Teaching Edith Wharton’s Major Novels and Short Fiction

Ferdâ Asya is Professor of English at Bloomsburg University, USA. She works in the fields of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature, with an emphasis on the turn of the century, the era of realism, naturalism, and early modernism. She is Editor of American Writers in Europe: 1850 to the Present (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

1. Introduction.- 2. Part I. Culture and History: Chapter 1. Reading in Three Dimensions: Using Material Culture to Teach The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence.- 3. Chapter 2. Getting to Know the Community: Using Raymond Williams's Concept of "Knowable Communities" to Teach Wharton's Summer.- 4. Chapter 3. Using Women Reporting War to Teach Edith Wharton's "Writing a War Story": An Added Context for Gendered Writing.- 5. Chapter 4. An Argument for Teaching The Marne: A Long Overlooked Example of Wharton's Wartime Writings. - 6. Chapter 5. Historicizing Adaptation: The Age of Innocence in the Context of 1930s Hollywood. - 7. Part II. Wharton and Other Authors: Chapter 1. Survival versus Thriving: Social Mobility in Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth and Edna Ferber's So Big.- 8. Chapter 2. Developing Sympathy: Teaching Edith Wharton's Summer with Lynn Nottage's Intimate Apparel.- 8. Chapter 3. Teaching Edith Wharton and Henry James in The Netherlands.- 9. Part III. Wharton and Critical Lenses: Chapter 1. "Granite Outcroppings but Half-Emerged from the Soil": Using Ethan Frome in a Gateway Course for the English Major.- 10. Chapter 2. "We're near each other only if we stay far from each other": Teaching Psychoanalytic Desire in The Age of Innocence.- 11. Chapter 3. Social Darwinism, Feminism, and Performative Identity in Wharton's "The Last Asset".- 12. Chapter 4. Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome and the History of Literary Scholarship.- 13. Part IV. Wharton and Interdisciplinary Contexts: Chapter 1. Modeling Addiction: Teaching The House of Mirth in the Context of Addiction Studies.- 14. Chapter 2. Ecoliteracy and Edith Wharton: The Ecosomatic Paradigm and the Poetics of Paratexts in Ethan Frome.- 15. Chapter 3. Teaching Edith Wharton's The Children in The Anarchist Tradition in Literature Course.- 16. Part V. Wharton and the World Today: Chapter 1. Wharton Goes Online: Reimagining the Traditional Graduate Seminar.- 17. Chapter 2. Students Abroad - in the Classroom: A Transatlantic Assignment on Wharton's "Roman Fever".- 18. Chapter 3. Slouching toward the Posthuman: Teaching Edith Wharton's Twilight Sleep.