The Magazine of the English Subject Centre April 2010 • Issue 3
Undergraduate English: what the students say
The implied aesthetic Morag Shiach: teaching of English teaching as a shared practice Transforming professional writing From student to lecturer at UEA with market-savvy students
ISSN 2040-6754 WordPlay Issue 3 • April 2010 ISSN 2040-6754
WordPlay is published twice a year by the English Subject Centre, part of the Subject Network of the Higher Education Academy. The English Subject Centre provides many different kinds of help to lecturers in English literature, Creative Writing and English language. Details of all of our activities are available on our website www.english.heacademy.ac.uk
Inside WordPlay you will fi nd articles on a wide range of English-related topics as well as updates on English Subject Centre work, important developments in the discipline and across higher education. The next issue will appear in October 2010. We welcome contributions. If you would like to submit an article (of between 300 and 2,500 words), propose a book or software review (perhaps a textbook review by one of your students) or respond in a letter to an article published in WordPlay, please contact the editor, Nicole King ([email protected]).
Views expressed in WordPlay are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the English Subject Centre.
Website links are active at the time of going to press.
You can keep in touch with the English Subject Centre by subscribing to our e-mail list, www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/ english-heacademy.html, coming to our workshops and other events or exploring our website. WordPlay is distributed to English, Creative Writing and English language departments across the UK and is also available online at www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/wordplay. If you would like extra copies, please e-mail [email protected]
The English Subject Centre Royal Holloway, University of London Egham TW20 0EX T 01784 443221 Is WordPlay F 01784 470684 E [email protected] What You Want? www.english.heacademy.ac.uk We’re thinking about whether to continue printing WordPlay next year. Tell us what WordPlay means to you by completing a short online survey available at The English Subject Centre Staff www.surveymonkey.com/wordplaysurvey Jane Gawthrope Manager You could win £50 in gift vouchers! Jonathan Gibson Academic Co-ordinator Nicole King Academic Co-ordinator Ben Knights Director Brett Lucas Website Developer and Learning Technologist Rebecca Price Administrator Candice Satchwell Liaison Offi cer for HE in FE Carolyne Wishart Administrative Assistant
Design: John Gittins Student Voices
06 22 36 40
Starters Creative Pedagogies
02 Welcome 30 Here when you want them: statistics on English and Creative Writing 03 Events Calendar 36 Odour of Chrysanthemums: a text in process 04 IT Works! 42 Bologna: 10 years on Features
06 Student Voices: a report on the Student Perspective experience of studying English in the UK 44 Meet our student Bloggers! 14 Teaching as a shared practice: an interview with Morag Shiach Book Reviews 18 The Anxiety of Infl uence: inside UEA’s 48 Teaching North American Environmental Literature Creative Writing MA 49 A History of English Literature, 2nd edition 22 The Implied Aesthetic of English Teaching
26 Not more of the same: a modern twist on professional writing Endnotes
50 Desert Island Texts
52 The Last Word
Recycle when you have fi nished with this publication please pass it on to a colleague or student or recycle it appropriately.
WordPlay • Issue 3 • April 2010 01 Welcome Nicole King
As I write this Welcome spring is still My interview with Morag Shiach, a Professor and Vice Principal hesitating. The clocks have moved at Queen Mary, University of London, concurs with the ideas forward, the daffodils have made it, but and data presented by Knights and Hodgson. She is a fi rm gloves, boots and woolly jumpers are still believer in team-teaching and using technology to extend the in rotation. However it is the economic opportunities we have to interact with our students. Given climate of higher education that has the many different ways of reading and the different types of our full attention. Many universities are texts we place in front of students, they can be understandably facing funding cuts and recruitment wrong-footed by the diverse reading skills we expect them to freezes while voluntary redundancy cultivate and deploy in any given term. She told me, ‘I think we packages are quietly proffered. Through it all the work of teaching underestimate the complexity of some of the core things that we and learning continues, as it must. At this time of year, amidst the ask students to do.’ regular teaching, there will be review sessions, dissertations to Andrew Cowan, once a student on the University of East Anglia’s complete and, of course, the exam period is just around the corner. Creative Writing MA programme and now convener of its MA So it is perhaps appropriate, given the season and the current fi scal in Prose Fiction, provides a retrospective account of his student realities, that with this issue of WordPlay we turn our attention to experience and how it affects the work he does at UEA as a the student experience which we have chosen to approach from member of staff. His article highlights some of the tensions several different angles in each of our featured articles. between the craft and business side of Creative Writing that We think our lead article, ‘Student Voices,’ contains such many MA programmes wrestle with. Christina Bunce, who is important commentaries from students that we have given it course leader for the MA in Professional Writing at University extra space. It is an excerpt from a report the Subject Centre College Falmouth, profi les her programme in ‘Not more of the commissioned partially in response to requests we have received same: a modern twist on professional writing’ and describes how from many departments of English and Creative Writing for data Falmouth is succeeding with its students by adopting a brazenly that goes beyond the National Student Survey. Based on focus market-focused approach. groups at six universities, led by John Hodgson (University of The student experience is captured elsewhere in WordPlay too – the West of England), the result is a rich compilation of student you may wish to read about the latest developments regarding experience across a number of broad topics and themes such the Bologna Process for making national systems of higher as assessment, feedback and progression. Students were also education across Europe more compatible (p. 42). Sean Matthews asked about their reading habits and were given the opportunity reports on his completed Subject Centre mini-project, a website to comment on how gender shapes classroom discussion, given that introduces genetic criticism using D H Lawrence’s ‘Odour of that only 28% of undergraduate English and Creative Writing Chrysanthemums.’ In ‘Here when you want them’ Subject Centre students are male. One conclusion that Hodgson reaches is that Manager Jane Gawthrope crunches the numbers for all of you all students interviewed, whether at pre- or post-92 universities, who are interested in what the statistics say about English and ‘encounter at university a practice of literary study which differs Creative Writing. from their previous experience, which may not be made explicit, and which somehow has to be grasped.’ Finally, a serious question: is WordPlay what you want? We want to make sure we’re providing the features and articles that matter The implicit nature of English teaching is a theme picked up by and which interest you. As a cost-saving measure we are also our Director Ben Knights in his article ‘The Implied Aesthetic thinking about whether to continue printing WordPlay or simply of English Teaching.’ He tackles the ‘tacit rules and hidden providing it online and we would like to hear your opinion. Tell us networks’ which many students struggle to access over the what WordPlay means to you by completing a very short online course of their degree while others, a minority, acquire it easily, survey available from our home page and you could win £50. becoming model students perhaps even future lecturers. Knights asserts that ‘the professional community favours argumentative If you would like to contribute to WordPlay or have an idea for a suppleness, metaphorical play, the ability to engage in topic you think we should cover, please get in touch. In the mean representations which […] are at least distantly commensurate time, enjoy the issue. with the complexity of the representations under study.’ He suggests that as a discipline community it is time to ‘make explicit and refl ect upon our unacknowledged pedagogic aesthetic and its infl uence on the identity of both the learner and teacher.’ One consequence of such a process would be a deeper understanding of how students engage with our subjects and how we can actively enhance that engagement and experience. Within this Nicole King issue of WordPlay (p. 44), readers might also be interested in Editor reading excerpts from our six undergraduate student bloggers (or go to our website to read their unexpurgated blogs).
02 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk Events Calendar
English Subject Centre Spring/Summer 2010 For further details about any of these free events please visit our website www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/events
Networking Day for Subject Leaders of English and Creative Writing 22 April, St Anne’s College, Oxford The annual networking day for Subject Leaders, Heads of Department (and related roles) takes place at a moment of unusual uncertainty and stress in the sector. But this event will comprise more than an exchange of horror stories. In a mix of structured small group and plenary activities, the day will explore the nature of subject leadership at this historical moment, and the possibilities for infl uencing change contained within that role.
Teaching Digital Writing 23 April, Phoenix Square, Leicester Digital Writing crosses over Media, Creative Writing, Art & Design and English departments and demand for more higher education courses continues to grow. How are we meeting that demand and how is digital writing being taught? This symposium is an opportunity to discuss, debate and sample Digital Writing with leading practitioners and university lecturers. This event is organised in collaboration with De Montfort University.
Great Expectations: An Introductory Day for Postgraduates beginning English Literature Teaching 21 May, Queen Mary, University of London This one-day workshop is designed to help graduates who are new to teaching in English Literature and have recently, or will soon, face their fi rst seminar. Led by English lecturers, it will be a practical introduction to teaching techniques, a study on how and what students learn in English, and a chance to refl ect on what the teaching role is. And of course, it will be a chance to meet other new graduate teachers, to ask diffi cult questions, and discover the help that the English Subject Centre offers everyone teaching English in Higher Education.
What Works in Work-related Learning? Networking Day for Humanities Careers Advisers 9 July, University of Surrey, Guildford The English Subject Centre, in collaboration with Anne Benson (Head of the Careers Service at UEA) is convening this fi fth meeting for HE Career Advisers with an interest in the humanities. The meeting will provide a forum for careers advisers to discuss and share ideas and experiences.
The Politics of Teaching Literature and the Teaching of Political Literature 24 September, University of Brighton What relevance do the arguments that were once so fi erce in literature and cultural studies have in the current climate for academics and students? As educational policy moves towards the teaching of skills sets and research is required to have social 'impact', what are the politics of teaching literature? And how should the curriculum deal with political texts? Email your paper proposals to [email protected] by 23 April.
WordPlay • Issue 3 • April 2010 03 IT Works!
Brett Lucas casts his eye over recent developments in the world of e-learning.
Resources Free teaching materials now available In the last edition of WordPlay I introduced the HumBox project and I am now pleased to announce that the collection was launched at the end of February! HumBox is a community-based collection of peer-reviewed Brett Lucas is the teaching resources that are contributed by humanities lecturers Website Developer for humanities lecturers to reuse free of charge. and Learning All materials are deposited with a Creative Commons licence Technologist at the English Subject Centre. which means they may or may not be modifi ed (in most cases they can be) as long as you attribute the original author. There are now over a thousand resources in the collection including handouts, quizzes, videoclips, podcasts, slideshows etc. Groups of resources can also be viewed as collections. You can browse by tags, sign-up for an account and access a range of tools that enable you to bookmark resources you like, comment on other people’s resources, upload your own materials and track their popularity... and much more. The collection is great for helping you with specifi c teaching needs or simply browsing for useful teaching ideas. We are very proud of the work carried out by all of our academic partners in the last year. They have built a diverse and substantial collection and provided good advice on searchability and presentation of resources. Come and have a look and let us know what you think… better still, donate a resource and help grow the collection for all of us! www.humbox.ac.uk
Publications The Steeple Podcasting Booklet Many lecturers are exploring the use of audio podcasts to record assessment feedback, deliver mini-lectures or simply post their thoughts after a seminar. Steeple is a JISC-funded community project linking together a series of initiatives that focus on the use of digital audio or podcasts in HE contexts. Many of the projects have explored the educational uses of podcasting and the outputs of these projects have been distilled into an excellent project wiki and hardcopy booklet explaining clearly how to record, edit and publish. The resources are useful for individuals getting started with podcasting or departments considering its wider implementation. The wiki-based materials are available at: www.steeple.org.uk/wiki/Introduction The booklet is available to download as a PDF from: http://tinyurl.com/ybpv7kn
04 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk IT Works! Tools Social annotation Diigo is social bookmarking on steroids. This tool, available as a browser plug-in, allows you to do a lot more than just save weblinks. You can annotate pages with sticky notes (and multiple colours), archive and tag content you fi nd, and organise your web travels with some smart presentational features. The web 2.0-type collaborative features allow you to set up student groups then save your links to the group where comments can be made and discussion tools added. There is potential for powerful teaching hubs to be created so have a look... www.diigo.com
Generate word clouds from any text Word clouds look great and can be a simple but surprisingly insightful activity to do with your students or to illustrate a lecture or seminar slide. Wordle is a free tool for generating ‘word’ clouds from any text you provide. The 'clouds' give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and colour schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share. www.wordle.net/
What is it? Bubbl.us is a simple and free web application that lets you brainstorm online. While it lacks the heavyweight features of packages like Inspiration, it more than makes up for it by having a clear and simple interface and is free to use without an account if you don’t need to save your mindmap. If you do, however, then you can email the map to your blog and/or save your mind map as an image. http://bubbl.us/
Focus On … Other Bits ... Theatron Project What is a Tiny URL? Sixteen theatres that have all played a part in the development The URLs that you see on this page, and throughout this issue, of theatre from classical to modern times (including the were generated by a free utility which takes long URLs and Globe and the Banqueting Hall) have been reconstructed in resizes them for you. Access the utility yourself at the virtual world Second Life as part of an Eduserv-funded http://tinyurl.co.uk two-year project. The theatres are now freely available for educational use, and can be booked for student groups for an hour at a time to prevent interference from visitors! Part of ... and Bobs the project involved two pilots in English from York St John • Where possible, I try to recommend software that is and Northumbria universities which explored the positive and open-source, free of charge, copyright cleared, shareware occasional negative experiences of using virtual worlds in the or freeware classroom. You can read about the project on the Theatron 3 website (http://cms.cch.kcl.ac.uk/theatron/). JISC has also • All URLs on this page were last accessed in recently produced an excellent guide to getting started in March 2010 virtual worlds which provides a useful complement to the • You can access all the links on this page directly in the Theatron resources. www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/documents/ online version of WordPlay gettingstartedsecondlife.aspx
WordPlay • Issue 3 • April 2010 05 Features
Student Voices a report on the experience of studying English in the UK
In this extended extract of a major study for the English Subject Centre on the reading habits and general experience of the BA in English, Creative Writing and English Language, John Hodgson captures the voices of today’s students.
Introduction (see p.30) and the focus would be on their experience Early in 2009, the English Subject Centre of studying what is frequently characterised as a commissioned a focus group study on the experience “feminine” or “feminised” subject (Knights 2008). of studying English in UK higher education. Its The second theme, Reading Habits, would address purpose was to enrich both the Subject Centre’s and lecturers’ concern about the extent of students’ the discipline community's understanding of the ways knowledge, including the breadth of their reading, their in which students are currently experiencing English capacity for close analysis, and their understanding of programmes at undergraduate level. The method theoretical approaches to literature. The third theme, was to run focus groups of undergraduate English Assessment and Feedback, would address the aspect of John Hodgson taught students in six locations; these discussions, each of university study about which, according to the National English in secondary and Student Survey (HEFCE 2009), students continue to be higher education before which took between an hour and 90 minutes, were least satisfi ed. It was suggested that a fourth theme, gaining his doctorate recorded, transcribed and analysed. at the University of the Progression, would be studied implicitly rather than West of England for a Four main themes were proposed for the focus raised directly in the focus groups, but was important in longitudinal study of groups. It was anticipated that the fi rst of these, gauging students’ sense of the meaning of their studies. young people’s literacy The Experience of Male Students, would be addressed practices. He now as a single topic within male only groups. Men comprise A number of institutions were identifi ed as possible teaches Cultural Studies about 28% of undergraduate English students locations for the study, including Russell Group at UWE and runs a members and newer universities with a range of workshop in academic writing. He is Research Offi cer of the National Association for the Teaching of English (UK).
06 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk Features institutional histories. Their names have been fi ctionalised here (see Gender and university English box). With the agreement of the Heads of Department, ten focus The most direct evidence of male experience of undergraduate groups were arranged with 35 students in the summer term of 2009. English came from Alan and Mark at Longbourn University. Alan’s previous experience of English had been extensively masculine The Universities in character, in that he had studied at a boys’ grammar school Longbourn: pre-92 Russell Group university where the men who had taught him in the sixth form had chosen Netherfi eld: pre-92 Russell Group university Tom Brown's School Days as one of the A level set books! As a Pemberley: pre-92 university male student, he thought he brought a "different perspective" to Lambton: post-92 university discussions at university; in a seminar on a Victorian novel, he had Hunsford: post-92 university challenged the focus on feminist readings. However, he allowed Ashworth: post-92 university college the legitimacy of such readings in a patriarchal world where "it's been masculine readings ever since day one".
Mark and Alan echoed the comments of many of the female Selecting male only groups proved much more diffi cult than had students about the low number of contact hours and the overall been expected and it was possible to interview only one all-male lack of social involvement in their university English course. Their group, which comprised two students from an older university. response to this situation had a certain masculine tone. The During each session, the researcher used a cue sheet to guide the assessment regime made essay writing (in Alan's words) “the only conversation, while allowing the students to develop topics naturally. thing that really matters on the course”, and thus it was sensible The cue sheet was based upon the themes and questions proposed to put effort into essays rather than into attending seminars. Alan by the English Subject Centre, and structured the conversation in enjoyed "creating new ideas … having critics to back it up, but not terms of the students’ experience of change. For example, they relying on someone else's argument too much”. It was necessary, were asked about their personal reading during their pre-university of course, to have in mind the preferences of the tutor who would years and while at university; their expectations of reading for their mark the essay. These students adopted a robust approach to the university course; the differences between their course reading tutor-student relationship: it was up to the student to approach the before and at university; their previous knowledge of literary and tutor. The system worked, Alan thought, “so long as the student cultural theory, and their present feelings about theoretical and isn’t reticent … otherwise you get nothing”. Admittedly, the critical reading. Questions about their current experience included anonymous marking system meant that tutors often had little to the balance between primary and secondary reading; reading say to students, as they had no real recollection of their work. Alan modalities, eg print or online; coping strategies; and so on. would look at the mark his essay had gained, and read what the tutor had to say about it, but he hadn't “sourced out the tutor to It soon became clear that it was impossible to discuss any one have a little discussion about it”. He had been focused on the next of the themes without involving the others: for example, much essay: “Turnover is the key I guess”. reading was done in preparation for writing and assessment, and gendered perspectives on all these processes of study gradually Mark and Alan presented a male response to a learning context emerged. Thus, the conversations did not all follow the same that appeared feminine in several respects. Most of their fellow sequence, and some highlighted some aspects of the students’ students were women; a good proportion of the tutors were experience more than others. female; the subject matter was often feminine or, indeed, feminist; and the overt pedagogic method was of inclusive, The full report of the study is available on the English Subject open discussion. The assessment regime, however, appeared to Centre’s website. This article summarises the fi ndings and reports emphasise the importance of isolated, individual effort, and the the words of the students. It is hoped that it will assist colleagues to tutor-student relationship was distant. develop university English in ways that will enhance the experience of tutors and students alike. Seamus, at Pemberley University, was the only male in a focus group of six students, but he spoke confi dently about his
WordPlay • Issue 3 • April 2010 07 Features experience of English. He was scornful analysis. The students had some complaint embarrassment and reticence at being of the attainments of the students with about the amount of writing expected, thought to be feminists. Lynda, in the whom he had studied for the International which they thought insuffi cient, but overall second Pemberley group, said the girls Baccalaureate, and glad to be surrounded they appeared confi dent and comfortable would shy away from being labelled as by "intelligent” people at university. He within English studies. feminists, while male students would try had a strong sense of what was “proper” to accommodate a feminist position. John was a distinctive fi gure in the Lambton to university study: a theoretical module focus group in that he was male, a mature While several of the girls expressed in the fi rst semester had included "proper student, and taking a degree in English concern for the feelings of boys who found stuff" like formalism, but more recent Language. He had the confi dence of a themselves discussing feminist issues in a material (including a three-week unit on man who had been employed for many largely female group, they also admired the feminism) had been "lightweight". He years and "done other types of writing". confi dence and relaxed attitude that some wanted more opportunities for writing and He defi ned himself as "well read" owing of the boys demonstrated in class. As Holly a longer time to refl ect on the topic. He to his use of information books and 20 (Netherfi eld) put it: “They are always laid seemed confi dent in his student identity years’ experience of the internet. Rather back in the chair … and they’ll just throw and said that it had never occurred to him like Alan at Longbourn, he saw his tutors something in at the end”. The girls found to question why he had chosen a subject as deliberately supporting his learning, this particularly surprising given the belief studied predominantly by females. He giving an indication “of what you should (expressed in various ways) that English was did, however, feel that he couldn't argue be reading to get good grades in your a more natural subject for girls to study than as strongly at university as he liked to do, assessments”. He gave the impression of for boys. "I mean this in the nicest way," because female students appeared to feel enjoying a “hands-on“ mode of English said Becky (Pemberley), "but I think it takes threatened by such argument. study. He praised the tutors who had a type of guy to do English". She thought Robert and Luke, the male students excited him by introducing him to methods he would be "not the most macho kind”. interviewed (along with one female) of linguistic analysis, and he appreciated Although several of the women regarded at Netherfi eld, participated vigorously the use of group investigations and the English as a natural subject for them to in university life – Robert as a student “very varied” assessment programme. study, they were not necessarily confi dent journalist and Luke in the drama society. He had found a module on language and or comfortable with either the learning Robert saw the transition from school gender chastening: “To think of the way situation or the subject matter. The former to university in terms of a leap into that women had been portrayed not just was often seen as private, individual and independence: he had been "spoon in literature but in scientifi c writing in the isolated. Caitlin, at Longbourn, spoke fed" at A Level, whereas at university seventeenth and eighteenth century”. He eloquently about the days during which "people expect you to read a lot more felt that “the lads in the class” would be she had nothing to do but write an essay, independently and by yourself". The thinking: “I don't want to be associated with no ready opportunity to communicate students in this group appreciated with this”. with others. "English is not a sociable their tutors’ support, although Robert The women in the focus groups expressed subject," said Antonia in Pemberley. "You complained about having to pay the more awareness than did the men of are there in your little bubble on your own, same fees as did other students who, he the difference in numbers between reading on your own." A sense of being claimed, received much more tuition. He the genders. They often welcomed the "outside", not knowing how to engage took a robust attitude to study: "You've presence of boys: Antonia, of Pemberley, with, the university and the curriculum was expressed in various ways. The girls in the second Netherfi eld group, for example, were surprised to hear that it Lynda said the girls would shy away from was possible to change one's tutor. being labelled as feminists, while male students would Their brief discussion of this, in which each girl’s comment overlapped the try to accommodate a feminist position. others’, indicated their anxiety at having missed a foothold.
