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24327 results in Literary texts

Page 258 of 1217

  • Okonkwo's Revenge (Short story)

  • from LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
    • By Pede Hollist, Associate Professor of English at The University of Tampa
  • Ernest N. Emenyonu, John C. Hawley
  • Book:
    ALT 36: Queer Theory in Filmand Fiction
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    25 March 2020
    Print publication:
    16 November 2018, pp 220-231

  • Summary

    Reverend Jeremiah Smith clenched his jaw, inhaled, and patted the bulge in the right pocket of his trousers, as one would do to assure a wallet of crisp dollar bills had not been stolen. If the commissioner of Bible Technologies for the Global South project had been less agitated, he would have realized that the odds of his wallet being stolen were zero because his right leg was jammed next to the external wall of the medical office waiting room. He would also have realized that the other patients with faraway looks, bowed, or nodding heads had more sublime concerns than money.

    Like them, Reverend Smith had been waiting for over an hour to see Dr. Ezinma Okonkwo, the internationally renowned New York psychiatrist. Her waiting room overflowed with patients. They had heard that she overbooked. But that she took whatever time was necessary with each patient. So few complained. Instead, they resolved to make up for the long wait by unburdening themselves when their turn came to talk to her. Such was Reverend Smith's resolve as he shifted his buttocks to ease the pain hammering his lower back. A transplant to the United States from a British missionary family, Reverend Smith saw the world in ones and zeros, and digital technologies were his weapons to slay the children of Baal. Until they beguiled and sent him on a downward spiral – a falling apart he hoped Dr. Okonkwo would arrest.

    After shimmying his buttocks in an effort to relieve his back pain, Reverend Smith picked up Scientific American from the oversized coffee table and fanned the stale, hot air. The makeshift fan brought little relief, so he opened the magazine and began reading an article on the brain, about its plasticity, its capacity to create neural networks that enable people to learn new things. Dedicated to spreading God's Word through technology, Reverend Smith became entranced in a future world in which ignorant, lost, and dammed souls would be redeemed if he could use technology to saturate their brains with His Word.

    ‘Do you think he hanged himself?’ Reverend Smith said, surprised to hear his own voice questioning Dr. Okonkwo when she walked into the consulting room.

  • Looking Behind the Mirror Challenging representationalism in contemporary dance in postcolonial African contexts

  • from I - Dance
  • Edited by Yvette Hutchison, Chukwuma Okoye
  • Book:
    African Theatre: Contemporary Dance
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    26 July 2019
    Print publication:
    16 November 2018, pp 23-44

  • Summary

    This article offers some thoughts on the conceptual challenges of making, performing and thinking about contemporary dance in Africa, specifically the role of representation and representationalism. It draws on Karen Barad's image of two facing mirrors to argue that, within a representationalist frame, choreographic processes may not only re-craft colonially scripted representations of dancing bodies, but also keep dancing bodies and danced texts locked within a ‘representationalist trap’ (Barad 2003). It asks how we explore ‘What is contemporary dance in Africa?’ outside the space between the mirrors? Does this involve looking behind, under or over the mirrors, inverting or eliminating them? It explores these questions by analysing two specific works of contemporary South African practitioners Mamela Nyamza and Tossie van Tonder.

    Problematising the term ‘contemporary dance’

    The term ‘contemporary dance’ gives rise to a particular problem when thinking through dance in postcolonial African contexts. Part of the dilemma for those working with contemporary dance in Africa is the continual need to renegotiate the Euro-American roots, dominance and influence of contemporary dance while responding to a postcolonial cultural project. Even in a Western dance context, Bojana Cvejic notes that the term ‘contemporary dance’ ‘entails a vague and undetermined concept’ (2015: 5). Contemporary dance, she writes

    serves merely to distinguish the present-day production of dance from the coexisting historical or canonical styles of – originally West- European – theater dance (ballet, ‘classical dance,’ also referred to as ‘academic dance’), or from other non-Western dance traditions as well as dance forms geared to non-art purposes (social, therapeutic, entertainment, etc.) (5)

    This description is helpful in placing the term ‘contemporary dance’ in the sphere of theatre dance, but it also complicates the understanding of this term in the context of artistic practice in Africa by distinguishing contemporary dance production from non-Western dance traditions, affirming a discourse in which contemporary dance can only be conceptualised in close relation to a canon of Western theatre dance. Recognising this conceptual problem, this article specifically offers a critique of representation and representationalism with the aim of opening up an investigation into alternative conceptualisations of contemporary dance in postcolonial African contexts that may constitute ways of seeing an ‘aesthetic logic’ in the many experiments undertaken by choreographers in various parts of Africa.

