William Paterson University English Department1500: Experiences in LiteratureReading Resources
Although it may be desirable to have students purchase texts for this class, we want to move away from requiring expensive anthologies. Beginning in the Fall of 2020, we would like faculty to try to cap the total textbook costs for students at $35. In order to do this, we recommend that professors take advantage of the Open Education Resources linked below. We think it is important for students to have free access to essential class material. These open education resources contain literature and related course material free of charge. Teachers and students can pick and choose whichever sources seem useful. We encourage teachers to browse the links below and select the readings that best fit their courses. In place of expensive anthologies, professors may also assign mass market paperbacks that might include collections of poems or short stories, plays, or novels.
Project GutenbergProject Gutenberg is a library of over 60,000 free eBook in multiple formats including Kindle eBooks that can be downloaded or read online. Most are older works for which U.S. copyright has expired. There is an easy search engine.
Lit2Go by FSULit2Go offers free audio versions of stories and poems. It is easy to search the collection through the search bar, or to browse via five categories: authors, cooks, genres, collections, and readability.
University of Minnesota OERThe University of Minnesota OER provides many full PDF textbooks that cover literature and rhetoric. Each textbook available is presented with the cover image, title, and a brief description of the book’s contents. In particular, we recommend Writing the Nation: A Concise Introduction to American Literature 1865 to Present for an anthology that covers a wide variety of popular literature.
Literature and Society: an Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and NonfictionLiterature and Society is full-text anthology of literature. It begins with a discussion of the writing process.
Paperback Anthology ExamplesPlease see the attached list for examples of low-cost, accessible mass market books that you might assign in your 1500 class.
Click here to return to the ENG 1500-Experiences in Literature main page
Click here to view recommended assignments for ENG 1500
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