WordPlay - Magazine of the English Subject Centre - Issue 3

The Magazine of the English Subject Centre

April 2010 • Issue 3

Undergraduate English: what the students say Morag Shiach: teaching as a shared practice From student to lecturer at UEA

The implied aesthetic of English teaching Transforming professional writing 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 find 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 (nicole.king@rhul.ac.uk).

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 esc@rhul.ac.uk The English Subject Centre Royal Holloway, University of London Egham TW20 0EX T 01784 443221 F 01784 470684 E esc@rhul.ac.uk www.english.heacademy.ac.uk

Is WordPlay What You Want?

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 Officer 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 04 IT Works!

36 Odour of Chrysanthemums: a text in process 42 Bologna: 10 years on

Features 06 Student Voices: a report on the experience of studying English in the UK 14 Teaching as a shared practice: an interview with Morag Shiach 18 The Anxiety of Influence: inside UEA’s Creative Writing MA 22 The Implied Aesthetic of English Teaching 26 Not more of the same: a modern twist on professional writing

Student Perspective 44 Meet our student Bloggers!

Book Reviews 48 Teaching North American Environmental Literature 49 A History of English Literature, 2nd edition

Endnotes 50 Desert Island Texts 52 The Last Word

Recycle when you have finished 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 hesitating. The clocks have moved forward, the daffodils have made it, but gloves, boots and woolly jumpers are still in rotation. However it is the economic climate of higher education that has our full attention. Many universities are facing funding cuts and recruitment freezes while voluntary redundancy packages are quietly proffered. Through it all the work of teaching and learning continues, as it must. At this time of year, amidst the regular teaching, there will be review sessions, dissertations to complete and, of course, the exam period is just around the corner.

So it is perhaps appropriate, given the season and the current fiscal realities, that with this issue of WordPlay we turn our attention to the student experience which we have chosen to approach from several different angles in each of our featured articles.

We think our lead article, ‘Student Voices,’ contains such important commentaries from students that we have given it extra space. It is an excerpt from a report the Subject Centre commissioned partially in response to requests we have received from many departments of English and Creative Writing for data that goes beyond the National Student Survey. Based on focus groups at six universities, led by John Hodgson (University of the West of England), the result is a rich compilation of student experience across a number of broad topics and themes such as assessment, feedback and progression. Students were also asked about their reading habits and were given the opportunity to comment on how gender shapes classroom discussion, given that only 28% of undergraduate English and Creative Writing students are male. One conclusion that Hodgson reaches is that all students interviewed, whether at pre- or post-92 universities, ‘encounter at university a practice of literary study which differs from their previous experience, which may not be made explicit, and which somehow has to be grasped.’

The implicit nature of English teaching is a theme picked up by our Director Ben Knights in his article ‘The Implied Aesthetic of English Teaching.’ He tackles the ‘tacit rules and hidden networks’ which many students struggle to access over the course of their degree while others, a minority, acquire it easily, becoming model students perhaps even future lecturers. Knights asserts that ‘the professional community favours argumentative suppleness, metaphorical play, the ability to engage in representations which […] are at least distantly commensurate with the complexity of the representations under study.’ He suggests that as a discipline community it is time to ‘make explicit and reflect upon our unacknowledged pedagogic aesthetic and its influence 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 issue of WordPlay (p. 44), readers might also be interested in 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

My interview with Morag Shiach, a Professor and Vice Principal at Queen Mary, University of London, concurs with the ideas and data presented by Knights and Hodgson. She is a firm believer in team-teaching and using technology to extend the opportunities we have to interact with our students. Given the many different ways of reading and the different types of texts we place in front of students, they can be understandably wrong-footed by the diverse reading skills we expect them to cultivate and deploy in any given term. She told me, ‘I think we underestimate the complexity of some of the core things that we ask students to do.’

Andrew Cowan, once a student on the University of East Anglia’s Creative Writing MA programme and now convener of its MA in Prose Fiction, provides a retrospective account of his student experience and how it affects the work he does at UEA as a member of staff. His article highlights some of the tensions between the craft and business side of Creative Writing that many MA programmes wrestle with. Christina Bunce, who is course leader for the MA in Professional Writing at University College Falmouth, profiles her programme in ‘Not more of the same: a modern twist on professional writing’ and describes how Falmouth is succeeding with its students by adopting a brazenly market-focused approach.

The student experience is captured elsewhere in WordPlay too – you may wish to read about the latest developments regarding the Bologna Process for making national systems of higher education across Europe more compatible (p. 42). Sean Matthews reports on his completed Subject Centre mini-project, a website that introduces genetic criticism using D H Lawrence’s ‘Odour of Chrysanthemums.’ In ‘Here when you want them’ Subject Centre Manager Jane Gawthrope crunches the numbers for all of you who are interested in what the statistics say about English and Creative Writing.

Finally, a serious question: is WordPlay what you want? We want to make sure we’re providing the features and articles that matter and which interest you. As a cost-saving measure we are also thinking about whether to continue printing WordPlay or simply providing it online and we would like to hear your opinion. Tell us what WordPlay means to you by completing a very short online survey available from our home page and you could win £50.

If you would like to contribute to WordPlay or have an idea for a topic you think we should cover, please get in touch. In the mean time, enjoy the issue.

Nicole King Editor

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 influencing 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 first 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 reflect on what the teaching role is. And of course, it will be a chance to meet other new graduate teachers, to ask difficult 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 fifth 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 fierce 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 d.philips@brighton.ac.uk 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!

Brett Lucas is the Website Developer and Learning Technologist at the English Subject Centre.

HumBox is a community-based collection of peer-reviewed teaching resources that are contributed by humanities lecturers for humanities lecturers to reuse free of charge.

All materials are deposited with a Creative Commons licence which means they may or may not be modified (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 specific 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 find, 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 Sixteen theatres that have all played a part in the development of theatre from classical to modern times (including the Globe and the Banqueting Hall) have been reconstructed in the virtual world Second Life as part of an Eduserv-funded 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 the project involved two pilots in English from York St John and Northumbria universities which explored the positive and occasional negative experiences of using virtual worlds in the classroom. You can read about the project on the Theatron 3 website (http://cms.cch.kcl.ac.uk/theatron/). JISC has also recently produced an excellent guide to getting started in virtual worlds which provides a useful complement to the Theatron resources. www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/documents/ gettingstartedsecondlife.aspx

What is a Tiny URL? The URLs that you see on this page, and throughout this issue, were generated by a free utility which takes long URLs and resizes them for you. Access the utility yourself at http://tinyurl.co.uk

... and Bobs • Where possible, I try to recommend software that is open-source, free of charge, copyright cleared, shareware or freeware • All URLs on this page were last accessed in March 2010 • You can access all the links on this page directly in the online version of WordPlay

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

John Hodgson taught English in secondary and higher education before gaining his doctorate at the University of the West of England for a longitudinal study of young people’s literacy practices. He now teaches Cultural Studies at UWE and runs a workshop in academic writing. He is Research Officer of the National Association for the Teaching of English (UK).

Early in 2009, the English Subject Centre commissioned a focus group study on the experience of studying English in UK higher education. Its purpose was to enrich both the Subject Centre’s and the discipline community's understanding of the ways in which students are currently experiencing English programmes at undergraduate level. The method was to run focus groups of undergraduate English students in six locations; these discussions, each of which took between an hour and 90 minutes, were recorded, transcribed and analysed.

Four main themes were proposed for the focus groups. It was anticipated that the first of these, The Experience of Male Students, would be addressed as a single topic within male only groups. Men comprise about 28% of undergraduate English students

06 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk

(see p.30) and the focus would be on their experience of studying what is frequently characterised as a “feminine” or “feminised” subject (Knights 2008).

The second theme, Reading Habits, would address lecturers’ concern about the extent of students’ knowledge, including the breadth of their reading, their capacity for close analysis, and their understanding of theoretical approaches to literature. The third theme, Assessment and Feedback, would address the aspect of university study about which, according to the National Student Survey (HEFCE 2009), students continue to be least satisfied. It was suggested that a fourth theme, Progression, would be studied implicitly rather than raised directly in the focus groups, but was important in gauging students’ sense of the meaning of their studies.

A number of institutions were identified as possible locations for the study, including Russell Group members and newer universities with a range of

Features institutional histories. Their names have been fictionalised 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 where the men who had taught him in the sixth form had chosen Longbourn: pre-92 Russell Group university Tom Brown's School Days as one of the A level set books! As a Netherfield: pre-92 Russell Group university male student, he thought he brought a "different perspective" to Pemberley: pre-92 university discussions at university; in a seminar on a Victorian novel, he had Lambton: post-92 university challenged the focus on feminist readings. However, he allowed Hunsford: post-92 university the legitimacy of such readings in a patriarchal world where "it's Ashworth: post-92 university college been masculine readings ever since day one".

Selecting male only groups proved much more difficult than had been expected and it was possible to interview only one all-male group, which comprised two students from an older university.

During each session, the researcher used a cue sheet to guide the conversation, while allowing the students to develop topics naturally.

The cue sheet was based upon the themes and questions proposed by the English Subject Centre, and structured the conversation in terms of the students’ experience of change. For example, they were asked about their personal reading during their pre-university years and while at university; their expectations of reading for their university course; the differences between their course reading before and at university; their previous knowledge of literary and cultural theory, and their present feelings about theoretical and critical reading. Questions about their current experience included the balance between primary and secondary reading; reading modalities, eg print or online; coping strategies; and so on.

It soon became clear that it was impossible to discuss any one of the themes without involving the others: for example, much reading was done in preparation for writing and assessment, and gendered perspectives on all these processes of study gradually emerged. Thus, the conversations did not all follow the same sequence, and some highlighted some aspects of the students’ experience more than others.

The full report of the study is available on the English Subject Centre’s website. This article summarises the findings and reports the words of the students. It is hoped that it will assist colleagues to develop university English in ways that will enhance the experience of tutors and students alike.

Mark and Alan echoed the comments of many of the female students about the low number of contact hours and the overall lack of social involvement in their university English course. Their response to this situation had a certain masculine tone. The assessment regime made essay writing (in Alan's words) “the only thing that really matters on the course”, and thus it was sensible to put effort into essays rather than into attending seminars. Alan enjoyed "creating new ideas … having critics to back it up, but not relying on someone else's argument too much”. It was necessary, of course, to have in mind the preferences of the tutor who would mark the essay. These students adopted a robust approach to the tutor-student relationship: it was up to the student to approach the tutor. The system worked, Alan thought, “so long as the student isn’t reticent … otherwise you get nothing”. Admittedly, the anonymous marking system meant that tutors often had little to say to students, as they had no real recollection of their work. Alan 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 have a little discussion about it”. He had been focused on the next essay: “Turnover is the key I guess”.

Mark and Alan presented a male response to a learning context that appeared feminine in several respects. Most of their fellow students were women; a good proportion of the tutors were female; the subject matter was often feminine or, indeed, feminist; and the overt pedagogic method was of inclusive, open discussion. The assessment regime, however, appeared to emphasise the importance of isolated, individual effort, and the tutor-student relationship was distant.

Seamus, at Pemberley University, was the only male in a focus group of six students, but he spoke confidently about his

WordPlay • Issue 3 • April 2010 07

Features experience of English. He was scornful of the attainments of the students with whom he had studied for the International Baccalaureate, and glad to be surrounded by "intelligent” people at university. He had a strong sense of what was “proper” to university study: a theoretical module in the first semester had included "proper stuff" like formalism, but more recent material (including a three-week unit on feminism) had been "lightweight". He wanted more opportunities for writing and a longer time to reflect on the topic. He seemed confident in his student identity and said that it had never occurred to him to question why he had chosen a subject studied predominantly by females. He did, however, feel that he couldn't argue as strongly at university as he liked to do, because female students appeared to feel threatened by such argument.

Robert and Luke, the male students interviewed (along with one female) at Netherfield, participated vigorously in university life – Robert as a student journalist and Luke in the drama society.

Robert saw the transition from school to university in terms of a leap into independence: he had been "spoon fed" at A Level, whereas at university "people expect you to read a lot more independently and by yourself". The students in this group appreciated their tutors’ support, although Robert complained about having to pay the same fees as did other students who, he claimed, received much more tuition. He took a robust attitude to study: "You've

analysis. The students had some complaint about the amount of writing expected, which they thought insufficient, but overall they appeared confident and comfortable within English studies.

John was a distinctive figure in the Lambton focus group in that he was male, a mature student, and taking a degree in English Language. He had the confidence of a man who had been employed for many years and "done other types of writing".

He defined himself as "well read" owing to his use of information books and 20 years’ experience of the internet. Rather like Alan at Longbourn, he saw his tutors as deliberately supporting his learning, giving an indication “of what you should be reading to get good grades in your assessments”. He gave the impression of enjoying a “hands-on“ mode of English study. He praised the tutors who had excited him by introducing him to methods of linguistic analysis, and he appreciated the use of group investigations and the “very varied” assessment programme.

He had found a module on language and gender chastening: “To think of the way that women had been portrayed not just in literature but in scientific writing in the seventeenth and eighteenth century”. He felt that “the lads in the class” would be thinking: “I don't want to be associated with this”.

The women in the focus groups expressed more awareness than did the men of the difference in numbers between the genders. They often welcomed the presence of boys: Antonia, of Pemberley,

Lynda said the girls would shy away from being labelled as feminists, while male students would try to accommodate a feminist position.

paid your money – if you don't do the work that's your problem”. Luke liked university tutors’ expectations of essays: “ They're looking for an argument … there is more focus on coming up with your own ideas about the text”. Robert was pleased that his module choice in the second year had enabled him to develop the reading tastes he had learned at A Level. He felt that his English course had benefited him by developing skills of debate and

08 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk

said that in her seminar group the boys usually came up with more interesting points and would "push the argument further". Bela liked the presence of boys in seminars with a feminist agenda – without them, she thought, “[the discussion] becomes a bit one-sided”.

Several of the female students were anxious about the feelings of males in such classes. In more than one group, women students expressed a sense of

embarrassment and reticence at being thought to be feminists. Lynda, in the second Pemberley group, said the girls would shy away from being labelled as feminists, while male students would try to accommodate a feminist position.

While several of the girls expressed concern for the feelings of boys who found themselves discussing feminist issues in a largely female group, they also admired the confidence and relaxed attitude that some of the boys demonstrated in class. As Holly (Netherfield) put it: “They are always laid back in the chair … and they’ll just throw something in at the end”. The girls found this particularly surprising given the belief (expressed in various ways) that English was a more natural subject for girls to study than for boys. "I mean this in the nicest way," said Becky (Pemberley), "but I think it takes a type of guy to do English". She thought he would be "not the most macho kind”.

Although several of the women regarded English as a natural subject for them to study, they were not necessarily confident or comfortable with either the learning situation or the subject matter. The former was often seen as private, individual and isolated. Caitlin, at Longbourn, spoke eloquently about the days during which she had nothing to do but write an essay, with no ready opportunity to communicate with others. "English is not a sociable subject," said Antonia in Pemberley. "You are there in your little bubble on your own, reading on your own." A sense of being "outside", not knowing how to engage with, the university and the curriculum was expressed in various ways. The girls in the second Netherfield group, for example, were surprised to hear that it was possible to change one's tutor.

Their brief discussion of this, in which each girl’s comment overlapped the others’, indicated their anxiety at having missed a foothold.

Despite, then, the preponderance of women students on university English courses, the majority of women tutors in several departments, and the traditional association of English studies with affect, interior states and issues of human relations (Knights 2008), the typical practice of English studies as experienced by most of the students could be defined as “masculine”. Diana at Hunsford was unusual in speaking directly of her response to poetry. To many of these students, university English meant, rather,

Features a difficult journey of mastering theory, managing their reading, and writing essays for high-stakes assessment within an environment that was felt to lack nurture.