  • Ezra Chitando & Adriaan van Klinken, eds, Christianity and Controversies over Homosexuality in Contemporary Africa; and Adriaan van Klinken & Ezra Chitando, eds, Public Religion and the Politics of Homosexuality in Africa

  • from REVIEWS
  • Ernest N. Emenyonu, John C. Hawley
  • Book:
    ALT 36: Queer Theory in Filmand Fiction
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    25 March 2020
    Print publication:
    16 November 2018, pp 246-249

  • Summary

    These two volumes are conceived as companion pieces, composed of essays written by African scholars and others, and seeking to fill what the editors conceive to have been a gap in the study of a nexus of subjects that has received very little academic attention: homosexuality, politics, and public religion (especially Christianity). They hope the high percentage of African scholars contributing essays will counter the observation from some Africans that the whole subject is part of a Western-driven agenda. Chitando and van Klinken see homosexuality as an issue of human rights and public health. They acknowledge, on the one hand, studies by Murray and Roscoe (1998), Epprecht (2004), and Morgan and Wieringa (2005) that show how long-standing African toleration of same-sex intimacies have not necessarily completely correlated to Western designations, and on the other hand, note studies by Ekine and Abbas (2013), Snadfort et al. (2015), and Tamale (2011) that demonstrate how, in recent times, ‘Western discourses and concepts of homosexuality, LGBTI identities and queer politics have been introduced to African contexts, and to a considerable extent have been adopted by local sexual minority communities and activists’ (Public 9). They leave it to individual authors to enter this debate as they see fit, while agreeing with Sylvia Tamale that there is little point in reinventing the wheel if there are Western concepts or names that, with some tweaking, will do well enough as conversational starting points.

    The Public Religion volume explores Christian (mostly Pentecostal), Islamic, and Rastafari contexts. The editors suggest that traditional African religions have contributed less directly to the politics of homosexuality. The first section, ‘The Politicisation of Homosexuality’, examines that topic by looking at case studies from Uganda and Nigeria, and their new legislation, focusing on Pentecostalism in Uganda and the joint mobilisation of Christians and Muslims in Nigeria to work against homosexuality. Another chapter in this section looks at Egypt, where recent fatwas encourage the growth in attacks on homosexuals. A chapter deals with Zimbabwe and Mugabe's use of religious fervour to bolster his political standing. A chapter on Kenya records how Muslims overlook ‘the traditions of same-sex sexuality in coastal Muslim communities’ (11) possibly because they consider themselves marginalised from Christian-dominated politics in the country.

  • Introduction

    • By Yvette Hutchison, Reader in the Department of Theatre & Performance Studies at the University of Warwick, UK., Chukwuma Okoye, studied at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, where he is currently a Reader in African Theatre and Performance at the Department of Theatre Arts.
  • Edited by Yvette Hutchison, Chukwuma Okoye
  • Book:
    African Theatre: Contemporary Dance
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    26 July 2019
    Print publication:
    16 November 2018, pp xv-xxii

  • Summary

    This is an exciting moment for African Theatre as we move towards a new approach which has both themed and open sections of papers.

    For the themed section on Contemporary Dance, we have sought to trace the diversity of contemporary African dance and physical theatre practices across the continent, in the diaspora, and as inspiration for new, contemporary dance forms more widely. As a continent, Africa has an incredibly vibrant history of dance as well as contemporary practice. However, there is tension between what is considered ‘traditional’ dance, which is seen as being rooted in African societies and often linked to spiritual or ceremonial practices and occasions, and more contemporary forms of dance that have been influenced by Africa's contact with the global North, via colonialism and media. This tension has spawned a plethora of creative responses stretching from the purist to a diversity of hybridised categories; from the most traditional to the most Euro-American. Thus, there are individuals and companies whose forte is either ‘traditional’ or ‘contemporary’, or, more commonly, anything in between. In addition, forms that have developed in the global North, like break dancing and hip hop, are returning to Africa and defining youth culture in new ways. For example, break dancers from across Uganda, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo performed at the Batalo East Dance Fest in Uganda in 2014.