Despite, then, the preponderance of women students on university English paid your money – if you don't do the said that in her seminar group the boys courses, the majority of women tutors in work that's your problem”. Luke liked usually came up with more interesting several departments, and the traditional university tutors’ expectations of essays: “ points and would "push the argument association of English studies with affect, They're looking for an argument … there further". Bela liked the presence of interior states and issues of human is more focus on coming up with your own boys in seminars with a feminist agenda relations (Knights 2008), the typical ideas about the text”. Robert was pleased – without them, she thought, “[the practice of English studies as experienced that his module choice in the second year discussion] becomes a bit one-sided”. by most of the students could be defi ned had enabled him to develop the reading Several of the female students were as “masculine”. Diana at Hunsford tastes he had learned at A Level. He felt anxious about the feelings of males in was unusual in speaking directly of her that his English course had benefi ted such classes. In more than one group, response to poetry. To many of these him by developing skills of debate and women students expressed a sense of students, university English meant, rather,
08 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk Features a diffi cult journey of mastering theory, to reading original literature. Where they when compared with students in other managing their reading, and writing essays felt the tutor or department emphasised disciplines. This complaint often went for high-stakes assessment within an the importance of theoretical orientations, with an observation that they appeared environment that was felt to lack nurture. students attempted to balance their to be paying the same fees for much less reading of primary and secondary texts, attention and involvement. Students’ experience of reading and would give more time to researching A related and frequent comment was All the students agreed that the reading and rehearsing theoretical positions. Their that too little written work was expected, demands of university study were much reading practices would thus be infl ected especially as everything submitted counted greater than those they had experienced by their sense of what was required to towards their fi nal assessment. Students at A level. They had usually expected this construct a good essay. compared the A level regime of relatively to be the case, but had still found the The students interviewed in the focus frequent essays, formatively assessed, with difference stark: "You read as much here groups did not make much confession the university regime of a few long essays, in a week as in a year at A level" was a of shortcuts in their reading practices, most or all of which were assessed as part typical comment. There was no negative although Isabel at Pemberley was surely of the coursework to the degree. Some response to this quantity of work per se: it not alone in using SparkNotes and other complained that assessment dates were was seen rather as an essential aspect of study guides. They usually felt that the not always staggered, so that two or more the independent study that the students primary text should be read fi rst, with essays (for different modules) might be expected and appreciated at this level. as much secondary reading as was required to be submitted simultaneously. For many of the students, a major problem appropriate or possible. They reported Some claimed that assignment titles of university life was to know what to increased facility as the course progressed were often announced only a few weeks read and how to manage their time. This in selecting passages for comment and in before the hand in date, so that a great was related to a larger issue: what kind grasping the arguments of secondary texts deal of reading and writing had to be of reading did the tutors want? Very few – processes of reading again contingent done in a relatively short time. This led to had had any signifi cant encounter pre- on the demands of essay writing. Self considerable pressure on library resources. university with the literary and cultural chosen participants in the focus groups, Students commented on a "feast or theory that underpins contemporary these were usually committed students famine” pattern where no written work literary study; they had learned instead who approached their work with a measure would be required for several weeks and to read whole literary texts in detail. of energy and enthusiasm. They did, then two or more essays might have to The problem of reading, then, was however, report occasions where they did be written simultaneously. often a problem of balancing the time not prepare for a seminar, and there were Although these concerns spent on primary and secondary texts. several accounts of painful classes where it may have arisen partly Did the tutor prefer detailed, personal, was apparent that few of those present had because of insuffi cient textual comments, or a demonstration of done any preparatory reading or thinking. planning or effort on theoretical grasp? They were also aware of the practices of the part of individual those contemporaries who skimmed critical students, the The problems presented by reading were books and produced essays that were little frequency of these thus connected to the problems presented more than a patchwork of undigested comments suggests by writing. As many students (from almost secondary reading. a structural all institutions) pointed out, essay writing problem. was by far the most important activity of Writing, assessment and feedback their course, as the greater part of their The form The assessed essay is an enormously assessment depended on it. The students’ of writing signifi cant factor in the experience of reading was thus heavily infl uenced most often undergraduate students of English, as the (as were their writing and wider study undertaken words of Mark, Alan, Caitlin, Antonia and practices) by the assessment regime. Much by students others suggest. The importance of nearly of their reading was done in preparation for of English every essay in determining the fi nal degree an essay. They would read, or felt that they Literature class (symbolised by the ritual aspect of should read, to prepare for seminars, but, was the submission, and the long delay in returning as Alan put it, you didn't get a pat on the discursive the work to the student) affected every back for performance in seminars; credit essay. No aspect of study. was given for written expression in the form Literature student of an essay. Managing their reading in order The students refl ected on this mode of mentioned other to write a good essay submitted on time study in various ways. Several compared forms, such as proved challenging to many. The solution the experience of English students with imaginative or chosen depended in part on the student’s those taking science or medicine, who recreative writing interpretation of the tutor’s requirements. were seen as enjoying more collaborative based on their In some cases, students clearly felt (an and companionable study time. Others literary studies. attitude doubtless ingrained by their A level mentioned their dissatisfaction with However, studies) that the primary text was indeed the relatively low number of student/ students taking primary, and they would give most time tutor contact hours they experienced
WordPlay • Issue 3 • April 2010 09 Features courses in English Language and Creative There was a good deal of feeling amongst Many of the students felt that, while they Writing had opportunities for engagement most of the students that the mark given were glad to have transcended the “tick- with language that involved the production for an essay depended on the subjective box”, assessment objective-led approach of original texts as well as of critical opinion of the tutor, and no one indicated of their previous studies, they would have essays. Such texts sometimes received awareness of any system of moderation appreciated more help in orientating feedback and evaluation from their peers or collaborative assessment (except in the themselves to university English. Jessica as well as from the tutor. It appeared to case of the peer assessment of Creative (Longbourn) suggested that it would have students in one department at least that Writing and Language work). Opinion been helpful if the reading list she had an implicit hierarchy of value existed in varied regarding the quality of written been given before coming to university the department whereby Creative Writing feedback. Students at one institution had borne some relation to the work did not gain the legitimacy of the critical regarded most of their feedback as she had done in the fi rst term. Looking literary essay. summative, while those at another back, Martine, a third-year student at found tutorial comment was helpful in Netherfi eld, said that the diffi culty of transition was “trying to understand what [the tutors] are looking for”. As many students Some universities eased the transition (from almost all institutions) pointed out, by offering modules and/or seminar essay writing was by far the most important activity arrangements that recognised the need to bridge the gap between students’ of their course, as the greater part of their previous experience of English studies assessment depended on it. and the concepts and approaches required at degree level. Netherfi eld, for example, provided general seminars throughout the fi rst year with a tutor to The predominant mode of writing for preparing for their next assignment. whom students could bring issues for the students in this study was, then, the Some students felt that feedback was clarifi cation. Students attending these critical essay: they would write perhaps not as helpful as it might have been, seminars wrote "practice" essays that two or three a term, most if not all of because they often could not translate were marked by the seminar tutor. Pauline which would be assessed towards their tutors’ comments into practical action. found these "really useful for the feedback degree result. All departments also Almost all students agreed that the long on essay structure and [an indication of] offered students the opportunity to period between submitting an essay and the amount of research needed". Elaine, write “non-assessed” essays, especially receiving feedback limited the usefulness of Hunsford, valued being led "step by in the fi rst year. Practice here varied of the comments, especially (as was often step" in fi rst-year seminars. Ashworth widely, some institutions placing more the case) if the student had moved to a gave all students an introductory module emphasis on this than others. Where different module with a different tutor. on language which introduced them to “non-assessed” essays were in fact given certain key concepts. The fi rst-year short Students’ sense of progression formative comment, and the writer invited story module was taught in three-hour to meet with the tutor to discuss these, All the students agreed that the transition sessions involving a lecture, discussion and the students valued the opportunity from their pre-university studies to their other activities which had helped to create more than in those departments where degree courses had been a marked a feeling of mutual support. The online the initiative was left to the student progression. In nearly every focus discussion forum at this university seemed and the staff merely offered a notional group, the students described this in a successful way for students to discuss opportunity for such a formative work. terms of moving from "ticking boxes" problems with each other and with Students in some institutions felt that the to more demanding but less clearly their tutor. system of anonymous marking, among defi ned objectives summarised by Caitlin One of the reasons for the prolonged dip in other distancing factors, prevented their (Longbourn) as “not just proving you many students’ sense of progression, which tutors from even recognising them as the can do things”. In many cases, this was lasted, in some cases, to the beginning of authors of their essays; consequently, a diffi cult transition. Most students felt the third year, appeared to be the relatively spoken feedback was unsatisfactory. they had not been prepared in school or college for the amount or kind of reading small amount of writing – especially Generally, students accepted without they had to do at university. What Chris formative, experimental writing – required much demur the assessments and (Netherfi eld) called the "confi ned" A in many of the courses. Infrequent writing feedback comments given by their tutors, level course involved the lengthy study restricted opportunities for dialogue but a number of concerns arose. In one of a small number of texts, with little between student and tutor. This was of the older universities, students felt secondary reading. University demanded, compounded by the assessment regime. that, no matter how hard they tried to in Alan of Longbourn’s phrase, “a Most of the essays written were formally improve, their essays were unlikely to prodigious amount of reading, and assessed towards the fi nal mark of the break the 70% barrier and would remain an understanding of literary and course, and students’ comments revealed classifi ed as 2.1, a degree class which cultural theory”. that they regarded their essays less as a most of the students expected to gain. means of learning than as submissions
10 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk Features for summative assessment. Elaine felt so Conclusion: improving the student 92 universities) will have supplemented judged by the process that she would not experience their A Level texts with a considerable read the tutor’s comments until she had The six departments demonstrated amount of self-directed reading in classical assimilated her mark. a range of institutional cultures, and and modern literature, with an eye to impressing the university interviewer. Some students spoke with appreciation student experiences of university English Others, many of whom will be found in the of the wider choice of modules that was were accordingly diverse. One of the post-92 universities, will be less invested usually available during the second year intriguing and heartening aspects of in literary capital. All students, however, of the course, and the opportunities the study was, in fact, the differences in will encounter at university a practice these offered to play upon and develop pleasure and satisfaction that students of literary study which differs from their their previous reading. The third- felt in their studies, depending on the previous experience, which may not be year dissertation was more frequently curriculum they were following and a made explicit, and which has somehow to mentioned in terms of progression. Lesley, range of subtle but important variations in be grasped. Alison, at Netherfi eld, spoke of at Pemberley, appreciated the way in the university and department culture. It “fl oating along and hoping you'll have an which her tutor had worked with her on is apparent that changes in these cultures epiphany or something”. her dissertation proposal: she had gained, can make a difference to the experience she said, a "sense of progression and of students, and thus to the increased All departments aided the transition by being able to improve". success of the institution in social, cultural offering introductory modules, some of and economic terms. which were very well regarded by students. Students who were following Language It may be that an explanatory focus in or Creative Writing courses usually It was noted in the section above on the early weeks of the fi rst year on the expressed a sense of enjoyment and Gender and University English that, underlying philosophy of HE English study progression. Isabel, at Pemberley, said despite the far greater numbers of would help students make the changes in that she had not really enjoyed the course female than male students in English their mind-set necessary to understand the before taking a Creative Writing module departments (and, in some departments, discipline they are engaged in (Snapper in the second year. John, at Lambton, a preponderance also of female tutors), 2009:202). The rationale and method expressed amazement at “the capacity the male students sometimes appeared of post-structural and discourse analysis I’ve learnt to look at language in use”. It more comfortable with their English remain for some, it would seem, as opaque seems, from this small sample of student studies than their female contemporaries. as did the rationale and method of practical experience, that a well-framed language They were more likely to insist on the criticism for an earlier generation. course or module can help students gain a student’s responsibility to fi nd help method of critical literacy and confi dence where needed and to regard the solitary Part of the diffi culty of in reading in unfamiliar ways. Peer- writing of essays as the only aspect of transition, for many assessment was also a feature of Language the course that really mattered. Many of the students, was and Creative Writing courses that of the female students expressed some the limited number Chris (Netherfi eld) and John (Lambton) reservations about the process of learning of opportunities appreciated: “instant feedback each and assessment, suggesting that studying offered for week”, as John put it. English at university lacked nurture in formative writing. certain respects. The observations and Recognising Despite their reservations, nearly all recommendations that follow may, then, the crucial the students expressed appreciation, in be seen as suggesting ways in which the market various terms, of their university English experience of studying what is often seen value of their courses. Some, like Robert of Netherfi eld, as a feminine subject may indeed embody coursework spoke of developing “debating, analytical “feminine” characteristics and values that essays, many skills”, while Antonia (Pemberley) felt would benefi t not only female but also or most of that she now had a more distinctive male students. which would be written voice. Many students said they assessed towards appreciated (in Elaine of Hunsford’s Many students arrive at university to read their course total, words) “reading books that I’d never have English after having completed a two- students tried to dreamt of reading”. Caitlin of Longbourn year course in A Level English Literature. discover what their and Luke of Netherfi eld spoke of cultural A Level syllabi have changed signifi cantly tutors wanted, insight: literature (in Luke’s words) “refl ects from 2008/09, and the transition may and to produce the time it was written and people’s become easier over the coming years. it in their essays. ideas around that time”. Holly, also of The tradition of A Level English Literature, Several students Netherfi eld, liked the way her studies however, involves the intensive study of a said they would intertwined literature with art, history, fi lm small number of texts to which students welcome writing and popular forms such as comics and are expected to give "personal" responses tasks with more graphic novels. John (Lambton) and Diana with little secondary reading. Many, indeed, formative (rather than (Hunsford) spoke of enthusiastic tutors will have read little or no critical argument merely summative) who had illuminated their language and before arriving at university. Some students assessment, to help literature studies. (more usually, it appears, from the pre- them develop
WordPlay • Issue 3 • April 2010 11 Features
(in Tessa’s words) “a system in our mind”. were prepared for the occasion and the and practice: through the direct study and Students at Netherfi eld especially valued tutors struggled to maintain a dialogue. production of language, they could explore such “practice” essay assignments, and, The students did not, however, suggest and grasp its theoretical dimensions. in at least two of the universities, students a reduction in the provision of seminars. Students whose courses included writing valued online written discussion as a means They were realistic about the diffi culty assignments beyond the essay welcomed of communication with each other and with of increasing opportunities for individual the opportunity for productive as well their tutors. Research repeatedly associates feedback, and regarded seminars as as critical writing. Unfortunately, several student success with an emphasis on potentially valuable learning opportunities. commented that Creative Writing modules formative assessment in the early weeks of Most of the students interviewed appeared to be valued less highly than the fi rst year (Yorke & Longden 2007). were following a degree course in other modules in assessment terms (cf A feeling expressed to a greater or lesser English Literature drawn from a literary the student comments recorded by May extent by students in most of the focus canon with options (depending on the (2008)), and it was more diffi cult to do groups – with the notable exception of department) including some study of well. Within a literary paradigm, there Ashworth – was the private and solitary popular culture and Creative Writing. is nevertheless a strong tradition of alternatives to critical writing, exemplifi ed most recently by Knights and Thurgar- All students, however, Dawson's (2006) work on creative responses to texts. Many students clearly will encounter at university a practice of gain satisfaction from engagement in literary study which differs from their previous literary production as well as in other forms and genres. Increasingly this will experience, which may not be made explicit, become multimodal, as upcoming students and which has somehow to be grasped. will increasingly expect to use converged digital technology. English departments may wish to reconsider approaches to student production within English courses, taking into account the contemporary aspect of much of their study of English. Some students, particularly those in nature of production in new media. They felt that, unlike their imagined the pre-92 universities, clearly gained contemporaries taking degrees in science pleasure from studying “diffi cult” The full study is available at or medicine, they had few opportunities texts from the English literary heritage www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/ for communal or collaborative work and and demonstrating in their essays explore/resources/studexp/index.php experience. their capacity for literary analysis and argument. The female mature students Essay writing was frequently discussed in interviewed, who apparently expected a References terms of its assessment value rather than traditional course in English Literature, as a means of learning. A change in this HEFCE (2009) National Student Survey especially appreciated the expertise of culture, with more emphasis on low-stakes, www.hefce.ac.uk/learning/nss/ the tutors in making accessible diffi cult collaborative, formative writing, for informal data/2009 texts and in assessing their essays. It was and peer assessment, would surely improve Knights, B (Ed.) (2008) Masculinities equally clear that students appreciated the experience of tutors as well as students. in Text and Teaching. Basingstoke: courses that extended literary study into Palgrave Macmillan. Of other modes of learning, lectures non-traditional areas and enabled them attracted relatively little comment – to make connections with their personal Knights, B & Thurgar-Dawson, C which may refl ect their importance in reading. Such options as children's (2006) Active reading: transformative students’ academic experience. Some literature and media texts provided writing in literary studies. London: students wished they would focus more on opportunities for students to make Continuum. textual issues, whereas others liked their connections with, and draw upon, their May, S (2008) ‘Investigating Creative contextualising function. Seminars gained wider literary and cultural experience. Writing: student perspectives.’ mixed reviews. Several students valued At the same time, the study of literature English Subject Centre Newsletter 14. them as opportunities to meet fellow (however defi ned), demonstrated and Snapper, G (2009) ‘Beyond English students and to have a good discussion assessed by the critical essay, is not the Literature A Level: The Silence of the with an enthusiastic tutor. At the same only possible form of university English. Seminar?’ English in Education 43 (3). time, even some of the motivated and The students of English Language who committed students who made up Yorke, M and Longden, B (2007) were interviewed in the focus groups were the focus groups regarded seminars The fi rst year experience of higher clearly enthusiastic about opportunities as dispensable. Attendance was not education in the UK: Report on for the study of linguistic structures, the required in any effective manner and they Phase 1 of a project funded by development of English, and language in rarely gained positive feedback to their the Higher Education Academy. use. Language study appeared to offer contributions. At worst, seminars were York: Higher Education Academy. students a fruitful combination of theory painful affairs where only a few participants
12 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk Staying the Course The Experiences of Disabled Students of English and Creative Writing
This summarises the fi ndings of the fi rst national study of disabled students and is illustrated throughout by vivid quotations in students' own words. It includes a checklist of 10 relatively straightforward things departments can do to help students. The report is available to download as a PDF at www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/resources/ studyexp/index.php
Breaking Boundaries November 2009
‘Breaking Boundaries’, as we called the fi rst event of the Northwest English and Linguistics Pedagogy English Subject Centre Network, attracted 29 participants. We had decided to take a rather liberal interpretation of our geography (ie no one who wanted to come was refused!). One participant came from Middlesex University, two from Huddersfi eld University and a self-employed materials producer also hailed from deepest Yorkshire. There were teachers of Creative Writing, English Literature, English Language and Linguistics present, though the last group was a bit thin on the ground (it was rumoured that having to analyse a poem might have put some of them off!).
We began with a long buffet lunch, on the grounds that it would be helpful for people to eat together, chat and get to know one another before the proceedings started in earnest. This was followed by a session devoted to Paul Farley’s poem ‘A Tunnel‘, and how it might be used in teaching from the different angles of the four subject areas.
We divided the participants up into four mixed groups. Paul Farley read out his poem and then fi ve Lancastrians (Paul Farley: Creative Writing, Alison Findlay: English Literature, Mick Short: English Language and Willem Hollmann and Kevin Watson together: Linguistics) rotated around the four groups at 15-minute intervals. They each talked briefl y about how they would approach or use the text and then issues arising from what had been said were discussed. Finally, there was a 15-minute plenary session for the groups to compare notes. The general response to this Breaking Boundaries work was very positive overall (the large majority were very pleased to be able to talk about a text and teaching with colleagues, something they rarely have time to do in their own institutions). Alison, Mick and Willem all produced brief handouts for participants to take away and these are available on the Subject Centre website along with the minutes of the business meeting.
Mick Short, Lancaster University
More details and information about presentations can be viewed on our website in the Events Archive.
WordPlay • Issue 3 • April 2010 13 Features Teaching as a shared practice an interview with Morag Shiach
Morag Shiach is the Vice-Principal for Teaching and Learning and Professor of Cultural History in the School of English and Drama at Queen Mary, University of London. Nicole King sat down to talk with her in February, at her offi ces in the Administrative wing of the university.