Students’ experience of reading All the students agreed that the reading demands of university study were much greater than those they had experienced at A level. They had usually expected this to be the case, but had still found the difference stark: "You read as much here in a week as in a year at A level" was a typical comment. There was no negative response to this quantity of work per se: it was seen rather as an essential aspect of the independent study that the students expected and appreciated at this level.

For many of the students, a major problem of university life was to know what to read and how to manage their time. This was related to a larger issue: what kind of reading did the tutors want? Very few had had any significant encounter preuniversity with the literary and cultural theory that underpins contemporary literary study; they had learned instead to read whole literary texts in detail.

The problem of reading, then, was often a problem of balancing the time spent on primary and secondary texts.

Did the tutor prefer detailed, personal, textual comments, or a demonstration of theoretical grasp?

The problems presented by reading were thus connected to the problems presented by writing. As many students (from almost all institutions) pointed out, essay writing was by far the most important activity of their course, as the greater part of their assessment depended on it. The students’ reading was thus heavily influenced (as were their writing and wider study practices) by the assessment regime. Much of their reading was done in preparation for an essay. They would read, or felt that they should read, to prepare for seminars, but, as Alan put it, you didn't get a pat on the back for performance in seminars; credit was given for written expression in the form of an essay. Managing their reading in order to write a good essay submitted on time proved challenging to many. The solution chosen depended in part on the student’s interpretation of the tutor’s requirements.

In some cases, students clearly felt (an attitude doubtless ingrained by their A level studies) that the primary text was indeed primary, and they would give most time

to reading original literature. Where they felt the tutor or department emphasised the importance of theoretical orientations, students attempted to balance their reading of primary and secondary texts, and would give more time to researching and rehearsing theoretical positions. Their reading practices would thus be inflected by their sense of what was required to construct a good essay.

The students interviewed in the focus groups did not make much confession of shortcuts in their reading practices, although Isabel at Pemberley was surely not alone in using SparkNotes and other study guides. They usually felt that the primary text should be read first, with as much secondary reading as was appropriate or possible. They reported increased facility as the course progressed in selecting passages for comment and in grasping the arguments of secondary texts – processes of reading again contingent on the demands of essay writing. Self chosen participants in the focus groups, these were usually committed students who approached their work with a measure of energy and enthusiasm. They did, however, report occasions where they did not prepare for a seminar, and there were several accounts of painful classes where it was apparent that few of those present had done any preparatory reading or thinking.

They were also aware of the practices of those contemporaries who skimmed critical books and produced essays that were little more than a patchwork of undigested secondary reading.

Writing, assessment and feedback The assessed essay is an enormously significant factor in the experience of undergraduate students of English, as the words of Mark, Alan, Caitlin, Antonia and others suggest. The importance of nearly every essay in determining the final degree class (symbolised by the ritual aspect of submission, and the long delay in returning the work to the student) affected every aspect of study.

The students reflected on this mode of study in various ways. Several compared the experience of English students with those taking science or medicine, who were seen as enjoying more collaborative and companionable study time. Others mentioned their dissatisfaction with the relatively low number of student/ tutor contact hours they experienced

when compared with students in other disciplines. This complaint often went with an observation that they appeared to be paying the same fees for much less attention and involvement.

A related and frequent comment was that too little written work was expected, especially as everything submitted counted towards their final assessment. Students compared the A level regime of relatively frequent essays, formatively assessed, with the university regime of a few long essays, most or all of which were assessed as part of the coursework to the degree. Some complained that assessment dates were not always staggered, so that two or more essays (for different modules) might be required to be submitted simultaneously.

Some claimed that assignment titles were often announced only a few weeks before the hand in date, so that a great deal of reading and writing had to be done in a relatively short time. This led to considerable pressure on library resources.

Students commented on a "feast or famine” pattern where no written work would be required for several weeks and then two or more essays might have to be written simultaneously.

Although these concerns may have arisen partly because of insufficient planning or effort on the part of individual students, the frequency of these comments suggests a structural problem.

The form of writing most often undertaken by students of English Literature was the discursive essay. No Literature student mentioned other forms, such as imaginative or recreative writing based on their literary studies.

However, students taking

WordPlay • Issue 3 • April 2010 09

Features courses in English Language and Creative Writing had opportunities for engagement with language that involved the production of original texts as well as of critical essays. Such texts sometimes received feedback and evaluation from their peers as well as from the tutor. It appeared to students in one department at least that an implicit hierarchy of value existed in the department whereby Creative Writing did not gain the legitimacy of the critical literary essay.

There was a good deal of feeling amongst most of the students that the mark given for an essay depended on the subjective opinion of the tutor, and no one indicated awareness of any system of moderation or collaborative assessment (except in the case of the peer assessment of Creative Writing and Language work). Opinion varied regarding the quality of written feedback. Students at one institution regarded most of their feedback as summative, while those at another found tutorial comment was helpful in

As many students (from almost all institutions) pointed out, essay writing was by far the most important activity of their course, as the greater part of their assessment depended on it.

The predominant mode of writing for the students in this study was, then, the critical essay: they would write perhaps two or three a term, most if not all of which would be assessed towards their degree result. All departments also offered students the opportunity to write “non-assessed” essays, especially in the first year. Practice here varied widely, some institutions placing more emphasis on this than others. Where “non-assessed” essays were in fact given formative comment, and the writer invited to meet with the tutor to discuss these, the students valued the opportunity more than in those departments where the initiative was left to the student and the staff merely offered a notional opportunity for such a formative work.

Students in some institutions felt that the system of anonymous marking, among other distancing factors, prevented their tutors from even recognising them as the authors of their essays; consequently, spoken feedback was unsatisfactory.

Generally, students accepted without much demur the assessments and feedback comments given by their tutors, but a number of concerns arose. In one of the older universities, students felt that, no matter how hard they tried to improve, their essays were unlikely to break the 70% barrier and would remain classified as 2.1, a degree class which most of the students expected to gain.

10 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk

preparing for their next assignment.

Some students felt that feedback was not as helpful as it might have been, because they often could not translate tutors’ comments into practical action.

Almost all students agreed that the long period between submitting an essay and receiving feedback limited the usefulness of the comments, especially (as was often the case) if the student had moved to a different module with a different tutor.

Students’ sense of progression All the students agreed that the transition from their pre-university studies to their degree courses had been a marked progression. In nearly every focus group, the students described this in terms of moving from "ticking boxes" to more demanding but less clearly defined objectives summarised by Caitlin (Longbourn) as “not just proving you can do things”. In many cases, this was a difficult transition. Most students felt they had not been prepared in school or college for the amount or kind of reading they had to do at university. What Chris (Netherfield) called the "confined" A level course involved the lengthy study of a small number of texts, with little secondary reading. University demanded, in Alan of Longbourn’s phrase, “a prodigious amount of reading, and an understanding of literary and cultural theory”.

Many of the students felt that, while they were glad to have transcended the “tickbox”, assessment objective-led approach of their previous studies, they would have appreciated more help in orientating themselves to university English. Jessica (Longbourn) suggested that it would have been helpful if the reading list she had been given before coming to university had borne some relation to the work she had done in the first term. Looking back, Martine, a third-year student at Netherfield, said that the difficulty of transition was “trying to understand what [the tutors] are looking for”.

Some universities eased the transition by offering modules and/or seminar arrangements that recognised the need to bridge the gap between students’ previous experience of English studies and the concepts and approaches required at degree level. Netherfield, for example, provided general seminars throughout the first year with a tutor to whom students could bring issues for clarification. Students attending these seminars wrote "practice" essays that were marked by the seminar tutor. Pauline found these "really useful for the feedback on essay structure and [an indication of] the amount of research needed". Elaine, of Hunsford, valued being led "step by step" in first-year seminars. Ashworth gave all students an introductory module on language which introduced them to certain key concepts. The first-year short story module was taught in three-hour sessions involving a lecture, discussion and other activities which had helped to create a feeling of mutual support. The online discussion forum at this university seemed a successful way for students to discuss problems with each other and with their tutor.

One of the reasons for the prolonged dip in many students’ sense of progression, which lasted, in some cases, to the beginning of the third year, appeared to be the relatively small amount of writing – especially formative, experimental writing – required in many of the courses. Infrequent writing restricted opportunities for dialogue between student and tutor. This was compounded by the assessment regime.

Most of the essays written were formally assessed towards the final mark of the course, and students’ comments revealed that they regarded their essays less as a means of learning than as submissions

Features for summative assessment. Elaine felt so judged by the process that she would not read the tutor’s comments until she had assimilated her mark.

Some students spoke with appreciation of the wider choice of modules that was usually available during the second year of the course, and the opportunities these offered to play upon and develop their previous reading. The thirdyear dissertation was more frequently mentioned in terms of progression. Lesley, at Pemberley, appreciated the way in which her tutor had worked with her on her dissertation proposal: she had gained, she said, a "sense of progression and being able to improve".

Students who were following Language or Creative Writing courses usually expressed a sense of enjoyment and progression. Isabel, at Pemberley, said that she had not really enjoyed the course before taking a Creative Writing module in the second year. John, at Lambton, expressed amazement at “the capacity I’ve learnt to look at language in use”. It seems, from this small sample of student experience, that a well-framed language course or module can help students gain a method of critical literacy and confidence in reading in unfamiliar ways. Peerassessment was also a feature of Language and Creative Writing courses that Chris (Netherfield) and John (Lambton) appreciated: “instant feedback each week”, as John put it.

Despite their reservations, nearly all the students expressed appreciation, in various terms, of their university English courses. Some, like Robert of Netherfield, spoke of developing “debating, analytical skills”, while Antonia (Pemberley) felt that she now had a more distinctive written voice. Many students said they appreciated (in Elaine of Hunsford’s words) “reading books that I’d never have dreamt of reading”. Caitlin of Longbourn and Luke of Netherfield spoke of cultural insight: literature (in Luke’s words) “reflects the time it was written and people’s ideas around that time”. Holly, also of Netherfield, liked the way her studies intertwined literature with art, history, film and popular forms such as comics and graphic novels. John (Lambton) and Diana (Hunsford) spoke of enthusiastic tutors who had illuminated their language and literature studies.

Conclusion: improving the student experience The six departments demonstrated a range of institutional cultures, and student experiences of university English were accordingly diverse. One of the intriguing and heartening aspects of the study was, in fact, the differences in pleasure and satisfaction that students felt in their studies, depending on the curriculum they were following and a range of subtle but important variations in the university and department culture. It is apparent that changes in these cultures can make a difference to the experience of students, and thus to the increased success of the institution in social, cultural and economic terms.

It was noted in the section above on Gender and University English that, despite the far greater numbers of female than male students in English departments (and, in some departments, a preponderance also of female tutors), the male students sometimes appeared more comfortable with their English studies than their female contemporaries.

They were more likely to insist on the student’s responsibility to find help where needed and to regard the solitary writing of essays as the only aspect of the course that really mattered. Many of the female students expressed some reservations about the process of learning and assessment, suggesting that studying English at university lacked nurture in certain respects. The observations and recommendations that follow may, then, be seen as suggesting ways in which the experience of studying what is often seen as a feminine subject may indeed embody “feminine” characteristics and values that would benefit not only female but also male students.

Many students arrive at university to read English after having completed a twoyear course in A Level English Literature.

A Level syllabi have changed significantly from 2008/09, and the transition may become easier over the coming years.

The tradition of A Level English Literature, however, involves the intensive study of a small number of texts to which students are expected to give "personal" responses with little secondary reading. Many, indeed, will have read little or no critical argument before arriving at university. Some students (more usually, it appears, from the pre-

92 universities) will have supplemented their A Level texts with a considerable amount of self-directed reading in classical and modern literature, with an eye to impressing the university interviewer.

Others, many of whom will be found in the post-92 universities, will be less invested in literary capital. All students, however, will encounter at university a practice of literary study which differs from their previous experience, which may not be made explicit, and which has somehow to be grasped. Alison, at Netherfield, spoke of “floating along and hoping you'll have an epiphany or something”.

All departments aided the transition by offering introductory modules, some of which were very well regarded by students.

It may be that an explanatory focus in the early weeks of the first year on the underlying philosophy of HE English study would help students make the changes in their mind-set necessary to understand the discipline they are engaged in (Snapper 2009:202). The rationale and method of post-structural and discourse analysis remain for some, it would seem, as opaque as did the rationale and method of practical criticism for an earlier generation.

Part of the difficulty of transition, for many of the students, was the limited number of opportunities offered for formative writing.

Recognising the crucial market value of their coursework essays, many or most of which would be assessed towards their course total, students tried to discover what their tutors wanted, and to produce it in their essays.

Several students said they would welcome writing tasks with more formative (rather than merely summative) assessment, to help them develop

WordPlay • Issue 3 • April 2010 11

Features (in Tessa’s words) “a system in our mind”.

Students at Netherfield especially valued such “practice” essay assignments, and, in at least two of the universities, students valued online written discussion as a means of communication with each other and with their tutors. Research repeatedly associates student success with an emphasis on formative assessment in the early weeks of the first year (Yorke & Longden 2007).

A feeling expressed to a greater or lesser extent by students in most of the focus groups – with the notable exception of Ashworth – was the private and solitary

were prepared for the occasion and the tutors struggled to maintain a dialogue.

The students did not, however, suggest a reduction in the provision of seminars.

They were realistic about the difficulty of increasing opportunities for individual feedback, and regarded seminars as potentially valuable learning opportunities.

Most of the students interviewed were following a degree course in English Literature drawn from a literary canon with options (depending on the department) including some study of popular culture and Creative Writing.

All students, however, will encounter at university a practice of literary study which differs from their previous experience, which may not be made explicit, and which has somehow to be grasped.

aspect of much of their study of English.

They felt that, unlike their imagined contemporaries taking degrees in science or medicine, they had few opportunities for communal or collaborative work and experience.

Essay writing was frequently discussed in terms of its assessment value rather than as a means of learning. A change in this culture, with more emphasis on low-stakes, collaborative, formative writing, for informal and peer assessment, would surely improve the experience of tutors as well as students.

Of other modes of learning, lectures attracted relatively little comment – which may reflect their importance in students’ academic experience. Some students wished they would focus more on textual issues, whereas others liked their contextualising function. Seminars gained mixed reviews. Several students valued them as opportunities to meet fellow students and to have a good discussion with an enthusiastic tutor. At the same time, even some of the motivated and committed students who made up the focus groups regarded seminars as dispensable. Attendance was not required in any effective manner and they rarely gained positive feedback to their contributions. At worst, seminars were painful affairs where only a few participants

12 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk

Some students, particularly those in the pre-92 universities, clearly gained pleasure from studying “difficult” texts from the English literary heritage and demonstrating in their essays their capacity for literary analysis and argument. The female mature students interviewed, who apparently expected a traditional course in English Literature, especially appreciated the expertise of the tutors in making accessible difficult texts and in assessing their essays. It was equally clear that students appreciated courses that extended literary study into non-traditional areas and enabled them to make connections with their personal reading. Such options as children's literature and media texts provided opportunities for students to make connections with, and draw upon, their wider literary and cultural experience.

At the same time, the study of literature (however defined), demonstrated and assessed by the critical essay, is not the only possible form of university English.

The students of English Language who were interviewed in the focus groups were clearly enthusiastic about opportunities for the study of linguistic structures, the development of English, and language in use. Language study appeared to offer students a fruitful combination of theory

and practice: through the direct study and production of language, they could explore and grasp its theoretical dimensions.