    However, it is also clear that dancers and choreographers are wrestling in unique ways with issues of representation – of race, class, gender, ability in and through the body in dance – and socio-cultural realities. Interestingly, what comes across in their engagement with these issues is not a programmatic de-colonial scheme, wielding an uncritical approach to either traditional and contemporary forms, but a healthy, more personal and pragmatic posture. This is evidenced by the way choreographers and dancers critically but sinuously respond to the cultures of the global North and that of ‘traditional’ Africa. Thus, it is evident that today dance and dance-based practices flourish creatively and critically in Africa and its Diasporas.

  • ‘And who can turn away?’ Witnessing a Shared Dystopia

  • Edited by Robert Eaglestone, Gail Marshall
  • Book:
    English: Shared Futures
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    15 October 2019
    Print publication:
    15 November 2018, pp 180-193

  • Summary

    Take a suitcase

    full of your thirsty mountains,

    they will thrive in that rain.

    Pack the voices of your neighbourhood

    in a musical box, firmly locked

    for the long journey.

    Choman Hardi

    For this is the place the world ended.

    Miroslav Holub

    Yes, and who can turn away?

    Claudia Rankine

    Two days before the fire at Grenfell Tower, I found myself at the scene of the London Bridge attacks. I was retracing the steps of a family journey along the riverbank, taken two years before when my younger sister visited from Canada.

    The attacks took place on 3 June 2017, while the country was getting ready for a snap general election and the English: Shared Futures committee was in the final stages of preparation for our conference in July. I was out of London at the time. By the time I returned, on 12 June, the election had passed and we had become used to seeing crowds of mourners at vigils and multi-faith ceremonies in Westminster, Manchester and London Bridge. I had known about, but not set out to find, the tributes, flowers and prayers, the pink and yellow Post-it Notes covering the concrete isosceles monument outside London Bridge station, and the banks of flowers on the pavement in front of Evans Cycles.

    In the cobbled alleyways around Stoney Street the police cordon was still in place. Chipboard covered up shattered windows, and parts of the road were marked off with blue and white police tape. I wandered into the cool stone interior of Southwark Cathedral and found myself sitting in a service of thanksgiving. The church was busier than I'd ever seen it, with volunteers and local residents speaking to each other animatedly in corners, signposting people to the garden, or the service, or just stopping to sit quietly. I felt the air reverberate with shock as members of the church and the local community came together to pray and weep, along with tourists who – like me – had not planned to take part. I listened to the tales of horror and courage, saddened yet grateful that no one I knew had been affected.

  • A View from the United States: The Crisis in the Humanities; the Liberal Arts; and English in the Military Academy

  • Edited by Robert Eaglestone, Gail Marshall
  • Book:
    English: Shared Futures
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    15 October 2019
    Print publication:
    15 November 2018, pp 109-116

  • Summary

    This short essay offers a few frames of reference from my current perspective within the US. I am a professor at New York University, but worked in UK universities for over fifteen years before that, and while the essay will raise more questions than answers I hope it might offer new perspectives for thinking about the future of English within the UK.

    The most pressing context for English in the US right now is the ‘crisis in the humanities’. That anything of the sort exists has been disputed by Peter Mandler, but it remains the case that many major English departments in the US have suffered forty to fifty percent losses in English majors over the space of a few recent years. Whether it's fifty percent over five years or forty percent over three years, the story is much the same in many places: recruitment of majors has fallen off a cliff. This has been reported and analyzed in a number of articles in New York Times and Inside Higher Ed. Many are wondering what the future of English in the US might look like.

    Numbers are falling in the UK, I believe, but at present nothing like they are in US. When we think of a crisis in the humanities in the UK we might think of the lack of government support in a STEM-driven vision of the future, but students are still opting to study English in relatively large numbers. So, what is going on in the US, and might the trend spread to the UK? It is worth pointing out that in the US English does not seem to be losing out to the sciences as much as to disciplines that are perceived to lead more directly to sectors in which the number of jobs is growing. The 2008 financial crisis – and a resultant sense of income instability and a fast-changing economic landscape – contribute (as the commentaries already cited point out): the steady rise of computer science and business studies suggest students are opting for disciplines that they expect (rightly or wrongly) will deliver them to sectors in which jobs are perceived to be plentiful and in which wages are relatively high.