Professor Morag Shiach is warm and welcoming. She’s agreed much more cultural theory and cultural history. I think that’s quite to the interview at relatively short notice given what I imagine is consistent in terms of a project which looks at the relationship her very full diary and she seems genuinely pleased to answer my between cultural identities and history. I think everything I’ve done questions and think back on a successful career that is far from has been doing that. Sometimes it’s modernism, at one stage it over. Our conversation is punctuated by laughter occasioned by was Cixous. Even though I was moving from discipline to discipline, Shiach’s wry humour while her fi ercely held beliefs about teaching I was still doing the same re-inventing in different contexts.’ and academic life are balanced by her palpable delight at the privilege to be a part of it all. Shiach has held different roles at Queen Mary, including Head of School, before becoming VP for There is nothing predictable about Teaching and Learning in 2005. Her CV reveals that in her studies and subsequent research she has worked across ‘English’ doing what people want to do with their a great deal of what is gathered under its broad umbrella, as the titles of her twenty-fi ve plus articles and three of her six books lives after graduation and we should indicate: Discourse on Popular Culture: Class, Gender and History prepare them for whatever that is in Cultural Analysis 1730 to the Present (Polity Press and Stanford University Press, 1989), Hélène Cixous: A Politics of Writing (Routledge, 1991), and Modernism, Labour and Selfhood in It was when she was at Glasgow that Shiach found herself drawn British Literature and Culture, 1890-1930 (Cambridge University to the life of the mind. ‘It was a very exciting time! There was a Press, 2004). sense of intellectual life as a project. There was something at stake. It was after I started work on a PhD that I began to work out that Beginnings the best way to sustain that was to be an academic. Also I liked After planning to study English Shiach did her fi rst degree in teaching which I didn’t have a chance to fi nd out until I was a PhD Drama and Philosophy. She switched, she said, because although student. It was great, at Cambridge at the time, there was a new it has changed completely now, ‘in the late seventies English paper (Cambridge-speak for module) which was called ‘The Literary at Glasgow was a rather unexciting department. Drama was Representation of Women’ which sounds very stuffy now, but you completely the opposite, a new discipline, hugely engaged and know it was a big deal on the Cambridge curriculum that this existed very keen to map this new area. And of course, it had within it (laughter). When I arrived, Lisa Jardine, who happened to be at the fi lm, cultural theory and that sort of thing.’ For her MA Shiach same college, she just got me involved in the teaching. ‘The Literary went to McGill University in Montreal and did her degree in Representation of Women’ was about designing a curriculum and Communications, because she wanted ‘to go to North America trying to teach something really new, and running seminars which and do cultural theory.’ Finally, she returned to the UK to do actually the English Faculty there would not run – they only had her PhD with Raymond Williams at Cambridge and ‘ended up lectures or supervisions, they didn’t have seminars. The whole way in English because he was in English, but the research focus was we were teaching was more collective and it was exciting.’
14 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk Features
A philosophy of teaching do. We know what we mean. So if we say students do after they leave. I don’t think Cambridge was formative for Shiach both “read a poem” we don’t mean pass your we used to think that, I don’t think that we in terms of her research under Williams’ eye over it, we mean engage with it for a are as uncomfortable about conversations direction and for the intense work she did substantial period of time so that it gives with students about their future as we with Lisa Jardine and others ‘developing up meaning to you! That’s what we mean used to be and maybe we’ve learned that models for teaching as a team, not teaching individually but teaching thinking of teaching as a shared practice and as a collectively.’ The teaching partnership with Jardine continued at Queen Mary public practice was very enabling and their shared classroom was a space of experimentation and innovation ‘the but we don’t say that. I do think we can from Science. I remember people said two of us being in the room all the time, use the fact that students can continue quite exclusively in English “not our issue, teaching a big group, breaking them up, to access materials we’ve provided when we’re here to educate and challenge, we getting them to do projects and group they’re not physically with us to help.’ should actually be subverting people so work and learning logs and presentations’ they don’t want to go and fi t in to happy Shiach has found that VLEs are also very were just some of what they tried. Their places” and I’m quite sympathetic to that useful tools for enhancing the quality of success can be measured in part by too. There is nothing predictable about interaction in seminars: ‘Let’s say you see the fact that team-teaching is now the what people want to do with their lives them on a Tuesday morning and you won’t commonest model of teaching within the after graduation and we should prepare see them again until the following Tuesday QMUL English Department and there are them for whatever that is.’ it used to be we would say, “I’d like you all very few people who don’t do it. ‘From to read this for next week and if you could my point of view, thinking of teaching as Leadership have a think about it…” and all that sort a shared practice and as a public practice On the other hand, English has taught of stuff. Whereas now we can actually say, rather than relying on the kind of intimate other disciplines quite a lot about research “If you go on the VLE you’ll see there are a privacy of other modes of teaching was informed teaching, which is one reason, series of prompt questions and when you’re very enabling and it made me clear that perhaps, that Vice-Principals of Teaching done reading this you might want to make that’s what I was passionate about in terms and Learning who hail from a literature a few notes about that, and when you come of teaching. It was what it could do as a background are no longer uncommon. back next week…” or “I’ll put you into little public activity not as models of intimacy ‘In a research intensive university to have groups and I want you to have a discussion and patronage and private teaching – a leadership of teaching and learning with each other and come back next week which don’t appeal to me as a particularly in someone who has lot of experience and tell me what the key issue is that you good models of learning.’ In describing of research and teaching and their want to raise.” So you’ve actually extended what she values in the classroom Shiach implications [is important]. Typically in the quality of the seminar, you’ve certainly introduces the notion of an explicit an English department the people who improved the quality of the next seminar by ethics of teaching. These are values that are teaching are also the researchers. We doing the structured learning in between, developed over time and as a result of have very few people who are not doing but you’ve also given them something to her early opportunities as a postgraduate engage with outside the classroom. So student to team teach. The work she did I think that is defi nitely something we with Jardine modelled a style of teaching should be doing.’ that refl ects, among other things, the best bits of feminism as a political apparatus: Learning from the Sciences communal learning, and fl at hierarchies. Shiach’s perspective as a Vice-Principal Structured Learning with VLEs allows her to see how Humanities and Science, Technology, Engineering and In the contemporary moment, Shiach is Mathematics (STEM) subjects actually very keen on the power of virtual learning learn from each other. The notion of environments (VLEs) to enhance the employability is an area where the interaction between lecturers and their Humanities have been and, to an students. She talked about the scaffolding extent still are, playing catch up with that lecturers can provide on a VLE to their peers. ‘I think that disciplines help to make explicit some of the more outside the humanities have tended opaque aspects of studying English: ‘If to be more comfortable with the you’re only seeing them in one module notion that a university education for a defi ned number of hours how do you is part of a journey into some help them outside that period? You can kind of subsequent professional say, “Off you go and read,” but actually identity. Humanities are now that’s not a simple thing to ask. There are accepting that it is a reasonable many different ways of reading and I think conversation to have: we have we underestimate the complexity of some some responsibility for what our of the core things that we ask students to
WordPlay • Issue 3 • April 2010 15 Features both of those, in the research-intensive quite a lot. Some people would say that boy or head girl and captain of the hockey universities. And that’s slightly different they lose because you’ve always got this team and right enough I was head girl, I in medicine and dentistry –obviously you steep learning curve of somebody in their was captain of the hockey team. Research have certain separations because you fi rst year and everybody makes mistakes would say there is a pattern there! Not that have clinical practice as well as research the fi rst year they do it, obviously, but I I was thinking about that at 16, 17 or 18 as well a 44-week teaching year. So it’s think there are many advantages. Partly, it but I think there is a route through where quite hard to combine a full engagement keeps everybody honest: because if you people tend to want to be involved.’ in teaching with research. Some people are going to be a head on a temporary do it in the Sciences, but it is quite hard. basis you’ve got to recognise that anything Mentorship So there is more of a tendency to have a you do, somebody else can do to you in Where English and the Humanities stand slight pulling apart of people’s emphases. the future! So I do actually think it creates in terms of systems of mentorship has I think for this institution and probably for a pretty healthy culture within academic evolved since Shiach was a postgraduate some others as well, it is important that departments when you have rotating student. She recalled Raymond Williams as ‘an extraordinary intellectual presence’ who was ‘a completely supportive and I think we underestimate the complexity of some profoundly challenging supervisor’ because ‘the idea of saying you were of the core things that we ask students to do. fi nding it diffi cult to write something when he’d gone away and written two books since you’d last seen him – I mean you teaching and learning is associated with heads. And it keeps you interested because know!’ We both laugh and she continued, the management of research and teaching you put a lot of work into it because you ‘I think both the importance and, I don’t in relationship to each other.’ think, “well, I’ve got this period and I can know how to put this, everydayness do something now.” My own view is that It is starting to become clear to me that doesn’t sound right, of intellectual life, having people, moving through, taking part of what has kept Shiach engaged and but it’s something like that. The process of on roles, stepping into new roles actually invigorated about intellectual life and life in thinking hard about something and writing outweigh the disadvantages.’ a university are the different roles that she down what you learned seemed absolutely has taken on. She readily agrees with my Since particular management and normal working with him and you didn’t assessment: ‘Defi nitely, absolutely true. Yes, administrative roles are rarely why any agonise too much. It was an important I absolutely loved being a Head of School of us become academics, I asked Shiach thing to do but it wasn’t something to but I wouldn’t have wanted to do a second to talk a bit about her career trajectory get precious about, it was just what you term though because the new challenges and if she ever imagined she’d end up did and I found that very useful. He was are the exciting things. I think that in the Principal’s Wing. ‘Did I imagine? very unprecious.’ Clearly, he was a pivotal universities which run themselves on the Probably not as I don’t think many of us fi gure in terms of Shiach’s intellectual basis of academics taking leadership in a were very good at career planning development and I got the sense that the rotating way gain or imagining. So initially I did idea of being ‘unprecious’ was perhaps a research because I wanted to trait Shiach already had in spades before continue thinking and writing arriving at Cambridge. about topics that interested me. Certainly she is clear-eyed in her advice Having said that, if I look back to early career lecturers: ‘Get yourself a all through my life I have always mentor, whether formally or informally. I been someone that is engaged think some departments are much better in whatever institution I’ve been than others at providing support for part of. Certainly from a very academics but… When I think back to early stage as young lecturer my own experience I had absolutely no there were lots of things I career advice or mentoring whatsoever. didn’t like and was astonished Anything I had I went out and found. to fi nd that if you just sat Also, I had basically walked in [to my there and thought about it fi rst job] with a background that was not put it on paper, and took it traditionally English literature and I was to a staff meeting everyone given an absurd set of things to teach went “Oh, okay” because on the basis that I had had a perfectly you had thought about it standard education – it was just mad, now and they hadn’t, actually that I think back on it. Of course you do quite easy to get change it because it is your fi rst job and they say in that context. When you “jump” and you say “how high,” but it was think about who are the a ridiculous to have done, actually. And people who end up being nobody felt it was the job of a department vice chancellors and so on to advise, mentor and support young they have all been head staff. Now, again I think they’re beginning
16 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk Features to embed better systems but I still think STEM is not our future they (young lecturers) get buffeted by all Shiach was frank and realistic but not the different demands and there’s nobody grim as she refl ected on the current really sitting down with them and saying, state of affairs in terms of budget cuts to “Look, in fi ve years time where do you higher education that we are all facing want to be? Well, in that case do this and some of us are already experiencing, project and not that project and actually ‘One can’t help but notice that there is a do this one fi rst, and take on this thing very clear commitment by both parties to because that will take you where you need the idea that STEM are the subject areas to go, here’s how to get your external that are vital to invest in to sustain the profi le…” I mean it is not an easy career economy and that’s not what we do. I to manage because there are so many think it is likely that we will be seeing a different things you need to be doing. declining unit of resource-- we will be I would say get a mentor who has run teaching students with fewer staff and their career in such a way that you say to less resource than we have. I think you yourself, I’d like to be able to do that.’ just have to grab that and decide not At this point in the conversation the to be defeated by it, if you continue question of work-life balance came up. to care about the discipline which I Not surprisingly younger colleagues, think we all do. And there is clearly a particularly women, often ask Shiach about demand for it. Despite students being how one manages, how one juggles, well, told that STEM is their future they everything. In a no-nonsense voice which don’t seem to believe it, so there is made me sit up a bit straighter in my chair, a kind of interesting tension there Shiach had an answer at the ready: ‘It’s where students feel they want to do more than any other even when I don’t a challenge for everyone of course, but Humanities. I don’t think we are going to know that I am going to is Virginia Woolf. it’s still the case that it’s only the women have a shortage of students wishing to She seems to be… something about the who have the babies and the maternity study English, I think the discipline is very formal issues that underpin the way that leave and that’s a particular kind of issue viable. And there is a rhetorical battle that she presents an account of individuals … people who think they can continue to we simply haven’t won; STEM has won and their relationships with history, keeps research having had a newborn, well, they it, that it’s the “engine” of the economy, on being helpful to me in thinking about haven’t had a newborn! … My advice is get good childcare – you can’t work in the Despite students being told that STEM is study while caring for a child.’ In Shiach’s opinion the fi rst years of an academic post their future they don’t seem to believe it are diffi cult and very full for every new lecturer, as the responsibilities of preparing all those words that people use. English what I am thinking which is actually not lectures, adjusting to a new institution has to be careful, I think, that it doesn’t the same thing as being favourite. So the and publishing as much as one can, are get sucked into a kind of defensive space one I can’t escape from is probably Woolf.’ particularly great. People who add to that that disconnects completely from ideas Although she has named Woolf specifi cally, load the responsibilities of caring, place about how what we do connects to the I would venture that Shiach is talking about themselves at a serious disadvantage. On rest of people’s lives and the broader the lure of Modernism as well. In her most the other hand, Shiach was equally wary social structures that we all inhabit. I recent book, The Cambridge Companion of the workaholic tendencies: ‘There is a don’t think we can afford to become the to The Modernist Novel (2007), the fl uidity about the boundaries between work ‘hobby’ subject that people just do if they components of her passions as a scholar and the rest of life in our profession which have leisure and time, and we have to and an educator are on display. Shiach’s sometimes means that people never do defend the importance of the discipline curiosity about the vast cultural, social anything other than work and people can intellectually and also its potential social and political shifts that defi ne the long be overwhelmed by it because the work impact and we’ve been a bit squeamish modernist period and how they affected fi lls their lives completely, so I don’t think it about doing that.’ individuals and institutions, including is always a good thing that the boundaries writers like Woolf, is presented in lucid are unclear.’ And that, as they say, was that. As soon as I ask Shiach my fi nal question, and elegant prose that assumes a capable Mentorship, yes, the importance of support who her favourite author is, it sounds reader. In Shiach’s editorial voice I glimpse from your institution, huge – all the time frivolous given the weighty issues we’ve some of her classroom persona: an erudite presuming a research-intensive institution been discussing. But if Shiach thinks so guide with high expectations but also that actually has the means and the ethos too, she graciously doesn’t let on. Indeed the ability to occupy the margins when to support its staff – but lack of focus, lack her response is as considered as all of her necessary so that students themselves can of drive, lack of planning on the part of the others have been. ‘Interesting question. make discoveries and chart a collective individual? You won’t get far like that in this Favourite I am not sure I would sign up intellectual adventure alongside her. business, was Shiach’s underlying message. to. The author I fi nd myself writing about
WordPlay • Issue 3 • April 2010 17 Features The Anxiety of Infl uence: Inside UEA’s Creative Writing MA
Andrew Cowan gives a nuanced perspective on the Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia, by drawing on his experience there as a curmudgeonly student in the 1990s and now as a member of staff.
Recently I spent an afternoon googling the names I was one of those disgruntled graduates, and my of University of East Anglia’s (UEA) Creative Writing latest afternoon trawling the internet introduced me alumni, searching for news of publications and prizes to another. to advertise on our web pages, which is something I There is no mention of UEA on this writer’s website, do fairly often – more than is healthy, I’m sure – and I nor in the biography that accompanies his fi ction and say ‘advertise’ rather than ‘trumpet’ not just because journalism. He doesn’t acknowledge UEA anywhere, I need to legitimise in some way to myself the hours in fact, except for an interview with a literary blog in I spend on such searches. Increasingly this seems a which he’s asked whether our MA shaped him as a necessary part of my job. Given the competition – writer, and whether he’d recommend it to others. Andrew Cowan is the many high calibre courses taught by high calibre The sense of grievance that animates his reply might convener of the MA writers elsewhere – UEA’s continuing ability to well have been mine 20 years earlier. in Creative Writing attract high calibre students may well depend on the (Prose Fiction) at continuing success of our graduates. This needs to be The course, he says, was in ‘irreversible decline’ the University of East Anglia, and the publicised. But fi rst it needs to be researched. when he joined it. There were too many students, author of four novels, few of them committed or interested readers of My trainspotterish interest in the careers of our including Pig and literary fi ction, and the ‘mediocrity’ of the teaching, graduates is accompanied by several misgivings, What I Know. His allied to the ‘inanity’ of the workshopping method, guidebook, The Art however – for instance, that publication is not the only served only to foster the kind of ‘useless, content- of Writing Fiction, criterion of value for a Creative Writing MA, and that free, unintelligent criticism’ that so characterises will be published by placing so much emphasis on our published alumni may Pearson Longman English anti-intellectualism. In this respect UEA was translate as a promise to future students that we cannot later this year. typical of ‘the Creative Writing industry’ generally, fulfi l, and that certain of our alumni may not welcome which is responsible for producing so much of the the association of their success with our course. conventionalised, ‘zeitgeisty’ writing that For many of our graduates, having completed an MA now dominates British publishing. Nevertheless, in Creative Writing at UEA is merely a matter of fact, the experience was in two respects valuable: it neither something to boast about nor something provided him with a model (aesthetic, intellectual) to hide. But for others the connection can be more to react against, while equipping him with a sound vexed, in part because the MA is so commonly ‘fi ltering system’ for dealing with unhelpful criticism. described in the press as ‘prestigious’ or ‘famous’ And he would still recommend such courses to or ‘celebrated’. This inevitably gives rise to certain others, albeit reluctantly, since agents are becoming expectations, primarily to do with publication, and so so chary of anything that doesn’t emerge from ‘a a failure to publish – despite completing a programme good writing school’. renowned for ‘producing’ new writers – may well If publication and prizes are any criteria, I should at be a source of embarrassment, or shame. Some will least dispute the suggestion of ‘irreversible decline’. blame themselves; others will blame the course. And Almost 50 published authors – 18 of them prizewinning while many who do succeed in getting published will – emerged from the MA in the three years either side attribute at least some of their success to UEA – and of this writer’s year, and there’s nothing in the diversity recent graduates especially can make productive use of their work to support the notion of an ‘industrial’ of the connection – there will be others who feel their norm. What links the best of them – including this success has been achieved in spite of the course, writer himself – is literary excellence. or who will simply not want to be ‘branded’ as yet another UEA author. Some will deny or disguise the Even so, his lament for his year does chime with association; others will openly criticise the course and my own – and that of others I’ve spoken to – and I its claims – particularly its claims over them. suspect our shared disappointment has much to do
18 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk Newsletter 15
with unrealised expectations, the defl ating of hopes aroused by the reputation of the MA. But while that reputation is based on the success of UEA’s graduates, the hopes it provokes do not always relate to dreams of publication. To extrapolate from this writer’s remarks, I would guess he expected to encounter something like a signifi cant climate around writing, in which talented and promising authors would be taken through the problems of their form and their ambitions, shown the options and possibilities, challenged, edited, pressured, hastened, treated as members of a serious profession. the extent of thinking that an MA in Creative Writing classes. In my fi rst term I Creative Writing ought really be called an studied Literary Theory with Lorna Sage, in This indeed was – and remains – the MA in Bourgeois Individualism, and so I my second Postmodernism with Malcolm, ambition of the course, and these words compensated, as far as I could, by being and I approached these seminars with an are not mine but Malcolm Bradbury’s, rigorously ascetic in my aestheticism. intensity of engagement I rarely brought taken from his introduction to Classwork, Sternly perfectionist, I committed barely to our writing workshops. I had after all an anthology of alumni published to a word to the page, and I would have been schooled on UEA’s undergraduate celebrate his retirement, 25 years after no truck with talk of publication. When Literature programme, which was greatly he and Angus Wilson had launched ‘the Malcolm relocated our workshop to the in thrall to the theoretical isms that were program era’ in British literary culture university’s AV suite for one session, so we then in their ascendency. The workshop, by accepting Ian McEwan as their sole could be recorded for a feature on BBC by comparison, wasn’t nearly critical – or inaugural student. Radio, I refused to attend. I stayed away, earnest – enough. With eight others – the largest cohort so too, when he invited his agent to meet far – I joined the MA in its 14th year. Or perhaps in its 10th year, given that there weren’t always enough candidates to I was one of those disgruntled graduates, justify running the course (such was the and my latest afternoon trawling the halting beginning to the discipline in UK higher education). Of the 40 students who internet introduced me to another. preceded us, McEwan was much the most famous, his success often linked in the press with ‘Malcolm Bradbury’s MA’. Kazuo us, and again when David Lodge came to We met in the same room as now, but Ishiguro’s debut novel had recently offered discuss the practicalities of the writing life. whereas today we have tables, around the fi rst corroboration of a possible link I was young, class-conscious, class-anxious, which we sit in a more or less democratic between UEA and publication, while JK somewhat confused, sometimes quite circle, elbow to elbow, papers spread Klavans was just about to publish God, furious, and I suspect that Malcolm found out before us, then we sat in a line. The He Was Good (still her only novel). But me somewhat annoying. I think I wanted to room’s dimensions meant we had the though I owned (and still treasure) each of annoy him; I also wanted his approval. The beginning of a curve towards the round, these books, and though it was McEwan two are doubtless connected. but we all faced Malcolm, and Malcolm faced us. That was the structural dynamic, and Ishiguro who had alerted me – and my Then, as now, Creative Writing justifi ed and the conversation proceeded in a classmates – to the course, I would have its presence in the academy in terms of manner as fi xed as the arrangement of vehemently denied having any interest in there being a relationship between the furniture. We each in turn offered our publication myself. creative and critical – a relationship more opinion on a classmate’s work, and then of proximity than cross-pollination – and The mid-80s was a time when it was we moved on to the next work. Malcolm so we were required to attend academic still possible to use the term ‘politically might attempt to tease a little more modules, write essays, and sit a three-hour correct’ as a form of approbation, and from us, but the discussion remained exam, all of this quite separate from our I was strenuously politically correct, to impressionistic, often perfunctory, and it
WordPlay • Issue 3 • April 2010 19 Features was rare that he revealed his own thoughts on our work, much ‘industry’, and so in Prose Fiction there are prizes and bursaries less made any suggestions for its improvement. If there was a sponsored by literary agencies, numerous visits from agents ‘signifi cant climate’ around our writing, it was characterised by and publishers, the publication of our annual anthology, and a the uncertainty – and rivalry – that this engendered: I wasn’t the mentoring scheme that pairs each of our students with an agency only one who wanted his approval. for a period of four months immediately after they graduate.
