This collection of essays, edited by Donna Heiland and Laura J. Rosenthal, is the product of many authors, including the editors. The essays represent an enticing and interesting series of ideas and experiences about the work of assessment in literature and related fields that often resist the language and the methods of standard forms of assessment.
Contents include:
(1) Transformative Learning--Mine and Theirs (Carol Geary Schneider);
(2) Making the Case for Discipline-Based Assessment (Rachelle L. Brooks);
(3) Where Has Assessment Been in the Modern Language Association? A Disciplinary Perspective (Rosemary G. Feal, David Laurence, and Stephen Olsen);
(4) Measuring the Humanities: The Slippery Slope from Assessment to Standardization (Michael Holquist);
(5) The Pygmies in the Cage: The Function of the Sublime in Longinus (W. Robert Connor);
(6) Approaching the Ineffable: Flow, Sublimity, and Student Learning (Donna Heiland);
(7) Fearful Symmetries: Rubrics and Assessment (Sarah Webster Goodwin);
(8) Posthumanist Measures: Elephants, Assessment and the Return of Creativity (Lucinda Cole);
(9) Assessment in Literary Education (Charles Altieri);
(10) Assessment, Literary Study, and Disciplinary Futures (Laura J. Rosenthal);
(11) The Future of Literary Criticism, Assessment, the Curricularized Classroom, and Thick Reading (Charles M. Tung);
(12) A Progressive Case for Educational Standardization: How Not to Respond to Calls for Common Standards (Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein);
(13) English Departments, Assessment, and Organizational Learning (David Mazella);
(14) From Skepticism to Measured Enthusiasm: The Story of Two Literary Scholars' Introduction to Assessment in the Major (Kirsten T. Saxton and Ajuan Maria Mance);
(15) A Cautionary Tale about System-Wide Assessment in the State University of New York: Why and How Faculty Voices and Must Unite (Pat Belanoff and Tina Good);
(16) The Collaborative World Languages Department: A Teamwork Approach to Assessing Student Learning Outcomes (Jose G. Ricardo-Osorio); and
(17) How to Construct a Simple, Sensible, Useful Departmental Assessment Process (Barbara E. Walvoord).
Appended are: (1) English 10 Essay Assessment Guide; and (2) Basic Communication Outcomes SUNY.