Teaching the Postmodern

by Brenda Marshall

Brenda Marshall engages with both literary texts and theory, providing an accessible and rigorous introduction to everything you wanted to know about postmodernism.

224 pages, Hardcover

First published December 6, 1991

About the author

I was born on a farm in the Red River Valley of eastern North Dakota, and grew up climbing trees, riding my pony and daydreaming under a wide prairie sky. I left North Dakota after college, and have since lived in Colorado, Minnesota, Iowa, Washington, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and for the past fourteen years, Michigan. I have a Ph.D. in English, and teach part-time in the English Department at the University of Michigan.

I have published two novels, MAVIS (Fawcett-Columbine, 1996) and DAKOTA, OR WHAT'S A HEAVEN FOR (North Dakota Institute for Regional Studies, 2010). I also have published a book of scholarship, TEACHING THE POSTMODERN (Routledge, 1992).

My partner and I live in the country near Ann Arbor, with two horses, two dogs, and one cat. When not writing or teaching, I might be trying to improve my nascent woodworking skills, riding horse, working in my garden, reading, exercising at the gym, listening to opera, or planning trips, some of which I actually take. No matter where I am living or what I am doing, I think of myself as a North Dakotan.
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Reviews

[Peter Mathews · Rating 5 out of 5]

I initially encountered Teaching the Postmodern when I was a nineteen-year-old undergraduate first struggling to grasp the nuances of Derrida, Foucault, and Lacan. I picked it out at random from the library and studied it carefully. Postmodern concepts are difficult to understand, but Marshall's presentation makes them accessible without dumbing them down. Now, as a professor of literature myself, this is the book that I recommend to people as an introduction to literary theory and analysis.