Other students in other years – as I know from having talked to No doubt this adds some extra value and lustre to the MA, but them – thrived under this regime, which they experienced as while few prospective students will share my post-adolescent something more benign, a kind of tacit encouragement to go hostility to the sell-out implied by publication, I don’t believe their own way. Others, meanwhile, didn’t respond quite so readily many will look upon the course as a straightforward passage as I did to the arrival of Angela Carter in our summer term, to publication. The admissions process tends to reveal those when the weekly workshop gave way to individual tutorials. Her who view us in quite so instrumental a way. These we weed out. irreverence lifted some of the burden of self-seriousness that was Most will admit that our professional links are an attraction, but so weighing me down, and it was Angela who suggested I might what mainly emerges from applications, and interviews, and our read Raymond Carver instead of Helene Cixous, and perhaps subsequent relationship with our students is that the promise consider writing about what I knew – an axiom of Creative implied by UEA’s history and reputation is not that we will Writing pedagogy that was, for me at that time, revelatory. ‘produce’ successful authors, but that we will provide something like the signifi cant climate around writing envisioned by Malcolm Bradbury, in which promising authors will be challenged, edited I had failed to be a writer on the and pressured, their development hastened. It isn’t so much an outcome we promise – and our students seek – as a particular MA, and I would doubtless fail kind of experience, a year in which to take writing seriously in the again. At heart, I blamed myself. company of other serious writers. The workshop remains central to that experience, and while the If asked, I blamed the course. issues explored there tend to be practical and formal – broadly, narratological – the sessions are now supported by individual tutorials that invite more extended discussion of a student’s But still, the course seemed only to confi rm that I wasn’t ‘really’ a specifi c concerns, which may include questions of commercial writer. In the two years after graduation I wrote half a short story, potential. Academic modules and essays are still required, and then laboured for six years to fi nish my fi rst novel, during which my colleagues report that the Creative Writers in their classes are time I was constantly dogged by a sense of imminent failure. I often among the most engaged and articulate participants. had failed to be a writer on the MA, and I would doubtless fail But the calibre of the MA is never a simple consequence again. At heart, I blamed myself. If asked, I blamed the course. of the way in which it is organised: there are many courses It was only much later that I began to understand why my hopes structured along similar lines, and many that are structured quite for the MA could not have been realised. Firstly, so much of the differently, offering other kinds of opportunity. Nor does our impetus behind Malcolm’s championing of Creative Writing in value necessarily reside in the calibre of the writers who teach the academy was in reaction to theoretical trends that appeared the MA: I think we’re excellent, but there are many excellent hostile to the very idea of authorship: if the division between writers elsewhere. Ultimately it is the students who determine practice and theory was to be bridged, that wouldn’t be achieved the value of the experience – they are each other’s best asset by admitting such theories into the discussion of student – and in this respect our reputation is crucial because it means works-in-progress. And secondly, for all my attachment to those we attract so many strong applicants, from whom we can select theoretical isms, my sensibility was – and remains – that of a those we feel will most hasten the development of their peers, literary realist. As Angela suggested, I was attempting to write and most benefi t by the input of others. No one is admitted, in against the grain of myself. other words, without being able to convince us in interview that they are committed and interested readers of literary fi ction who In some respects my experience differs from that of the writer will contribute intelligently and constructively to the ongoing I found on the internet, but what we have in common might conversation about writing that constitutes not just the weekly be assumed to be general: that eventual publication will never workshop but social context in which it takes place. And while we redeem a bad year; that the success of the year will depend on do consider the practicalities of fi nding an agent and publisher, the success of the workshop; and that the organisation of the MA and continue to advise our alumni after they leave us, the primary – including the teaching – should be geared to meet rather than emphasis is on fostering a sense of mutual challenge and support frustrate the students’ expectations. that will school the students in becoming their own best critics But fi rst, of course, those expectations need to be reasonable, and so equip them, we hope, for the lonelier, less clement and carefully managed. climate that will follow.
On the spectrum of Creative Writing programmes, the three And of course, should this emphasis on the student experience genre strands of the MA at UEA are situated towards the produce a generation of satisfi ed graduates who nevertheless fail ‘professional preparation’ end of the scale, though not by any to get published, the reputation of ‘the prestigious UEA Creative means at the extreme. There are differences of emphasis, but Writing MA’ may never recover. each strand offers its students some kind of introduction to the
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Teaching African American Women’s Writing - G. Wisker Teaching Science Fiction - A. Sawyer & P. Wright Teaching Theory - R. Bradford Teaching Creative Writing - H. Beck Teaching the Short Story - A. Cox Teaching Stylistics - L. Jeffries & D. McIntyre WordPlay • Issue 3 • April 2010 21 Features The Implied Aesthetic of English Teaching
Ben Knights delves into the implicit and unspoken aspects of how we teach and how students learn in our family of subjects. What are the tacit rules, the hidden networks, which students must access to literally become English students? What is the relation between the practice of teaching and the subject matter we engage with?
The English Subject Centre has recently initiated or (admittedly in a more or less troubled way) but also collaborated in a number of attempts to develop a performs it in its day-to-day practice. There is an more systematic understanding of how students learn assumed continuum between the play of the text and in our subject. This enquiry includes commissioning the play of the articulate reading. focus groups, the support of departmental projects While it is true that the subject has steadily such as the Keele ‘Production of University English’ complicated its own sense of ‘beauty’ (and in many project www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/ ways over the past 30 years shifted its sense of the projects/archive/studexp/studexp2.php (and see aesthetically satisfying away from the literary text Bruce, Jones, and McLean 2007), and welcoming towards the apparatus of analysis), it still in one way or Ben Knights is the student bloggers onto our website ( www.english. another proposes a cognitive and expressive hierarchy Director of the English heacademy.ac.uk/studentblog/). In the context Subject Centre. His of esteem whose rules are aesthetic and rhetorical. of an endeavour which seeks insight from a variety most recent book is That this integration of medium and message moulds of projects, this article represents an attempt to Masculinities in our pedagogy is only obliquely apparent, for example come at the question of student engagement from Text and Teaching underlying the reservations entertained by many (Palgrave, 2007). a different angle. It seeks to get hold of an intuition colleagues about making allowance for dyslexia (on about the aesthetics of teaching and learning. English the lines that ballet schools don’t put up with people (especially in its Literary Studies manifestation) is a who habitually fall over their own feet). University discipline where subject matter is embedded in a ‘English’ is a form of behaviour or performance which dialectical relationship with the process of articulating is ‘about’ its own practice as much as it is ‘about’ its insight, and where teachers (even from apparently subject matter and texts. To put that another way: this incompatible theoretical backgrounds) tend to share a essay seeks to suggest the pedagogic consequences set of tacit rules about the appropriate idiom in which of the propensity to divert attention from proposition to do so. The discipline expects its students to make to medium, a propensity which throws weight onto a counter-intuitive leap: to be willing and able – to the student ability to reproduce the medium in all its have the patience and the self-confi dence – to treat verbal abundance. This is one of the reasons why many even apparently discursive texts as non-discursive. students fi nd it diffi cult to grasp what is going on and In going beyond the seductions of manifest content, what they are supposed to do. They are effectively students are implicitly expected to make their own required to take the authority to speak by becoming incursions on the unsayable, complicating, as they do the author of the writerly text of the discipline, but so, the protocols of everyday speech. The medium do not always realise that this is what they are meant of teaching is in fact no more transparent than the to do. Meyer and Land’s (2003) ‘threshold concept’ modernist text. So the argument of this short paper is is perhaps helpful in focusing this. For the literature that residually English not only studies the aesthetic student, one conceptual threshold is constituted by the
22 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk Features focus of attention on representation (granting primary signifi cance aesthetic and understandings of disciplinary ‘elegance’. Such to the how rather than the what). Another is the idea that you (as values are likely to shape in more or less covert ways the student, as scholar) act out and make available to others a unique relations between students and their teachers. Nevertheless, experience; that to have the experience (say of being moved, the relationship between the practice and the subject matter is surprised, confi rmed, or shocked in some way by a reading) is particularly problematic for disciplines like Literature and Creative dialectically integral with the ability to articulate that movement of Writing whose subject and practice is representation. Both, so to mind and emotion in ways which generate intellectual and affective speak, address aesthetic values at the cognitive level, but usually pleasure for the reader or listener. So students are expected to without acknowledging they are doing so at an existential level as engage in a linguistic and meta-linguistic activity whose forms are well. Equally, again, the fear of looking naive or ignorant in front not (and some would argue cannot be) made explicit to them. of peers or teachers is certainly not confi ned to English students. The lack of formal requirements – assessment objectives to be But I suggest that such a fear takes a quite specifi c form in a fulfi lled – had made several of the students feel confused and subject whose medium is suffused with its own aesthetic values. uncertain in their fi rst months of the course. Caitlin* said that The anti-humanist revolt may have talked a different language, she had spent much of her fi rst year trying to work out what she but it did not in fact exorcise from the profession the implicit was expected to do, a feeling which Siân (currently taking her belief that it bore the high responsibility of coaching students out fi rst year) recognised. The students felt that the course offered of the ideologically compromised discourses of which they would a space where brilliant, innovative thinking was encouraged and fi nd themselves shown up as the discomfi ted avatars. valued, but that they also had to try to work out what their tutors The world of an academic tribe is both signalled and constituted wanted. The values of the course were not explicit; they had to by its communicative idioms and values: how the phenomenon be discovered through an apprenticeship that might last well into for study is selected, how once selected it is deployed within a the second year and beyond. felicitous grammar of argument and exemplifi cation. But only (*all names have been changed) in a limited, if expanding, group of cases do new meanings in (Hodgson 2010:17) English emerge from new information. A lot of the time (and if we make the important exceptions of stylistic or historicist Why should we take an interest in this apparently recondite topic at research) new meanings emerge from making what are felt to be this historical moment? Precisely because teachers expect students more satisfying arrangements of existing information, drawing to internalise these tacit rules, but, generally speaking, without on analogy, creating parallels or interpretative frameworks that explaining the necessity of doing so, or even suggesting that the hadn’t been thought of before. To take a classic example: Frank rules exist. The existence of this body of largely unspoken rules has Kermode’s The Sense of an Ending (1967) didn’t on the whole critical implications for the forms of hospitality (or exclusion) we tell us anything new – in the sense in which, say, recent histories extend towards students and potential students. I’ll cite the fi eld of Russia or Germany draw on newly opened archives. Instead notes of an astute observer of fi rst years in an English department: it re-arranged thinking about how narrative moulds social and There is a constant sense of these students walking into a world individual experience. Students are not expected to turn into that they are not part of, where there is something going on that Frank Kermode or Judith Butler overnight, but they are expected they are not party to, but which they’re trying to understand to be able to act out in their essays or their seminar contributions without anyone ever really explaining it to them. the novelty of insight. The ‘scene of reading’ into which we seek (Snapper 2008: 172). to induct students consists of a small-scale dramatisation of the ‘Good’ students are those who are able to align with the implied steps of discovery with its own narrative of simulated ignorance, student the discipline asks them to become. But many students triumphant disclosure, and provocation to the credulous or literal- (at least at fi rst) misunderstand the subject as one where they minded. As a subject where in principle a student is as capable are expected simply to acquire knowledge and display it. So the of startling new insight as an experienced scholar, ‘English’ unacknowledged aesthetic of English professionals may turn out to establishes criteria for what is interesting in the absence of any be an important, even central, aspect of the barrier we put up to immediate semantic pay-off. Footing in the subject still rests to a students from outside the charmed circle. To take on a sanctioned large degree on being able persuasively to turn mere sensation identity as an English student is to be able to perform that identity into signifi cant sensation, preserving as you do so some echo of within the drama of the subject, a performance which involves the vigour and many-layered complexity of the text. A powerful subscribing to a purportedly shared subjectivity of response. consensus within the subject values struggle in writing, and Probably those students who remain compliant, ‘plodding’ student writing which bears the traces of that struggle. learners (‘typical 2.2’ as some colleagues used to say) experience More research is needed. The ideas sketched here might provide themselves and are largely experienced as outsiders to this project. a thread for future research on seminars or through focus groups. They haven’t, so to say, grasped that they were meant to play their They could also provide pointers for teachers’ own refl ection, own part in performing the verbal ebullience of the discipline. an examination of the pre-suppositions underlying feedback to This article makes an initial case for exploring the persistence students, or those governing our own performance in lectures. and meaning of such an implicit aesthetic. In doing so, it makes In the space available, I can only suggest where – in our own a contribution to a discussion of disciplinary styles, working on experience as teachers – we might turn for examples. What does a hypothesis that even within an increasingly heterogeneous a well-formed critical proposition look like? What, we might ask subject there exists an effectively consensual learning idiom. ourselves, makes an essay in our eyes ‘plodding’ or ‘pedestrian’? We should of course beware of making a claim of English What are the signifi ers of brilliance in discussion? What is it that exceptionality. Other subjects undoubtedly have their own strikes us about a student for whom we would be happy to write
WordPlay • Issue 3 • April 2010 23 Features an AHRC reference? Hard work and extensive reading are clearly gain footing in a discussion that many of your peers feel inhibited not the only pre-conditions. What irks us about a dull, repetitive, or about joining? However apparently formal the discussion, you inarticulate essay? Being good at appreciation, making intelligent risk the exposure not alone of your fumbling verbal prowess, but connections, developing persuasive analogies is inseparable from of your unformed intuitions, your longings, fantasies, inhibitions, the craft of articulating your insights economically, persuasively, and nightmares before an audience of judges whom you have few and with wit and verbal panache. Productive verbal facility is a grounds to trust with them. core element in being good at dealing with a subject matter which Clearly we have to acknowledge internal differences. I am vexes commonsense with indirection. not trying to suggest that the discipline or the expectations The professional community favours argumentative suppleness, placed upon its implied student are homogeneous. Rather, the metaphorical play, the ability to engage in representations which argument is that as a discipline community we do need to bring – if not verbally exotic – are at least distantly commensurate to the surface and refl ect upon our unacknowledged pedagogic with the complexity of the representations under study. Implicit aesthetic and its infl uence on the identity of both learner and is an existential position: tolerance for ambiguity and cognitive teacher. If we are to avoid our own form of pedagogical naiveté delay – a refusal to give way quickly to the simplistic desire we need to examine how studying representations itself entails for interpretative closure. (The profession resists simple one the making of other representations, representations whose to one equivalence between verbal phenomena and meaning, success is judged according to the largely unspecifi ed rules of may indeed pull the rug from under students by playfully a discourse of shared subjectivity. If there is anything at all in deconstructing the deep/surface, or original/copy metaphors the argument of this paper, it will surely have implications for themselves.) The model student is capable of seizing on a the continuing professional development of those to whom falls superfi cially tangential item, then elegantly demonstrating its the task of choreographing that dance along the borders of the paradoxically central signifi cance. She has a feeling for verbal public and private that run through the discipline. penumbra, a degree of self-refl exiveness, and, too, (though increasingly rarely) a gift for unforced quotation. If, as Louise Rosenblatt (1978) argues, the text is an event, a transactional References medium of communication between readers, then the occasions Becher, Tony, and Trowler Paul R. Academic Tribes and on which it is formally discussed exemplify its event-ness, but Territories: Intellectual Enquiry and the Cultures of they do so not on the principle of pure free association but within Disciplines (2nd edition). Buckingham: Open University normative connotations supervised by a caste of professional Press/SRHE. 2001. arbiters. In thus exposing their subjectivity, students may well feel Bruce, Susan, Jones, Ken, and McLean, Monica. themselves under a judgment potentially more undermining than ‘Some Notes on a Project: Democracy and Authority simply being confused or ill-informed, and are likely to feel the in the Production of a Discipline’. Pedagogy: Critical need to edit their subjectivity in a way that makes it acceptable. Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, It is commonly argued that Creative Writing is a practice-based Composition, and Culture. 7.3 (2007) 481-500. subject. It would probably be misleading to make a similar claim Graff, Gerald. ‘The Problem Problem, and Other Oddities for Literary Studies. Nevertheless, the thrust of this article is that of Academic Discourse’. Arts and Humanities in Higher there is a practice element even to the study of the already written. Education 1.1 (2002) 27-42. Analytical cohesion, the crafting of argument, the willingness to engage in an ambitious, risk-taking interchange between synoptic Hodgson, John. The Experience of Studying English in UK range and the selection of precise examples comprise between Higher Education. (English Subject Centre, 2010) them core elements of being good at the subject. Further, given www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/resources/ the disciplinary commitment to the dialectic of form and content, studexp/index.php stylistic panache is not the only element. Thus, it seems to me that Knights, Ben. ‘Intelligence and Interrogation: the Identity how you manage embarrassment is another ingredient of subject of the English Student’. Arts and Humanities in Higher identity. English has always Education. 4.1. (2005) 33-52. been to some degree a Knights, Ben and Thurgar-Dawson, Chris. Active Reading: subject that dealt with Transformative Writing in Literary Studies. London: the libidinal. In the Continuum. 2006. last generation, it has become a subject that Meyer J H F and Land R. ‘Threshold Concepts and makes a positive point Troublesome Knowledge 1 – Linkages to Ways of Thinking of talking in public about and Practising’ in Improving Student Learning – Ten Years the erotic and about On. C. Rust (Ed), OCSLD, Oxford. 2003. intimate bodily matters. A lot Rosenblatt, Louise. The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The of its subject matter can be Transactional Theory of the Literary Work. Carbondale: experienced as shocking, and Southern Illinois University Press. 1978. prides itself on being shocking. Snapper, Gary. Beyond the Words on the Page: A study Can the student join in? How does of the relationship between A Level English Literature s/he handle the embarrassment and university English. Unpublished PhD thesis. (2008). of doing so? How do you Quotation reproduced by kind permission of the author.
24 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk Teaching the History of the English Language: Methods and Materials September 2009
On 11 September 2009, 25 teachers and students, as well as one publisher’s English Subject Centre linguistics editor, met at Newcastle University to share ideas about the practicalities of teaching the history of English to undergraduates. As in other subfi elds of English language and literature, many of the people gathered that day had met before, through print, e-mail or in person, yet few of them had ever talked together about their teaching, as opposed to research. This one-day workshop was aimed to make a start at redressing the balance somewhat. The venue was felt to be an appropriate one since it was at Newcastle University that Barbara Strang had written her well-known A History of English (Methuen, 1970), the fi rst textbook on the topic to be produced in the UK that made use of methods of modern linguistic analysis. More recent works were available for inspection during the workshop at a small publishers’ exhibition, with publications from OUP, CUP, Palgrave and Benjamins, all important players in this market.
The day started with Wim van der Wurff (Newcastle) presenting a brief overview of the kinds of history-of-English modules currently taught at undergraduate level in the UK. Nearly all English language programmes offer some introductory material but there is enormous variety in what, if anything, follows, with tradition and overall profi le of programmes appearing to be the main decisive factors. An in-depth look at one fi rst-year module was offered by Ann Taylor (University of York), who discussed and demonstrated online VLE-based materials for teaching Old English that she has recently developed, including interactive exercises and self-assessment quizzes. She emphasised the benefi ts of greater hands-on engagement by the students that this module affords but also noted the need to guard against the danger of rigidity in constructing quiz questions (because simple right-wrong answers are obviously easiest to construct feedback for). After this, a panel of undergraduate students from Newcastle aired their views on how the subject should be taught and responded to questions from the other participants. Engagement with actual textual materials (such as corpora, facsimiles or early modern texts in original spelling) was one of their recommendations too, as was the need to make sure students are equipped to deal with the linguistic aspects of historical texts (eg by scheduling introductory syntax and phonetics modules before historical ones and by pointing students to further reference materials, such as dictionaries of linguistics). With respect to the amount of attention that should be paid to ‘internal’ and ‘external’ factors in the history of English, students’ opinions were divided, to some extent refl ecting – not surprisingly – the nature of the degrees they were doing (English Language and Literature, English Language, or Linguistics).
The afternoon session brought further demonstration of teaching methods and materials. Wim van der Wurff showed a visually-oriented PowerPoint presentation, designed for use in an introductory module, on the history of the OED from Trench’s lectures to the Philological Society in 1857 to the 2006/2007 ‘Word Appeal’ programmes shown on BBC. John Kirk (Queen’s University Belfast) presented ideas and assignments based on word families, offering students ready entry to all kinds of historical developments, social and linguistic. Nuria Yáñez-Bouza (University of Manchester) introduced the participants to the use of portable electronic voting pads, linked to the programme TurningPoint, which she employs in a module on language attitudes, enabling students to compare their own judgement of specifi c usages to those given in 18th and 19th -century normative works.
Next, Andrew Winnard (Cambridge University Press) talked about the way a major publisher views the history of English as a segment in the publishing market. Of particular interest was his description, using as an example Joan Beal and Philip Shaw’s (2009) revised edition of Charles Barber’s The English Language: A Historical Introduction, of the procedures followed in publishing a textbook – with careful research among potential users (and writers) being a crucial element. The fi nal session was a roundtable (in spirit if not exactly physical arrangement), with calls being made for having a follow-up meeting, perhaps and also for sharing of materials and ideas. At which point Jonathan Gibson (English Subject Centre) reminded everyone of the existence of the the English Subject Centre’s website and of the English Subject Centre’s wish to build up more resources for teaching English Language, in the form of T3 ideas as well as reports and articles in WordPlay. He called on the historians of English present to continue making use of these opportunities.
Wim van der Wurff, Newcastle University
More details and information about presentations can be viewed on our website in the Events Archive.
WordPlay • Issue 3 • April 2010 25 Features Not more of the same a modern twist on professional writing
Christina Bunce asks, how do you create a compelling offering in the crowded world of postgraduate writing courses? Build on what you’re good at...
