A Mirror and a Telescope: Using Reader Responses in an International Literature Project

Reader Response literary theory affords a useful paradigm for understanding how literature
can be used in the ESL classroom. This paper discusses an international literature project in
which university students in Iraq, Hong Kong, and the United States read the Hemingway
short story, “Cat in the Rain” and exchanged reader responses with students in the other
countries. It enabled students to articulate and mirror their own views to themselves, as well
as enabling students in distant lands to read those reader responses through the telescope of
email. From a student perspective, multiple benefits were thus realized while from an
institutional perspective the project facilitated internationalization of a small patch of the
university curriculum.