  • Employability in English Studies

  • Edited by Robert Eaglestone, Gail Marshall
  • Book:
    English: Shared Futures
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    15 October 2019
    Print publication:
    15 November 2018, pp 152-161

  • Summary

    In a UK Higher Education landscape increasingly shaped by tuition fees and high levels of student debt, Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education (DHLE) survey data, the NSS, and the TEF, the need to focus on the employability of humanities graduates has never been greater. Prospective humanities students run the risk of being deterred from studying subjects that are not vocational, or might even forgo higher education for apprenticeship schemes. On the other hand, in seeking to present undergraduate degrees in English Literature, English Language, and Creative Writing as routes to specific forms of employment, we might risk undermining or damaging the qualities and values that mark English Studies degrees out as distinctive and appealing to both prospective and current students. In The Singularity of Literature, Derek Attridge defines ‘ instrumentalism’ as ‘the treating of a text (or other cultural artefact) as a means to a predetermined end: coming to the object with the hope or the assumption that it can be instrumental in furthering an existing project’. Attridge goes on to present his book as ‘an attempt to conceive of literature (and by implication other artistic products and practices) […] as, in fact, defined by its resistance to such thinking’. This essay seeks to identify and examine some of the employability strategies currently being implemented within undergraduate degree courses in English in the UK – focusing on the examples of two institutions in the North East of England – and to ask how and whether ensuring a sustainable shared future for our disciplines by continuing to attract students, while also enhancing students’ prospects when they graduate, can be reconciled with resistance to the idea of literature (and, by extension, of a literary studies degree) as a means to a predetermined end.

    In order to explore these issues, let us turn first to Teesside University, which was cited in 2015 among a number of institutions engaging in ‘pioneering work’ in the integration of employability within the English syllabus. In 2013, the revalidation of Teesside's BA (Hons) English Studies and BA (Hons) English Studies with Creative Writing programmes was seized as an opportunity to build on the strengths of the existing undergraduate provision by extending the embedding of employability in the curriculum.

  • Exploring Intersections between Creative and Critical Writing: An Interview with Elleke Boehmer

  • Edited by Robert Eaglestone, Gail Marshall
  • Book:
    English: Shared Futures
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    15 October 2019
    Print publication:
    15 November 2018, pp 136-143

  • Summary

    Elleke Boehmer, Professor of World Literature in English at the University of Oxford, is both a novelist, and a cultural and literary historian. Her critical and creative work published in 2015 focuses on the Indian Ocean cultural arena, teasing out its entanglements with empire and other global webs. The novel The Shouting in the Dark (Sandstone Press, 2015) crafts a portrait of a lonely girlhood and looks at the suppression of women's voices through its narration of the inner life of a young woman in the 1970s, set against the political chaos of apartheid South Africa. Her cultural history, Indian Arrivals, 1870–1915: Networks of British Empire (Oxford University Press, 2015), considers the English metropole through Indian intellectual eyes, exploring the rich textures of contact between Indians and Britons on British soil at the height of empire through poetry and travel writing.

    Interviewers Diya Gupta and Bárbara Gallego Larrarte are doctoral researchers at King's College London and the University of Oxford respectively. Their conversation with Elleke Boehmer at Shared Futures examined the points of contact between creative and critical modes of thinking and writing.

    Diya Gupta (DG):We'd like to begin this interview by considering how rare it is for academics to also be creative writers, particularly novelists – and yet you have received acclaim for both! Would you consider the critical and the creative as oppositional structures of thinking? Or are there intersections? Is it like changing hats?

    Elleke Boehmer (EB):This is the question with which my work begins, or that lies at its nerve centre. I used to give a very different answer to this question to the one I give now.

    In the past, I used to think that the two kinds of writing came from different parts of my experience and consciousness or ‘brain’. In fact, I wrote creatively and critically at very different times of the day and of the week. The one kind of writing, the creative, seemed to have to be drawn up like water from a deep well, whereas the other kind of writing, the critical, often arose in interaction with the writing of others.

