Digital library
Textbooks, references and open learning resources.
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Creating Literary Analysis
LibreTexts · LibreTexts
Literary scholarship is guided by literary theories and expressed through writing; it doesn’t make sense to learn each in isolation. Literary theories are intellectual models that scholars use to understand stories, novels, poems, plays, and other texts. Different theories prioritize different historical, social, or methodological concerns. The authors believe students of literature should learn about many literary theories.
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EmpoWord - A Student-Centered Anthology and Handbook for College Writers
Shane Abrams · Ashland High School
EmpoWord is a reader and rhetoric that champions the possibilities of student writing. The textbook uses actual student writing to exemplify effective writing strategies, celebrating dedicated college writing students to encourage and instruct their successors: the students in your class. Through both creative and traditional activities, readers are encouraged to explore a variety of rhetorical situations to become more critical agents of reading, writing, speaking, and listening.
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Technical Writing Essentials
Suzan Last · University of Victoria
This open textbook is designed to introduce readers to the basics of technical communication: audience and task analysis in workplace contexts, clear and concise communications style, effective document design, teamwork and collaboration, and fundamental research skills.
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Technical Writing
DeSilva et al. · Central Oregon Community College
A textbook focusing on writing in the workplace, with an emphasis on audience analysis, writing for specific situations, document design, research processes, and visual aids.
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English Composition II - Rhetorical Methods–Based
Lumen · LibreTexts
English Composition II is an expository writing course that helps students develop advance writing skills. The text also reviews and incorporates some of the same skills. This course teaches research skills by emphasizing the development of advanced analytical/critical reading skills, proficiency in investigative research, and the writing of persuasive prose including documented and researched argumentative essays. This course emphasizes on the research process and information literacy.
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Living Literature: A Journey Through Stories, Drama, and Poetry
Kelsey Ford · Cosumnes River College
This textbook introduces students to literature through creative nonfiction, fiction, drama, and poetry while developing skills in close reading, literary analysis, and academic writing. It explores literary elements, major critical theories, research methods, and MLA citation style through readings, discussion questions, and writing activities that strengthen interpretation and communication skills.
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Critical Thinking and Writing
LibreTexts
LibreTexts
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The Odyssey
Homer · translated by Samuel Butler
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other Homeric epic. The Odyssey is a fundamental work in the modern Western canon, being the oldest extant piece of Western literature, second to the Iliad. Scholars believe the Odyssey was composed near the end of the 8th century BC, somewhere in Ionia, the Greek coastal region of Anatolia.
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SPAN 426: Introduction to Mexican American Literature
Rebecca Estes · Cosumnes River College
This page details Project Gutenberg's collection of popular Spanish literature, offering access to a range of texts from classics to modern works. It serves as an essential resource for readers interested in exploring Spanish literary heritage.
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Reading Anthology Three Levels
Lumen Learning · Lumen Learning
This reading anthology is a curated collection of openly licensed full-text essays and stories on a variety of subjects, designed to be used for discussions and writing assignments. The anthology is organized according to three levels of reading difficulty, but instructors can easily mix and match reading selections. This anthology was curated by Lumen Learning using materials from a variety of open sources.
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English 102: Arguments and Research Skills
Professor Ukaisha Al-Amin · City Colleges of Chicago
English 102: Arguments and Research Skills at the City Colleges of Chicago is a transfer-level composition course that focuses on advanced academic writing, critical thinking, and research methodologies. Students learn to identify controversial topics, evaluate source credibility, synthesize evidence, and formulate compelling argumentative essays.
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2.4: Featured Creative Nonfiction Author- Frederick Douglass
Heather Ringo and Athena Kashyap · City College of San Francisco
LibreTexts
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Writing Unleashed
Sybil Priebe, Ronda Marman, & Dana Anderson · North Dakota State College of Science
Welcome to Writing Unleashed, designed for use as a textbook in first-year college composition programs, written as an extremely brief guide for students, jam-packed with teachers’ voices, students’ voices, and engineered for fun.
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A Guide to Academic Writing and Research: Reading, Writing, and Joining Academic Conversations
Danilo Caputo · Irvine Valley College
Developed for ENGL C1001 and ENGL C1001H at Irvine Valley College, this practical guide supports students through academic writing and sustained research. Its focused chapters address questions writers naturally ask, from developing research questions and evaluating sources to building arguments and presenting findings. Rather than prescribing rigid formulas, the guide emphasizes adaptable rhetorical principles, including audience, purpose, evidence, organization, and style.
