LibGuides: Composition and Literary Studies (English): Books &amp; eBooks

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Materials in our libraries are shelved according to the LC Classification system.

Common call numbers for this subject are:

PE (English Language)
PN (Literature-General)
- PN 80-99 Literature Criticism
- PN 172-239 Literary Composition
- PN 1010-1525 Poetry
- PN 1600-3307 Drama
PR (English Literature)
- PR 111-116 Women Authors
- PR 431-439 17th Century
- PR 441-449 18th Century
- PR 451-469 19th Century
- PR 471-479 20th Century
- PR 481-488 21st Century
PS (American Literature)
- PS 185-195 17th-18th Centuries
- PS 201-217 19th Century
- PS 221-228 20th Century
- PS 229-231 21st Century
PZ (Juvenile Literature)

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African American poetry
19th-century literature
Mexican American authors

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Literary Criticism, Analysis, & History

LGBTQ+ Literature in the West by Robert C. Evans
ISBN: 9781350371828
Publication Date: 2023-05-18
A survey, within one volume, of the history of critical responses to LGBTQ literature from the beginning to the present day, this book explores changes in attitudes, literature and criticism over a period of two and a half thousand years.
Harry Potter and the Myth of Millennials by Priscilla Hobbs
ISBN: 9781793620279
Publication Date: 2022-06-14
The publication of the Harry Potter series in the United States coincided with the coming-of-age of its main target audience, the millennial generation. Harry Potter and the Myth of Millennials: Identity, Reception, and Politics takes an interdisciplinary view of Harry Potter, as a series and a phenomenon, to uncover how the appeal of Harry became a lifestyle, a moral compass, and a guiding light in an era fraught with turbulence and disharmony.
Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies by Elizabeth Winkler
ISBN: 9781982171261
An "extraordinarily brilliant" and "pleasurably naughty" (André Aciman) investigation into the Shakespeare authorship question, exploring how doubting that William Shakespeare wrote his plays became an act of blasphemy...and who the Bard might really be.
Theories of the Flesh by Andrea J. Pitts (Editor); Mariana Ortega (Editor); Jose Medina (Editor)
ISBN: 9780190062965
The collection features a series of essays analyzing decolonial approaches within U. S. Latinx and Latin American feminist philosophy, including studies of the functions of gender within feminist theory, everyday modes of resistance, and methodological questions regarding the scope and breadth of decolonization as a critical praxis. Additionally, essays examine theoretical contributions to feminist discussions of selfhood, narrativity, and genealogy, as well as novel epistemic and hermeneutical approaches within the field.
The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans
ISBN: 9781594487330
With The Office of Historical Corrections, Evans zooms in on particular moments and relationships in her characters' lives in a way that allows them to speak to larger issues of race, culture, and history. She introduces us to Black and multiracial characters who are experiencing the universal confusions of lust and love, and getting walloped by grief--all while exploring how history haunts us, personally and collectively.
Perverse Feelings by Suzanne Ashworth
ISBN: 9781793626523
Publication Date: 2022-09-23
Perverse Feelings: Poe and American Masculinity examines white masculinity in Poe's fiction and the culture it represents. Poe's men are tormented by chronic illness, deviant attachments, and ugly emotions. As it analyzes these afflictions, this book illuminates the pathologies of American masculinity that emerged in a terrible history of imperialism, capitalism, racism, misogyny, and homophobia.
The Monster Theory Reader by Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock (Editor)
ISBN: 9781452960395
This book collects the best of what contemporary scholars have to say on the subject, in the process creating a map of the monstrous across the vast and complex terrain of the human psyche.
Native Speakers by María Eugenia Cotera; María Eugenia Cotera
ISBN: 9780292721616
Gloria Anzaldua Book Prize, National Women's Studies Association, 2009 In the early twentieth century, three women of color helped shape a new world of ethnographic discovery. Ella Cara Deloria, a Sioux woman from South Dakota, Zora Neale Hurston, an African American woman from Florida, and Jovita González, a Mexican American woman from the Texas borderlands, achieved renown in the fields of folklore studies, anthropology, and ethnolinguistics during the 1920s and 1930s.
Behold the Land by James Smethurst
ISBN: 9781469663043
In this follow-up to his award-winning history of the movement nationally, James Smethurst investigates the origins, development, maturation, and decline of the vital but under-studied Black Arts movement in the South from the 1960s until the early 1980s.
Living Beyond Borders by Margarita Longoria
ISBN: 9780593204979
In this mixed-media collection of short stories, personal essays, poetry, and comics, this celebrated group of authors share the borders they have crossed, the struggles they have pushed through, and the two cultures they continue to navigate as Mexican Americans.
Shakespeare in a Divided America by James Shapiro
ISBN: 9780525522294
A timely exploration of what Shakespeare's plays reveal about our divided land. "In this sprightly and enthralling book . . . Shapiro amply demonstrates [that] for Americans the politics of Shakespeare are not confined to the public realm, but have enormous relevance in the sphere of private life.
Displaced by Kate Rose (Editor)
ISBN: 9781003005889
This collection brings together a diverse and compelling array of voices from academics leading their fields around the world, to pioneer a new approach to literary analysis anchored in engagement with our changing world.
The Places of Modernity in Early Mexican American Literature, 1848-1948 by José F. Aranda
ISBN: 9781496229908
In The Places of Modernity in Early Mexican American Literature, 1848-1948, José F. Aranda Jr. describes the first one hundred years of Mexican American literature. He argues for the importance of interrogating the concept of modernity in light of what has emerged as a canon of earlier pre-1968 Mexican American literature.
Urban Homelands by Lindsey Claire Smith
ISBN: 9781496237286
Urban Homelands, while examining the overlooked histories of Oklahoma Indigenous urbanization relative to these regions, engages literature and film as not just mirrors of experience but as producers of it. Lindsey Claire Smith brings the work of three-time poet laureate Joy Harjo into conversation with the great Cherokee playwright Lynn Riggs and breakout filmmaker Sterlin Harjo.
Horror Fiction in the 20th Century by Jess Nevins
ISBN: 9781440862069
Providing an indispensable resource for academics as well as readers interested in the evolution of horror fiction in the 20th century, this book provides a readable yet critical guide to global horror fiction and authors.