  • Some Reflections on the Funding of English Departments

  • Edited by Robert Eaglestone, Gail Marshall
  • Book:
    English: Shared Futures
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    15 October 2019
    Print publication:
    15 November 2018, pp 73-82

  • Summary

    Why should academics in English take an interest in the funding of their discipline? The answer may be obvious. But in practice, even at quite senior level, I've observed, few follow matters to any depth. This is perhaps understandable as little effort is generally made to make this sort of information widely or accessibly known while, as a whole, we make little effort to follow it. As a result, headline issues such as student fees, or limited postgraduate funding, or ‘marketised’ higher education, consume our attention, sometimes separating them from broader patterns. The deep political and ethical resonance of such issues is naturally more interesting than quotidian income and expenditure. I have strongly held views about some of these high-level issues, which I will come to, but with the encouragement of the editors I want first to consider the bare bones of HE funding in a discipline like English.

    Though different disciplines have them in different ratios, and some (such as medicine) have supplementary sources, university departments have essentially three sources of funding: from teaching, research and other. I will reflect on each. The first is generally called ‘T’-stream funding. This derives from undergraduate and postgraduate teaching for which a fee is charged. The UK and EU undergraduate fee is notionally variable, and universities could discount it from the capped maximum (currently £9,250 in England) to reflect actual costs or gain market advantage by competing on price. In reality, however, fees cluster in thunderous numbers at the maximum. Past attempts by a small number of publicly funded universities to offer courses at a lower fee to attract more students (thus offsetting lower unit price by larger volume) failed.

    Committed to ‘driving value’ (so-called) into the provision, recent administrations have been keen to introduce ‘private’ (for-profit) providers into competition with ‘public’ (not for profit) institutions, hence establishing the market that didn't materialise voluntarily for reasons I will give below. The argument is that this will disrupt what is in effect a cartel at £9,250, thereby lowering costs for students and forcing universities to ‘drive up’ quality to compete.

    Things are often ‘driven’ in this theory, but, so far, journey times are slow with little impact except as a theoretical (and ideological) challenge.

  • English Outreach: Academics in the Classroom

  • Edited by Robert Eaglestone, Gail Marshall
  • Book:
    English: Shared Futures
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    15 October 2019
    Print publication:
    15 November 2018, pp 25-32

  • Summary

    English in Crisis: Can Outreach Help?

    In the summer of 2017, as teachers, academics and other members of the wider English community met at the ‘Shared Futures’ conference, Year 11s across the country sat their examinations for the new reformed English GCSE. Graded with a numerical system of 9–1, the new course is designed to be more demanding and to stretch able students: coursework has been abolished, all examinations are closed-book, and there is an increased emphasis on the ‘classics’ of British literature. At the same time, the introduction of the new linear A-Level requires Key Stage 5 students to sit all of their examinations at the end of a two-year course, rather than in the stages facilitated by the previous AS system, and sees a reduction in coursework. Creative Writing did not survive the A-Level reforms. Critics of these changes have argued that they risk placing English studies in crisis and, indeed, there is already evidence to suggest that some students are being put off pursuing higher-level qualifications in English. A recent study conducted by John Gordon at the University of East Anglia's School of Education revealed that many pupils find the new literature GCSE off-putting and confusing, preventing them from having the kinds of discussions that allow them to enjoy the texts they are required to study. This may well have a knock-on effect on the number of students choosing to study English at A-Level, with entries in 2017 already having dropped by 11.1% for English Language and Literature, 10.2% for English Language, and 4.7% for English Literature. Bill Watkin, chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, fears that the ‘love of the subject’ that inspires students to continue English to A-Level is in ‘danger of being overshadowed’ by the more rigid standards now expected. Against this backdrop of educational reform, we also face an increased governmentbacked emphasis on the supposed superiority of STEM subjects and the accompanying perception that the study of English is only useful if it is skills-based and relevant to ‘real life’.

    As many English departments in universities across the UK encounter a corresponding decline in applications, an increasing number of academics are considering how we can connect with younger students by offering educational outreach.

