Don Deshler Discusses Rita Dove



Donald D. Deshler, Ph.D. (Professor , School of Education and Director, Center for Research on Learning (CRL) at the University of Kansas; member of NCLD’ Professional Advisory Board) discusses the ideas of Rita Dove, M.F.A. (Commonwealth Professor of English, University of Virginia in Charlottesville; 1993 Poet Laureate) on creating learning environments that embrace and respond to a range of learners with sensitivity to literacy needs from an interview on Smithsonian.com, Rita Dove on the Future of Literature.

Key Ideas from Rita Dove’s Interview:
  • “With the advent of technology and cyberspace and iPads and Kindle, I feel change happening even at the level of composition. In the past, a reader had to rely upon the author to supply all the details of what it was like to hike in Nepal, let’s say. Thanks to search engines, now you can quickly look at up, and that’s going to change the way literature is written.”
  • “As we become more multicultural and able to look at each corner of the world, the more at ease we are with our differences. And we are going to be more comfortable reading something about experiences which are, on the surface, very different from ours. Yet we’ll still feel confident that we can access the common humanity.”



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