Students whose courses included writing assignments beyond the essay welcomed the opportunity for productive as well as critical writing. Unfortunately, several commented that Creative Writing modules appeared to be valued less highly than other modules in assessment terms (cf the student comments recorded by May (2008)), and it was more difficult to do well. Within a literary paradigm, there is nevertheless a strong tradition of alternatives to critical writing, exemplified most recently by Knights and ThurgarDawson's (2006) work on creative responses to texts. Many students clearly gain satisfaction from engagement in literary production as well as in other forms and genres. Increasingly this will become multimodal, as upcoming students 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 nature of production in new media.

The full study is available at www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/ explore/resources/studexp/index.php

References HEFCE (2009) National Student Survey www.hefce.ac.uk/learning/nss/ data/2009 Knights, B (Ed.) (2008) Masculinities in Text and Teaching. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Knights, B & Thurgar-Dawson, C (2006) Active reading: transformative writing in literary studies. London: Continuum.

May, S (2008) ‘Investigating Creative Writing: student perspectives.’

English Subject Centre Newsletter 14.

Snapper, G (2009) ‘Beyond English Literature A Level: The Silence of the Seminar?’ English in Education 43 (3).

Yorke, M and Longden, B (2007) The first year experience of higher education in the UK: Report on Phase 1 of a project funded by the Higher Education Academy.

York: Higher Education Academy.

Staying the Course The Experiences of Disabled Students of English and Creative Writing This summarises the findings of the first 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 first event of the Northwest English and Linguistics Pedagogy 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 Huddersfield 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!).

English Subject Centre

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 five 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 briefly 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 offices in the Administrative wing of the university.

Professor Morag Shiach is warm and welcoming. She’s agreed to the interview at relatively short notice given what I imagine is her very full diary and she seems genuinely pleased to answer my questions and think back on a successful career that is far from over. Our conversation is punctuated by laughter occasioned by Shiach’s wry humour while her fiercely held beliefs about teaching 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 Teaching and Learning in 2005. Her CV reveals that in her studies and subsequent research she has worked across ‘English’ doing a great deal of what is gathered under its broad umbrella, as the titles of her twenty-five plus articles and three of her six books indicate: Discourse on Popular Culture: Class, Gender and History 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 British Literature and Culture, 1890-1930 (Cambridge University Press, 2004).

Beginnings After planning to study English Shiach did her first degree in Drama and Philosophy. She switched, she said, because although it has changed completely now, ‘in the late seventies English at Glasgow was a rather unexciting department. Drama was completely the opposite, a new discipline, hugely engaged and very keen to map this new area. And of course, it had within it film, cultural theory and that sort of thing.’ For her MA Shiach went to McGill University in Montreal and did her degree in Communications, because she wanted ‘to go to North America and do cultural theory.’ Finally, she returned to the UK to do her PhD with Raymond Williams at Cambridge and ‘ended up in English because he was in English, but the research focus was

14 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk

much more cultural theory and cultural history. I think that’s quite consistent in terms of a project which looks at the relationship between cultural identities and history. I think everything I’ve done has been doing that. Sometimes it’s modernism, at one stage it was Cixous. Even though I was moving from discipline to discipline, I was still doing the same re-inventing in different contexts.’

There is nothing predictable about what people want to do with their lives after graduation and we should prepare them for whatever that is It was when she was at Glasgow that Shiach found herself drawn to the life of the mind. ‘It was a very exciting time! There was a 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 the best way to sustain that was to be an academic. Also I liked teaching which I didn’t have a chance to find out until I was a PhD student. It was great, at Cambridge at the time, there was a new paper (Cambridge-speak for module) which was called ‘The Literary Representation of Women’ which sounds very stuffy now, but you know it was a big deal on the Cambridge curriculum that this existed (laughter). When I arrived, Lisa Jardine, who happened to be at the same college, she just got me involved in the teaching. ‘The Literary Representation of Women’ was about designing a curriculum and trying to teach something really new, and running seminars which actually the English Faculty there would not run – they only had lectures or supervisions, they didn’t have seminars. The whole way we were teaching was more collective and it was exciting.’

Features A philosophy of teaching Cambridge was formative for Shiach both in terms of her research under Williams’ direction and for the intense work she did with Lisa Jardine and others ‘developing models for teaching as a team, not teaching individually but teaching collectively.’ The teaching partnership with Jardine continued at Queen Mary and their shared classroom was a space of experimentation and innovation ‘the two of us being in the room all the time, teaching a big group, breaking them up, getting them to do projects and group work and learning logs and presentations’ were just some of what they tried. Their success can be measured in part by the fact that team-teaching is now the commonest model of teaching within the QMUL English Department and there are very few people who don’t do it. ‘From my point of view, thinking of teaching as a shared practice and as a public practice rather than relying on the kind of intimate privacy of other modes of teaching was very enabling and it made me clear that that’s what I was passionate about in terms of teaching. It was what it could do as a public activity not as models of intimacy and patronage and private teaching – which don’t appeal to me as a particularly good models of learning.’ In describing what she values in the classroom Shiach introduces the notion of an explicit ethics of teaching. These are values that developed over time and as a result of her early opportunities as a postgraduate student to team teach. The work she did with Jardine modelled a style of teaching that reflects, among other things, the best bits of feminism as a political apparatus: communal learning, and flat hierarchies.

Structured Learning with VLEs In the contemporary moment, Shiach is very keen on the power of virtual learning environments (VLEs) to enhance the interaction between lecturers and their students. She talked about the scaffolding that lecturers can provide on a VLE to help to make explicit some of the more opaque aspects of studying English: ‘If you’re only seeing them in one module for a defined number of hours how do you help them outside that period? You can say, “Off you go and read,” but actually that’s not a simple thing to ask. There are many different ways of reading and I think we underestimate the complexity of some of the core things that we ask students to

do. We know what we mean. So if we say “read a poem” we don’t mean pass your eye over it, we mean engage with it for a substantial period of time so that it gives up meaning to you! That’s what we mean

students do after they leave. I don’t think we used to think that, I don’t think that we are as uncomfortable about conversations with students about their future as we used to be and maybe we’ve learned that

thinking of teaching as a shared practice and as a public practice was very enabling but we don’t say that. I do think we can use the fact that students can continue to access materials we’ve provided when they’re not physically with us to help.’

Shiach has found that VLEs are also very useful tools for enhancing the quality of interaction in seminars: ‘Let’s say you see them on a Tuesday morning and you won’t see them again until the following Tuesday it used to be we would say, “I’d like you all to read this for next week and if you could have a think about it…” and all that sort of stuff. Whereas now we can actually say, “If you go on the VLE you’ll see there are a series of prompt questions and when you’re done reading this you might want to make a few notes about that, and when you come back next week…” or “I’ll put you into little groups and I want you to have a discussion with each other and come back next week and tell me what the key issue is that you want to raise.” So you’ve actually extended the quality of the seminar, you’ve certainly improved the quality of the next seminar by doing the structured learning in between, but you’ve also given them something to engage with outside the classroom. So I think that is definitely something we should be doing.’

from Science. I remember people said quite exclusively in English “not our issue, we’re here to educate and challenge, we should actually be subverting people so they don’t want to go and fit in to happy places” and I’m quite sympathetic to that too. There is nothing predictable about what people want to do with their lives after graduation and we should prepare them for whatever that is.’

Leadership On the other hand, English has taught other disciplines quite a lot about research informed teaching, which is one reason, perhaps, that Vice-Principals of Teaching and Learning who hail from a literature background are no longer uncommon.

‘In a research intensive university to have a leadership of teaching and learning in someone who has lot of experience of research and teaching and their implications [is important]. Typically in an English department the people who are teaching are also the researchers. We have very few people who are not doing

Learning from the Sciences Shiach’s perspective as a Vice-Principal allows her to see how Humanities and Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects actually learn from each other. The notion of employability is an area where the Humanities have been and, to an extent still are, playing catch up with their peers. ‘I think that disciplines outside the humanities have tended to be more comfortable with the notion that a university education is part of a journey into some kind of subsequent professional identity. Humanities are now accepting that it is a reasonable conversation to have: we have some responsibility for what our

WordPlay • Issue 3 • April 2010 15

Features both of those, in the research-intensive universities. And that’s slightly different in medicine and dentistry –obviously you have certain separations because you have clinical practice as well as research as well a 44-week teaching year. So it’s quite hard to combine a full engagement in teaching with research. Some people do it in the Sciences, but it is quite hard.

So there is more of a tendency to have a slight pulling apart of people’s emphases.

I think for this institution and probably for some others as well, it is important that

quite a lot. Some people would say that they lose because you’ve always got this steep learning curve of somebody in their first year and everybody makes mistakes the first year they do it, obviously, but I think there are many advantages. Partly, it keeps everybody honest: because if you are going to be a head on a temporary basis you’ve got to recognise that anything you do, somebody else can do to you in the future! So I do actually think it creates a pretty healthy culture within academic departments when you have rotating

I think we underestimate the complexity of some of the core things that we ask students to do. teaching and learning is associated with the management of research and teaching in relationship to each other.’

It is starting to become clear to me that part of what has kept Shiach engaged and invigorated about intellectual life and life in a university are the different roles that she has taken on. She readily agrees with my assessment: ‘Definitely, absolutely true. Yes, I absolutely loved being a Head of School but I wouldn’t have wanted to do a second term though because the new challenges are the exciting things. I think that universities which run themselves on the basis of academics taking leadership in a rotating way gain

16 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk

heads. And it keeps you interested because you put a lot of work into it because you think, “well, I’ve got this period and I can do something now.” My own view is that having people, moving through, taking on roles, stepping into new roles actually outweigh the disadvantages.’

Since particular management and administrative roles are rarely why any of us become academics, I asked Shiach to talk a bit about her career trajectory and if she ever imagined she’d end up in the Principal’s Wing. ‘Did I imagine?

Probably not as I don’t think many of us were very good at career planning or imagining. So initially I did research because I wanted to continue thinking and writing about topics that interested me.

Having said that, if I look back all through my life I have always been someone that is engaged in whatever institution I’ve been part of. Certainly from a very early stage as young lecturer there were lots of things I didn’t like and was astonished to find that if you just sat there and thought about it put it on paper, and took it to a staff meeting everyone went “Oh, okay” because you had thought about it and they hadn’t, actually quite easy to get change in that context. When you think about who are the people who end up being vice chancellors and so on they have all been head

boy or head girl and captain of the hockey team and right enough I was head girl, I was captain of the hockey team. Research would say there is a pattern there! Not that I was thinking about that at 16, 17 or 18 but I think there is a route through where people tend to want to be involved.’

Mentorship Where English and the Humanities stand in terms of systems of mentorship has evolved since Shiach was a postgraduate student. She recalled Raymond Williams as ‘an extraordinary intellectual presence’ who was ‘a completely supportive and profoundly challenging supervisor’ because ‘the idea of saying you were finding it difficult to write something when he’d gone away and written two books since you’d last seen him – I mean you know!’ We both laugh and she continued, ‘I think both the importance and, I don’t know how to put this, everydayness doesn’t sound right, of intellectual life, but it’s something like that. The process of thinking hard about something and writing down what you learned seemed absolutely normal working with him and you didn’t agonise too much. It was an important thing to do but it wasn’t something to get precious about, it was just what you did and I found that very useful. He was very unprecious.’ Clearly, he was a pivotal figure in terms of Shiach’s intellectual development and I got the sense that the idea of being ‘unprecious’ was perhaps a trait Shiach already had in spades before arriving at Cambridge.

Certainly she is clear-eyed in her advice to early career lecturers: ‘Get yourself a mentor, whether formally or informally. I think some departments are much better than others at providing support for academics but… When I think back to my own experience I had absolutely no career advice or mentoring whatsoever.

Anything I had I went out and found.

Also, I had basically walked in [to my first job] with a background that was not traditionally English literature and I was given an absurd set of things to teach on the basis that I had had a perfectly standard education – it was just mad, now that I think back on it. Of course you do it because it is your first job and they say “jump” and you say “how high,” but it was a ridiculous to have done, actually. And nobody felt it was the job of a department to advise, mentor and support young staff. Now, again I think they’re beginning

Features to embed better systems but I still think they (young lecturers) get buffeted by all the different demands and there’s nobody really sitting down with them and saying, “Look, in five years time where do you want to be? Well, in that case do this project and not that project and actually do this one first, and take on this thing because that will take you where you need to go, here’s how to get your external profile…” I mean it is not an easy career to manage because there are so many different things you need to be doing.

I would say get a mentor who has run their career in such a way that you say to yourself, I’d like to be able to do that.’

At this point in the conversation the question of work-life balance came up.

Not surprisingly younger colleagues, particularly women, often ask Shiach about how one manages, how one juggles, well, everything. In a no-nonsense voice which made me sit up a bit straighter in my chair, Shiach had an answer at the ready: ‘It’s a challenge for everyone of course, but it’s still the case that it’s only the women who have the babies and the maternity leave and that’s a particular kind of issue … people who think they can continue to research having had a newborn, well, they haven’t had a newborn! … My advice is get good childcare – you can’t work in the study while caring for a child.’ In Shiach’s opinion the first years of an academic post are difficult and very full for every new lecturer, as the responsibilities of preparing lectures, adjusting to a new institution and publishing as much as one can, are particularly great. People who add to that load the responsibilities of caring, place themselves at a serious disadvantage. On the other hand, Shiach was equally wary of the workaholic tendencies: ‘There is a fluidity about the boundaries between work and the rest of life in our profession which sometimes means that people never do anything other than work and people can be overwhelmed by it because the work fills their lives completely, so I don’t think it is always a good thing that the boundaries are unclear.’ And that, as they say, was that.

Mentorship, yes, the importance of support from your institution, huge – all the time presuming a research-intensive institution that actually has the means and the ethos to support its staff – but lack of focus, lack of drive, lack of planning on the part of the individual? You won’t get far like that in this business, was Shiach’s underlying message.

STEM is not our future Shiach was frank and realistic but not grim as she reflected on the current state of affairs in terms of budget cuts to higher education that we are all facing and some of us are already experiencing, ‘One can’t help but notice that there is a very clear commitment by both parties to the idea that STEM are the subject areas that are vital to invest in to sustain the economy and that’s not what we do. I think it is likely that we will be seeing a declining unit of resource-- we will be teaching students with fewer staff and less resource than we have. I think you just have to grab that and decide not to be defeated by it, if you continue to care about the discipline which I think we all do. And there is clearly a demand for it. Despite students being told that STEM is their future they don’t seem to believe it, so there is a kind of interesting tension there where students feel they want to do Humanities. I don’t think we are going to have a shortage of students wishing to study English, I think the discipline is very viable. And there is a rhetorical battle that we simply haven’t won; STEM has won it, that it’s the “engine” of the economy,

more than any other even when I don’t know that I am going to is Virginia Woolf.

She seems to be… something about the formal issues that underpin the way that she presents an account of individuals and their relationships with history, keeps on being helpful to me in thinking about

Despite students being told that STEM is their future they don’t seem to believe it all those words that people use. English has to be careful, I think, that it doesn’t get sucked into a kind of defensive space that disconnects completely from ideas about how what we do connects to the rest of people’s lives and the broader social structures that we all inhabit. I don’t think we can afford to become the ‘hobby’ subject that people just do if they have leisure and time, and we have to defend the importance of the discipline intellectually and also its potential social impact and we’ve been a bit squeamish about doing that.’

As soon as I ask Shiach my final question, who her favourite author is, it sounds frivolous given the weighty issues we’ve been discussing. But if Shiach thinks so too, she graciously doesn’t let on. Indeed her response is as considered as all of her others have been. ‘Interesting question.