  • Practice at Large: How Creative Writing can Enhance University Research Environments

  • Edited by Robert Eaglestone, Gail Marshall
  • Book:
    English: Shared Futures
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    15 October 2019
    Print publication:
    15 November 2018, pp 171-179

  • Summary

    ‘I don't at all favour the institution known as the “creative writer on the campus”,’ opined F. R. Leavis in 1967. ‘What next?’ linguist Roman Jakobson remarked, when he heard Vladimir Nabokov had been offered a Harvard professorship, ‘shall we appoint an elephant to teach zoology?’ Like King Cnut, their helplessly raised hands failed to hold back the tide. Creative writing (hereafter CW) maintains an uneasy relationship with its academic mother subject, English, ‘rather like welcoming Heathcliff into the family’, in Nicholas Royle's British ‘elephant’ equivalent. Beyond this uncomfortable duality as academic sub-discipline and object of study, however, Royle recognizes that CW attracts students, connecting its rapid expansion in many minds to the marketization of Higher Education.

    A success story, yet often eyed still with suspicion then, CW has gradually carved out a distinct academic identity for itself. This essay outlines the subject's genesis within English Studies, and describes the ways it has come to describe its own research paradigms. It considers how the subject is currently securing its future in Higher Education. We discuss how the University of Leicester's CW research centre, the Centre for New Writing, has adapted to the wider academic research environment. Notwithstanding the subject's business value to institutional managers, we show how it provides many opportunities, both to serve the wider writing community, and to design innovative research projects with colleagues from other disciplines. Archaeologists, archivists, historians, geographers and medical researchers are awakening to the power of imaginative writing and beginning to understand its potential for delivering considerable public benefits.

    Understanding ‘Creative Practice’

    Sociologist Laurel Richardson ‘was taught … not to write until I knew what I wanted to say’; instead, she finds ‘I write in order to learn something that I did not know before I wrote it.’ The late author and screenwriter Alain Robbe-Grillet believed the

    function of art is never to illustrate a truth – even an interrogation – known in advance, but to bring into the world certain interrogations not yet known to themselves… When we ask [the writer] why he has written his book, he has only one answer: ‘To try and find out why I wanted to write it.’

  • Exquisite Tensions – Narrating the BAME ECA Experience

  • Edited by Robert Eaglestone, Gail Marshall
  • Book:
    English: Shared Futures
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    15 October 2019
    Print publication:
    15 November 2018, pp 51-56

  • Summary

    Recent events have initiated both a re-evaluation and, consequently, a re-write of what would otherwise have been a straightforward précis of an uplifting panel session where four academics – at very different stages of our careers – who fall under the BAME (Black and Minority Ethnic) category discussed our experiences. The thread binding us together was – despite our divergent journeys leading there – our work within British universities and, broadly speaking, within English departments. Aside from these commonalities, and the shared experiences and connections once inside the UK academy, we could arguably, present ourselves as a manifesto repudiating the idea of a monolithic BAME experience.

    In fact, any conclusion from our initial presentations could be summarised thus:

  • The BAME experience is not a monolithic one;

  • The ECA experience is not a monolithic one;

  • We're all interdisciplinarians now.

    • To briefly address these points, it is salient to note that the panel was composed of four people, born in three different continents, from different ethnic backgrounds, educational backgrounds, genders, social classes, and, ultimately, different initial experiences of teaching within higher education institutions. If only more English departments were to boast such diversity in their employment practices!

    As loosely defined ‘Early Career Academics’, a range of previous employment, including teaching roles, had also preceded our presences on the faculty payroll. And on this note, our wealth of experience meant that we continued to cross disciplines once inside the academy.

    The idea of a permanent, secure job within academia is increasingly rare and, as such, expertise has widened. This phenomenon is not limited to BAME staff, of course, but it is also worth taking into account the large subset of BAME staff whose experience of living and being educated outside of the UK has enabled them to more easily reach beyond their immediate areas of expertise within English.

    Here I shall divulge further my own peripatetic existence: as a British-educated PhD candidate, sat between the Creative Writing Department at one institution, on the one hand, and the Religions and Philosophies department at a neighbouring institution, on the other, my practice-led research comprising of fiction, Caribbean Pentecostalism and migration straddles disciplines in an atypical manner.

  • From A-Level to HE: Working Towards a Shared Future?

