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Approaches to Teaching DeLillo's White Noise
Editor(s): Tim Engles, John N. Duvall
Pages: vii & 240 pp.
Published: 2006
ISBN: 9780873529198 (paperback)
ISBN: 9780873529181 (hardcover)
"I believe that this collection of essays will be of great value to instructors of White Noise. The essays in the volume are lively, accessible, opinionated (in a good sense), and informative."
Douglas Keesey, California Polytechnic State University
Don DeLillo's satiric novel White Noise, prophetic in 1985 about American society's rampant consumerism, information overload, overreliance on the media, and environmental problems, may seem to today's students simply a description of their lived reality. The challenge for teachers, then, is to help them appreciate both the postmodern qualities of the novel and its social critique.
This volume, like others in the MLA's Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, is divided into two parts. The first part, "Materials," suggests readings and resources for both instructor and students of White Noise. The second part, "Approaches," contains eighteen essays that establish cultural, technological, and theoretical contexts (e.g., whiteness studies); place the novel in different survey courses (e.g., one that explores the theme of American materialism); compare it with other novels by DeLillo (e.g., Mao II); and give examples of classroom techniques and strategies in teaching it (e.g., the use of disaster films).
Table of Contents
Approaches to Teaching DeLillo's White Noise
Preface to the Series
Preface to the Volume
PART 1: MATERIALS
Tim Engles and John N. Duvall
Introduction
Readings for Students
The Instructor's Library
Biographical Material
Interviews, Profiles, and Essays
Bibliographic Sources
Critical Studies
Book-Length Studies
Journals and Collections
Electronic Resources and Other Teaching Aids
Regarding Editions
PART 2: APPROACHES
Introduction
Cultural and Theoretical Approaches
White Noise and American Cultural Studies
Randall Fuller
"Hijacked Jet Crashes into White House":
Teaching White Noise after September 11
Margaret Scanlan
No One Sees the Camps: Hitler and Humor in White Noise
Paul Young
An Ecocritical Approach to Teaching White Noise
Louisa Mackenzie
Connecting White Noise to Critical Whiteness Studies
Tim Engles
Teaching White Noise in the Context of Electronic Media and Technology
Technology, Rationality, Modernity: An Approach to White Noise
Timothy Melley
White Noise as Wake-Up Call: Teaching DeLillo as Media Skeptic
Kathleen LeBesco
White Noise and the Web
Philipp Schweighauser
Surveying White Noise
White Noise and the American Novel
Theron Britt
White Noise, Postmodernism, and Postmodernity
John N. Duvall
White Noise, Materialism, and the American Literature Survey
Ted Billy
Teaching White Noise in the Context of Other DeLillo Novels
Plot Summary: Motives and Narrative Mechanics in Underworld
and White Noise
Michael Bérubé
Inventing Hope: The Question of Belief in White Noise and Mao II
Mark A. Eaton
Loyalty to Reality: White Noise, Great Jones Street, and The Names
Margaret Soltan
Classroom Techniques and Strategies
A Burkeian Reading of White Noise
David Blakesley
Homicidal Men and Full-Figured Women: Gender in White Noise
Philip Nel
"The Natural Language of the Culture": Exploring Commodities through White Noise
Mark Osteen
White Noise as Disaster Movie
Valerie Wee and John Whalen-Bridge
Notes on Contributors
Survey Participants
Works Cited
Index
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