Favourite I am not sure I would sign up to. The author I find myself writing about

what I am thinking which is actually not the same thing as being favourite. So the one I can’t escape from is probably Woolf.’

Although she has named Woolf specifically, I would venture that Shiach is talking about the lure of Modernism as well. In her most recent book, The Cambridge Companion to The Modernist Novel (2007), the components of her passions as a scholar and an educator are on display. Shiach’s curiosity about the vast cultural, social and political shifts that define the long modernist period and how they affected individuals and institutions, including writers like Woolf, is presented in lucid and elegant prose that assumes a capable reader. In Shiach’s editorial voice I glimpse some of her classroom persona: an erudite guide with high expectations but also the ability to occupy the margins when necessary so that students themselves can make discoveries and chart a collective intellectual adventure alongside her.

WordPlay • Issue 3 • April 2010 17

Features

The Anxiety of Influence: 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.

Andrew Cowan is convener of the MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) at the University of East Anglia, and the author of four novels, including Pig and What I Know. His guidebook, The Art of Writing Fiction, will be published by Pearson Longman later this year.

Recently I spent an afternoon googling the names of University of East Anglia’s (UEA) Creative Writing alumni, searching for news of publications and prizes to advertise on our web pages, which is something I do fairly often – more than is healthy, I’m sure – and I say ‘advertise’ rather than ‘trumpet’ not just because I need to legitimise in some way to myself the hours I spend on such searches. Increasingly this seems a necessary part of my job. Given the competition – the many high calibre courses taught by high calibre writers elsewhere – UEA’s continuing ability to attract high calibre students may well depend on the continuing success of our graduates. This needs to be publicised. But first it needs to be researched.

My trainspotterish interest in the careers of our graduates is accompanied by several misgivings, however – for instance, that publication is not the only criterion of value for a Creative Writing MA, and that placing so much emphasis on our published alumni may translate as a promise to future students that we cannot fulfil, and that certain of our alumni may not welcome the association of their success with our course.

For many of our graduates, having completed an MA in Creative Writing at UEA is merely a matter of fact, neither something to boast about nor something to hide. But for others the connection can be more vexed, in part because the MA is so commonly described in the press as ‘prestigious’ or ‘famous’ or ‘celebrated’. This inevitably gives rise to certain expectations, primarily to do with publication, and so a failure to publish – despite completing a programme renowned for ‘producing’ new writers – may well be a source of embarrassment, or shame. Some will blame themselves; others will blame the course. And while many who do succeed in getting published will attribute at least some of their success to UEA – and recent graduates especially can make productive use of the connection – there will be others who feel their success has been achieved in spite of the course, or who will simply not want to be ‘branded’ as yet another UEA author. Some will deny or disguise the association; others will openly criticise the course and its claims – particularly its claims over them.

18 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk

I was one of those disgruntled graduates, and my latest afternoon trawling the internet introduced me to another.

There is no mention of UEA on this writer’s website, nor in the biography that accompanies his fiction and journalism. He doesn’t acknowledge UEA anywhere, in fact, except for an interview with a literary blog in which he’s asked whether our MA shaped him as a writer, and whether he’d recommend it to others.

The sense of grievance that animates his reply might well have been mine 20 years earlier.

The course, he says, was in ‘irreversible decline’ when he joined it. There were too many students, few of them committed or interested readers of literary fiction, and the ‘mediocrity’ of the teaching, allied to the ‘inanity’ of the workshopping method, served only to foster the kind of ‘useless, contentfree, unintelligent criticism’ that so characterises English anti-intellectualism. In this respect UEA was typical of ‘the Creative Writing industry’ generally, which is responsible for producing so much of the conventionalised, ‘zeitgeisty’ writing that now dominates British publishing. Nevertheless, the experience was in two respects valuable: it provided him with a model (aesthetic, intellectual) to react against, while equipping him with a sound ‘filtering system’ for dealing with unhelpful criticism.

And he would still recommend such courses to others, albeit reluctantly, since agents are becoming so chary of anything that doesn’t emerge from ‘a good writing school’.

If publication and prizes are any criteria, I should at least dispute the suggestion of ‘irreversible decline’.

Almost 50 published authors – 18 of them prizewinning – emerged from the MA in the three years either side of this writer’s year, and there’s nothing in the diversity of their work to support the notion of an ‘industrial’ norm. What links the best of them – including this writer himself – is literary excellence.

Even so, his lament for his year does chime with my own – and that of others I’ve spoken to – and I suspect our shared disappointment has much to do

Newsletter 15

with unrealised expectations, the deflating 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 significant 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.

This indeed was – and remains – the ambition of the course, and these words are not mine but Malcolm Bradbury’s, taken from his introduction to Classwork, an anthology of alumni published to celebrate his retirement, 25 years after he and Angus Wilson had launched ‘the program era’ in British literary culture by accepting Ian McEwan as their sole inaugural student.

With eight others – the largest cohort so far – I joined the MA in its 14th year. Or perhaps in its 10th year, given that there weren’t always enough candidates to justify running the course (such was the halting beginning to the discipline in UK higher education). Of the 40 students who preceded us, McEwan was much the most famous, his success often linked in the press with ‘Malcolm Bradbury’s MA’. Kazuo Ishiguro’s debut novel had recently offered the first corroboration of a possible link between UEA and publication, while JK Klavans was just about to publish God, He Was Good (still her only novel). But though I owned (and still treasure) each of these books, and though it was McEwan and Ishiguro who had alerted me – and my classmates – to the course, I would have vehemently denied having any interest in publication myself.

The mid-80s was a time when it was still possible to use the term ‘politically correct’ as a form of approbation, and I was strenuously politically correct, to

the extent of thinking that an MA in Creative Writing ought really be called an MA in Bourgeois Individualism, and so I compensated, as far as I could, by being rigorously ascetic in my aestheticism.

Sternly perfectionist, I committed barely a word to the page, and I would have no truck with talk of publication. When Malcolm relocated our workshop to the university’s AV suite for one session, so we could be recorded for a feature on BBC Radio, I refused to attend. I stayed away, too, when he invited his agent to meet

Creative Writing classes. In my first term I studied Literary Theory with Lorna Sage, in my second Postmodernism with Malcolm, and I approached these seminars with an intensity of engagement I rarely brought to our writing workshops. I had after all been schooled on UEA’s undergraduate Literature programme, which was greatly in thrall to the theoretical isms that were then in their ascendency. The workshop, by comparison, wasn’t nearly critical – or earnest – enough.

I was one of those disgruntled graduates, and my latest afternoon trawling the internet introduced me to another. us, and again when David Lodge came to discuss the practicalities of the writing life.

I was young, class-conscious, class-anxious, somewhat confused, sometimes quite furious, and I suspect that Malcolm found me somewhat annoying. I think I wanted to annoy him; I also wanted his approval. The two are doubtless connected.

Then, as now, Creative Writing justified its presence in the academy in terms of there being a relationship between the creative and critical – a relationship more of proximity than cross-pollination – and so we were required to attend academic modules, write essays, and sit a three-hour exam, all of this quite separate from our

We met in the same room as now, but whereas today we have tables, around which we sit in a more or less democratic circle, elbow to elbow, papers spread out before us, then we sat in a line. The room’s dimensions meant we had the beginning of a curve towards the round, but we all faced Malcolm, and Malcolm faced us. That was the structural dynamic, and the conversation proceeded in a manner as fixed as the arrangement of furniture. We each in turn offered our opinion on a classmate’s work, and then we moved on to the next work. Malcolm might attempt to tease a little more from us, but the discussion remained impressionistic, often perfunctory, and it

WordPlay • Issue 3 • April 2010 19

Features was rare that he revealed his own thoughts on our work, much less made any suggestions for its improvement. If there was a ‘significant climate’ around our writing, it was characterised by the uncertainty – and rivalry – that this engendered: I wasn’t the only one who wanted his approval.

‘industry’, and so in Prose Fiction there are prizes and bursaries sponsored by literary agencies, numerous visits from agents and publishers, the publication of our annual anthology, and a mentoring scheme that pairs each of our students with an agency for a period of four months immediately after they graduate.

Other students in other years – as I know from having talked to them – thrived under this regime, which they experienced as something more benign, a kind of tacit encouragement to go their own way. Others, meanwhile, didn’t respond quite so readily as I did to the arrival of Angela Carter in our summer term, when the weekly workshop gave way to individual tutorials. Her irreverence lifted some of the burden of self-seriousness that was so weighing me down, and it was Angela who suggested I might read Raymond Carver instead of Helene Cixous, and perhaps consider writing about what I knew – an axiom of Creative Writing pedagogy that was, for me at that time, revelatory.

No doubt this adds some extra value and lustre to the MA, but while few prospective students will share my post-adolescent hostility to the sell-out implied by publication, I don’t believe many will look upon the course as a straightforward passage to publication. The admissions process tends to reveal those who view us in quite so instrumental a way. These we weed out.

Most will admit that our professional links are an attraction, but what mainly emerges from applications, and interviews, and our subsequent relationship with our students is that the promise implied by UEA’s history and reputation is not that we will ‘produce’ successful authors, but that we will provide something like the significant climate around writing envisioned by Malcolm Bradbury, in which promising authors will be challenged, edited and pressured, their development hastened. It isn’t so much an outcome we promise – and our students seek – as a particular kind of experience, a year in which to take writing seriously in the company of other serious writers.

I had failed to be a writer on the MA, and I would doubtless fail again. At heart, I blamed myself.

If asked, I blamed the course.

But still, the course seemed only to confirm that I wasn’t ‘really’ a writer. In the two years after graduation I wrote half a short story, then laboured for six years to finish my first novel, during which time I was constantly dogged by a sense of imminent failure. I had failed to be a writer on the MA, and I would doubtless fail again. At heart, I blamed myself. If asked, I blamed the course.

It was only much later that I began to understand why my hopes for the MA could not have been realised. Firstly, so much of the impetus behind Malcolm’s championing of Creative Writing in the academy was in reaction to theoretical trends that appeared hostile to the very idea of authorship: if the division between practice and theory was to be bridged, that wouldn’t be achieved by admitting such theories into the discussion of student works-in-progress. And secondly, for all my attachment to those theoretical isms, my sensibility was – and remains – that of a literary realist. As Angela suggested, I was attempting to write against the grain of myself.

In some respects my experience differs from that of the writer I found on the internet, but what we have in common might be assumed to be general: that eventual publication will never redeem a bad year; that the success of the year will depend on the success of the workshop; and that the organisation of the MA – including the teaching – should be geared to meet rather than frustrate the students’ expectations.

But first, of course, those expectations need to be reasonable, and carefully managed.

On the spectrum of Creative Writing programmes, the three genre strands of the MA at UEA are situated towards the ‘professional preparation’ end of the scale, though not by any means at the extreme. There are differences of emphasis, but each strand offers its students some kind of introduction to the

20 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk

The workshop remains central to that experience, and while the 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 specific concerns, which may include questions of commercial potential. Academic modules and essays are still required, and my colleagues report that the Creative Writers in their classes are often among the most engaged and articulate participants.

But the calibre of the MA is never a simple consequence of the way in which it is organised: there are many courses structured along similar lines, and many that are structured quite differently, offering other kinds of opportunity. Nor does our value necessarily reside in the calibre of the writers who teach the MA: I think we’re excellent, but there are many excellent writers elsewhere. Ultimately it is the students who determine the value of the experience – they are each other’s best asset – and in this respect our reputation is crucial because it means we attract so many strong applicants, from whom we can select those we feel will most hasten the development of their peers, and most benefit by the input of others. No one is admitted, in other words, without being able to convince us in interview that they are committed and interested readers of literary fiction who will contribute intelligently and constructively to the ongoing conversation about writing that constitutes not just the weekly workshop but social context in which it takes place. And while we do consider the practicalities of finding an agent and publisher, and continue to advise our alumni after they leave us, the primary emphasis is on fostering a sense of mutual challenge and support that will school the students in becoming their own best critics and so equip them, we hope, for the lonelier, less clement climate that will follow.

And of course, should this emphasis on the student experience produce a generation of satisfied graduates who nevertheless fail to get published, the reputation of ‘the prestigious UEA Creative Writing MA’ may never recover.

h s i l g n E w e N e h t g n i h c Tea ies for new and more experienced teachers alike

ser An invaluable

Teaching the New English is an innovative series concerned with teaching English at degree level in the UK and elsewhere. The series considers new and developing areas of the curriculum as well as more traditional areas that are reforming in new contexts. It is grounded in an intellectual and theoretical concept of the curriculum, but is also concerned with the practicalities of teaching in today’s higher education classrooms.

Published in association with the English Subject Centre | Series editor: Ben Knights

‘Imaginatively conceived and professionally edited, the series will be required reading for instructors in English studies worldwide’ - Professor Elaine Showalter, Professor Emerita of English, Princeton University, USA, and Author of Teaching Literature NEW

NEW

978-0-230-20233-7

978-0-230-22485-8

978-1-4039-4495-5

NEW

978-0-230-53781-1

978-1-4039-8827-0

978-1-4039-4493-1

978-1-4039-4493-1

978-1-4039-4930-1

978-1-230-01937-9

Save £5 on all paperback titles already published in the Teaching the New English series (RRP £18.99).

Just use the code WTEACH10a when you order online at www.palgrave.com Forthcoming titles for 2010 Teaching African American Women’s Writing - G. Wisker Teaching Science Fiction - A. Sawyer & P. Wright Teaching Creative Writing - H. Beck Teaching Theory - R. Bradford Teaching Stylistics - L. Jeffries & D. McIntyre Teaching the Short Story - A. Cox

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?

Ben Knights is the Director of the English Subject Centre. His most recent book is Masculinities in Text and Teaching (Palgrave, 2007).

The English Subject Centre has recently initiated or collaborated in a number of attempts to develop a more systematic understanding of how students learn in our subject. This enquiry includes commissioning focus groups, the support of departmental projects such as the Keele ‘Production of University English’ project www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/ projects/archive/studexp/studexp2.php (and see Bruce, Jones, and McLean 2007), and welcoming student bloggers onto our website ( www.english. heacademy.ac.uk/studentblog/). In the context of an endeavour which seeks insight from a variety of projects, this article represents an attempt to come at the question of student engagement from a different angle. It seeks to get hold of an intuition about the aesthetics of teaching and learning. English (especially in its Literary Studies manifestation) is a discipline where subject matter is embedded in a dialectical relationship with the process of articulating insight, and where teachers (even from apparently incompatible theoretical backgrounds) tend to share a set of tacit rules about the appropriate idiom in which to do so. The discipline expects its students to make a counter-intuitive leap: to be willing and able – to have the patience and the self-confidence – to treat even apparently discursive texts as non-discursive.

In going beyond the seductions of manifest content, students are implicitly expected to make their own incursions on the unsayable, complicating, as they do so, the protocols of everyday speech. The medium of teaching is in fact no more transparent than the modernist text. So the argument of this short paper is that residually English not only studies the aesthetic

22 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk

(admittedly in a more or less troubled way) but also performs it in its day-to-day practice. There is an assumed continuum between the play of the text and the play of the articulate reading.

While it is true that the subject has steadily complicated its own sense of ‘beauty’ (and in many ways over the past 30 years shifted its sense of the aesthetically satisfying away from the literary text towards the apparatus of analysis), it still in one way or another proposes a cognitive and expressive hierarchy of esteem whose rules are aesthetic and rhetorical.