All of us working in HEIs are facing shrinking resources and a diminishing pool of students who can afford to fund a year out to take an MA. University College Falmouth (UCF) established the UK’s fi rst postgraduate Professional Writing course in 1999, and so should have found it easier than most to establish and maintain a strong position in the postgraduate Christina Bunce is writing market, but let’s face it, this sector has Course Leader of exploded over the last fi ve years. Currently there the MA Professional are at least 10 MA Professional Writing courses, Writing course at University College around 50 Creative Writing MAs in the UK, and a Falmouth. Prior to that search on the Prospects website returns over 2,000 she was a journalist, entries for writing-related postgraduate courses. We put together an academically magazine editor, author and online content Challenged to keep our programme viable and rigorous, commercially-focused course that strategist, specialising competitive in this crowded market, we embraced helps students write effectively across a in health, medicine and the idea of developing the course as a commercial range of forms and to market themselves medical politics. She venture: a high quality offering that meets the needs and their work. It focuses on developing also led a multimedia creative ideas and good writing technique, building company specialising in of a defi ned sector of the potential recruitment multiplatform healthcare market and is responsive to industry requirements. an understanding of narrative and original research content and online We aimed to build a strong academic brand around skills, and teaching effective editing and critiquing. community building. our approach to the subject – professional writing – We aim to produce fl exible, creative, pragmatic, and our method of teaching and developing students. industry-savvy writers at the forefront of writing This is the story of what we did. practice who are able to adapt to all sorts of forms and genres. There were – and are – many people out there writing with no idea of how to make any money from it or Students learn through a heavy schedule of lectures sense of where there might be a market for their and seminars, constant assignments, (two or three a work. Others may have highly developed writing skills week) and critiquing on online forums to guidelines in particular forms, but don’t know how to adapt their that refl ect best editorial practice. skills for other genres and audiences. Critiquing is initially assessed and supervised by After extensive consultation with potential employers tutors, but as the course progresses students form and commissioners, academic colleagues, alumni and their own critiquing groups, resulting in a tight-knit potential applicants, we decided to target writers community of learners who have learned to trust each who could demonstrate some technical ability but other and recognise the value of peer critiquing for more importantly had a creative, inquisitive mind, developing skills as well as quenching their insatiable and were determined to explore, develop and exploit appetite for feedback. their writing.
26 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk Features
to a panel of tutors and industry beyond the initial introductory units. So professionals during an intensive students could progress from How Fiction (assessable) day. Works by James Wood (Vintage 2008) and Basic Elements of Narrative by David In addition students produce a Herman (Wiley-Blackwell 2009) to The range of self-promotional materials Crime Writer’s Guide to Police Practice – websites, blogs, tweets – and Procedure by Michael O’Byrne (Hale designed to give them the 2009) or Brilliant Business Writing by Neil digital presence so essential Taylor (Pearson 2009) and Fun House: to new writers and which a Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel allow them to demonstrate (Jonathan Cape 2006). A heavy reading profi ciency in key technical schedule is of course essential, and skills. Photo capture and reading groups form an important part of manipulation, basic the learning experience. website construction, awareness of Students take part in practical multi-platform interdisciplinary projects with a range applications, of professional affi liates to help them blogging and develop familiarity with industry production social networking processes and practices. Guest speakers are all vital for also hold weekly workshops and lectures – writers operating they include authors, literary agents, feature in today’s industry. writers, editors, publishers and perhaps Profi ciency in most importantly, successful graduates. these is also Many Creative Writing MAs are demonstrated constrained by being located within English in core work departments. We are lucky to be based in submitted for a School of Media, which allows many of assessment – for our students the opportunity to put their example a non- work into production by collaborating fi ction book is with peers on other vocationally focused presented with a courses, including Multimedia Journalism, sample jacket and TV Production and Graphic Design. spreads. We work hard to keep our tight alumni The form of fi nal MA projects community thriving – graduates are our varies hugely - from literary ambassadors out there in the real world of fi ction to comedy script and teenage writing – which benefi ts both employers fantasy or from marketing materials and our own recruitment. Those working and company communications audits to in all corners of the industry help us to promotional or campaigning websites and keep up to date with practice and issues, textbooks. Submissions sit alongside a All course teaching is by professionally introduce us to new industry contacts contextual essay, exploring in detail one experienced writers and academics whose and offer ideas for course development. aspect of the writing process relevant to approach replicates that of a professional They also take current students on the writer’s particular project. editor as far as possible. Assessment is work experience and offer employment based on professional-standard writing The approach to research skills follows opportunities. Through Facebook, Twitter portfolios and a demonstration of clear three strands. Firstly students engage in and regular parties and social events industry relevance. subject-specifi c research relevant to the as well as attendance at guest speaker Portfolios are submitted at three points project in hand. Secondly they conduct sessions we stay in touch with well over during the course, accompanied by a industry-focused enquiry – how work 70 per cent of alumni. sits within the market, trend analysis and refl ective ‘Critical Rationale’ outlining the Overall our approach seems to work, identifying the next steps to publication target market for the writer’s work and and we have started to recruit more full- and/or employment. As part of their analysing his or her approach and methods. time students each year from a range of fi nal submission, students outline any These portfolios must be presented in line backgrounds – career changers, returners theoretical enquiry relevant to their work. with industry conventions for each form to work, longstanding amateur writers. (fi ction, non-fi ction, script, business-writing) Because of the diversity of projects Graduates proceed to a wide range and demonstrate awareness of market undertaken, the introduction to theoretical of writing and editorial roles with over contexts, current industry practice and approaches is via narratology followed 80 per cent working as writers within a expectations in terms of genre, format, by diversifi cation according to individual year of completing the MA. appropriate use of media and audience interests. There is no single reading model expectations. MA proposals are pitched
WordPlay • Issue 3 • April 2010 27 Features
The challenge of developing a distance-learning MA We realise that in order to keep this brand going and to stay As we grew in confi dence that the teaching and course model we relevant, all UCF MA Professional Writing activities need to had developed worked and was appealing to our target audience, evolve continually in line with industry practice and commercial it made sense to extend the model to other forms of delivery. imperatives. Changes brought about by the recession require In response to the many enquiries about part-time study, we writers to be more fl exible and changes in commissioning developed University College Falmouth’s fi rst distance-learning practice means that the old slush pile for fi ction and faxed MA – a two-year part-time version of the campus-based course. proposals for magazine features are no longer options. Shrinking publishing lists have made self-marketing and engagement with social networking and blogging essential from the outset. many people are out there writing Markets are now global – students have to write and think with no idea of how to make internationally. To work as a writer, graduates have also to embrace the requirement for multi-platform content both in any money from it terms of what they produce and how they brand and market themselves and their skills. We were keen to replicate our successful subject and teaching model online, but to open it up to students around the world It’s hard keeping up sometimes, but now we are more confi dent who for work, family or geographical commitments are unable that it pays off. Seven years ago, Professional Writing at Falmouth to take a full-time MA on campus. The course has now recruited College of Arts was a campus-based PgDip course with seven two intakes successfully, even if the learning curve nearly cost the students, one member of staff and a narrow curriculum. In 2010 course team its collective sanity. MA Professional Writing at University College Falmouth has over 50 students, an active alumni network and a distinct approach to Helen Shipman is an experienced lecturer on the full-time course the learning and teaching of writing. who has had to adapt her approach to run an online course. On the online course, for example, lectures and feedback are We appreciate that as an MA situated in a School of Media we delivered via podcasts, telephone conferencing and chatrooms. have had an unusually free reign in designing a course that is truly vocational and industry-responsive as well as academically ‘In some ways, teaching online is a less dynamic process than rigorous. We believe that by continuing to diversify and develop classroom teaching: exchanges cannot be spontaneous, and it new offerings based on what we do well we will increase our has proved diffi cult to fi nd a substitute for the kind of discussion success, open up learning to a wider range of students and – we and debate that emerges naturally during face-to-face sessions. hope – safeguard the course’s future in uncertain times. Synchronistic online seminars proved unwieldy, and although some tutors favour telephone conferencing as an alternative method, others only use our Virtual Learning Environment forum A bit more about us for exchanges and comments. www.profwriting.com editor and non-fi ction lecturer ‘While this is slower, it does have the merit of focusing the tutor’s Susannah Marriott explains how the site works. attention almost entirely on the work itself. Consequently, there Profwriting.com opens the course model to unpublished can be an intensity in online teaching that is missing from the writers wherever they are in the world and whatever form terrestrial equivalent, and this in turn requires a high level of they are working in, reaching out to those who don’t want precision and care on the part of the teacher: throwaway or a full- or part-time course at MA level. Our £25 online mini ambiguous responses are easily misinterpreted by online students.’ courses allow new writers to test their aptitude both for The success of the online course increased our confi dence in writing and our approach. Those with more experience can our approach to developing writers so we decided to see if the commission a professional to assess their writing or work model could be extended to shorter learning experiences. for three months with a mentor in their fi eld.
We now run Summer Schools that take the same approach as the Current students – on campus and online – provide the teaching on the full-time course. We also run a series of 2-5 day site’s content, writing news stories and interviewing our Continuing Professional Development (CPD) courses for people network of writing professionals, including alumni in the working in business, both locally and regionally. We won funding to writing industries. Students also blog and podcast from make course materials publicly available under a Creative Commons industry events, such as Cheltenham Screenwriters’ Festival Licence which will be delivered through the development of UCF and London Bookfair, and run a writing competition judged openSpace, via our online writers’ publication. by authors and editors.
These new income streams help us to fund events and initiatives This is also a place for alumni to maintain impetus once such as the development of www.profwriting.com our online they’ve fi nished a course. Rather than fi ling manuscripts in publication aimed at extending our community and teaching their sock drawer, they can upload chapters to a site agents approach to all those writers worldwide desperate for feedback are scouting. And they can continue peer critiquing – the on their work and for information and resources about writing backbone of our approach to teaching – in cosy closed (see box). Although it aims to be self-funding, much of the groups. The forum for freelance opportunities and CV technical and editorial development has been funded by income database builds a community of writers creating work for from other course initiatives. each other. The facility is on offer for anyone to set up a private community of writers within the site.
28 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk Because plays were written to be seen A new resource for students and teachers of classic plays
There is nothing to beat a live performance. Stage or seen it in a lecture theatre, the Teachers’ on Screen started last year on the basis that there editions of the DVDs give students the chance were not enough of the classic plays that students to re-edit various scenes of the shows. Re-editing read at GCSE, A Level, and at university, being enables students to understand the rhythms of the performed live or being recorded for posterity play, in a way that simply reading the text cannot. on DVD with proper educational resources Commentaries from the actors, director, designer attached. Determined to plug the gap, Stage on and lighting designer (and hopefully the stage Screen are currently working in partnership with manager and composer in future productions) London’s Greenwich Theatre and have already give insights for both Theatre Studies and English Tom Barnes is Head mounted productions of Doctor Faustus and The of the English and MFL students, in terms of understanding how a text Faculty at Portland School for Scandal, and are currently rehearsing becomes a live performance. Place School, London, for spring performances of The Duchess of Malfi and Educational Advisor and Volpone. Each play is recorded with multiple Stage on Screen are very keen for interesting for Stage on Screen. cameras onto high defi nition widescreen video for essays and interpretations of any of their plays He is an occasionally to be sent to them by university staff or students published poet, and a students and teachers to purchase as Stage on regular performer and Screen DVDs. for inclusion on their website which includes founder member of freely accessible ‘study areas’ for each play. Most students will not have seen a live production Multi-Story Improvised The study areas provide notes on sources, of any of these plays, so will not necessarily Theatre Company. contexts and close-reading of the plays all of understand their theatrical power. Working from which are designed to be useful to students the idea that a student who has researched and re- and tutors at A Level and at university. edited a classic text will know that text far better than one who has merely read it in class, Stage on Screen: www.stageonscreen.com/
WordPlay • Issue 3 • April 2010 29 Creative Pedagogies
“Statistics are somewhat like old medical journals, or like revolvers in newly opened mining districts. Most men rarely use them, and fi nd it troublesome to preserve them so as to have them easy of access; but when they do want them, they want them badly.”
John Shaw Billings, 1838-1913 American surgeon and librarian ‘On Vital and Medical Statistics’, The Medical Record, 1889, 36, pp589
Here when you want them: Statistics on English and Creative Writing
Jane Gawthrope, English Subject Centre
Introduction Writing, while taking care not to disclose matters of For a community whose business is words, English a confi dential or sensitive nature. Most of this body demonstrates a surprising level of concern with of evidence is shared with the wider community via numbers. Hardly a week goes by without the Subject our publications and on our website. This three-part Centre receiving a statistical enquiry, perhaps from article shares some of the data we have acquired a Head of Department preparing a case to senior recently. It presents two different datasets: fi gures on management, or a lecturer preparing a case to a Head A Level English applications obtained from OfQual of Department or making a presentation at an Open and fi gures on student numbers in our disciplines Day. Parents concerned about contact hours, publishers commissioned from UCAS. Section 3 then highlights Jane Gawthrope is curious about how widely a topic is taught and some of the fi ndings of our recently published Survey the Manager of the of the English Curriculum and Teaching in UK Higher English Subject Centre organisations responding to consultation documents Education. and has run a number also approach us with questions about numbers. The of surveys in academic value of numbers in strengthening arguments (as Lewis Section 1: A Level English environments. She Carroll said, “If you want to inspire confi dence, give is joint author of the The following tables were all supplied by OfQual plenty of statistics”), and understanding a department’s Survey of the English (The Offi ce of the Qualifi cations and Examinations particular situation in relation to the broader picture, Curriculum and Teaching Regulator) in December 2009. in UK Higher Education seems to be widely recognised. described here and The Subject Centre works with and for the discipline Table 1. National GCE A Level in English Literature, has edited a number of 2004 to 2008 (All UK Candidates) reports commissioned as part of a national network and is therefore well- Number of GCE A level entries in English Literature by the Subject Centre. placed to gather and disseminate intelligence 2004-2008 Jane will try to answer ‘without fear or favour’ to the interests of particular any statistical enquiries institutions. This intelligence-gathering takes several 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 that you may have. forms. It ranges through casual conversations with All 49,577 52,128 51,268 49,333 51,766 academic colleagues, to presentation of publicly Males 14,313 15,349 15,016 14,587 15,214 available statistics in a more digestible form and Females 35,261 36,778 36,252 34,746 36,552 commissioning surveys to gather data not available elsewhere. We see our role as building up a ‘body of Note: (i) 2004 onwards – is A Level (Curriculum 2000). evidence’ about the teaching of English and Creative Source: Inter Examination Board Statistics – Final Results (JCQ)
30 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk Creative Pedagogies
Table 1 shows that the number of entries for A Level English Table 5. National GCE A Level in English Language and Literature is on average 50,800 over the fi ve-year period. Literature, 2004 to 2008 (All UK Candidates) Although there has been a 4% increase between 2004 and 2008 Number of GCE A level entries in English Language and Literature this does not seem to be part of a trend, as the numbers go up 2004-2008 and down slightly from one year to the next. (Figures for the 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 number of entries should also be seen against the background All 14,863 15,580 15,789 16,293 17,221 of the number of young people in the population and A Level Males 4,512 4,642 4,844 4,912 5,374 entries as a whole.) Males account for 29% of A Level English Literature entries each year. Females 10,351 10,938 10,945 11,381 11,847 Note: (i) 2004 onwards – is A Level (Curriculum 2000). Table 2. National GCE A Level in English Literature, Source: Inter Examination Board Statistics – Final Results (JCQ) 2004 to 2008 (All UK Candidates) Cumulative percentage achieving each grade The numbers taking Language and Literature are much lower Year A B C D E Candidates A-C A-E than Literature, and slightly lower than Language. Table 5, however, demonstrates a steady increase in the numbers taking 2004 25.9 50.0 74.8 91.8 98.7 49,577 74.8 98.7 A Level Language and Literature, a rise of almost 16% between 2005 25.9 50.9 75.9 92.6 98.9 52,128 75.9 98.9 2004 and 2008. The percentage of males taking this A Level is 2006 27.7 52.8 77.5 93.6 99.1 51,268 77.5 99.1 30%-31%. 2007 29.2 55.0 79.0 94.0 99.2 49,333 79.0 99.2 Table 6. National GCE A Level in English Language 2008 28.2 54.3 78.9 94.0 99.1 51,766 78.9 99.1 and Literature, 2004 to 2008 (All UK Candidates) Cumulative percentage achieving each grade This table shows that, in round numbers, 26%-29% achieve an A grade. It also shows that the percentage achieving an A grade Year A B C D E Candidates A-C A-E has increased from 25.9% to 28.2% between 2004 and 2008, with 2004 15.0 37.8 67.7 90.1 98.3 14,863 67.7 98.3 a high of 29.2% in 2007. 2005 15.1 39.3 69.5 91.3 98.6 15,580 69.5 98.6
Table 3. National GCE A Level in English Language, 2006 16.2 42.3 71.6 91.6 98.7 15,789 71.6 98.7 2004 to 2008 (All UK Candidates) 2007 17.9 44.4 74.6 93.2 99.0 16,293 74.6 99.0 Number of GCE A level entries in English Language 2004-2008 2008 17.9 45.5 75.4 93.8 99.1 17,221 75.4 99.1
2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 This table shows that, in round numbers, 15%-18% achieve an All 15,826 17,049 18,096 18,981 20,649 A grade (only about half the percentage achieving an A grade in Males 5,418 5,941 6,444 6,524 7,199 Literature, and slightly higher than the percentage achieving an Females 10,407 11,108 11,652 12,457 13,450 ‘A’ in Language). It also shows that the percentage achieving an A grade has increased each year from 15% to 18% between Note: (i) 2004 onwards – is A Level (Curriculum 2000). Source: Inter Examination Board Statistics – Final Results (JCQ) 2004 and 2008.
Although the number taking A Level Language is much smaller So what do these statistics tell us? than those taking Literature, Table 3 shows a steady increase in In broad terms, the number of entries for A Level Literature is the number of A Level English Language entries over the fi ve-year bumping along around the 50,000 mark, whilst Language and, period. The number of entries increased by just over 30% between to a lesser extent Language and Literature, are becoming more 2004 and 2008. The percentage of males taking Language is higher popular. While Literature is still the most popular of the three than Literature, ranging between 34% and 36%. A Levels, these fi gures suggest that the growth in English A Level overall is coming from Language. Departments seeking Table 4. National GCE A Level in English Language, to recruit more students might look to attracting those with 2004 to 2008 (All UK Candidates) A Level Language or Literature and Language. Departments Cumulative percentage achieving each grade who accept only Literature A Level might also bear in mind that Year A B C D E Candidates A-C A-E it is considerably harder to achieve a top grade in Language or 2004 13.0 36.3 67.3 91.1 98.8 15,826 67.3 98.8 Language and Literature than it is in Literature. 2005 13.1 36.5 68.4 91.1 98.8 17,049 68.4 98.8 If we look at gender it is apparent that even at A Level, English 2006 13.9 39.1 71.9 93.2 99.2 18,096 71.9 99.2 is dominated by female candidates (around 71% for Literature, 2007 14.8 40.6 73.6 94.3 99.3 18,981 73.6 99.3 65% for Language and 70% for Language and Literature). This 2008 14.5 41.5 74.5 94.2 99.2 20,649 74.5 99.2 compares with about 71%-73% female students at university (see below). The gender imbalance in the discipline therefore This table shows that, in round numbers, 13%-15% achieve an starts pre-A Level, and by extension is very diffi cult to correct at A grade (only about half the percentage achieving an A grade HE Level. It may be possible to redress the balance slightly by in Literature). It also shows that the percentage achieving an attracting more A Level Language students, as A Level Language A grade has increased from 13% to 14.5% between 2004 and has the highest percentage of males. 2008, with a high of 14.8% in 2007.
WordPlay • Issue 3 • April 2010 31 Creative Pedagogies
Section 2: UCAS Data on English and Creative Writing The table below was commissioned by the English Subject Centre from UCAS in order to provide a breakdown of all English subjects using JACS codes. (In the publicly available data at http://tinyurl.com/yl6m8jw only the single heading ‘English studies’ is used.) It also gives the fi gures for Creative Writing (JACS code W8 ‘Imaginative Writing’, which includes script, poetry and prose writing.
The larger version of this table available on the English Subject Centre website also shows student numbers by origin (UK, EU, non- EU) and by gender. (Among UK students, female students represent between 71%-73% of the total in different years.) HESA warns that it is possible for some institutions to code certain subjects generically at this level of detail, eg some students studying Q321, ‘English literature by period‘, may actually be classifi ed as Q300 ‘English studies‘.
Table 7. All HE students with a specifi ed 4 digit JACS subject of study by academic year, subject of study, mode of study, level of study, 2003/04 to 2007/08
Academic year 4 digit Total HE Full time Full time Part time Part time subject of study Students Postgraduate Undergraduate Postgraduate Undergraduate
2007/08 (Q300) English studies 42608.2 2546.9 29183.8 1413.8 9463.8
(Q310) English language 3753.7 227.1 2968.2 122.8 435.6
(Q320) English literature 12032.9 434.5 7361.0 543.3 3694.1
(Q321) English literature 296.3 154.8 3.0 72.0 66.5 by period (Q322) English literature 103.0 24.0 0.0 18.0 61.0 by author (Q323) English literature 584.3 80.5 14.7 126.0 363.2 by topic (Q330) English as a second 2336.4 54.0 1112.9 23.5 1146.0 language (Q340) English literature 9.0 0.0 5.0 0.0 4.0 written as a second language (Q390) English studies not 184.2 54.5 96.2 23.0 10.5 elsewhere classifi ed (W8) Imaginative writing 5415 2780 545 1130 960
2007/08 Total 67323.0 6356.3 41289.7 3472.4 16204.6
2006/07 (Q300) English studies 43049.7 2609.3 30142.1 1535.8 8762.4
(Q310) English language 3161.5 145.0 2408.8 65.0 542.7
(Q320) English literature 10522.0 470.5 5745.7 520.5 3785.3
(Q321) English literature 258.0 162.5 5.5 87.0 3.0
by period
(Q322) English literature 183.0 13.0 0.0 8.0 162.0 by author (Q323) English literature 202.2 51.5 2.7 91.0 57.0 by topic (Q330) English as a second 1605.2 147.0 615.0 10.0 833.2 language (Q340) English literature 55.0 0.0 52.0 0.0 3.0 written as a second language (Q390) English studies not 136.2 59.5 26.7 35.0 15.0 elsewhere classifi ed (W8) Imaginative writing 6465 505.0 2505 920 2540.0
2006/07 Total 65637.7 4163.3 41503.4 3272.3 16703.6
Source: HESA Student Record 2003/04 - 2007/08 HESA does not accept any liability for any inferences or conclusions derived from the Data by the Client or any third party. Copyright Higher Education Statistics Agency 2009 Note: It is possible for some institutions to code certain subjects generically at this level of detail, eg some students studying Q321 ‘English literature by period‘. 'Postgraduate' includes both PG taught and PG research students.
