The Culture of Reading and the Teaching of English' aims to do for contemporary literary and cultural theory what I.A. Richard's 'Practical Criticism' did for literary formalism. Kathleen McCormick analyzes current approaches to reading theory and the teaching of literary and related cultural texts. She moves beyond 'theory', with its tendency to become arcane and elitest, and instead examines the 'cultures' of reading - its ideologies, institutions and classroom practices. She presents cognitive, expressivist and culturally-based approaches to reading, and then considers a variety of institutional and classroom practices from the writing of formal essays to the use of textbooks. This represents a crucial intervention in debates around the reformation of new curricula in schools and the 'politically correct' classroom currently raging in both Britain and America. 'The Culture of Reading' is much more than a classroom-oriented approach to contemporary literary and cultural theory.

Through accounts of teaching experiences, student writing, professional conferences and curriculum battles on both sides of the Atlantic, she tells an often personal, frequently amusing account of the discoveries of one teacher - herself a widely published critic, writer and lecturer - as she finds how theory is mediated in very different institutions, social contexts and classroom situations.