That this integration of medium and message moulds our pedagogy is only obliquely apparent, for example underlying the reservations entertained by many colleagues about making allowance for dyslexia (on the lines that ballet schools don’t put up with people who habitually fall over their own feet). University ‘English’ is a form of behaviour or performance which is ‘about’ its own practice as much as it is ‘about’ its subject matter and texts. To put that another way: this essay seeks to suggest the pedagogic consequences of the propensity to divert attention from proposition to medium, a propensity which throws weight onto the student ability to reproduce the medium in all its verbal abundance. This is one of the reasons why many students find it difficult to grasp what is going on and what they are supposed to do. They are effectively required to take the authority to speak by becoming the author of the writerly text of the discipline, but do not always realise that this is what they are meant to do. Meyer and Land’s (2003) ‘threshold concept’ is perhaps helpful in focusing this. For the literature student, one conceptual threshold is constituted by the

Features focus of attention on representation (granting primary significance to the how rather than the what). Another is the idea that you (as student, as scholar) act out and make available to others a unique experience; that to have the experience (say of being moved, surprised, confirmed, or shocked in some way by a reading) is dialectically integral with the ability to articulate that movement of mind and emotion in ways which generate intellectual and affective pleasure for the reader or listener. So students are expected to engage in a linguistic and meta-linguistic activity whose forms are not (and some would argue cannot be) made explicit to them.

The lack of formal requirements – assessment objectives to be fulfilled – had made several of the students feel confused and uncertain in their first months of the course. Caitlin* said that she had spent much of her first year trying to work out what she was expected to do, a feeling which Siân (currently taking her first year) recognised. The students felt that the course offered a space where brilliant, innovative thinking was encouraged and valued, but that they also had to try to work out what their tutors wanted. The values of the course were not explicit; they had to be discovered through an apprenticeship that might last well into the second year and beyond. (*all names have been changed) (Hodgson 2010:17) Why should we take an interest in this apparently recondite topic at this historical moment? Precisely because teachers expect students to internalise these tacit rules, but, generally speaking, without explaining the necessity of doing so, or even suggesting that the rules exist. The existence of this body of largely unspoken rules has critical implications for the forms of hospitality (or exclusion) we extend towards students and potential students. I’ll cite the field notes of an astute observer of first years in an English department: There is a constant sense of these students walking into a world that they are not part of, where there is something going on that they are not party to, but which they’re trying to understand without anyone ever really explaining it to them.

(Snapper 2008: 172).

‘Good’ students are those who are able to align with the implied student the discipline asks them to become. But many students (at least at first) misunderstand the subject as one where they are expected simply to acquire knowledge and display it. So the unacknowledged aesthetic of English professionals may turn out to be an important, even central, aspect of the barrier we put up to students from outside the charmed circle. To take on a sanctioned identity as an English student is to be able to perform that identity within the drama of the subject, a performance which involves subscribing to a purportedly shared subjectivity of response.

Probably those students who remain compliant, ‘plodding’ learners (‘typical 2.2’ as some colleagues used to say) experience themselves and are largely experienced as outsiders to this project.

They haven’t, so to say, grasped that they were meant to play their own part in performing the verbal ebullience of the discipline.

This article makes an initial case for exploring the persistence and meaning of such an implicit aesthetic. In doing so, it makes a contribution to a discussion of disciplinary styles, working on a hypothesis that even within an increasingly heterogeneous subject there exists an effectively consensual learning idiom.

We should of course beware of making a claim of English exceptionality. Other subjects undoubtedly have their own

aesthetic and understandings of disciplinary ‘elegance’. Such values are likely to shape in more or less covert ways the relations between students and their teachers. Nevertheless, the relationship between the practice and the subject matter is particularly problematic for disciplines like Literature and Creative Writing whose subject and practice is representation. Both, so to speak, address aesthetic values at the cognitive level, but usually without acknowledging they are doing so at an existential level as well. Equally, again, the fear of looking naive or ignorant in front of peers or teachers is certainly not confined to English students.

But I suggest that such a fear takes a quite specific form in a subject whose medium is suffused with its own aesthetic values.

The anti-humanist revolt may have talked a different language, but it did not in fact exorcise from the profession the implicit belief that it bore the high responsibility of coaching students out of the ideologically compromised discourses of which they would find themselves shown up as the discomfited avatars.

The world of an academic tribe is both signalled and constituted by its communicative idioms and values: how the phenomenon for study is selected, how once selected it is deployed within a felicitous grammar of argument and exemplification. But only in a limited, if expanding, group of cases do new meanings in English emerge from new information. A lot of the time (and if we make the important exceptions of stylistic or historicist research) new meanings emerge from making what are felt to be more satisfying arrangements of existing information, drawing on analogy, creating parallels or interpretative frameworks that hadn’t been thought of before. To take a classic example: Frank Kermode’s The Sense of an Ending (1967) didn’t on the whole tell us anything new – in the sense in which, say, recent histories of Russia or Germany draw on newly opened archives. Instead it re-arranged thinking about how narrative moulds social and individual experience. Students are not expected to turn into Frank Kermode or Judith Butler overnight, but they are expected to be able to act out in their essays or their seminar contributions the novelty of insight. The ‘scene of reading’ into which we seek to induct students consists of a small-scale dramatisation of the steps of discovery with its own narrative of simulated ignorance, triumphant disclosure, and provocation to the credulous or literalminded. As a subject where in principle a student is as capable of startling new insight as an experienced scholar, ‘English’ establishes criteria for what is interesting in the absence of any immediate semantic pay-off. Footing in the subject still rests to a large degree on being able persuasively to turn mere sensation into significant sensation, preserving as you do so some echo of the vigour and many-layered complexity of the text. A powerful consensus within the subject values struggle in writing, and student writing which bears the traces of that struggle.

More research is needed. The ideas sketched here might provide a thread for future research on seminars or through focus groups.

They could also provide pointers for teachers’ own reflection, an examination of the pre-suppositions underlying feedback to students, or those governing our own performance in lectures.

In the space available, I can only suggest where – in our own experience as teachers – we might turn for examples. What does a well-formed critical proposition look like? What, we might ask ourselves, makes an essay in our eyes ‘plodding’ or ‘pedestrian’?

What are the signifiers of brilliance in discussion? What is it that 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 not the only pre-conditions. What irks us about a dull, repetitive, or inarticulate essay? Being good at appreciation, making intelligent connections, developing persuasive analogies is inseparable from the craft of articulating your insights economically, persuasively, and with wit and verbal panache. Productive verbal facility is a core element in being good at dealing with a subject matter which vexes commonsense with indirection.

The professional community favours argumentative suppleness, metaphorical play, the ability to engage in representations which – if not verbally exotic – are at least distantly commensurate with the complexity of the representations under study. Implicit is an existential position: tolerance for ambiguity and cognitive delay – a refusal to give way quickly to the simplistic desire for interpretative closure. (The profession resists simple one to one equivalence between verbal phenomena and meaning, may indeed pull the rug from under students by playfully deconstructing the deep/surface, or original/copy metaphors themselves.) The model student is capable of seizing on a superficially tangential item, then elegantly demonstrating its paradoxically central significance. She has a feeling for verbal penumbra, a degree of self-reflexiveness, and, too, (though increasingly rarely) a gift for unforced quotation. If, as Louise Rosenblatt (1978) argues, the text is an event, a transactional medium of communication between readers, then the occasions on which it is formally discussed exemplify its event-ness, but they do so not on the principle of pure free association but within normative connotations supervised by a caste of professional arbiters. In thus exposing their subjectivity, students may well feel themselves under a judgment potentially more undermining than simply being confused or ill-informed, and are likely to feel the need to edit their subjectivity in a way that makes it acceptable.

It is commonly argued that Creative Writing is a practice-based subject. It would probably be misleading to make a similar claim for Literary Studies. Nevertheless, the thrust of this article is that there is a practice element even to the study of the already written.

Analytical cohesion, the crafting of argument, the willingness to engage in an ambitious, risk-taking interchange between synoptic range and the selection of precise examples comprise between them core elements of being good at the subject. Further, given the disciplinary commitment to the dialectic of form and content, stylistic panache is not the only element. Thus, it seems to me that how you manage embarrassment is another ingredient of subject identity. English has always been to some degree a subject that dealt with the libidinal. In the last generation, it has become a subject that makes a positive point of talking in public about the erotic and about intimate bodily matters. A lot of its subject matter can be experienced as shocking, and prides itself on being shocking.

Can the student join in? How does s/he handle the embarrassment of doing so? How do you

24 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk

gain footing in a discussion that many of your peers feel inhibited about joining? However apparently formal the discussion, you risk the exposure not alone of your fumbling verbal prowess, but of your unformed intuitions, your longings, fantasies, inhibitions, and nightmares before an audience of judges whom you have few grounds to trust with them.

Clearly we have to acknowledge internal differences. I am not trying to suggest that the discipline or the expectations placed upon its implied student are homogeneous. Rather, the argument is that as a discipline community we do need to bring to the surface and reflect upon our unacknowledged pedagogic aesthetic and its influence on the identity of both learner and teacher. If we are to avoid our own form of pedagogical naiveté we need to examine how studying representations itself entails the making of other representations, representations whose success is judged according to the largely unspecified rules of a discourse of shared subjectivity. If there is anything at all in the argument of this paper, it will surely have implications for the continuing professional development of those to whom falls the task of choreographing that dance along the borders of the public and private that run through the discipline.

References Becher, Tony, and Trowler Paul R. Academic Tribes and Territories: Intellectual Enquiry and the Cultures of Disciplines (2nd edition). Buckingham: Open University Press/SRHE. 2001.

Bruce, Susan, Jones, Ken, and McLean, Monica.

‘Some Notes on a Project: Democracy and Authority in the Production of a Discipline’. Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture. 7.3 (2007) 481-500.

Graff, Gerald. ‘The Problem Problem, and Other Oddities of Academic Discourse’. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 1.1 (2002) 27-42.

Hodgson, John. The Experience of Studying English in UK Higher Education. (English Subject Centre, 2010) www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/resources/ studexp/index.php Knights, Ben. ‘Intelligence and Interrogation: the Identity of the English Student’. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education. 4.1. (2005) 33-52.

Knights, Ben and Thurgar-Dawson, Chris. Active Reading: Transformative Writing in Literary Studies. London: Continuum. 2006.

Meyer J H F and Land R. ‘Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge 1 – Linkages to Ways of Thinking and Practising’ in Improving Student Learning – Ten Years On. C. Rust (Ed), OCSLD, Oxford. 2003.

Rosenblatt, Louise. The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. 1978.

Snapper, Gary. Beyond the Words on the Page: A study of the relationship between A Level English Literature and university English. Unpublished PhD thesis. (2008).

Quotation reproduced by kind permission of the author.

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 linguistics editor, met at Newcastle University to share ideas about the practicalities of teaching the history of English to undergraduates. As in other subfields 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 first 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.

English Subject Centre

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 profile of programmes appearing to be the main decisive factors. An in-depth look at one first-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 benefits 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 reflecting – 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 specific 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 final 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...

Christina Bunce is Course Leader of the MA Professional Writing course at University College Falmouth. Prior to that she was a journalist, magazine editor, author and online content strategist, specialising in health, medicine and medical politics. She also led a multimedia company specialising in multiplatform healthcare content and online community building.

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 first 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 writing market, but let’s face it, this sector has exploded over the last five years. Currently there are at least 10 MA Professional Writing courses, around 50 Creative Writing MAs in the UK, and a search on the Prospects website returns over 2,000 entries for writing-related postgraduate courses.

Challenged to keep our programme viable and competitive in this crowded market, we embraced the idea of developing the course as a commercial venture: a high quality offering that meets the needs of a defined sector of the potential recruitment market and is responsive to industry requirements.

We aimed to build a strong academic brand around our approach to the subject – professional writing – and our method of teaching and developing students.

This is the story of what we did.

There were – and are – many people out there writing with no idea of how to make any money from it or sense of where there might be a market for their work. Others may have highly developed writing skills in particular forms, but don’t know how to adapt their skills for other genres and audiences.

After extensive consultation with potential employers and commissioners, academic colleagues, alumni and potential applicants, we decided to target writers who could demonstrate some technical ability but more importantly had a creative, inquisitive mind, and were determined to explore, develop and exploit their writing.

26 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk

We put together an academically rigorous, commercially-focused course that helps students write effectively across a range of forms and to market themselves and their work. It focuses on developing creative ideas and good writing technique, building an understanding of narrative and original research skills, and teaching effective editing and critiquing.

We aim to produce flexible, creative, pragmatic, industry-savvy writers at the forefront of writing practice who are able to adapt to all sorts of forms and genres.

Students learn through a heavy schedule of lectures and seminars, constant assignments, (two or three a week) and critiquing on online forums to guidelines that reflect best editorial practice.

Critiquing is initially assessed and supervised by tutors, but as the course progresses students form their own critiquing groups, resulting in a tight-knit community of learners who have learned to trust each other and recognise the value of peer critiquing for developing skills as well as quenching their insatiable appetite for feedback.

Features to a panel of tutors and industry professionals during an intensive (assessable) day.

In addition students produce a range of self-promotional materials – websites, blogs, tweets – designed to give them the digital presence so essential to new writers and which allow them to demonstrate proficiency in key technical skills. Photo capture and manipulation, basic website construction, awareness of multi-platform applications, blogging and social networking are all vital for writers operating in today’s industry.

Proficiency in these is also demonstrated in core work submitted for assessment – for example a nonfiction book is presented with a sample jacket and spreads.

All course teaching is by professionally experienced writers and academics whose approach replicates that of a professional editor as far as possible. Assessment is based on professional-standard writing portfolios and a demonstration of clear industry relevance.

Portfolios are submitted at three points during the course, accompanied by a reflective ‘Critical Rationale’ outlining the target market for the writer’s work and analysing his or her approach and methods.

These portfolios must be presented in line with industry conventions for each form (fiction, non-fiction, script, business-writing) and demonstrate awareness of market contexts, current industry practice and expectations in terms of genre, format, appropriate use of media and audience expectations. MA proposals are pitched

The form of final MA projects varies hugely - from literary fiction to comedy script and teenage fantasy or from marketing materials and company communications audits to promotional or campaigning websites and textbooks. Submissions sit alongside a contextual essay, exploring in detail one aspect of the writing process relevant to the writer’s particular project.

The approach to research skills follows three strands. Firstly students engage in subject-specific research relevant to the project in hand. Secondly they conduct industry-focused enquiry – how work sits within the market, trend analysis and identifying the next steps to publication and/or employment. As part of their final submission, students outline any theoretical enquiry relevant to their work.

Because of the diversity of projects undertaken, the introduction to theoretical approaches is via narratology followed by diversification according to individual interests. There is no single reading model

beyond the initial introductory units. So students could progress from How Fiction Works by James Wood (Vintage 2008) and Basic Elements of Narrative by David Herman (Wiley-Blackwell 2009) to The Crime Writer’s Guide to Police Practice and Procedure by Michael O’Byrne (Hale 2009) or Brilliant Business Writing by Neil Taylor (Pearson 2009) and Fun House: a Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel (Jonathan Cape 2006). A heavy reading schedule is of course essential, and reading groups form an important part of the learning experience.

Students take part in practical interdisciplinary projects with a range of professional affiliates to help them develop familiarity with industry production processes and practices. Guest speakers also hold weekly workshops and lectures – they include authors, literary agents, feature writers, editors, publishers and perhaps most importantly, successful graduates.

Many Creative Writing MAs are constrained by being located within English departments. We are lucky to be based in a School of Media, which allows many of our students the opportunity to put their work into production by collaborating with peers on other vocationally focused courses, including Multimedia Journalism, TV Production and Graphic Design.

We work hard to keep our tight alumni community thriving – graduates are our ambassadors out there in the real world of writing – which benefits both employers and our own recruitment. Those working in all corners of the industry help us to keep up to date with practice and issues, introduce us to new industry contacts and offer ideas for course development.

