I was asked during one of the job interviews why I would teach a section on madness in literature.
My answer was that many of us deal with mental instability in the lives of our family and friends (or our own) and the literature provides us vocabulary, metaphors, and ways of thinking about the difficulties that we would not have on our own.
Today I was reading through blogs and was pointed to Lessons from Literature that is an ongoing project encouraging discussions within the literature classroom of violence.
A press release says that teaching plans for Their Eyes were Watching God and Brave New World are available now.
It is an interesting concept, in line with what I am already doing. I may need to look at their resources.