32 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk Creative Pedagogies
Academic year 4 digit Total HE Full time Full time Part time Part time subject of study Students Postgraduate Undergraduate Postgraduate Undergraduate
2005/06 (Q300) English studies 42999.0 2769.5 30419.8 1788.5 8021.2 (Q310) English language 2915.8 123.5 2250.8 47.5 494.0 (Q320) English literature 9398.2 361.5 4975.0 166.0 3895.7 (Q321) English literature by 287.3 134.0 7.5 86.0 59.8 period (Q322) English literature by 169.0 11.0 0.0 18.0 140.0 author (Q323) English literature by 207.3 34.0 3.3 66.0 104.0 topic (Q330) English as a second 1252.0 112.5 724.2 5.5 409.8 language (Q340) English literature 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 written as a second language (Q390) English studies not 170.8 53.0 54.8 38.0 25.0 elsewhere classifi ed (W8) Imaginative writing 5825 460.0 2250 705.0 2415 2005/06 Total 63224.5 4059.0 40685.5 2920.5 15564.5 2004/05 (Q300) English studies 43626.5 2526.2 30621.9 1852.3 8626.1 (Q310) English language 2639.7 110.5 1948.2 44.5 536.5
(Q320) English literature 8957.3 337.0 4385.7 166.0 4068.7 (Q321) English literature 370.2 192.5 9.2 87.0 81.5
by period
(Q322) English literature 204.0 9.0 0.0 18.0 177.0 by author (Q323) English literature 166.0 35.0 4.0 57.0 70.0
by topic (Q330) English as a second 1373.0 51.0 740.7 1.5 579.8 language (Q340) English literature 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
written as a second language (Q390) English studies not 138.0 70.0 24.0 29.0 15.0 elsewhere classifi ed (W8) Imaginative writing 5145 370.0 1790 630.0 2355 2004/05 Total 62619.7 3701.2 39523.6 2885.3 16509.6 2003/04 (Q300) English studies 44135.6 2464.8 31680.1 2016.0 7974.7 (Q310) English language 2234.5 66.5 1800.0 30.5 337.5
(Q320) English literature 8105.5 348.5 4150.7 129.5 3476.8 (Q321) English literature 467.8 226.0 5.8 142.0 94.0
by period
(Q322) English literature 339.3 16.0 0.0 26.0 297.3 by author (Q323) English literature 176.0 20.0 0.0 88.0 68.0
by topic (Q330) English as a second 1590.2 80.0 1060.0 1.0 449.2 language (Q340) English literature 174.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 174.0
written as a second language (Q390) English studies not 178.0 41.0 100.0 7.0 30.0 elsewhere classifi ed (W8) Imaginative writing 3985 310.0 1200 460.0 2015 2003/04 Total 61385.9 3572.8 39996.6 2900.0 14916.5
WordPlay • Issue 3 • April 2010 33 Creative Pedagogies
Table 8 below extracts some of the key rows from Table 7 and presents them chronologically so that growth trends are easier to identify. Again, this data is subject to the same possibilities for inconsistency in how institutions code courses.
Table 8 Growth in Student Numbers 2003/04 to 2007/08 (Data extracted from Table 7 above)
Year total HE Q300 English Q310 Q320 W8 Imag. Total Total Total Total students Studies Language Literature Writing HE FT PGs HE PT PGs HE FT UGs HE PT UGs 2007/08 67323 42608 3753 12032 5415 6356 3472 41289 16204
2006/07 65637 43049 3161 10522 6465 4163 3272 41503 16703
2005/06 63224 42999 2915 9398 5825 4059 2920 40685 15564
2004/05 62619 43626 2693 8957 5145 3701 2885 39523 16509
2003/04 61385 44135 2234 8105 3985 3572 2900 39996 14916
increase 10% -3% 40% 48% 36% 78% 20% 3% 9%
Tables 7 and 8 evidence the overall growth in student numbers The report, available on the Subject Centre website from in our disciplines (10%), and also growth in particular areas. www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/publications/reports. English Language and English Literature have grown by 40% php, is a snapshot of how English and Creative Writing were and 48% respectively, although some of this increase may be being taught in mid-2009, adding to the data collected by due to re-coding of courses from the more general ‘English a similar survey in 2002. It is based on responses from 54 studies’ which has fallen by 3%. Imaginative Writing has grown departments, representing about 40% of those contacted. (It by 36%, so that in 07/08 there were 5415 students of whom 10% should be noted that we contacted some very small units from were full-time undergraduates, 18% part-time undergraduates, whom a response was unlikely, so the response rate is probably 51% full-time postgraduates and 21% part-time postgraduates. better than would initially appear.) The survey yielded a large Students on Creative Writing courses now outnumber those on quantity of detailed data, but the report presents it in a digestible English Language courses, and it is the remarkable growth in the form with written analysis accompanying the tables and charts. number of full-time postgraduates on Creative Writing courses Heads of Department were invited to fi ll in an online that accounts for most of the growth in full-time postgraduate questionnaire between April and August 2009. Questions numbers overall. There was however a dip in the number of covered the following topics: Creative Writing students overall between 06/07 and 07/08 which may suggest that growth in this discipline is tailing off. • Student numbers
Across all subjects, the number of full-time postgraduates has • Student recruitment and retention increased by 78% and the number of part-time postgraduates by • Teaching staff 20%. In 2007/08 postgraduates therefore accounted for 15% of • Undergraduate teaching all students taught. Part-time students (both undergraduate and postgraduate) account for 29% of students. • Assessment • Curriculum Section 3: Survey of the English Curriculum and • Graduate attributes Teaching in UK Higher Education 2009 • Physical resources, facilities and e-learning Background This survey was conducted by the English Subject Centre in • General questions about factors affecting teaching the spring of 2009 in order to provide data for the following Trends since 2002 purposes: While the 2009 survey covered much the same ground as • To help departments benchmark themselves against others the previous one in 2002, questions were not always directly especially when making cases to senior management in their comparable and of course changes in responses between the institutions two surveys may be attributable to different sets of respondents. The 2009 survey to some extent separated out Literature, • To provide evidence to support responses to various national Language and Creative Writing which the 2003 one did not, consultations again making comparison diffi cult. The overall impression, • To provide information to prospective students about what however, is that there have been no ‘seismic shifts’ in learning they are likely to study and how and teaching over the period. For example, ‘staff leaving or joining’ was the most common reason cited in both surveys • To evidence the breadth and variety of provision in the for adding or removing modules. However, some interesting discipline indicators of change emerged: • To answer enquiries about the discipline from those inside and outside it
34 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk Creative Pedagogies
• 54% of respondents offer undergraduate degrees in In relation to the pressures faced by departments, however, Creative Writing diversity fades and a more consistent picture emerges. Pressures caused by students engaged in paid employment or with caring • Departments offering Creative Writing have seen the most responsibilities, pressure to give more feedback on coursework notable increase in student numbers, with 52% reporting and the negative impact on teaching of the lack of good quality an increase of more than 10% (the equivalent for Literature teaching space are all commonly cited by respondents and could was 41%) be described as ‘characteristic’ of the community. • Departments offering taught PG programmes rose from Heads of Department have in common a preoccupation with 77% to 87% between the two surveys, although the average student numbers and increased workloads for staff. When asked number of taught PG students has fallen from 42 to 35 to state the single change that would most enhance teaching • Work-related learning or work placements were used by over and learning, the answer ‘more staff’ was commonly given. 50% of respondents The gap between what HE policy makers see as the priorities • One-third used plagiarism-detection software for all or nearly for the sector, and the priorities as perceived by those running all assessed coursework departments, is a striking one.
• All respondents reported that at least a few modules have The following fi gures illustrate some of the pressures faced by an online component or support delivered through a VLE, departments: with almost three-quarters reporting that most of their • 81% of respondents said that paid employment had ‘a lot’ of modules do so impact on student learning; 16% said it had ‘some’. 28% said • Digital collections and the availability of computers for that caring responsibilities had a lot of impact; 56% ‘some’ students were the factors most frequently mentioned as having • 63% said they were under pressure to give feedback on exams; a positive impact on learning and teaching 75% said they were under pressure to give more feedback on • Compared to 2003, there was a marked decrease (63% to 38%) coursework in the percentage reporting that assessed coursework and • In terms of physical resources the most common negative exam papers are always marked by multiple examiners and an impact was the availability of teaching space (54%) followed by equivalent increase in the percentage saying that papers are the quality of teaching space (44%) and the richness of printed selectively marked by more than one examiner library collections (38%)
Evidence of breadth and variety abounds in this report in answers • When asked what were the most signifi cant changes they to questions about student and staff numbers, entry profi le, expected in the future, the most common responses related to assessment methods and the curriculum. While such diversity is student numbers (both increasing, decreasing and stabilising) perhaps not surprising to those familiar with the discipline in HE, and increased workloads for staff it is useful to be able to point it out to prospective students when guiding them in making university choices. It is also useful in Problems and pressures are not the whole picture however. challenging the stereotypes of teaching and the curriculum often This report points to growth in terms of undergraduate numbers, portrayed in the press and indeed occasionally by VCs. in Creative Writing and in postgraduate programmes. It points to innovation in teaching and assessment methods, widespread Just some of the examples of diversity include: adoption of e-learning • The number of full-time undergraduates in a department and the positive impact of ranges from 18 to 750 the availability of digital collections. It points to a wide • The entry profi le ranges between 180 and 380 points, with and changing curriculum. an average of 280 for Language and Literature and 270 for Taken as a whole, this report Creative Writing evidences a diverse and • The number of FTE staff involved in teaching varies between energetic discipline, striving 0.8 and 50, with an average of 18 (19 in 2003) to fi nd innovative solutions to the problems faced by • While the dissertation, exam and essay still dominate as HE generally and by English assessment methods, about 50% of respondents said they and Creative Writing in were using short answer tests, contributions in seminars and particular. student logs
WordPlay • Issue 3 • April 2010 35 Creative Pedagogies ODOUR OF CHRYSANTHEMUMS a text in process
It began as an English Subject Centre mini-project and grew into a life-changing experience: Sean Matthews refl ects on working with manuscripts, building a website and introducing readers to a whole new way of learning and doing criticism.
I got through my entire undergraduate and of the particular benefi ts of working in D H Lawrence postgraduate career without ever holding a manuscript Studies at the University of Nottingham, after all, is in anger. Nobody suggested I should and it never access to the unparalleled Lawrence Collections – came up in any lecture, seminar or tutorial I attended. people come from all over the world to consult them. Actually, I never even looked at a manuscript, much Nonetheless, I had rather hoped to retain a critical less studied one – except for a letter from James Joyce distance from the two currents which have dominated that my tutor had found in an attic somewhere and Lawrence criticism for the past three decades: editing we all thought was great, but not strictly relevant to and biography. My own research and teaching had anything we were doing, and a glance at a copy of concentrated on Lawrence’s cultural signifi cance, Sean Matthews is Household Words in order to confi rm that Dickens’s involving things like arguments around his infl uence Director of the DH writing ‘conformed to serial publication norms’. Texts, and status in the 1950s (he was very important, but Lawrence Research for me – and most other English students, I would for different reasons from the 1930s) and the impact Centre at the University of Nottingham. He guess – were pretty stable entities. There was a role for of the Chatterley Trial (considerable, but not very teaches Lawrence at all editors, but it was fairly mundane stuff, after which the easy to be specifi c about), and it had never taken me levels of the university serious work of criticism took place. Of course, there anywhere near a manuscript or archive. My data was all curriculum, and also are moments where editors’ work comes to centre in the public domain, and that seemed very important works with sixth-formers stage: the obvious bits of Shakespeare which people to me, because I wanted to attend to patterns in our on Lawrence's plays and short stories. His used to argue about – ‘sullied’ or ‘solid’ fl esh and all ordinary culture, whereas work on manuscripts seemed article, 'The Trial of Lady that sort of thing; Wordsworth’s multiple rewritings of necessarily a rather private, even elite, affair. In addition, Chatterley's Lover: The The Prelude and Lawrence’s three Lady Chatterleys; it’s a lot more straightforward to teach things that your most thorough and even Auden’s fi ddling with the political poems of the students can actually take home and bring to class. I expensive seminar on 1930s in later editions. But such variants and oddities was grateful for all those details in the comprehensive, Lawrence's work ever given' has just been don’t involve the majority of us in any real manuscript three-volume Cambridge biography about the published in New DH work, and are pretty much served up to us on a plate Lawrences’ extraordinary lives, and for the exhaustive Lawrence ed. Howard by the specialists. I did have a grudging respect for precision of the monumental Cambridge edition of Booth (Manchester those serious types who would totter off to the Rare Lawrence’s work, a remarkable achievement of recovery University Press, 2009). Books Room while I snuggled down on a sofa with my and restoration but I still remained to be convinced paperbacks and latte, and I know they thought I wasn’t that, for most of us – and certainly for students – there a proper scholar, but in the end it seemed to me that was anything in those wonderful projects which was grubbing through manuscripts was probably both dull central to the everyday work of teaching and learning and a bit too, well, empirical for me. The interesting at an undergraduate level. Another reason I hadn’t had stuff in English, at the time, was going on in Theory. We much to do with manuscripts and textual variants was had no time for authors, much less their material traces, that novels, stories, plays and poems offer quite enough and real literary criticism involved an intellectually challenge without further complicating the very text strenuous attention to the words on the printed page we’re trying to read. More to the point, how could one and, according to taste, such things as their sexual, give a lecture cohort of 200 students any meaningful political, ethical or ecological implications. access to the complex detail of autograph manuscripts and corrected proofs? There aren’t even 200 seats in Appointed to a post which involved work on DH the Rare Books Room. Lawrence, I knew things might have to change. One
36 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk Then I decided to set up a lecture course on Lawrence’s fi rst collection of tales, The Prussian Offi cer and Other Stories (1914). In an idle moment, I fl icked through the notes to my edition, and learnt that we had most of the manuscripts and proofs for those tales a few hundred yards away, in the library. It seemed rude not to have a look at them – perhaps they would be good for a few anecdotes in my lecture before we got down to the serious business of critical analysis, and it would also give me a little scholarly credibility.dibility.
The trip to the archive turned out to be a Damascus Road experience. I becameme immersed in the complex textual history of these stories, and I began to realisese quite how much of the richness and signifi cance of Lawrence’s writing my students aandnd I were missing. Attention to the genesis, the story, of these stories, to the considerablesiderable changes Lawrence (and his editors) made to these texts, powerfully enhances and clarifi es the work of more conventional literary and cultural analysis. As the scalesales fell from my eyes I accepted that I couldn’t lecture on, for instance, ‘Odour off Chrysanthemums’ without making detailed reference to the manuscripts. Overer a period of four years Lawrence, as was already his customary practice, substantiallytially revised and reworked this tale on at least four occasions, in the stages of bothh drafting and page proofs, and then again between the work’s publication in FFordord Madox Ford’s English Review (1911), and its appearance in the collection Thee Prussian Offi cer and Other Stories (1914). The University of Nottingham holds,s, in addition to fi rst editions of the published versions, a set of radically correcteded page proofs of the 1911 version, from which James T Boulton reconstructed the unrevised proofs (in 1969). The Nottinghamshire County archives hold a further set of proofs from 1914. Just to complicate matters further, Lawrence also rewrote the story as a play, The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd, between 1910 and 1913, of which, perhaps fortunately, no manuscript survives. Placing these different versions alongside each other generates a wholly new conception of what is going on in the story.
Immediately, however, the old problems reasserted themselves. How was I to sharehare tthishis discovery with the class? Academic researchers and Lawrence enthusiasts have long made use of this treasure trove of manuscripts, but the challenge for any teacher, given the size of many of the groups we face these days (there are indeed 200 students on the fi rst-year Lawrence module), is to fi nd ways of integrating such materials into a regular undergraduate or graduate programme in such a way that all learners not only have equal access, but also appropriate assistance and direction in grasping their signifi cance. It is a question not only of putting manuscripts and other artefacts on show in such a form that, say, those 200 people can view them in and out of class, but also of providing a framework for delivery, a structure of supporting materials and guidance, through which learners might independently come to a better understanding of their material and intellectual importance. I was lucky enough to be able to spend considerableable time with these documents, and could call on the advice of such senior Lawrence scholarscholars as John Worthen, Keith Cushman and Keith Sagar, not to mention the extremelyely knowledgeable archivists in the Department of Manuscripts and Special Collectionsctions at Nottingham, and the dialect expert, Hilary Hillier. I knew that, in the past, thehe university had made bids to digitise materials, but simply being able to see thee manuscripts, however good the reproduction, wasn’t going to take us very far.. How could we possibly reproduce, for my fi rst-year lecture course, something of thee experience of working with these manuscripts?
Methodological, analytic and theoretical issues which attend work with manuscripts tend only to be introduced very late on in English studies programmes, if at all, and have little impact at the level of learners’ everydayy engagement with texts. The magnifi cent, scholarly print editions of the worksks of, for instance, Lawrence, Yeats, Orwell or Southey remain the preserve of specialists and postgraduates (there simply aren’t enough copies to go around, even with the smallest groups), and where substantial textual apparatus is available in the cheaper, common editions of an author’s work (as with Shakespeare, Pope, Wordsworth), the lack of consistency between different editorial objectives and priorities, modes and forms, still make them intimidating reading. The questions presented by the Lawrence
PhotoPhoP to CreCrCredits:reeditdi s: DHDH LawLaLawrencewrerencec ©U© Universityniverssityty of NoNNottinghamttiinghg am WordWorordPlayPlaPll y • IssueIsssssue 3 • AprilAprprpril 201020120 0 373 Creative Pedagogies
manuscripts were, indeed, effectively invisible in the detail of the Cambridge edition’s Textual and textual apparatus, yet they are immediately, powerfully apparent when you are faced with the actual pieces of paper. And yet, it’s not simply a question of needing to Genetic Criticism generate decent facsimiles. The physical, material moves you can make with the papers in front of you, moving backwards and forwards, dwelling on the differences and In designing the site, and above all in deciding how best to frame and utilise similarities, bringing in other texts, are obviously less readily available with facsimiles the materials for teaching and learning on screen, but for readers altogether new to manuscripts we wanted to create an situations, we were particularly fortunate environment similar to the one I had enjoyed – with a few experts at my elbow helping in having the input of John Worthen me to see things, to understand what was important. The experience of coming to (who has edited numerous volumes in know these materials, and to understand how best to utilise them, was an education in the Cambridge Edition of the Complete itself – an education we wanted to reproduce in the online environment. That was the Works of D. H. Lawrence), and Finn challenge we set ourselves with ‘Odour of Chrysanthemums: a text in process’. Fordham and Sarah Davison (scholars schooled in ‘genetic criticism’, the When you visit the site now, we hope it provides a straightforward but substantial emergent theoretical and methodological experience of the texts, and supplies the crucial elements of support and direction mode of attending to ‘texts in process’). that anyone new to this kind of work might need. There are facsimiles of all the main Between them they coached me – and versions of the story, but also transcripts with line numbers. It is possible to call up convinced me – about the methods and the versions alongside each other in order to trace exactly what changes have taken value of textual and genetic criticism. place – for several passages these changes are highlighted in order to guide the initial ‘Genetic criticism’, Finn explained, analysis. In addition to all this primary material, there are also substantial supporting ‘is concerned about how best to resources looking at history, dialect, biographical information and geography, as well communicate the changes between texts as reproductions of some famous articles and essays about the story. There is also a that exist in a series’. The benefi ts of section devoted to ‘working with the text’, which suggest a variety of ‘ways in’ to the such work, he argues, are considerable: manuscripts and the issues they raise for textual and ‘genetic’ critics (genetic criticism ‘Readers fi nd themselves adjacent to the position of a writer in the process sounded a terrifying prospect, but as my colleagues explained isn’t in fact frightening at of refl ecting on their texts, seeing those all – see side panel). In its various beta incarnations the site has been used by a number texts as open to change, to deletion, of student groups, and has come a long way from the original ideas that persuaded the addition, substitution and so on. The line Subject Centre to support us, and we intend to continue adding supporting materials so between the writer and reader becomes that it remains very much a ‘text in process’… blurred. We might be familiar with the idea that readers become writers in their http://odour.nottingham.ac.uk/index.asp production of textual meaning. What drafts can make us familiar with is how much writers are always readers of their own texts. Readers then learn about different ways of relating to and refl ecting Building the Site on textual production.’ Specifi cally in terms of ‘Odour of Chrysanthemums', The process of designing the site has been far longer and more diffi cult than we ever Sarah suggested, ‘Exploring the multiple imagined. When we started out (in 2005) there were a number of examples online, but avant-textes (that is the pre-publication we wanted something simple, cheap (IT stuff doesn’t come cheap), and user-friendly. materials) allows you to see how the It soon became apparent that the dream of providing an exhaustive, comprehensive ‘fi nal’ text has been put together. comparison of the different versions would be impossible. There are pedagogic virtues in Tracking the interlineations, substitutions this limitation, however, as was made clear in conversation with advisers from the Subject and cuts that take place in the various Centre. Breaking the story down into ‘episodes’ allowed for close focus on several stages in the genesis of the work gives key scenes, which serve as exemplars for the kinds of critical attention required. The an indication of Lawrence’s changing supporting materials have been added piecemeal (and continue to grow), but already conception of the text and what it was he include several famous articles about the text, and some ‘getting started’ guidance for sought to achieve.’ critical reading and genetic textual analysis.