They also take current students on work experience and offer employment opportunities. Through Facebook, Twitter and regular parties and social events as well as attendance at guest speaker sessions we stay in touch with well over 70 per cent of alumni.

Overall our approach seems to work, and we have started to recruit more fulltime students each year from a range of backgrounds – career changers, returners to work, longstanding amateur writers.

Graduates proceed to a wide range of writing and editorial roles with over 80 per cent working as writers within a year of completing the MA.

WordPlay • Issue 3 • April 2010 27

Features The challenge of developing a distance-learning MA As we grew in confidence that the teaching and course model we had developed worked and was appealing to our target audience, it made sense to extend the model to other forms of delivery.

In response to the many enquiries about part-time study, we developed University College Falmouth’s first distance-learning MA – a two-year part-time version of the campus-based course.

many people are out there writing with no idea of how to make any money from it We were keen to replicate our successful subject and teaching model online, but to open it up to students around the world who for work, family or geographical commitments are unable to take a full-time MA on campus. The course has now recruited two intakes successfully, even if the learning curve nearly cost the course team its collective sanity.

Helen Shipman is an experienced lecturer on the full-time course who has had to adapt her approach to run an online course.

On the online course, for example, lectures and feedback are delivered via podcasts, telephone conferencing and chatrooms.

‘In some ways, teaching online is a less dynamic process than classroom teaching: exchanges cannot be spontaneous, and it has proved difficult to find a substitute for the kind of discussion and debate that emerges naturally during face-to-face sessions.

Synchronistic online seminars proved unwieldy, and although some tutors favour telephone conferencing as an alternative method, others only use our Virtual Learning Environment forum for exchanges and comments.

‘While this is slower, it does have the merit of focusing the tutor’s attention almost entirely on the work itself. Consequently, there can be an intensity in online teaching that is missing from the terrestrial equivalent, and this in turn requires a high level of precision and care on the part of the teacher: throwaway or ambiguous responses are easily misinterpreted by online students.’

We realise that in order to keep this brand going and to stay relevant, all UCF MA Professional Writing activities need to evolve continually in line with industry practice and commercial imperatives. Changes brought about by the recession require writers to be more flexible and changes in commissioning practice means that the old slush pile for fiction and faxed 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.

Markets are now global – students have to write and think internationally. To work as a writer, graduates have also to embrace the requirement for multi-platform content both in terms of what they produce and how they brand and market themselves and their skills.

It’s hard keeping up sometimes, but now we are more confident that it pays off. Seven years ago, Professional Writing at Falmouth College of Arts was a campus-based PgDip course with seven students, one member of staff and a narrow curriculum. In 2010 MA Professional Writing at University College Falmouth has over 50 students, an active alumni network and a distinct approach to the learning and teaching of writing.

We appreciate that as an MA situated in a School of Media we have had an unusually free reign in designing a course that is truly vocational and industry-responsive as well as academically rigorous. We believe that by continuing to diversify and develop new offerings based on what we do well we will increase our success, open up learning to a wider range of students and – we hope – safeguard the course’s future in uncertain times.

A bit more about us www.profwriting.com editor and non-fiction lecturer Susannah Marriott explains how the site works.

The success of the online course increased our confidence in our approach to developing writers so we decided to see if the model could be extended to shorter learning experiences.

Profwriting.com opens the course model to unpublished writers wherever they are in the world and whatever form they are working in, reaching out to those who don’t want a full- or part-time course at MA level. Our £25 online mini courses allow new writers to test their aptitude both for writing and our approach. Those with more experience can commission a professional to assess their writing or work for three months with a mentor in their field.

We now run Summer Schools that take the same approach as the teaching on the full-time course. We also run a series of 2-5 day Continuing Professional Development (CPD) courses for people working in business, both locally and regionally. We won funding to make course materials publicly available under a Creative Commons Licence which will be delivered through the development of UCF openSpace, via our online writers’ publication.

Current students – on campus and online – provide the site’s content, writing news stories and interviewing our network of writing professionals, including alumni in the writing industries. Students also blog and podcast from industry events, such as Cheltenham Screenwriters’ Festival and London Bookfair, and run a writing competition judged by authors and editors.

These new income streams help us to fund events and initiatives such as the development of www.profwriting.com our online publication aimed at extending our community and teaching approach to all those writers worldwide desperate for feedback on their work and for information and resources about writing (see box). Although it aims to be self-funding, much of the technical and editorial development has been funded by income from other course initiatives.

This is also a place for alumni to maintain impetus once they’ve finished a course. Rather than filing manuscripts in their sock drawer, they can upload chapters to a site agents are scouting. And they can continue peer critiquing – the backbone of our approach to teaching – in cosy closed groups. The forum for freelance opportunities and CV database builds a community of writers creating work for 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

Tom Barnes is Head of the English and MFL Faculty at Portland Place School, London, and Educational Advisor for Stage on Screen.

He is an occasionally published poet, and a regular performer and founder member of Multi-Story Improvised Theatre Company.

There is nothing to beat a live performance. Stage on Screen started last year on the basis that there were not enough of the classic plays that students read at GCSE, A Level, and at university, being performed live or being recorded for posterity on DVD with proper educational resources attached. Determined to plug the gap, Stage on Screen are currently working in partnership with London’s Greenwich Theatre and have already mounted productions of Doctor Faustus and The School for Scandal, and are currently rehearsing for spring performances of The Duchess of Malfi and Volpone. Each play is recorded with multiple cameras onto high definition widescreen video for students and teachers to purchase as Stage on Screen DVDs. Most students will not have seen a live production of any of these plays, so will not necessarily understand their theatrical power. Working from the idea that a student who has researched and reedited a classic text will know that text far better than one who has merely read it in class,

or seen it in a lecture theatre, the Teachers’ editions of the DVDs give students the chance to re-edit various scenes of the shows. Re-editing enables students to understand the rhythms of the play, in a way that simply reading the text cannot.

Commentaries from the actors, director, designer and lighting designer (and hopefully the stage manager and composer in future productions) give insights for both Theatre Studies and English students, in terms of understanding how a text becomes a live performance.

Stage on Screen are very keen for interesting essays and interpretations of any of their plays to be sent to them by university staff or students for inclusion on their website which includes freely accessible ‘study areas’ for each play.

The study areas provide notes on sources, contexts and close-reading of the plays all of which are designed to be useful to students and tutors at A Level and at university.

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 find 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

Jane Gawthrope is the Manager of the English Subject Centre and has run a number of surveys in academic environments. She is joint author of the Survey of the English Curriculum and Teaching in UK Higher Education described here and has edited a number of reports commissioned by the Subject Centre.

Jane will try to answer any statistical enquiries that you may have.

For a community whose business is words, English demonstrates a surprising level of concern with numbers. Hardly a week goes by without the Subject Centre receiving a statistical enquiry, perhaps from a Head of Department preparing a case to senior management, or a lecturer preparing a case to a Head of Department or making a presentation at an Open Day. Parents concerned about contact hours, publishers curious about how widely a topic is taught and organisations responding to consultation documents also approach us with questions about numbers. The value of numbers in strengthening arguments (as Lewis Carroll said, “If you want to inspire confidence, give plenty of statistics”), and understanding a department’s particular situation in relation to the broader picture, seems to be widely recognised.

The Subject Centre works with and for the discipline as part of a national network and is therefore wellplaced to gather and disseminate intelligence ‘without fear or favour’ to the interests of particular institutions. This intelligence-gathering takes several forms. It ranges through casual conversations with academic colleagues, to presentation of publicly available statistics in a more digestible form and commissioning surveys to gather data not available elsewhere. We see our role as building up a ‘body of evidence’ about the teaching of English and Creative

30 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk

Writing, while taking care not to disclose matters of a confidential or sensitive nature. Most of this body of evidence is shared with the wider community via our publications and on our website. This three-part article shares some of the data we have acquired recently. It presents two different datasets: figures on A Level English applications obtained from OfQual and figures on student numbers in our disciplines commissioned from UCAS. Section 3 then highlights some of the findings of our recently published Survey of the English Curriculum and Teaching in UK Higher Education.

Section 1: A Level English The following tables were all supplied by OfQual (The Office of the Qualifications and Examinations Regulator) in December 2009.

Table 1. National GCE A Level in English Literature, 2004 to 2008 (All UK Candidates) Number of GCE A level entries in English Literature 2004-2008 2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

All

49,577

52,128

51,268

49,333

51,766

Males

14,313

15,349

15,016

14,587

15,214

Females

35,261

36,778

36,252

34,746

36,552

Note: (i) 2004 onwards – is A Level (Curriculum 2000).

Source: Inter Examination Board Statistics – Final Results (JCQ)

Creative Pedagogies Table 1 shows that the number of entries for A Level English Literature is on average 50,800 over the five-year period.

Although there has been a 4% increase between 2004 and 2008 this does not seem to be part of a trend, as the numbers go up and down slightly from one year to the next. (Figures for the number of entries should also be seen against the background of the number of young people in the population and A Level entries as a whole.) Males account for 29% of A Level English Literature entries each year.

Table 5. National GCE A Level in English Language and Literature, 2004 to 2008 (All UK Candidates) Number of GCE A level entries in English Language and Literature 2004-2008 2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

All

14,863

15,580

15,789

16,293

17,221

Males

4,512

4,642

4,844

4,912

5,374

Females

10,351

10,938

10,945

11,381

11,847

Note: (i) 2004 onwards – is A Level (Curriculum 2000).

Source: Inter Examination Board Statistics – Final Results (JCQ)

Table 2. National GCE A Level in English Literature, 2004 to 2008 (All UK Candidates) Cumulative percentage achieving each grade Year

A

B

C

D

E

Candidates

A-C

A-E

2004

25.9

50.0

74.8

91.8

98.7

49,577

74.8

98.7

2005

25.9

50.9

75.9

92.6

98.9

52,128

75.9

98.9

2006

27.7

52.8

77.5

93.6

99.1

51,268

77.5

99.1

2007

29.2

55.0

79.0

94.0

99.2

49,333

79.0

99.2

2008

28.2

54.3

78.9

94.0

99.1

51,766

78.9

99.1

This table shows that, in round numbers, 26%-29% achieve an A grade. It also shows that the percentage achieving an A grade has increased from 25.9% to 28.2% between 2004 and 2008, with a high of 29.2% in 2007.

The numbers taking Language and Literature are much lower than Literature, and slightly lower than Language. Table 5, however, demonstrates a steady increase in the numbers taking A Level Language and Literature, a rise of almost 16% between 2004 and 2008. The percentage of males taking this A Level is 30%-31%.

Table 6. National GCE A Level in English Language and Literature, 2004 to 2008 (All UK Candidates) Cumulative percentage achieving each grade Year

A

B

C

D

E

Candidates

A-C

A-E

2004

15.0

37.8

67.7

90.1

98.3

14,863

67.7

98.3

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, 2004 to 2008 (All UK Candidates)

2006

16.2

42.3

71.6

91.6

98.7

15,789

71.6

98.7

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

All

15,826

17,049

18,096

18,981

20,649

Males

5,418

5,941

6,444

6,524

7,199

Females

10,407

11,108

11,652

12,457

13,450

Note: (i) 2004 onwards – is A Level (Curriculum 2000).

Source: Inter Examination Board Statistics – Final Results (JCQ)

Although the number taking A Level Language is much smaller than those taking Literature, Table 3 shows a steady increase in the number of A Level English Language entries over the five-year period. The number of entries increased by just over 30% between 2004 and 2008. The percentage of males taking Language is higher than Literature, ranging between 34% and 36%.

Table 4. National GCE A Level in English Language, 2004 to 2008 (All UK Candidates) Cumulative percentage achieving each grade Year

A

B

C

D

E

Candidates

A-C

A-E

2004

13.0

36.3

67.3

91.1

98.8

15,826

67.3

98.8

2005

13.1

36.5

68.4

91.1

98.8

17,049

68.4

98.8

2006

13.9

39.1

71.9

93.2

99.2

18,096

71.9

99.2

2007

14.8

40.6

73.6

94.3

99.3

18,981

73.6

99.3

2008

14.5

41.5

74.5

94.2

99.2

20,649

74.5

99.2

This table shows that, in round numbers, 13%-15% achieve an A grade (only about half the percentage achieving an A grade in Literature). It also shows that the percentage achieving an A grade has increased from 13% to 14.5% between 2004 and 2008, with a high of 14.8% in 2007.

This table shows that, in round numbers, 15%-18% achieve an A grade (only about half the percentage achieving an A grade in Literature, and slightly higher than the percentage achieving an ‘A’ in Language). It also shows that the percentage achieving an A grade has increased each year from 15% to 18% between 2004 and 2008.

So what do these statistics tell us?

In broad terms, the number of entries for A Level Literature is bumping along around the 50,000 mark, whilst Language and, to a lesser extent Language and Literature, are becoming more popular. While Literature is still the most popular of the three A Levels, these figures suggest that the growth in English A Level overall is coming from Language. Departments seeking to recruit more students might look to attracting those with A Level Language or Literature and Language. Departments who accept only Literature A Level might also bear in mind that it is considerably harder to achieve a top grade in Language or Language and Literature than it is in Literature.

If we look at gender it is apparent that even at A Level, English is dominated by female candidates (around 71% for Literature, 65% for Language and 70% for Language and Literature). This compares with about 71%-73% female students at university (see below). The gender imbalance in the discipline therefore starts pre-A Level, and by extension is very difficult to correct at HE Level. It may be possible to redress the balance slightly by attracting more A Level Language students, as A Level Language has the highest percentage of males.

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 figures 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, nonEU) 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 classified as Q300 ‘English studies‘.

Table 7. All HE students with a specified 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 subject of study

Total HE Students

Full time Postgraduate

Full time Undergraduate

Part time Postgraduate

Part time 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 by period

296.3

154.8

3.0

72.0

66.5

(Q322) English literature by author

103.0

24.0

0.0

18.0

61.0

(Q323) English literature by topic

584.3

80.5

14.7

126.0

363.2

2336.4

54.0

1112.9

23.5

1146.0

9.0

0.0

5.0

0.0

4.0

(Q390) English studies not elsewhere classified

184.2

54.5

96.2

23.0

10.5

(W8) Imaginative writing

5415

2780

545

1130

960

67323.0

6356.3

41289.7

3472.4

16204.6

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 by period

258.0

162.5

5.5

87.0

3.0

(Q322) English literature by author

183.0

13.0

0.0

8.0

162.0

(Q323) English literature by topic

202.2

51.5

2.7

91.0

57.0

1605.2

147.0

615.0

10.0

833.2

55.0

0.0

52.0

0.0

3.0

(Q390) English studies not elsewhere classified

136.2

59.5

26.7

35.0

15.0

(W8) Imaginative writing

6465

505.0

2505

920

2540.0

65637.7

4163.3

41503.4

3272.3

16703.6

(Q330) English as a second language (Q340) English literature written as a second language

2007/08 Total 2006/07

(Q300) English studies

(Q330) English as a second language (Q340) English literature written as a second language

2006/07 Total

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 subject of study

Total HE Students

Full time Postgraduate

Full time Undergraduate

Part time Postgraduate

Part time 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 period

287.3

134.0

7.5

86.0

59.8

(Q322) English literature by author

169.0

11.0

0.0

18.0

140.0

(Q323) English literature by topic

207.3

34.0

3.3

66.0

104.0

(Q330) English as a second language

1252.0

112.5

724.2

5.5

409.8

0.0

0.0

0.0

0.0

0.0

(Q390) English studies not elsewhere classified

170.8

53.0

54.8

38.0

25.0

(W8) Imaginative writing

5825

460.0

2250

705.0

2415

63224.5

4059.0

40685.5

2920.5

15564.5

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 by period

370.2

192.5

9.2

87.0

81.5

(Q322) English literature by author

204.0

9.0

0.0

18.0

177.0

(Q323) English literature by topic

166.0

35.0

4.0

57.0

70.0

1373.0

51.0

740.7

1.5

579.8

0.0

0.0

0.0

0.0

0.0

(Q390) English studies not elsewhere classified

138.0

70.0

24.0

29.0

15.0

(W8) Imaginative writing

5145

370.0

1790

630.0

2355

62619.7

3701.2

39523.6

2885.3

16509.6

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 by period

467.8

226.0

5.8

142.0

94.0

(Q322) English literature by author

339.3

16.0

0.0

26.0

297.3

(Q323) English literature by topic

176.0

20.0

0.0

88.0

68.0

1590.2

80.0

1060.0

1.0

449.2

(Q340) English literature written as a second language

174.0

0.0

0.0

0.0

174.0

(Q390) English studies not elsewhere classified

178.0

41.0

100.0

7.0

30.0

(W8) Imaginative writing

3985

310.0

1200

460.0

2015

61385.9

3572.8

39996.6

2900.0

14916.5

(Q340) English literature written as a second language

2005/06 Total 2004/05

(Q300) English studies

(Q330) English as a second language (Q340) English literature written as a second language

2004/05 Total 2003/04

(Q300) English studies

(Q330) English as a second language

2003/04 Total

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 students

Q300 English Studies

Q310 Language

Q320 Literature

W8 Imag.

