This book is a how-to and self-help book for literature teachers in higher education, aimed primarily at teachers at non-elite colleges. It offers a usable philosophy about the function of literary education and assistance with the practical and emotional challenges of teaching, grounded in pedagogical theory and research but focused on practice.

Offering guidance and inspiration to English literature instructors, this book faces the challenges of real-life teaching and the contemporary higher education classroom head on. Whether you're teaching in a community college, a state school, a liberal arts college, or an Ivy League institution, this book offers valuable advice and insights which will help you to motivate, incentivize and inspire your students. Addressing questions such as: 'how do you articulate the value of literary education to students (and administrators, and parents)?', 'how can a class session with a fatigued and underprepared group of students be made productive?', and 'how do you incentivize overscheduled students to read energetically in preparation for class?', this book answers these universal quandaries and more, providing a usable philosophy of the value of literary education, articulating a set of learning goals for students of literature, and offering plenty of practical advice on pedagogical strategies, day-to-day coping, and more. In its sum, Teaching Literature in the Real World constitutes an experience-based philosophy of teaching literature that is practical and realistic, oriented towards helping students develop intellectual skills, and committed to pedagogy built on explicit, detailed, and observable learning objectives.

"Collier has managed to write a book that exemplifies the virtues he appears to associate with literature: sensitivity, empathy, and a spirit of inquiry." - English: Journal of the English Association

"Collier, fully aware that one book cannot replace years of trial and error in the classroom, has created a book that does acknowledge how hard teaching literature can be and how demoralizing it is when we cannot reach our students and pass on our passion to them. But he goes beyond sympathy and provides some realistic areas of teaching in a literature classroom that many instructors have probably never considered ... There are plenty of examples and strategies throughout Teaching Literature in the Real World that make the book so useful." - Teaching American Literature: A Journal of Theory and Practice