Robin Aufses; Renee Shea; Katherine E. Cordes; Lawrence Scanlon
Authors

Robin Dissin Aufses
Robin Dissin Aufses is director of English Studies at Lycée Français de New York, where she teaches AP® English Language and Composition. Previous to this position, Aufses was the English department chair and a teacher at John F. Kennedy High School in Bellmore, New York, for ten years, and prior to that she taught English at Paul D. Schreiber High School in Port Washington, New York, for twenty years. She is co-author of Literature & Composition, The Language of Composition, and Conversations in American Literature and has published articles for the College Board® on novelist Chang-Rae Lee and the novel All the King’s Men.

Renee H. Shea
Renée H. Shea was professor of English and Modern Languages and Director of Freshman Composition at Bowie State University in Maryland. A College Board® faculty consultant for more than thirty years in AP® Language, Literature, and Pre-AP® English, she has been a reader and question leader for both AP® English exams. Renée served as a member of the Development Committee for AP® Language and Composition and the English Academic Advisory Committee for the College Board®, as well as the SAT® Critical Reading Test Development Committee. She is coauthor of The Language of Composition, Literature & Composition, Advanced Language & Literature, and Conversations in American Literature, as well as two volumes in the NCTE High School Literature series (on Amy Tan and Zora Neale Hurston).

Katherine E. Cordes
Katherine E. Cordes is a National Board Certified English Teacher with a B.A. in English, Psychology, and Medieval Studies; an M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction; more than 18 years of experience in the secondary English Language Arts classroom; and 6 years of experience working with NBCT candidates through the National Education Association. She currently teaches tenth grade English, dual enrollment College Writing, AP® English Language, and AP® English Literature at Skyview High School in Billings, Montana. As part of the College Board®’s Instructional Design Team, Katherine contributed to the development, review, and dissemination of the 2019 AP® English Literature and Composition Course and Exam Description, and she has been an AP® Reader for the AP® English Literature exam for eight years. She has authored teacher resource materials for Conversations in American Literature and The Language of Composition, Third Edition. She is also co-author of Literature & Composition, Third Edition.

Lawrence Scanlon
Lawrence Scanlon taught at Brewster High School for more than thirty years and now teaches at Iona College in New York. Over the past twenty years, he has been a reader and question leader for the AP® Language and Composition Exam. As a College Board® consultant in the United States and abroad, he has conducted AP® workshops in both language and literature and has served on the AP® English Language Test Development Committee. Larry is co-author of Literature & Composition, The Language of Composition, and Conversations in American Literature and has published articles for the College Board® and elsewhere.


American Literature and Rhetoric
First Edition| 2021
Robin Aufses; Renee Shea; Katherine E. Cordes; Lawrence Scanlon
Related Titles


American Literature and Rhetoric
First Edition| 2021
Robin Aufses; Renee Shea; Katherine E. Cordes; Lawrence Scanlon
Videos
Introduction to LaunchPad
This video explains the value of Bedford, Freeman & Worth's LaunchPad platform for teachers and students.
Available Demos
Select a demo to view:
Look Inside: Sample Chapters

These materials are owned by BFW High School Publishers or its licensors and are protected by United States copyright law. They are being provided solely for evaluation purposes only by instructors who are considering adopting BFW High School Publishers’s textbooks or online products for use by students in their courses. These materials may not be copied, distributed, sold, shared, posted online, or used, in print or electronic format, except in the limited circumstances set forth in the BFW High School Publishers Terms of Use and any other reproduction or distribution is illegal. These materials may not be made publicly available under any circumstances. All other rights reserved. © 2020 BFW High School Publishers.
BY CLICKING ON THE SAMPLE CHAPTER LINK BELOW, YOU ARE AGREEING TO USE THESE MATERIALS ONLY IN ACCORDANCE WITH BFW HIGH SCHOOL PUBLISHER'S TERMS OF USE.
Select a file to view:
We are processing your request. Please wait...
