| Sumario: | This paper uses rhetorical text analysis to provide an index of strategies of students in online forums devoted to literature that demonstrate engagement with literature and with each other. Student engagement is shown through a heightened investment of time, attention to the learning of colleagues, identification with authors and characters, and imitation of literary work. The paper also outlines practical strategies of online teachers that encourage such engaged dialogue. Briefly, teachers might find several ways to provide initial structure to online forums that encourages security, shared authority, and responsibility for course building among students. They might also construct opportunities for students to personalize and imitate the literature they are reading. Finally, they might catalyze engagement through dialogue that demonstrates patience, humility, faith in the learning community, humor and play. As almost all commentators observe, conversations between students and teachers are transformed in cyberspace. Yet such transformed conversations are nonetheless appropriate for the task at hand: instilling a love and knowledge of literature. My conclusions are based on twenty years of experience leading online discussion forums in composition and literature courses and on analyzing transcripts from forums of colleagues across the curriculum. My most recent examples are drawn from Blackboard-supported dialogue in modern American poetry courses, women's literature courses, and ethnic-American literature courses taught to commuting students in a suburban liberal-arts college in Michigan, United States.
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