This mode of attention is not simply Technical information about the construction of the site is set out in the ‘About the Project’ something for literary critics. There are pages on the site. Any moderately computer-literate person could carry out similar work, also important lessons for those who given some basic directions from a specialist programmer. The main requirements for are themselves engaged in creative anyone undertaking this work would seem to be the common academic attributes of writing, as John Worthen made clear: scholarly patience and precision: ‘There is nothing like reading every • meticulous attention to detail at each stage of computer input detail of a text, watching every change • regular checking (and double checking) for errors at each stage in it, for becoming extremely familiar with it (nearly always), and becoming • suitable pacing of the work, given the very close attention required deeply impressed with the working of • working always with copy text fi les in case of (apparent) disasters the creative mind and hand that were • working in short-ish text sections, especially during the early learning stages responsible for it. As an editor, you may be studying the details of punctuation, • making regular, separate, backup fi les under different, ‘staged’, fi lenames to minimise at the minutest level, but you are also risk of having to redo large amounts of work learning how a writer actually works.’ • additional checking!
38 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk Networking Day for Admissions Tutors 20 November 2009
For some years now, one strand in the Subject Centre’s events programme has consisted of English Subject Centre ‘networking days’ – events designed to bring together people performing a specifi c administrative or pastoral role: administrators; heads of department; careers advisors. This event, held high up in the Birkbeck building on Malet Street, in London, gave admissions tutors from across the country the opportunity to compare notes with colleagues from other institutions on some of the key issues facing them day to day. Our discussions, however, opened out far more widely than this. Thinking about the admissions process turned out to be the starting-point for stimulating debate about many of the most important topics in HE English today.
The day began with a summary by Jane Gawthrope (English Subject Centre) of the fi ndings of the then forthcoming (and now published) Subject Centre curriculum and teaching survey on a number of topics relevant to admissions: departmental criteria for student selection (predicted A Level performance and the UCAS form more generally being overwhelmingly the major methods used, interviews and portfolios appearing fairly widely as subsidiary methods); the relationship between admissions targets and actual intakes (closer now than when the Subject Centre survey fi rst ran in 2003); student numbers compared to three years ago (by and large, either the same or greater); the proportion of students recruited through clearing (not many); the proportion of students dropping out (small); entry requirements. Carolyn Lyle painted a vivid picture of workings of the admissions system at Reading, highlighting in particular the not always straightforward relationship between departmental and university-level elements in the process. Barbara Bleiman (English and Media Centre) gave a very useful presentation on pre-degree English qualifi cations, focusing largely on A Level: she provided us with an invaluable route-map to the changes brought in in 2008 as well as sharing her impressions of how the new specifi cations are beginning to work in practice. Though there are clearly some oddities about some of the new schemes of work, there seems to be much that is encouraging – in particular, the greater opportunities for creative writing and for wide reading. Barbara also highlighted the close relationship between English A Level and the A Level syllabi in Media Studies and Film Studies – both, she argued, a good test of skills useful on an English degree.
Candice Satchwell (English Subject Centre and Blackpool and the Fylde College) spoke insightfully about her experience of the recruitment and selection of ‘non-standard’ students, illustrating the pitfalls and opportunities involved with some moving case studies and anonymised student application letters. Matthew Steggle (Sheffi eld Hallam) raised a clutch of important topics in his presentation on MA admissions: the different constituencies there are for MA courses and the extent to which their criteria might vary; the structure of the application process; the place of scholarships and bursaries; the special circumstances of international students. A valuable group discussion focused on the variety of approaches to recruitment at open days and other similar events, varying according to the level of student and the point in the admissions calendar at which they occur. Ideas mentioned by delegates included the use of paid student ambassadors, mini-seminars, games, school visits, and activities for parents.
Admissions, in both policy and practice, is potentially one of the most controversial and problematic areas of departmental work – apart from anything else, it is perhaps the aspect of HE which most often appears in newspaper headlines. Things are now arguably more complicated – and diffi cult to negotiate – than ever before. The Subject Centre provides a website, ‘Why Study English?’ (www.whystudyenglish.ac.uk/) designed in part to help students through the process, and a web area on admissions for lecturers (www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/resources/recruitment/index.php): ideas about how we can build on the discussion in this event and further support admissions tutors in their work are very welcome.
Jonathan Gibson, English Subject Centre
More details and information about presentations can be viewed on our website in the Events Archive.
WordPlay • Issue 3 • April 2010 39 Freshen up your seminars! Stuck for what to do in next week’s seminar? There’s a new source of inspiration on the Subject Centre website: our new ‘Activity Ideas’ area (www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/resources/seminars/ activities/index.php). These pages provide a stimulating assortment of worked-up ideas for seminar activities. Some of the ideas require no resources other than yourself, your students and an imaginative leap or two. For others you will need lo-tech teaching aids, such as blu-tack, large sheets of paper and children's picture-books. Here’s a taster:
Seminar teaching Activity Ideas: Rewriting Nursery Rhymes and Fairytales
Advantages
Many HE courses in Literature now acknowledge the value of students writing creatively as a way of understanding more about the texts they are studying and helping them to become better critical readers. Writing imitations and parodies of a writer’s style can develop and consolidate understanding of the key features of a writer’s work. Nursery rhymes and fairytales can be a really enjoyable and neat way of using creative writing in this way.
What to do
Students share key aspects of the style of the text or writer they are studying, the defi ning characteristics that make a piece of that writer’s work instantly recognisable. This may be something they’ve thought about in advance as preparation for the session. They then choose a moment from a fairytale or nursery rhyme and try writing it as a passage from the text or fragment of a poem by this writer. In doing so, they are asked to imitate the style of the writer as closely as possible. The choice of fairytale can be made by you, so that all students are writing to the same one, or can be left up to the students themselves. If students select their own, this can add an extra dimension. For instance, why choose Cinderella as particularly appropriate for Jane Austen, or why might Humpty Dumpty be a good choice for Shelley? The writing can be very brief – just a 10 or 15 minute exercise – though of course they can take it away to develop more fully if inspired! Students read out their fragments of writing, either in pairs or as a whole group, and comment on each other’s work, identifying phrases and passages which seem highly characteristic of the writer and others which are less convincing. In talking about what’s convincing and what isn’t, there will inevitably be debate about the fi ner nuances and subtleties of the writer’s style, eg ‘that section doesn’t have the balance so typical of Austen’s use of sentence structure’, or ‘the use of free indirect style there is really typical of Austen’s subtly nuanced third-person narrative voice’.
Variations
If you are teaching a broad course, such as The Gothic, or Contemporary Fiction, or Modern Poetry, you could use a common fairytale or nursery rhyme and ask individuals to write versions of that story, in the style of a chosen writer from the course. Without telling the rest of the seminar group which writer they have chosen, they read out their version and the rest of the group has to guess the writer. If they have successfully identifi ed and imitated key aspects of the style and concerns of the writer, other students should be able to guess the writer easily. For example: everyone writes a version of ‘Jack and Jill’ in the style of a Modernist writer: Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Ts Eliot, Ezra Pound, etc or in the style of a Gothic text – The Monk, Dracula, Northanger Abbey, Wuthering Heights, The Bloody Chamber.
40 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk Beyond the Classroom: English in the community December 2009
Our discipline has often tried to distinguish English studies as practised inside the academy from English Subject Centre English as practised by ‘amateurs’ outside the academy who read for pleasure. The need to justify English as a legitimate academic discipline has led to an emphasis on its difference from popular reading, and on marking its academic boundaries as being a subject that deals with diffi cult texts written in diffi cult language, the study of which is made more diffi cult by theory.
This workshop, held in December 2009 at Birkbeck University of London, was attended by those with an interest, often an active interest, in building bridges between academic English and the wider public. Gweno Williams of York St John University and its C4C CETL showed how it was possible to weave a network of links with local museums, galleries and small businesses which are often keen to engage in collaborative projects that ensure that their space or skills are utilised and give them an opportunity to work with young people. Lecturers need an entrepreneurial and risk-taking approach to build partnerships, but both students and the community benefi t from projects such as one where students were responsible for creating a wagon for street performances of the York Mystery Plays. As Gweno said, “There are many ways to serve literature other than being in an English Department”.
Jess Moriarty and Katy Shaw of Brighton University have developed another way of engaging students in social and community issues. As well as developing relations with local presses and publishers, they encourage students to see themselves as agents of change through a level 2 module ‘Writing and Social Consciousness’ open to both Literature and Creative Writing students. With the guidance of external experts, students are prompted to write about environmental and social issues. Participants in the workshop were able to try their hand at writing about issues as diverse as polar bears and breast-feeding.
Josie Billington of Liverpool University and Tom Sperlinger of Bristol University both conveyed some of their substantial experience of supporting students as leaders of community reading groups, usually among marginalised or under- privileged members of society. They reported that student volunteers approach the task with a high degree of responsibility and preparation, and welcome the opportunity for engagement with the local community. There are pedagogical benefi ts too. Preparing a text for a reading group encourages the student to think about it differently and perhaps more deeply from how they might approach it individually or in a seminar group; the reading group in turn then enlarges the student’s experience of the text. Both Josie and Tom agreed that for them as lecturers it was revitalising to see the impact of literature in the outside world, especially where there is evidence of the therapeutic benefi ts of reading groups among those suffering from physical or mental incapacity.
With the current debate over the impact agenda, those involved in community collaboration anticipate greater interest from colleagues and the wider academic community. Their dedication and enthusiasm would however be devalued and undermined if they were exploited as tokenistic ‘Rent an Impact’ for REF purposes. The day suggested a host of possibilities for reaching ‘beyond the classroom’ which have benefi ts for students, lecturers and universities, but realising them requires belief in the value of community engagement as an end in itself and determination to breach the walls that have been constructed between readers ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ the academy.
Jane Gawthrope, English Subject Centre
More details and information about presentations can be viewed on our website in the Events Archive.
WordPlay • Issue 3 • April 2010 41 Creative Pedagogies Bologna: 10 years on
This year’s launch of the European Higher Education Area is an opportunity to review the progress of the Bologna reforms and set about addressing the remaining challenges, particularly that of increasing UK student mobility and ensuring greater participation by under-represented groups. Graeme Roberts
Four years ago the English Subject Centre periods recognised and for universities to attract participated in a joint meeting with the Subject students and scholars from other parts of the world. Centres for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies Nevertheless, the task of creating the EHEA is by no and for History, Classics and Archaeology to discuss means complete; full achievement of its objectives the academic implications of the Bologna Process. In will require increased commitment well beyond its March this year, the higher education ministers of the launch date in 2010. In particular, action is called for to 46 signatory countries met in Vienna and Budapest for widen access to higher education, so that the profi le the offi cial launch of the European Higher Education of the student body refl ects the diversity of Europe’s Area (EHEA) and to assess the progress of the populations, and the Bologna countries have been asked Graeme Roberts taught Bologna reforms. So what has been achieved since to set national targets for increasing participation by English at Aberdeen, 2006 and what still remains to be done? becoming Vice-Principal under-represented groups by 2020. Part of this growth, for Teaching and The most authoritative answer to these questions required if Europe is to cope with a shrinking workforce Learning. He is now is to be found, not in the bland celebratory and an ageing population, is to be achieved through an Academy Senior pronouncements of the offi cial ministerial communiqué, the creation of more fl exible learning paths, including Associate, helping Scottish HEIs to enhance but in the fi ndings of the European University part-time and work-based routes and the recognition of student employability, Association (EUA) Trends VI report, which is based prior learning. Last year’s review of progress at Leuven and a UK Bologna on a survey of over 800 universities, feedback from re-asserted the importance of the teaching mission of Expert, contributing 28 national rectors’ conferences and the results of 27 Europe’s universities, and concluded that more work still a chapter on learning site visits to institutions in 16 countries. At the time of needs to be done if the process of curricular reform is outcomes to Yes! Go! A Practical Guide to writing, however, the EUA report is not yet available, to be soundly based on the principle of student-centred Designing Degree so I am basing my answer on the outcome of last year’s learning and the use of learning outcomes. Programmes with ministerial conference in Leuven. This shows that: Integrated Transnational All this should sound very familiar to those of us who Mobility (DAAD, 2008). • the adoption of the three-cycle (bachelor, master experienced the reforms of UK higher education in the and doctoral) structure last 20 years and are now living with the consequences.
• the development of national qualifi cations Although the Bologna reforms are designed to make it frameworks (based on learning outcomes and student easier for academics and employers in one country to workload) linked to the overarching Framework for understand and recognise learning achieved in another, Qualifi cations of the EHEA, and of national quality increasing the mobility of Europe’s students remains assurance systems benchmarked against a common the most important, as yet unachieved, goal of the set of European Standards and Guidelines whole project. Mobility is to be the ‘hallmark’ of the EHEA; so the Leuven ministerial conference called upon • the use of recognition tools such as the European member countries to take steps not only to increase Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) mobility but to ensure that there is a better balance and the Diploma Supplement between incoming and outgoing students and greater are making national systems of higher education participation by under-represented groups. The target across Europe more compatible and comparable, for 2020 is for at least 20% of those graduating in the making it easier for students to have their mobility EHEA to have had a period of study or training abroad.
42 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk Creative Pedagogies
This is a particular challenge for a country like Britain, not This year sees the 20th anniversary of the European Society for just in terms of increasing outgoing student numbers (who the Study of English (ESSE), a network comprising most of currently amount to just over half the number of incoming the Bologna signatory countries and (one might have thought) Erasmus students), but also in terms of their demographic an ideal forum for promoting Erasmus exchanges involving profi le. According to a recent HEFCE study of the cohort of UK UK staff and students and for identifying potential partners students who began full-time fi rst degree courses in 2002-03 with whom to create high quality joint masters and doctoral and graduated within fi ve years, 4% undertook a period of programmes capable of competing for funding under the study abroad and 8% a work placement. Most of the former Erasmus Mundus scheme. were foreign language students and the vast majority of the Over the past two years the British Council (which administers the latter were studying business, science or engineering. Both UK Erasmus programme) has organised a series of joint events groups had different characteristics from their fellows. Study with the Higher Education Academy on the European Dimension. abroad students, for example, were typically female, young The UK Bologna Experts team hopes to follow this up by and less likely to come from an ethnic minority or from a low working with a number of Subject Centres to increase awareness participation neighbourhood or to have a declared disability; among academic staff and encourage them to think about the they were also more likely to be from a higher socio-economic implications of the Bologna reforms for learning and teaching at class, have a higher than average entry qualifi cation and be subject level, and about how they might give more students the studying at an institution with a high qualifi cation on entry. Not opportunity to enhance their personal development, academic surprisingly, students in both groups graduated with better achievements and career prospects through a period of study or degrees. Those who had undertaken placements abroad were training abroad. more likely to be employed six months after graduating, while Erasmus students were more likely to be engaged in further study. Both groups, however, were more likely to have higher than average salaries. Further information
Last year’s ministerial communiqué called for the creation of Offi cial Bologna Process: new opportunities for student mobility in each of the three www.ond.vlaanderen.be/hogeronderwijs/Bologna/ degree cycles, particularly through joint degrees and the European University Association: provision of ‘mobility windows’. The recent survey of UK www.eua.be/ universities by the UUK Europe Unit (due to report in January but, at the time of writing, still to appear) should reveal how Attainment in higher education: Erasmus and placement much progress there has been in the development of joint students (HEFCE, November 2009): degrees with European partners, one of the topics discussed www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2009/09_44/ at the meeting of the three Subject Centres in May 2006. UUK Europe Unit: Meanwhile, we do know that of the 116 Erasmus Mundus www.europeunit.ac.uk/home/ masters courses selected for funding next year by the European Commission, 12 are in the fi eld of languages, Erasmus Mundus programme: philological sciences and humanities but only two of these http://ec.europa.eu/education/external-relation- include a UK partner. programmes/doc72_en.htm
WordPlay • Issue 3 • April 2010 43 Student Perspective Meet our student Bloggers!
Six undergraduates have been blogging on the Subject Centre website about their experience of studying English at university: a roller-coaster ride of stimulating books and ideas, wacky lecturers, bad dietary habits, part-time work, all- night essay-writing, illegible essay feedback, daytime TV and money problems. Here are some highlights of their stories. You can read the unexpurgated blogs at www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/resources/studexp/blogs.php
Steph's blog invaluable to a student. My only qualm is that nature poetry is not really my thing. Poets of yore seemed to be able Steph is a second-year English Literature and to do it, but all I could come up with myself was a turtle Creative Writing student. She works part time in her swallowing a K-Mart bag. campus book store. We are having a bake sale to raise money for Haiti, which Untitled my housemates and I all plan to contribute to. It’s strange (18 January 2010) that we can fi nd the time in this house to bake so many cheesecakes and biscuits when we constantly bemoan the Midnight’s Children is the only course book I’ve managed lack of time we’ve been given for our essays, but I wouldn’t to steam through over the holidays. It reminded me a lot of have it any other way. On my 20th birthday I awoke to fi nd One Hundred Years of Solitude. I take a deep breath now an edible woman cake, Margaret Atwood style! But this when a student buys either book from the campus book time we know we have an actual cause, and I’m eager to store, trying to stop myself from issuing them with a terrible see what our capable minds will come up with. warning. In a moment of temporary insanity I also purchased David's blog Michael Cunningham’s The Hours in Oxfam. I don’t really have time to read it on top of everything else, but Nicole David is in the third year of his English Language degree. In his spare time he represents England Kidman just looked so lovely on the cover. I believe (hope) at karate. it may give me some kind of insight into Woolf for my next essay on Mrs Dalloway. Oh Come, All Ye Faithful (15 January 2010) Cereal and Surreal Seals First semester had ended and I returned home to the North (3 February 2010) East full of the best intentions of recharging my batteries I found out yesterday that I’d won the Alara Poetry and enjoying the festivities. Instead, I endured late nights Competition for January, which is always nice. My prize and early mornings working on two essays with a deadline is two boxes of muesli – and let me tell you, muesli is of 11 January. I created myself an effi cient timetable
44 WordPlayPlay • wwww.english.heacademy.ac.ukww.english.heacademy.ac.uk Student PerspectivePerspective
factoring in time to work on both essays, along with my underlined. Not only had I misspelled promenade, I’d used dissertation, and chill a bit with my family and friends. it incorrectly too. Dang. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the However, much like the A1 this winter, my timetable quickly difference between a traverse and a promenade stage now. became a slippery slope. Eventually I knuckled down to I got rip-roaringly drunk at the weekend, took all my money a few weeks of 12-hour per day shifts, rejecting friends’ out and left it somewhere in the centre of Birmingham. invitations out and having self-imposed bans from a certain Epic fail. I remember purchasing a chicken burger at 1am social networking site, all culminating in a timely hand-in and paying for the taxi home but have no recollection of last Monday. Luckily, this time I avoided the night-before- where this money has gotten too. hand-in red mist of doom. But it’s out there…
Hmmm, Monday I love thee! Song 2 (1 February2010) (25 January 2010) I spend so much time at work and so little time at Uni these My main concern over the past two weeks has been days that it’s a struggle to write about study. All I really continuing work on my dissertation. I am investigating do constructively is continue reading Great Expectations, the accents of regional television news presenters, with which I really love and have read before. Between the particular focus on BBC Look North and ITV Tyne Tees. overtime, my usual shift and trudging to and from the offi ce Today I am to submit 2000 words of my dissertation for I feel less and less like a student. feedback, but not assessment. Writing the 2000 words has helped overcome the ever-occurring slippery slope of “let’s make 350 pages of notes but not make any written Hope's blog contribution to my essay” and has forced me to articulate Hope is in the second term of her degree course on my ‘Background’ and ‘Data and Method’ sections into a English Literature and Journalism. grammatically complete and coherent set of sentences. Which is nice. My week. A summary. (24 January 2010)
Hannah's blog Monday: Poetry and Society – Our wonderful lecturer Hannah is in the fi rst year of her degree in English and started the workshop with a long talk about the assignment Creative Writing. we did before the holidays; we had to write 1500 words about three different poems (500 words each). He started Early Morning Salutations the talk with ‘You should know I have failed a third of you’, (18 January 2010) and went on to mention we would not get the results until next week as they were still in the process of being double I’m nervous and excited to be going back for semester two! marked. Now, I don’t mind an overall talk about the results Other than our reading list we had no written work for the of an assignment and what could have been done better holidays so I am looking forward to the mental stimuli. I generally, however, I really think it should be given on haven’t a clue what our Drama Semester Two module will the day you get your marks back because now we’ve all be like, it has a lot to live up to as Drama in Semester One been left to worry for a week over something we can do was superb. It’s silly but I repeatedly quote the play I wrote nothing about. for it half expecting people to recognise it. Thursday: Day off – shopping! It was surprisingly easy to fi nd my friend a full Lady Gaga style outfi t on the Back for Good? high street. (26 January 2010) Friday: Introduction to the Novel – It was our fi rst workshop It has been amazing seeing the result of Semester One's on Great Expectations. We focused on the women in the st slog, two 1 s and a trio of 2.1’s under my belt and still a novel and placed them into Patricia Ingham’s ‘Categories mark to go. I am fl oating through the rest of this evening of Dicken’s Women’. For example, Miss Havisham is on a great big cloud of GO ME! The most horrifying part ‘Excessive’ – she conforms to social expectations but was looking at my drama justifi cation and seeing one word does it in a very extreme way. Personally I love any talk
WordPlayPlay • IssueIssue 3 • April 2010 45 Student Perspective
of woman’s role in society and how it is depicted within As for language, my History of English tutor is a genius in both literature and the media – I’m sure my family and my my opinion. He was the reason I took the course in the fi rst boyfriend are fed up of me seeing some advert, place. For goodness sake, he can make the history of the TV programme, fi lm, reading some book, etc and dictionary interesting. completely over analysing how the women are depicted. So I found these categories really useful and insightful – if I do my essay on Dickens I will probably use them as Matt's blog my starting point. Incidentally, Dickens’ ideal women were Matt is a fi rst-year studying English and Drama. In effi cient but submissive, something which is reinforced his spare time, he works as a DJ at his university’s through the novel. As somebody in my class put it ‘What community radio station. a knob!’. And so we return… (18 January 2010) Susan's blog I was fairly pleased with my refl ective commentary for Susan is a fi rst-year mature student in English drama and essay on the gothic novel which both received Literature and Language. high 2.1s. The only problem I now have is how do I improve on my grades? Lecturer feedback is certainly helpful but Catching Up lecturer handwriting is another matter entirely! Having (14 January 2010) appalling handwriting myself I can certainly sympathise but Being in the position I am in, the university experience I just wish more of my feedback was word processed or at hasn’t been exactly what it is for others; as in I don’t go least explained to me in person; after all, I’m a student not partying and am lucky to have time for the odd coffee. a cryptographer. I am always so conscious of the fact that I should be at home picking up my younger daughter from my parents, Kicks for free? who are doing me a big favour!! (28 January 2010)
My student loan has still not arrived and I’ve completely belated intro and feeling jittery eaten away my precious savings. I seem to spend an (23 January 2010) inordinate amount of money on such mundane, but My tutor is rather strict, but she is excellent. I got my fi rst necessary past times as say, eating or paying rent. To top essay back and to be fair, since the feedback I have been it all off, my laptop has decided to pack up, so rather than feeling jittery and rather disappointed. My mark makes it writing this from the comfort of my bedroom I have been look like I did not make an effort, but my worry is I really forced to brave the library with its slow computers and did!! Still, I can defi nitely see where I went wrong. I chose dodgy air-con. Wuthering Heights, which was a bit of a mistake, but I Having recently purchased all 300 odd episodes of ER I spent a whole week trying to decide and in the end my have discovered a new way to motivate my learning; one nerves got the better of me and I chose the easy option. episode for one hour of work. It’s a simple system but at Then I just did not plan it very well and in the end just least I’m getting my reading done. This week alone I’ve went to writing it. In the end I feel I just got too over the top had to read and annotate the whole of Dracula, O Go My about it, so I was never going to be able to get it right. Am Man, 10 poems and two online journals and in the process going to go to academic guidance for the next one. I just I’ve got through a whole series of ER! Who knows, by the feel rather like a lost child at the moment with this subject end of my degree I may know as much about emergency and think I need direction. Thank God marks don’t count medicine as I do about semantic fi elds and Walt Whitman! this year!!
