College of Humanities & Social Sciences - Open & Free Materials by Course: English

aligns to the goals, topics, and objectives of many first-year writing and composition courses. It is organized according to relevant genres, and focuses on the writing process, effective writing practices or strategies—including graphic organizers, writing frames, and word banks to support visual learning—and conventions of usage and style. The text includes an editing and documentation handbook, which provides information on grammar and mechanics, common usage errors, and citation styles.

• Open License: CC-BY
• Instructor Resources

The Commons: Tools for Reading, Writing, and Rhetoric gives instructors and students of college writing courses a single source for information on metacognitive critical reading, rhetorical awareness, and MLA formatting basics as well as interesting and relevant reading and viewing content (essays, websites, videos, infographics, and poems). Its approach is interdisciplinary, bringing in material from ecology, sociology, psychology, technology, popular culture, political science, cultural studies, and literature.

• Open License: CC-BY

An interactive, multimedia text that introduces students to reading and writing at the college level.

• Open License: CC-BY-NC
• Read instructor reviews.

This text compiles open resources on composition from various authors, along with selected readings.

• Open License: CC-BY

This book is divided into two parts. Part I is a Composition Handbook designed to teach students the components of the writing process and the conventions of various forms of school and college writing assignments. Part II is an Anthology of Literature designed to help students read actively, analyze, understand, enjoy, and appreciate stories, poems, and plays by a diverse and inclusive group of exceptional writers.

• Open License: CC-BY

This peer-reviewed World Literature anthology includes introductory text and images before each series of readings. Sections of the text are divided by time period in three parts: the Ancient World, Middle Ages, and Renaissance, and then divided into chapters by location.

• Open License: CC BY-SA
• Read instructor reviews.

The following anthology for World Literature II has been prepared with the assistance of the University of North Georgia Press in its role as Affordable Learning Georgia's Partner Press. Part 4—The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Part 5—The Long Nineteenth Century. Part 6—The Twentieth Century and Contemporary Literature.

• Open License: CC-BY-SA

Part 4: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Part 5: The Long Nineteenth Century. Part 6: The Twentieth Century and Contemporary Literature. Texts from a variety of genres and cultures are included in each unit. Additionally, each selection or collection includes a brief introduction about the author and text(s), and each includes 3 – 5 discussion questions.

• Open License: CC-BY-SA

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.

• Open License: CC-BY-NC-SA
• Read instructor reviews.

This book presents technical writing as an approach to researching and carrying out writing that centers on technical subject matter. Each and every chapter is devoted to helping students understand that good technical writing is situationally-aware and context-driven. Technical writing doesn’t work off knowing the one true right way of doing things—there is no magic report template out there that will always work. Instead, the focus is on offering students a series of approaches they can use to map out their situations and do research accordingly.

• Open License: CC BY-NC-SA
• Read instructor reviews.

From the University of North Georgia Press and Affordable Learning Georgia. Featuring sixty-nine authors and full texts of their works, the selections in this open anthology represent the diverse voices in early American literature.

• Open License: CC-BY-SA
• Read instructor reviews.

This book offers an anthology of texts that includes letters, journals, poetry, newspaper articles, pamphlets, sermons, narratives, and short fiction written in and about America beginning with collected oral stories from Native American tribes and ending with the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Many major and minor authors are included, providing a sampling of the different styles, topics, cultures, and concerns present during the formation and development of America through the mid-nineteenth century.

• Open License: CC-BY-SA
• Read instructor reviews.

This anthology is divided into five major sections, starting with the Colonial period and ending with the publication of Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl on the eve of the Civil War. Each section includes an overview and framework for approaching the readings, as well as overarching questions to help students think about the connections between the texts. There is also a brief introduction to each of the authors featured in these sections, followed by discussion questions based on the texts.

• Open License: CC-BY

Readers will encounter a comprehensive collection of over seventy-five short stories, poems, and novel selections that encompass the distinct writing styles of the writers and eras. The text takes students on an academic journey of American Literature from the period of Late Romanticism to Modernism and the present. Each chapter begins with brief writer bios and includes a concise introduction to the time period and how certain societal, economical, and political factors influenced writers in that era.

• Open License: CC-BY-SA
• Read instructor reviews.

Some links may point to ebooks at a specific institution and may need to be modified for use at SHSU. Also incorporates video, podcasts, web pages, etc.

• Open License: CC-BY-SA

The University of North Georgia Press and Affordable Learning Georgia bring you British Literature I: From the Middle Ages to Neoclassicism and the Eighteenth Century. Featuring over 50 authors and full texts of their works, this anthology follows the shift of monarchic to parliamentarian rule in Britain, and the heroic epic to the more egalitarian novel as genre.

• Open License: CC-BY-SA
• Read instructor reviews.

This free and open access textbook introduces new writers to some basic elements of the craft of creative writing in the genres of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. The authors—Rachel Morgan, Jeremy Schraffenberger, and Grant Tracey—are editors of the North American Review, the oldest and one of the most well-regarded literary magazines in the United States. They’ve selected nearly all of the readings and examples (more than 60) from writing that has appeared in NAR pages over the years.

• Open License: CC-BY-NC