Literature and the Writing Process

For Composition Through Literature and Introduction to Literature courses.

Message:  Literature and the Writing Process promotes interactive learning by integrating writing instruction with the study of literature.  Its approach utilizes writing as a mode of learning, as a means for promoting critical thinking, as a method for exploring and developing insights and ideas about literary works.  The process-oriented instruction shows students how to use writing as a way of studying literature and gives them the tools to analyze literature on their own.

This book allows instructors to teach writing and literature together in a single course.  The complementary processes of reading and writing work together to improve students’ compositional skills and increase their comprehension of imaginative literature.

 Story:  This textbook grew out of the authors' long-standing interest in integrating the study of literature with the practice of composition.  Many of their students have learned to write perceptively and well using literature as their subject matter.  Great literature is always thought-provoking, always new.  Why not utilize it to sharpen critical thinking and improving writing skills?  Toward that end, we have combined an introduction to literature anthology with detailed instruction in the writing process. 

Elizabeth McMahan

is professor emerita of English at Illinois State University. She holds a Ph.D. in nineteenth-century literature from the University of Oregon. While still in graduate school, she wrote her first book, A Crash Course in Composition, published by McGraw Hill. She has taught on every level, from freshman composition to graduate seminars, and has published critical articles on works of literature and teaching composition. She served as the director of writing programs for seven years at Illinois State University. During her academic career, she received an NDEA Title IV Fellowship, the Kester Svendson Dissertation Grant, and the 1978 Illinois Arts Council Essay Award. Since taking early retirement, she has devoted her energies to writing and revising textbooks.

Robert W. Funk taught high school for 10 years before receiving his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois in 1974. He is currently a professor of English at Eastern Illinois University and lectures in grammar, advanced composition, Shakespeare, and methods for teaching English in the secondary school. He has co-authored a number of college-level textbooks with Elizabeth McMahan and Susan Day, including Literature and the Writing Process (6th ed., 2001), The Simon & Schuster Short Prose Reader (2nd ed., 2000), Strategies for College Writing (2000)

He has also lectured at Eureka College and Richland Community College and has presented numerous workshops on composition and the teaching of literature at national and regional conferences, including CCCC and NCTE, and for state and local in-service training sessions. His current research interests include contemporary rhetoric, composition theory, and reader-response criticism.

Susan X Day is an assistant professor of psychology at Iowa State University of Science and Technology in Ames. She pursues two research programs, one concerning personality and the development of interests, and one concerning the use of distance technology in psychotherapy. Dr. Day taught English at Illinois State University for 20 years before beginning her Ph.D. in psychology at University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Her specialties in English studies are writing and pedagogy, and she has done research on the practices of dissertation writers and the identity development of creative writers. In 1999, Dr. Day won the national American Psychological Association-sponsored Outstanding Graduate Student Award for excellence in scholarship and professional development in her field. She is the author and co-author of more than a dozen college textbooks in rhetoric, grammar, and literature, and her research has appeared in prestigious journals such as American Psychologist and Psychological Science.