This presentation attempts to probe the applicability of Diana Laurillard’s “conversational” model of collaborative learning to the teaching of the American Literature Survey at the University of Gävle. For the purpose of exemplification, I have selected a unit on race and gender representations in late nineteenth-century fiction, with a focus on Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, respectively. Given that the vast majority of students who take up this course are enrolled in the teacher training program, an important research question is how this pedagogic framework might contribute to developing and consolidating democratic values and practices in their future roles as high school teachers of English in Sweden. This aim converges with the curricular objective that civic values and attitudes should underpin the teaching of all subjects in the Swedish school system. The study is part of a project entitled “Democratic Vistas in the Classroom: Teaching American Literature in Swedish Higher Education”.