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A Guide to Rhetoric Genre and Success in First Year Writing - CSN Edition
Angela Spires, Brendan Shapiro, Geoffrey Kenmuir, Kimberly Kohl, and Linda Gannon · College of Southern Nevada
This is a textbook for second-semester college writing, with some elements tailored to the ENG 102/114 courses at the College of Southern Nevada. It includes material on reading methods, the writing process, rhetoric, multimodality, library research, working with sources, argument and synthesis, as well as updated guides to both MLA 9th edition and APA 7th edition formats.
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ENGL 3330: Approaches to Literature
Kris McAbee · University of Arkansas Little Rock
This text was built for a foundational undergraduate course for English majors. It focuses on the various methods, critical theories, and strategies used to analyze literary texts, while emphasizing close reading and academic research.
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Para vivir con salud
Kathryn McKnight; Jill Kuhnheim · Kathryn Joy McKnight and Jill Kuhnheim · 2022
We are asking anyone who adopts this webbook or uses portions of it in their teaching to please let us know at this link (click here). Para vivir con salud: Leyendo la salud y la literatura is the first textbook to introduce literary and textual analysis of Hispanic literature through the lens of health, illness, and medicine. The book meets the needs of the fast-growing numbers of Spanish majors and minors who are preparing themselves for careers in healthcare, in which they will engage Hispanic communities. These students seek advanced-level study of Hispanic culture and language that prepares them to communicate about health-related issues. While a growing number of literature departments teach Spanish courses with a health focus and most require their majors and minors to take an introductory course in literary or textual analysis, the crucial connection between the study of literature and professionalization in healthcare is generally not being made for or by these students. The movements of Narrative Medicine and Health Humanities have shown persuasively that healthcare providers benefit from a humanistic preparation that promotes empathy across difference; builds an understanding of how culture, language, and history shape our knowledge of health, illness, and medicine; and trains students in narrative competence to better understand and collaborate with patients and colleagues. Para vivir con salud is designed especially for the often-required Introduction to Hispanic Literature or Introduction to Textual Analysis course in most college Spanish programs, allowing individual sections to be transformed into a learning experience that prepares health professionals and brings them into greater engagement in literary and cultural studies in the Spanish major or minor. Para vivir con salud includes classics of Hispanic narrative, drama, and poetry—pieces by authors such as Cervantes, Garcilaso, Sor Juana, Martí, Neruda, Castellanos, Pizarnik, and Morejón, less-wel
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Rhetorical Communities: Understanding Language, Power, and Communication Across Contexts
Leigh Meredith; Phil Choong; Melisa Garcia · Leigh Meredith, Phil Choong, and Melisa Garcia · 2025
Rhetorical Communities guides students in analyzing and engaging with the practices, values, and expectations that shape communication within different communities. Beginning with foundational concepts of rhetoric and discourse community theory, the text progresses through genre analysis, audience and context, composing processes, collaboration, and ethical considerations, while highlighting how identity and power influence discourse. Emphasizing real-world examples and community contexts, this book helps students understand and participate in rhetorical practices across academic, professional, and civic settings.
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Writing Our Bodies
Sunayani Bhattacharya; Meghan Sweeney; Yin Yuan; Gina Kessler Lee · Saint Mary's College of California · 2025
Writing Our Bodies offers students a holistic approach to writing that intertwines embodied rhetorics with critical inquiry and academic conventions. Beginning with an introduction to rhetorical embodiment and personal experience, the text guides learners through writing to analyze, take a stand, revise, synthesize sources, and make arguments with research, while attending to how identity, technology, linguistic diversity, and power influence both reading and writing. Emphasizing reflection, audience awareness, disciplinary literacy, and ethical source use, this resource prepares students to write purposefully across contexts and audiences.
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The Muse: Misunderstandings and Their Remedies
Eric Detweiler; Paul Evans; Amy Fant; Amy Harris-Aber · Middle Tennessee State University
An open-access textbook composed to support Middle Tennessee State University's ENGL 1010: Expository Writing course. In this book, we adopt this exploratory orientation to communication, inviting you too to consider writing across contexts, its many consequent misunderstandings, and satisfying moments of remedy.