Voices that are shaping the Literary Movement

Black Women Writers at Work by Claudia Tate (Editor); Tillie Olsen (Foreword by)
ISBN: 9781642598407
Publication Date: 2023-01-10
Through candid interviews with Maya Angelou, Toni Cade Bambara, Gwendolyn Brooks, Alexis De Veaux, Nikki Giovanni, Kristin Hunter, Gayl Jones, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Sonia Sanchez, Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, Margaret Walker, and Sherley Anne Williams, the book highlights the practices and critical linkages between the work and lived experiences of Black women writers whose work laid the foundation for many who have come after.
Relations by Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond
ISBN: 9780063089044
Publication Date: 2023-01-17
Fresh and electrifying--stories, poems, and essays by African and diaspora writers, edited by author Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond. Relations punctures the human illusion of separation. New and established storytellers reshape the narratives that divide and subjugate, revealing the truth of our shared humanity despite differences in language, identity, class, gender, and beyond. This vital anthology is Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond's striking vision of a meeting place of perspectives, centered in the African and diaspora experience.
Mouths of rain: an anthology of Black lesbian thought by By Briona Simone Jones
ISBN: 9781620976258
Mouths of Rain, the companion anthology to Beverly Guy-Sheftall's classic Words of Fire, traces the long history of intellectual thought produced by Black Lesbian writers, spanning the nineteenth century through the twenty-first century.
¡Ándale, Prieta! by Yasmín Ramírez
ISBN: 9781947627550
This beautifully open coming-of-age memoir by a Mexican-American debut writer doubles as a love letter to the tough grandmother who raised her. When I tell people who don't speak Spanish what prieta means--dark or the dark one--their eyes pop open and a small gasp escapes... How do I tell them that now, even after the cruelty of children, Prieta means love?
Xicancuicatl by Alfred Arteaga; David Lloyd (Editor); Cherríe Moraga (Preface by)
ISBN: 9780819579706
First gathering of the poetry of leading avant-garde Chicano poet Xicancuicatl collects the poetry of leading avant-garde Chicanx poet Alfred Arteaga (1950-2008), whom French philosopher Gilles Deleuze regarded as "among those rare poets who are able to raise or shape a new language within their language."
Transnational Chicanx Perspectives on Ana Castillo by Bernadine Hernández (Editor); Karen Roybal (Editor)
ISBN: 9780822946670
For more than forty years, Chicana author Ana Castillo has produced novels, poems, and critical essays that forge connections between generations; challenge borders around race, gender, and sexuality; and critically engage transnational issues of space, identity, and belonging.
A Registry of My Passage upon the Earth by Daniel Mason
ISBN: 9780316477635
From the Nile's depths to the highest reaches of the atmosphere, from volcano-racked islands to an asylum on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, these are tales of ecstasy, epiphany, and what the New York Times Magazine called the "struggle for survival . . . hand to hand, word to word," by "one of the finest prose stylists in American fiction."