Writing

Total HE FT PGs

Total HE PT PGs

Total HE FT UGs

Total 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 in our disciplines (10%), and also growth in particular areas.

English Language and English Literature have grown by 40% and 48% respectively, although some of this increase may be due to re-coding of courses from the more general ‘English studies’ which has fallen by 3%. Imaginative Writing has grown by 36%, so that in 07/08 there were 5415 students of whom 10% were full-time undergraduates, 18% part-time undergraduates, 51% full-time postgraduates and 21% part-time postgraduates.

Students on Creative Writing courses now outnumber those on English Language courses, and it is the remarkable growth in the number of full-time postgraduates on Creative Writing courses that accounts for most of the growth in full-time postgraduate numbers overall. There was however a dip in the number of Creative Writing students overall between 06/07 and 07/08 which may suggest that growth in this discipline is tailing off.

The report, available on the Subject Centre website from www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/publications/reports. php, is a snapshot of how English and Creative Writing were being taught in mid-2009, adding to the data collected by a similar survey in 2002. It is based on responses from 54 departments, representing about 40% of those contacted. (It should be noted that we contacted some very small units from whom a response was unlikely, so the response rate is probably better than would initially appear.) The survey yielded a large quantity of detailed data, but the report presents it in a digestible form with written analysis accompanying the tables and charts.

Across all subjects, the number of full-time postgraduates has increased by 78% and the number of part-time postgraduates by 20%. In 2007/08 postgraduates therefore accounted for 15% of all students taught. Part-time students (both undergraduate and postgraduate) account for 29% of students.

• Student recruitment and retention

Heads of Department were invited to fill in an online questionnaire between April and August 2009. Questions covered the following topics: • Student numbers

• Teaching staff • Undergraduate teaching • Assessment • Curriculum

Section 3: Survey of the English Curriculum and Teaching in UK Higher Education 2009 Background This survey was conducted by the English Subject Centre in the spring of 2009 in order to provide data for the following purposes: • To help departments benchmark themselves against others especially when making cases to senior management in their institutions • To provide evidence to support responses to various national consultations • To provide information to prospective students about what they are likely to study and how • To evidence the breadth and variety of provision in the discipline • To answer enquiries about the discipline from those inside and outside it

34 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk

• Graduate attributes • Physical resources, facilities and e-learning • General questions about factors affecting teaching Trends since 2002 While the 2009 survey covered much the same ground as the previous one in 2002, questions were not always directly comparable and of course changes in responses between the two surveys may be attributable to different sets of respondents.

The 2009 survey to some extent separated out Literature, Language and Creative Writing which the 2003 one did not, again making comparison difficult. The overall impression, however, is that there have been no ‘seismic shifts’ in learning and teaching over the period. For example, ‘staff leaving or joining’ was the most common reason cited in both surveys for adding or removing modules. However, some interesting indicators of change emerged:

Creative Pedagogies • 54% of respondents offer undergraduate degrees in Creative Writing • Departments offering Creative Writing have seen the most notable increase in student numbers, with 52% reporting an increase of more than 10% (the equivalent for Literature was 41%) • Departments offering taught PG programmes rose from 77% to 87% between the two surveys, although the average number of taught PG students has fallen from 42 to 35 • Work-related learning or work placements were used by over 50% of respondents • One-third used plagiarism-detection software for all or nearly all assessed coursework • All respondents reported that at least a few modules have an online component or support delivered through a VLE, with almost three-quarters reporting that most of their modules do so • Digital collections and the availability of computers for students were the factors most frequently mentioned as having a positive impact on learning and teaching • Compared to 2003, there was a marked decrease (63% to 38%) in the percentage reporting that assessed coursework and exam papers are always marked by multiple examiners and an equivalent increase in the percentage saying that papers are selectively marked by more than one examiner Evidence of breadth and variety abounds in this report in answers to questions about student and staff numbers, entry profile, assessment methods and the curriculum. While such diversity is perhaps not surprising to those familiar with the discipline in HE, 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 challenging the stereotypes of teaching and the curriculum often portrayed in the press and indeed occasionally by VCs. Just some of the examples of diversity include: • The number of full-time undergraduates in a department ranges from 18 to 750 • The entry profile ranges between 180 and 380 points, with an average of 280 for Language and Literature and 270 for Creative Writing • The number of FTE staff involved in teaching varies between 0.8 and 50, with an average of 18 (19 in 2003) • While the dissertation, exam and essay still dominate as assessment methods, about 50% of respondents said they were using short answer tests, contributions in seminars and student logs

In relation to the pressures faced by departments, however, diversity fades and a more consistent picture emerges. Pressures caused by students engaged in paid employment or with caring responsibilities, pressure to give more feedback on coursework and the negative impact on teaching of the lack of good quality teaching space are all commonly cited by respondents and could be described as ‘characteristic’ of the community.

Heads of Department have in common a preoccupation with student numbers and increased workloads for staff. When asked to state the single change that would most enhance teaching and learning, the answer ‘more staff’ was commonly given.

The gap between what HE policy makers see as the priorities for the sector, and the priorities as perceived by those running departments, is a striking one.

The following figures illustrate some of the pressures faced by departments: • 81% of respondents said that paid employment had ‘a lot’ of impact on student learning; 16% said it had ‘some’. 28% said that caring responsibilities had a lot of impact; 56% ‘some’ • 63% said they were under pressure to give feedback on exams; 75% said they were under pressure to give more feedback on coursework • In terms of physical resources the most common negative impact was the availability of teaching space (54%) followed by the quality of teaching space (44%) and the richness of printed library collections (38%) • When asked what were the most significant changes they expected in the future, the most common responses related to student numbers (both increasing, decreasing and stabilising) and increased workloads for staff Problems and pressures are not the whole picture however.

This report points to growth in terms of undergraduate numbers, in Creative Writing and in postgraduate programmes. It points to innovation in teaching and assessment methods, widespread adoption of e-learning and the positive impact of the availability of digital collections. It points to a wide and changing curriculum.

Taken as a whole, this report evidences a diverse and energetic discipline, striving to find innovative solutions to the problems faced by HE generally and by English and Creative Writing in particular.

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 reflects on working with manuscripts, building a website and introducing readers to a whole new way of learning and doing criticism.

Sean Matthews is Director of the DH Lawrence Research Centre at the University of Nottingham. He teaches Lawrence at all levels of the university curriculum, and also works with sixth-formers on Lawrence's plays and short stories. His article, 'The Trial of Lady Chatterley's Lover: The most thorough and expensive seminar on Lawrence's work ever given' has just been published in New DH Lawrence ed. Howard Booth (Manchester University Press, 2009).

I got through my entire undergraduate and postgraduate career without ever holding a manuscript in anger. Nobody suggested I should and it never came up in any lecture, seminar or tutorial I attended.

Actually, I never even looked at a manuscript, much less studied one – except for a letter from James Joyce that my tutor had found in an attic somewhere and we all thought was great, but not strictly relevant to anything we were doing, and a glance at a copy of Household Words in order to confirm that Dickens’s writing ‘conformed to serial publication norms’. Texts, for me – and most other English students, I would guess – were pretty stable entities. There was a role for editors, but it was fairly mundane stuff, after which the serious work of criticism took place. Of course, there are moments where editors’ work comes to centre stage: the obvious bits of Shakespeare which people used to argue about – ‘sullied’ or ‘solid’ flesh and all that sort of thing; Wordsworth’s multiple rewritings of The Prelude and Lawrence’s three Lady Chatterleys; even Auden’s fiddling with the political poems of the 1930s in later editions. But such variants and oddities don’t involve the majority of us in any real manuscript work, and are pretty much served up to us on a plate by the specialists. I did have a grudging respect for those serious types who would totter off to the Rare Books Room while I snuggled down on a sofa with my paperbacks and latte, and I know they thought I wasn’t a proper scholar, but in the end it seemed to me that grubbing through manuscripts was probably both dull and a bit too, well, empirical for me. The interesting stuff in English, at the time, was going on in Theory. We had no time for authors, much less their material traces, and real literary criticism involved an intellectually strenuous attention to the words on the printed page and, according to taste, such things as their sexual, political, ethical or ecological implications.

Appointed to a post which involved work on DH Lawrence, I knew things might have to change. One

36 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk

of the particular benefits of working in D H Lawrence Studies at the University of Nottingham, after all, is access to the unparalleled Lawrence Collections – people come from all over the world to consult them.

Nonetheless, I had rather hoped to retain a critical distance from the two currents which have dominated Lawrence criticism for the past three decades: editing and biography. My own research and teaching had concentrated on Lawrence’s cultural significance, involving things like arguments around his influence and status in the 1950s (he was very important, but for different reasons from the 1930s) and the impact of the Chatterley Trial (considerable, but not very easy to be specific about), and it had never taken me anywhere near a manuscript or archive. My data was all in the public domain, and that seemed very important to me, because I wanted to attend to patterns in our ordinary culture, whereas work on manuscripts seemed necessarily a rather private, even elite, affair. In addition, it’s a lot more straightforward to teach things that your students can actually take home and bring to class. I was grateful for all those details in the comprehensive, three-volume Cambridge biography about the Lawrences’ extraordinary lives, and for the exhaustive precision of the monumental Cambridge edition of Lawrence’s work, a remarkable achievement of recovery and restoration but I still remained to be convinced that, for most of us – and certainly for students – there was anything in those wonderful projects which was central to the everyday work of teaching and learning at an undergraduate level. Another reason I hadn’t had much to do with manuscripts and textual variants was that novels, stories, plays and poems offer quite enough challenge without further complicating the very text we’re trying to read. More to the point, how could one give a lecture cohort of 200 students any meaningful access to the complex detail of autograph manuscripts and corrected proofs? There aren’t even 200 seats in the Rare Books Room.

Then I decided to set up a lecture course on Lawrence’s first collection of tales, The Prussian Officer and Other Stories (1914). In an idle moment, I flicked 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 became me immersed in the complex textual history of these stories, and I began to realise se quite how much of the richness and significance of Lawrence’s writing my students and I were missing. Attention to the genesis, the story, of these stories, to the considerable siderable changes Lawrence (and his editors) made to these texts, powerfully enhances and clarifies the work of more conventional literary and cultural analysis. As the scales ales fell from my eyes I accepted that I couldn’t lecture on, for instance, ‘Odour off er a Chrysanthemums’ without making detailed reference to the manuscripts. Over tially period of four years Lawrence, as was already his customary practice, substantially h revised and reworked this tale on at least four occasions, in the stages of both drafting and page proofs, and then again between the work’s publication in Ford e Madox Ford’s English Review (1911), and its appearance in the collection The s, Prussian Officer and Other Stories (1914). The University of Nottingham holds, ed in addition to first editions of the published versions, a set of radically corrected 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. hare this Immediately, however, the old problems reasserted themselves. How was I to share 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 first-year Lawrence module), is to find 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 significance.

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 able time and intellectual importance. I was lucky enough to be able to spend considerable cholars with these documents, and could call on the advice of such senior Lawrence scholars ely as John Worthen, Keith Cushman and Keith Sagar, not to mention the extremely ctions knowledgeable archivists in the Department of Manuscripts and Special Collections he at Nottingham, and the dialect expert, Hilary Hillier. I knew that, in the past, the e university had made bids to digitise materials, but simply being able to see the manuscripts, however good the reproduction, wasn’t going to take us very far.. How e could we possibly reproduce, for my first-year lecture course, something of the 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 ks engagement with texts. The magnificent, scholarly print editions of the works 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

Photo P Pho to Cr Cre Credits: re edit dits: di s: DH DH La Law Lawrence wre rence ren c © Univ ce U University nivers erssity ty of No N Nottingham otti ttiingh g am

WordPlay Wor ord dPla Pll y • Issue Iss sssue 3 • April Apr prril 2010 p 20 0 37 201 3

Creative Pedagogies

Textual and Genetic Criticism In designing the site, and above all in deciding how best to frame and utilise the materials for teaching and learning situations, we were particularly fortunate in having the input of John Worthen (who has edited numerous volumes in the Cambridge Edition of the Complete Works of D. H. Lawrence), and Finn Fordham and Sarah Davison (scholars schooled in ‘genetic criticism’, the emergent theoretical and methodological mode of attending to ‘texts in process’).

Between them they coached me – and convinced me – about the methods and value of textual and genetic criticism.

‘Genetic criticism’, Finn explained, ‘is concerned about how best to communicate the changes between texts that exist in a series’. The benefits of such work, he argues, are considerable: ‘Readers find themselves adjacent to the position of a writer in the process of reflecting on their texts, seeing those texts as open to change, to deletion, addition, substitution and so on. The line between the writer and reader becomes blurred. We might be familiar with the idea that readers become writers in their 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 reflecting on textual production.’ Specifically in terms of ‘Odour of Chrysanthemums', Sarah suggested, ‘Exploring the multiple avant-textes (that is the pre-publication materials) allows you to see how the ‘final’ text has been put together.

Tracking the interlineations, substitutions and cuts that take place in the various stages in the genesis of the work gives an indication of Lawrence’s changing conception of the text and what it was he sought to achieve.’

This mode of attention is not simply something for literary critics. There are also important lessons for those who are themselves engaged in creative writing, as John Worthen made clear: ‘There is nothing like reading every detail of a text, watching every change in it, for becoming extremely familiar with it (nearly always), and becoming deeply impressed with the working of the creative mind and hand that were responsible for it. As an editor, you may be studying the details of punctuation, at the minutest level, but you are also learning how a writer actually works.’

38 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk

manuscripts were, indeed, effectively invisible in the detail of the Cambridge edition’s 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 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 similarities, bringing in other texts, are obviously less readily available with facsimiles on screen, but for readers altogether new to manuscripts we wanted to create an environment similar to the one I had enjoyed – with a few experts at my elbow helping me to see things, to understand what was important. The experience of coming to know these materials, and to understand how best to utilise them, was an education in itself – an education we wanted to reproduce in the online environment. That was the challenge we set ourselves with ‘Odour of Chrysanthemums: a text in process’.

