Includes bibliographical references (pages 313-329) and index.

Introduction / Christine R Farris and Judith H Anderson -- Group I: Core courses in the humanities -- Intellectual community and integrated curricula in the first-year experience: the humanities core course at the University of California, Irvine / Michael P Clark and Elizabeth Losh -- Reinventing literary history at Barnard College / Margaret Vandenburg -- The first-year humanities program at Earlham College / Gordon W Thompson -- Connecting with the humanities at Centre College / Helen Emmitt, Daniel Manheim, Mark Rasmussen, Milton Reigelman, Maryanne Ward, and Philip White -- Group II: Literature as source and focus -- Crawling before writing / Helen M Whall -- The detail versus the debate: literature, argument, and first-year writing / Faye Halpern -- "You may find it a different story from the one you learned in school": teaching writing in a first-year seminar on historical fiction / Tamara A Goeglein -- Reading detectives: teaching analysis and argument in first-year writing / John Cyril Barton, Douglas Higbee, and Andre Hulet -- Group III: Literature and the larger culture -- Writing on boundaries: a cultural studies approach to literature and writing instruction / Lori Robinson and Eric A Wolfe -- Literary texts as primers in meaning making / Clyde Moneyhun -- Literature as language in first-year English: confessions of a maverick adjunct / Jeanne Marie Rose -- Integrating African American literature and writing at a college of public affairs / Allison Berg -- On not being only one thing: book clubs in the writing classroom / Rona Kaufman and Lee Torda -- Concluding section: Language, metaphor, and textuality -- Language and metaphor: the ways we think in words / Judith H Anderson, with a preamble by Christine R Farris on first-year writing at Indiana University.