  • Edited by Robert Eaglestone, Gail Marshall
  • Book:
    English: Shared Futures
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    15 October 2019
    Print publication:
    15 November 2018, pp 16-24

  • Summary

    Student transition from post-16 to higher education is a well-established and active area of research, engaging education specialists as well as those working within university and, more rarely, secondary English departments. It is also an issue that has prompted several cross-sector initiatives, many of which serve to put schools and universities in direct touch with one another. My own interest in the interface between the two sectors came from observing the frustrations of a colleague who spent half of her week teaching A-Level English Literature and the other half teaching undergraduates at a pre-92 university: a dual role that was, and still is, highly unusual. Her accounts of some of the misunderstandings, misinformation and mythologizing that persisted on both sides of the divide, prompted me to form the English Association's University Transition Special Interest Group with the aim of fostering and sustaining dialogue between A-Level and university teachers.

    I was fully aware when I initiated the group back in 2007 that we were entering potentially choppy waters. Carol Atherton, one of the leading schoolteacher-figures in transition, spoke for many in the teaching profession when she remarked: ‘I get very twitchy about the issue of transition. I am uneasy with the deficit model that it seems to set up: the assumption that students are not adequately prepared for degree level study and that this is because teachers aren't doing their jobs properly.’ Such wariness is not without justification. In the Foreword to David Ellis's illuminating report In at the Deep End? (2008), Jonathan Gibson observes:

    In the past, English departments seem, on occasion, almost to have relished the discomfort of new students, seeking to induce a kind of existential trauma. Freshers were told that doing English literature at university would involve a radically new approach to texts, disturbingly different from the old-fashioned nonsense they had been taught at school: it was time to grow up.

    Nowadays, with undergraduate recruitment and retention high on most universities’ list of priorities, adopting the de haute en bas attitude noted above would seem more than a little unwise and, while there are doubtless some academics who hold fast to the belief that students arrive stuffed with ‘old-fashioned nonsense’, most manage to hold back from issuing what used to be fairly standard advice to new undergraduates: ‘Unlearn everything they taught you at A-Level.’

  • Pedagogic Criticism: An Introduction

  • Edited by Robert Eaglestone, Gail Marshall
  • Book:
    English: Shared Futures
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    15 October 2019
    Print publication:
    15 November 2018, pp 40-50

  • Summary

    Pedagogic criticism involves reading texts through teaching, and teaching through texts. In so doing its aim is to bring into focus the transactions between the study and interpretation of texts and the social forms and rituals of pedagogy. It is a way of articulating a process through which an educational subject is talked into being. Literary studies is a form of cultural production, a collaborative process of making, carried out through a specialised form of dialogue: this form of conversation starts with what may look like confusion and moves towards a provisional order. Thus critical discourse – an intensified version of the meta-linguistic and interpretative conversations that constitute social living – is fashioned in the teaching relationship. Reciprocally, texts frequently prefigure the acts of pedagogy and politics of interpretation.

    In exploring this interaction, pedagogic criticism borrows a leaf from New Historicism. Arguing that social energy is stored in literature not only in paper form, but in ongoing social exchange and transactions, Stephen Greenblatt proposes that ‘we begin by taking seriously the collective production of literary pleasure and interest’. In pedagogic criticism I attempt to re-submerge printed criticism in the oral pedagogic dialogues from which it has emerged, reading the history of the discipline as a history of practices as much as a history of ideas. While so much of pedagogy obeys invisible rules, this approach seeks to locate and listen to pedagogic voices within a discipline whose history can best be understood as being a history of practices as much as of the evolution of ‘subject knowledge’ arguing for a kind of isomorphism between the tropes of text and those of pedagogy.

    The thick description of the discipline draws heavily on the work of the UK English Subject Centre between 2001 and 2011.2 The subject ‘English’ (in both secondary and tertiary education), while subject to enormous and in many ways conflicting political and social pressures, may be at a moment of radical reformation from within. Pedagogic criticism seeks to contribute to that transformation by raising the level of visibility of largely unspoken assumptions about teaching and learning. Education is a formal process for enlarging the repertoire of individual and social choices: pedagogic criticism suggests that the study of literary and cultural texts is a potent stage for the development of ideas about learning – ideas that are frequently at odds with the ‘evidence-based’ shibboleths that dominate current educational policy.

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