46 WordPlayPlay • wwww.english.heacademy.ac.ukww.english.heacademy.ac.uk Sounding it out: the performance of English 6 November 2009
The transition from English student to PhD researcher to English lecturer can seem somewhat English Subject Centre paradoxical: being good at solitary reading and writing (and research in libraries) brings the reward of having to perform in front of large audiences. Unsurprisingly, lecturing often seems an intimidating prospect, and when poetry or prose has to be read out (in seminar or lecture) it’s often speedily dispatched, if not actually gabbled. It was to address this situation that this highly successful event, the brainchild of Jane Mansfi eld (Leeds Metropolitan), was organised. The day provided delegates, both lecturers and postgraduates, with a clear sense of the importance of speech and performance to the teaching of English. Also, crucially, it armed us all with an exciting range of tips and techniques. The three workshop sessions were not without their challenges: in the words of one delegate, they made us ‘scared in a safe way’.
The fi rst speaker, the voice coach Jane Oakshott (www.oakshott.co.uk), swiftly got everybody moving around and making funny noises; more importantly, she also improved everyone’s posture, breathing and speaking voice in a very short space of time, using exercises designed to develop vowels and consonants separately. David Fuller (Durham) led a stimulating master class on reading poetry aloud, beginning with a discussion of poets’ comments on the topic (excerpted in a highly recommended handout: see http://tinyurl.com/yf9po92). The rest of the session focused on the reading aloud of two poems, one by Wallace Stevens and one by Marianne Moore. It was salutary to compare our attempts at performance in small groups with recordings made by the poets themselves (a bit of bravura knockabout in Moore’s case). Most of the afternoon was taken up by a workshop on Waiting for Godot led by Nick Monk and Jonny Heron from the CAPITAL Centre at the University of Warwick. Nick and Jonny led us through a kaleidoscope of drama-based techniques for getting to grips with Beckett’s text – according to one delegate, ‘one of the best examples of kinaesthetic teaching that I have seen’. A wide-ranging discussion with all four presenters completed the day.
The sections on the event feedback forms headed ‘Is there anything you will do or change as a result of attending this event?’ made interesting reading. Answers ranged from ‘I will … make sure I do my vocal exercises’ and ‘I will think more about interactive/kinetic approaches to English Literature’ to ‘[I will] read more modernist poetry’ and ‘I will love every word I speak’. Everybody was, as another delegate observed, ‘pushed out of their comfort zone’: the result was revelatory.
Jonathan Gibson, English Subject Centre
More details and information about presentations can be viewed on our website in the Events Archive.
Starting an English Literature Degree by Andrew Green PalgravePalg Macmillan is delighted to announce the publication of Starting an English Literature DDegree,eg by Andrew Green, co-published with the English Subject Centre. AAndrewnd Green provides students with the information and advice they need to ensure a stand-out apapplicationp to study at degree level at a time when competition is harder than ever. He off ers essential gguidanceui on how to refi ne the skills needed for this degree, such as preparing for lectures, seminars aandnd tutorials, applying literary theory, researching online, becoming a better writer, referencing an eessayss and avoiding plagiarism, and interpreting reading lists and developing reading skills.
‘‘ThTh is unusual, detailed, and thought-provoking book will help students of English Literature come to grips wwith their studies and take a share of responsibility for their own learning. It thus has the potential to mmake a major impact on the way English is studied.’ PProfessor Ben Knights, Director, English Subject Centre
WordPlay • Issue 3 • April 2010 47 Book Reviews
Teaching North American Environmental Literature edited by Laird Christensen, Mark C Long and Fred Waage (New York: MLA, 2008)
Twenty-three years ago, the Place-based approaches are still just as prevalent, but MLA published an ‘Options include explorations of toxic, ‘sacrifi cial’ landscapes like for Teaching’ title on Teaching Nevada (Glotfelty) and downtown LA (Bryson) as well as the Environmental Literature: pristine-ish Canadian Shield (Henderson). Interdisciplinary Materials, Methods, programmes including sustained fi eld study, such as the Summer Resources. Edited by Fred Environmental Writing Programme in Kentucky (Roorda) and Waage, who collaborated an Earthwatch project on Mexico’s Costa Alegre (Keir), arouse on the new volume, it was serious envy in this reader, and seem likely to have a far more a trail blazing publication enduring impact on students than courses limited to classrooms that had to argue for the and short fi eld trips. First prize for true grit, though, goes to very existence of the fi eld it Stacy Alaimo, charged with teaching green cultural studies in purported to describe. Aside the reddest of red states, in the belly of the Beast: ‘the North from an excursion into sci-fi , Texas metroplex’ (370). Dynamic and self-critical though they ‘environmental literature’ are, however, neither these accounts nor any of the other essays meant nature writing and engage with environmental education research more generally, regional literatures (American, which can make them seem a little naive in terms of pedagogical by default), and the key theory and methodology. For example, evidence for the pedagogical strategy was the use of fi eld trips considerably more effectiveness of a particular canon or programme is attested by demanding than a visit to the New Globe: one involved building a course evaluations and (assessed) journal entries submitted to sauna in the Minnesota wilderness, while another prescribed Jack the tutor, which hardly seem likely to yield reliable results. The London, Thomson, Pope and Wordsworth as prior reading for a bravest essay, by David Mazel, asks: ‘Do students who read and trek through the snows of Maine. write about green texts turn into more thoughtful and effective environmentalists than they might have been otherwise? I have The new anthology refl ects the confi dence, success and yet to see any empirical research (or even anecdotal evidence) diversifi cation of what is now called ‘ecocriticism’ throughout indicating that they do.’ (42) North America. Nature writing is still there, but is explored in relation to ‘East Asian Infl uence’ (Barnhill), for example, while Some of the essays amount to little more than lists of suggested ‘America’ has expanded to include Mexico (Marcone and Ybarra) reading; others are interesting but limited narratives of teaching and Canada (Banting, Bondar). The history of African-American experiences. The most valuable combine critical refl ection with relationships to the natural world, cruelly distorted by slavery, practical suggestions for teaching, such as Ursula Heise’s essay lynchings and migration to the urban North, is shown to have on ‘Teaching Ecocritical Theory’ and Anne Raine’s impressive generated powerful examples of complex pastoral (Myers), while account of ecocritical infl ections of such recalcitrant American Native American literature has been dragged out of the shadow Modernists as Gertrude Stein and Wallace Stevens. Besides of the Ecological Indian into the politicised ambit of environmental variations on the outdoor classroom, pedagogical innovations are justice (Adamson). New theoretical paradigms are represented limited to the use of electronic portfolios to produce multimedia beside multiculturalism and environmental justice: Catriona refl ections on environmental texts (Chandler) and student-led Mortimer-Sandilands’s ecofeminism seeks to supersede essentialist research inspired by Carson’s Silent Spring in the composition pieties, advocating ‘an act of reading in concert’ that ‘indicates classroom (Smith). So although the new MLA anthology includes that interpretation is about the cultivation of judgement in the some exemplary essays, and more generally testifi es to the company of others’ (62), while Glen Love argues that ecocriticism development of sophisticated environmental criticism and theory in the USA, it also unwittingly reveals that research into ecocritical ‘should now assume its place as part of the bridge between pedagogy remains essentially a hobby. science and the humanities and contribute powerfully to the continuing study of literature and human values’ (251) – the project Greg Garrard, the biologist EO Wilson has dubbed ‘consilience’. Bath Spa University
48 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk Book Reviews A History of English Literature 2nd edition Michael Alexander (Palgrave, 2000, 2007)
Michael Alexander has aspect is the further reading section at the end of each chapter, produced in A History of signposting the reader, or more presciently the student, to more English Literature a text information on the topic. that will and should endure The text also furnishes the reader with more than the usual for many generations. It is quotes from well thumbed writings but also extracts often an indispensable guide for overlooked passages, showing the willing reader how to look any Literature student who beyond the rhetoric that often befogs infamous texts. This is wishes to have a complete evidenced in the outstanding section on Shakespeare’s works and logical understanding and the intertextual interplay that Alexander unpacks. In his of the traditional canon. analysis of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a school pupil’s stalwart, By eschewing the defi nite he draws links with Prospero in The Tempest, the poetry of article in the title, Professor Walter Raleigh, and the esprit de corps that then beguiled Alexander does not wish the Elizabethan explorers and now informs the play's lasting to produce the conclusive resonance. Texts are placed not only in their chronological order version of the history, but but also contextualised within their literary tradition or cultural rather uses his exceptional history. Alexander does not critique the texts but rather entices knowledge to guide the the reader with enough information to pique their own criticism reader through a select history. The text maintains a well balanced and exegesis of the selected literature. and practical worth, without ever slipping into the mundane, or deviating into the fl ights of fancy of its author. Alexander follows This is not a book that highlights the dissident voices in Leavis’s tradition of English Literature and similar to The Great Literature, specifi cally in the short 20th century section, Tradition (Leavis 1948) is uncompromising, confi dent and decisive and the adherence to the conventional white male canon. in its inclusions and omissions. However, this is a far more modern However Alexander acknowledges and makes no apology for his text; Alexander does not concur with Leavis's view of the novel as populist decision to omit the minor in preference for the major moralised realism and is doing something more than “weeding the and notes the limitations in his criteria of selection. Otherwise, garden of literature for Cambridge students” (p307). Instead he the book is perfectly weighted not only in its content but also in equips both teacher and student with an indispensable handbook practical terms. It is comprehensive enough to be an invaluable to English Literature. resource and transportable enough to be treated as a working textbook, rather than a paper weight or desk ornament. My own Often witty, the text entertains and guides the serious student personal regret after reading the text is that I did not discover it of literature from the end of the fi rst millennium to the late 20th years ago, as an undergraduate. It serves as a useful manual for century, travelling at break neck pace over its thousand year producing an understanding of the engineering, construction and journey. At 484 pages, it manages to transcend what could design of literature. Allowing the reader to not only understand be a limited remit without deserting it entirely; it is both a the traditions of the past but also how they continue to shape careful index of key texts, and also remains rich, relevant and the present. contextualising. Professor Alexander’s linear A History of English Literature is never an exclusive world, but opens up a literary world that all are welcome to come and go from as they please: from the young scholar to the established pedagogue. The book has been designed to be read either as a complete story of English Literature, or it can be a handy reference book (facilitated by an exceptionally user friendly indexing system). It is initially segmented into fi ve parts: Medieval; Tudor and Stuart; Augustan and Romantic; Victorian Literature to 1880 and the Twentieth Century. These sections are split into smaller chapters that are punctuated by subsections relating to the key texts, authors and movements. The text resists the prosaic in any sense of the word and is careful to look not only at key works of prose, but also traces the simultaneous progression of verse. The author is also careful to differentiate between different styles of prose, such as the aestheticism of belles lettres, the triumph of the novel Natalie Clark and the emergence of literary criticism. Perhaps the most useful Liverpool John Moores University
WordPlay • Issue 3 • April 2010 49 Desert Island Texts
Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World One of Captain Scott’s party on the fateful 1912 expedition, Cherry-Garrard went on an expedition in their fi rst winter to Cape Crozier to collect the eggs of the Emperor penguin. At one point on the journey it’s so cold that the men’s teeth freeze and shatter when they open their mouths to speak: as Cherry-Garrard notes at one point, ‘Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised.’ A book to give perspective, wherever you’re travelling.
Alice Ferrebe is a Edwin Morgan, Collected Poems Senior Lecturer in English at Liverpool Our greatest living poet. I used to run a literary summer school in Edinburgh, and we had John Moores the privilege of having Edwin Morgan come through from Glasgow to read to us. Around 35 University, and author nationalities were represented among our students – every single one was rapt throughout, of Masculinity in Male- and The Loch Ness Monster’s Song brought the house down. Morgan is a realist, a romantic, Authored Fiction 1950- an experimenter, a master of traditional forms, and an inspirational translator. 2000: Keeping it Up (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Her research Tove Jansson, The Summer Book focus is currently The most diffi cult choice I had to make here was which one of Jansson’s books to include – any of on the 1950s, and the many incarnations of the Moomins would have been wonderful to have, or The True Deceiver, she is writing Good Brave Causes, the or Fair Play: all of them incredibly spare and moving and wise. In the end, I settled on this one – Fifties volume of the probably the best book I’ve ever read about women, young and old – and a handbook for sanity, Edinburgh History of humour and emotional sustenance on even the tiniest of islands. Twentieth Century Literature in Britain (forthcoming, 2011). Elizabeth Taylor, The Sleeping Beauty Neglected marvels, Taylor’s novels, I think, and this is my favourite – for its evocative descriptions of small-town, seaside life in the Fifties, and the unexpected vehemence of feminist feeling in its macabre fairy-tale.
Charles Dickens, Bleak House I did this for A Level and, ironically for an archetypal Victorian novel, it was one of the fi rst books that made me understand literature as text: full of intricate patterns of meaning, shifting through time and in different contexts.
50 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk Desert Island Texts
Alice Ferrebe, who is registered in our Directory of Experience and Interests, shares her favourite books with WordPlay. Sign up today, at tinyurl.com/dayyrm, and your desert island texts could be featured too.
Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim My thesis began life as no more than an elaborate feminist theoretical ruse to justify the fact that I fi nd this book incredibly funny and joyous. Rarely do I prepare a lecture without Jim’s ‘Merrie England’ experience running through my mind: a benchmark of failure for academics everywhere.
John Fowles, The Magus This is turning into a confessional, and most probably a professional suicide. Another very guilty pleasure: adolescent, pretentious, preposterous, misogynist and yet… I read it over and over again. One of my mum’s favourites, too, so I can blame her for this. A book to make an isolated island seem infi nitely preferable to Phraxos and the weird ministrations of the mysterious Conchis.
Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting I lived in Japan for a year, and didn’t have a large number of books, beyond Japanese/English dictionaries, with me. A friend sent this out to me – that silver-covered copy with the skulls and ‘Deserves to sell more copies than the Bible’ on its front – and I read it over and over again, trying to discern how Welsh always makes it immediately apparent who is speaking at the start of every chapter. The energy and horror of this book makes me forgive him anything, even Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs.
AA Milne, Winnie the Pooh Parables of great expectations and tiny successes and failures – very English and very profound. Plus I’ll always hear this in my dad’s voice – when I was fi ve or so he’d read this to me once he arrived home from work on a ridiculous yellow moped he’d bought to conserve family funds. Of course, I’ll need the EH Shepherd illustrations, nothing Disneyfi ed.
William Shakespeare, Complete Works A desert island cliché, but a necessary inclusion. I grew up in Stratford-upon-Avon, and until I left for university I thought all productions of Shakespeare looked like the RSC’s. The fi rst time I saw Romeo and Juliet, there was a Ferrari and a swimming pool on stage (hey, it was the Eighties). All the drama I’ll need.
WordPlay • Issue 3 • April 2010 51 Aidan Byrne teaches in the English and Media/ Cultural Studies departments at Wolverhampton The University. His PhD (2007) explored masculinity in 1930s Welsh novels and his research interests cover Last new technology, the 1930s and Welsh writing in English. His next paper is on constructions of national identity in Anne of Green Gables. He also blogs at Word plashingvole.blogspot.com
‘Do I dare disturb / the universe?’ asked Prufrock, his response of obedient worker drones ready for their square holes, I see it indicating a potential career in university management (‘In as a duty to promote the creative defamiliarisation available to a minute there is time / For decisions and revisions which a the committed reader and student. The concerns of Now are minute will reverse’). Yet even for those who prefer the seminar the concerns of Then: swine fl u is the plague which occasioned room, the question is ever more pertinent in the era of cuts, Bocaccio’s Decameron, The Faerie Queene prefi gures the instrumentalism and the reductive discourse of ‘skills’ and rhetoric of the War on Terror, poor Middlemarch tells us all we ‘employability’. need to know about hospital management and local politics – and if you fear the march of the Tories, A Child In Time charts the My colleagues and friends have committed themselves to a life of near future. the mind: they inhale and enthuse about ideas to all and sundry without concern about pay differentials and the rat race, yet I The pursuit of creative defamiliarisation is, taken seriously, a worry that the institutional soup in which we swim as intellectual frightening commitment. My students rarely experience true fl ies will drown the radical principles which underscore at least my education: the dizzying emotional and intellectual destabilisation own practice as a teacher. which comes with discovery. Instead, they’ve been subjected to what Baudrillard would call the ‘simulation’ (as opposed to I chose an English degree carelessly, with little thought of the symbolic) model: PowerPoint, ‘learning outcomes’ and a employment: the idea of being funded to read and talk certifi cate which encourage a consumerist experience. The result about books for three years was quite enough – I feel for my of this intellectual poverty on the part of our political leaders students, tyrannised by the vanishing job market and mocked is generations of students unaware of their own potential and by society at large for their artistic leanings. At the end of my that of literary study: one student informed me that she ‘doesn’t time, postgraduate work was suggested and the same principle really like reading’ and a new graduate said he could no longer applied. The idea that someone might actually pay me to carry read for pleasure because his analytical skills had stripped away on in the same vein was a revelation. all enjoyment – rather than being empowered by his acquisition Later, I gradually learned from my students that an English of independent, critical skills, he felt that literary praxis was degree could – should – be more than a personal indulgence: reductive and mechanical. The comment keeps coming back for many, literature offers liberation, a sense of radical to me as a mark of collective failure of nerve: rather than possibilities to be grasped fi rmly. This liberatory aspect to contributing to society by proclaiming the importance of critical literary studies is what I fear will be lost in the new climate. thinking, of joy and of wonder, we’re adapting our discourse and When Mandelson announces universities exist to ‘fi ll skills gaps practice to managerialism. in the economy’, I fear for those refugees from call-centres ‘Knowledge is power’ wrote Bacon – how wrong he was. In and factories who fi ll my classes looking for ‘something else’, our situation, knowledge has been reduced to ‘transferable whatever that may be: aspiration must now only be monetary. learning’, equipping obedient students for employment. As funding is cut and fees rise, such students will fall away, What’s been stripped away is the transformational quality but beyond the material, the discourse of education militates of English, of intellectual daring enabled by the discovery of against the pursuit of education for its own sake, or for aims non-linear, emotional, other ways of thinking the world. Of wider than that of the acquisition of employable skills. course, my jeremiad is premature: every seminar sees the My own tutors (a mix of crusty professors and nostalgic 1970s exchange of exciting ideas and we all see the pleasure which radicals) enjoyed uttering such pearls as ‘if you think you’ve accompanies discovery. Yet, as a reluctant witness to Ritzer’s ‘The understood it, you haven’t been listening’ and ‘if the world McDonaldization of the University’, I worry that the personal joys doesn’t seem like a different place when you leave class, I’ve and social potential available through literary study will once failed’. As a teenager, I thought these pensées were too well- again become the preserve of an élite group of students at an practised. As a teacher of mainly local, working-class students, élite group of institutions: education for the few and training for I recognise their wisdom. Within a managerial capitalist system the masses, Quixote in the quad, Business English for the rest. which seems to see universities as factories for the production For me, it’s back to Walden.
52 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk Creative Pedagogies Add a new ingredient to your teaching
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