Please return by 1 July 2001 to Tim Engles, Department of English, Eastern Illinois University, 600 Lincoln Av., Charleston, IL 61920.

Approaches to Teaching DeLillo's White Noise

Edited by Tim Engles and John Duvall

Name:

 

Department:

 

Institution:

 

Phone:

 

Address:

 

E-mail:

 

Please answer the following questions on separate sheets of paper. Or, if you prefer, you can cut and paste these questions into an e-mail message and send them with your answers to Tim Engles (cftde@eiu.edu). Supplementary materials (syllabi, handouts, assignments, exams, bibliographies, etc.) are also most welcome and can be sent electronically or in hard copy to the address above.Survey respondents will be acknowledged in the published volume.

1. List courses in which you teach White Noise. Please specify the nature of the courses, e.g., contemporary literature, postmodernism, narrative, etc.

 

 

 

 

2. If you teach other novels by DeLillo, which ones do you teach and what are the reasons for your choice(s)?

 

 

 

 

3. What reference and background works for DeLillo's fiction would you recommend for students? Which of these do you assign?

 

 

 

 

4. Please list the critical works you have found most helpful in teaching DeLillo's fiction. Which of these would you particularly recommend for teachers of this novel?

 

 

 

5. What for you are the particular challenges of teaching White Noise?

 

 

 

 

6. What are some of the challenges your students face when reading this novel? What features do they find engaging or stimulating?

 

 

7. Can you generally characterize in any way the approach you take while teaching this novel? Do you tend to stress sociopolitical and cultural elements, or narrative form, or the novel as postmodern exemplar, or some other elements of the text and/or its contexts? To what degree do you emphasize such elements as language, writing style, and characterization?

 

 

 

8. If you raise such topics as the modernist echoes in the novel, its handling of linguistic and epistemological issues, its depictions of white middle-class male subjectivity, or its social critique, how do you do so? Do you interrelate these subjects, and if so, how?

 

 

 

 

9. How much time do you allow for lecture and discussion of this novel? Are there particular in-class methods or activities that have been especially successful?

 

 

 

 

10. Do you alert your students to any of the particular real-world events or features of the novel's context? If so, how do you introduce and use such items?

 

 

 

 

11. Among the three editions of White Noise currently in print, which one do you prefer to use? What are the reasons for this choice? What changes would you recommend for this edition?

 

 

 

12. What do you consider to be the most important features of DeLillo's work? Why is this novel important? To students? To literary scholars?

 

 

 

 

13. What film/video, CD-ROM, Internet, or other electronic or computer-based resources, if any, have you found useful in teaching this novel?

 

 

 

 

14. What kinds of information would you like to see included in a volume on teaching White Noise?What particular topics need to be addressed?

 

 

 

 

If you would like to propose an essay for this volume, please indicate on a separate sheet of paper your topic, the work(s) you would like to address, what approach you would take, and how this approach would help other teachers. Please include a recent CV. Thank you very much for your responses.