When you visit the site now, we hope it provides a straightforward but substantial experience of the texts, and supplies the crucial elements of support and direction that anyone new to this kind of work might need. There are facsimiles of all the main versions of the story, but also transcripts with line numbers. It is possible to call up the versions alongside each other in order to trace exactly what changes have taken place – for several passages these changes are highlighted in order to guide the initial analysis. In addition to all this primary material, there are also substantial supporting resources looking at history, dialect, biographical information and geography, as well as reproductions of some famous articles and essays about the story. There is also a section devoted to ‘working with the text’, which suggest a variety of ‘ways in’ to the manuscripts and the issues they raise for textual and ‘genetic’ critics (genetic criticism sounded a terrifying prospect, but as my colleagues explained isn’t in fact frightening at all – see side panel). In its various beta incarnations the site has been used by a number of student groups, and has come a long way from the original ideas that persuaded the Subject Centre to support us, and we intend to continue adding supporting materials so that it remains very much a ‘text in process’… http://odour.nottingham.ac.uk/index.asp

Building the Site The process of designing the site has been far longer and more difficult than we ever imagined. When we started out (in 2005) there were a number of examples online, but we wanted something simple, cheap (IT stuff doesn’t come cheap), and user-friendly.

It soon became apparent that the dream of providing an exhaustive, comprehensive comparison of the different versions would be impossible. There are pedagogic virtues in this limitation, however, as was made clear in conversation with advisers from the Subject Centre. Breaking the story down into ‘episodes’ allowed for close focus on several key scenes, which serve as exemplars for the kinds of critical attention required. The supporting materials have been added piecemeal (and continue to grow), but already include several famous articles about the text, and some ‘getting started’ guidance for critical reading and genetic textual analysis.

Technical information about the construction of the site is set out in the ‘About the Project’ pages on the site. Any moderately computer-literate person could carry out similar work, given some basic directions from a specialist programmer. The main requirements for anyone undertaking this work would seem to be the common academic attributes of scholarly patience and precision: • meticulous attention to detail at each stage of computer input • regular checking (and double checking) for errors at each stage • suitable pacing of the work, given the very close attention required • working always with copy text files in case of (apparent) disasters • working in short-ish text sections, especially during the early learning stages • making regular, separate, backup files under different, ‘staged’, filenames to minimise risk of having to redo large amounts of work • additional checking!

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 specific 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 findings 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 first 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 qualifications, 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 specifications 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 (Sheffield 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 difficult 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 defining 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 finer 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 identified 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 difficult texts

written in difficult language, the study of which is made more difficult 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 benefit 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 underprivileged 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 benefits 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 benefits 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 benefits 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

Graeme Roberts taught English at Aberdeen, becoming Vice-Principal for Teaching and Learning. He is now an Academy Senior Associate, helping Scottish HEIs to enhance student employability, and a UK Bologna Expert, contributing a chapter on learning outcomes to Yes! Go! A Practical Guide to Designing Degree Programmes with Integrated Transnational Mobility (DAAD, 2008).

Four years ago the English Subject Centre participated in a joint meeting with the Subject Centres for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies and for History, Classics and Archaeology to discuss the academic implications of the Bologna Process. In March this year, the higher education ministers of the 46 signatory countries met in Vienna and Budapest for the official launch of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) and to assess the progress of the Bologna reforms. So what has been achieved since 2006 and what still remains to be done?

The most authoritative answer to these questions is to be found, not in the bland celebratory pronouncements of the official ministerial communiqué, but in the findings of the European University Association (EUA) Trends VI report, which is based on a survey of over 800 universities, feedback from 28 national rectors’ conferences and the results of 27 site visits to institutions in 16 countries. At the time of writing, however, the EUA report is not yet available, so I am basing my answer on the outcome of last year’s ministerial conference in Leuven. This shows that: • the adoption of the three-cycle (bachelor, master and doctoral) structure • the development of national qualifications frameworks (based on learning outcomes and student workload) linked to the overarching Framework for Qualifications of the EHEA, and of national quality assurance systems benchmarked against a common set of European Standards and Guidelines • the use of recognition tools such as the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) and the Diploma Supplement are making national systems of higher education across Europe more compatible and comparable, making it easier for students to have their mobility

42 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk

periods recognised and for universities to attract students and scholars from other parts of the world.

Nevertheless, the task of creating the EHEA is by no means complete; full achievement of its objectives will require increased commitment well beyond its launch date in 2010. In particular, action is called for to widen access to higher education, so that the profile of the student body reflects the diversity of Europe’s populations, and the Bologna countries have been asked to set national targets for increasing participation by under-represented groups by 2020. Part of this growth, required if Europe is to cope with a shrinking workforce and an ageing population, is to be achieved through the creation of more flexible learning paths, including part-time and work-based routes and the recognition of prior learning. Last year’s review of progress at Leuven re-asserted the importance of the teaching mission of Europe’s universities, and concluded that more work still needs to be done if the process of curricular reform is to be soundly based on the principle of student-centred learning and the use of learning outcomes.

All this should sound very familiar to those of us who experienced the reforms of UK higher education in the last 20 years and are now living with the consequences.

Although the Bologna reforms are designed to make it easier for academics and employers in one country to understand and recognise learning achieved in another, increasing the mobility of Europe’s students remains the most important, as yet unachieved, goal of the whole project. Mobility is to be the ‘hallmark’ of the EHEA; so the Leuven ministerial conference called upon member countries to take steps not only to increase mobility but to ensure that there is a better balance between incoming and outgoing students and greater participation by under-represented groups. The target for 2020 is for at least 20% of those graduating in the EHEA to have had a period of study or training abroad.

Creative Pedagogies

This is a particular challenge for a country like Britain, not just in terms of increasing outgoing student numbers (who currently amount to just over half the number of incoming Erasmus students), but also in terms of their demographic profile. According to a recent HEFCE study of the cohort of UK students who began full-time first degree courses in 2002-03 and graduated within five years, 4% undertook a period of study abroad and 8% a work placement. Most of the former were foreign language students and the vast majority of the latter were studying business, science or engineering. Both groups had different characteristics from their fellows. Study abroad students, for example, were typically female, young and less likely to come from an ethnic minority or from a low participation neighbourhood or to have a declared disability; they were also more likely to be from a higher socio-economic class, have a higher than average entry qualification and be studying at an institution with a high qualification on entry. Not surprisingly, students in both groups graduated with better degrees. Those who had undertaken placements abroad were 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.

Last year’s ministerial communiqué called for the creation of new opportunities for student mobility in each of the three degree cycles, particularly through joint degrees and the provision of ‘mobility windows’. The recent survey of UK universities by the UUK Europe Unit (due to report in January but, at the time of writing, still to appear) should reveal how much progress there has been in the development of joint degrees with European partners, one of the topics discussed at the meeting of the three Subject Centres in May 2006.

Meanwhile, we do know that of the 116 Erasmus Mundus masters courses selected for funding next year by the European Commission, 12 are in the field of languages, philological sciences and humanities but only two of these include a UK partner.

This year sees the 20th anniversary of the European Society for the Study of English (ESSE), a network comprising most of the Bologna signatory countries and (one might have thought) an ideal forum for promoting Erasmus exchanges involving UK staff and students and for identifying potential partners with whom to create high quality joint masters and doctoral programmes capable of competing for funding under the Erasmus Mundus scheme.

Over the past two years the British Council (which administers the UK Erasmus programme) has organised a series of joint events with the Higher Education Academy on the European Dimension.

The UK Bologna Experts team hopes to follow this up by working with a number of Subject Centres to increase awareness among academic staff and encourage them to think about the implications of the Bologna reforms for learning and teaching at subject level, and about how they might give more students the opportunity to enhance their personal development, academic achievements and career prospects through a period of study or training abroad.

Further information Official Bologna Process: www.ond.vlaanderen.be/hogeronderwijs/Bologna/ European University Association: www.eua.be/ Attainment in higher education: Erasmus and placement students (HEFCE, November 2009): www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2009/09_44/ UUK Europe Unit: www.europeunit.ac.uk/home/ Erasmus Mundus programme: http://ec.europa.eu/education/external-relationprogrammes/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, allnight 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 Steph is a second-year English Literature and Creative Writing student. She works part time in her campus book store.

invaluable to a student. My only qualm is that nature poetry is not really my thing. Poets of yore seemed to be able to do it, but all I could come up with myself was a turtle swallowing a K-Mart bag.

We are having a bake sale to raise money for Haiti, which

Untitled (18 January 2010)

my housemates and I all plan to contribute to. It’s strange that we can find 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 find

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 Michael Cunningham’s The Hours in Oxfam. I don’t really have time to read it on top of everything else, but Nicole Kidman just looked so lovely on the cover. I believe (hope) it may give me some kind of insight into Woolf for my next essay on Mrs Dalloway.

Cereal and Surreal Seals (3 February 2010)

David's blog David is in the third year of his English Language degree. In his spare time he represents England at karate.

Oh Come, All Ye Faithful (15 January 2010)

First semester had ended and I returned home to the North 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 efficient timetable

44 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk

Student Perspective

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 a few weeks of 12-hour per day shifts, rejecting friends’ invitations out and having self-imposed bans from a certain social networking site, all culminating in a timely hand-in last Monday. Luckily, this time I avoided the night-before-

I got rip-roaringly drunk at the weekend, took all my money out and left it somewhere in the centre of Birmingham.

Epic fail. I remember purchasing a chicken burger at 1am and paying for the taxi home but have no recollection of where this money has gotten too.

hand-in red mist of doom. But it’s out there…

Song 2

Hmmm, Monday I love thee!

(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 continuing work on my dissertation. I am investigating the accents of regional television news presenters, with particular focus on BBC Look North and ITV Tyne Tees.

Today I am to submit 2000 words of my dissertation for

days that it’s a struggle to write about study. All I really do constructively is continue reading Great Expectations, which I really love and have read before. Between the overtime, my usual shift and trudging to and from the office 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 contribution to my essay” and has forced me to articulate my ‘Background’ and ‘Data and Method’ sections into a

Hope's blog Hope is in the second term of her degree course on English Literature and Journalism.

grammatically complete and coherent set of sentences.

Which is nice.

Hannah's blog Hannah is in the first year of her degree in English and Creative Writing.

My week. A summary.

(24 January 2010)

Monday: Poetry and Society – Our wonderful lecturer started the workshop with a long talk about the assignment 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!

Other than our reading list we had no written work for the holidays so I am looking forward to the mental stimuli. I haven’t a clue what our Drama Semester Two module will be like, it has a lot to live up to as Drama in Semester One was superb. It’s silly but I repeatedly quote the play I wrote for it half expecting people to recognise it.

marked. Now, I don’t mind an overall talk about the results of an assignment and what could have been done better generally, however, I really think it should be given on the day you get your marks back because now we’ve all been left to worry for a week over something we can do nothing about.

Thursday: Day off – shopping! It was surprisingly easy

Back for Good?

to find my friend a full Lady Gaga style outfit on the high street.

(26 January 2010)

Friday: Introduction to the Novel – It was our first workshop It has been amazing seeing the result of Semester One's

on Great Expectations. We focused on the women in the

slog, two 1sts 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 floating 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 justification and seeing one word

does it in a very extreme way. Personally I love any talk

WordPlay • Issue 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 first

boyfriend are fed up of me seeing some advert,

place. For goodness sake, he can make the history of the

TV programme, film, 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 my starting point. Incidentally, Dickens’ ideal women were efficient but submissive, something which is reinforced through the novel. As somebody in my class put it ‘What

Matt's blog Matt is a first-year studying English and Drama. In his spare time, he works as a DJ at his university’s community radio station.

a knob!’.

And so we return…

Susan's blog Susan is a first-year mature student in English Literature and Language.

Catching Up

(18 January 2010)

I was fairly pleased with my reflective commentary for drama and essay on the gothic novel which both received high 2.1s. The only problem I now have is how do I improve on my grades? Lecturer feedback is certainly helpful but 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, who are doing me a big favour!!

Kicks for free?

(28 January 2010)

belated intro and feeling jittery

My student loan has still not arrived and I’ve completely 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 first

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 definitely see where I went wrong. I chose

dodgy air-con.

Wuthering Heights, which was a bit of a mistake, but I spent a whole week trying to decide and in the end my nerves got the better of me and I chose the easy option.

Then I just did not plan it very well and in the end just went to writing it. In the end I feel I just got too over the top about it, so I was never going to be able to get it right. Am going to go to academic guidance for the next one. I just feel rather like a lost child at the moment with this subject and think I need direction. Thank God marks don’t count this year!!

46 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk

Having recently purchased all 300 odd episodes of ER I have discovered a new way to motivate my learning; one episode for one hour of work. It’s a simple system but at least I’m getting my reading done. This week alone I’ve had to read and annotate the whole of Dracula, O Go My Man, 10 poems and two online journals and in the process I’ve got through a whole series of ER! Who knows, by the end of my degree I may know as much about emergency medicine as I do about semantic fields and Walt Whitman!

Sounding it out: the performance of English 6 November 2009 The transition from English student to PhD researcher to English lecturer can seem somewhat 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 Mansfield (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’.

English Subject Centre

The first 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 Palg Palgrave Macmillan is delighted to announce the publication of Starting an English Literature Degree, Deg

by Andrew Green, co-published with the English Subject Centre.

Andrew Green provides students with the information and advice they need to ensure a stand-out And application app to study at degree level at a time when competition is harder than ever. He offers essential guidance gui on how to refine the skills needed for this degree, such as preparing for lectures, seminars and tutorials, applying literary theory, researching online, becoming a better writer, referencing an essay ess and avoiding plagiarism, and interpreting reading lists and developing reading skills.

‘This unusual, detailed, and thought-provoking book will help students of English Literature come to grips with w their studies and take a share of responsibility for their own learning. It thus has the potential to make m a major impact on the way English is studied.’

Professor Ben Knights, Director, English Subject Centre P

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 MLA published an ‘Options for Teaching’ title on Teaching Environmental Literature: Materials, Methods, Resources. Edited by Fred Waage, who collaborated on the new volume, it was a trail blazing publication that had to argue for the very existence of the field it purported to describe. Aside from an excursion into sci-fi, ‘environmental literature’ meant nature writing and regional literatures (American, by default), and the key pedagogical strategy was the use of field trips considerably more demanding than a visit to the New Globe: one involved building a sauna in the Minnesota wilderness, while another prescribed Jack London, Thomson, Pope and Wordsworth as prior reading for a trek through the snows of Maine.

The new anthology reflects the confidence, success and diversification of what is now called ‘ecocriticism’ throughout North America. Nature writing is still there, but is explored in relation to ‘East Asian Influence’ (Barnhill), for example, while ‘America’ has expanded to include Mexico (Marcone and Ybarra) and Canada (Banting, Bondar). The history of African-American relationships to the natural world, cruelly distorted by slavery, lynchings and migration to the urban North, is shown to have generated powerful examples of complex pastoral (Myers), while Native American literature has been dragged out of the shadow of the Ecological Indian into the politicised ambit of environmental justice (Adamson). New theoretical paradigms are represented beside multiculturalism and environmental justice: Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands’s ecofeminism seeks to supersede essentialist pieties, advocating ‘an act of reading in concert’ that ‘indicates that interpretation is about the cultivation of judgement in the company of others’ (62), while Glen Love argues that ecocriticism ‘should now assume its place as part of the bridge between science and the humanities and contribute powerfully to the continuing study of literature and human values’ (251) – the project the biologist EO Wilson has dubbed ‘consilience’.

48 WordPlay • www.english.heacademy.ac.uk

Place-based approaches are still just as prevalent, but include explorations of toxic, ‘sacrificial’ landscapes like Nevada (Glotfelty) and downtown LA (Bryson) as well as the pristine-ish Canadian Shield (Henderson). Interdisciplinary programmes including sustained field study, such as the Summer Environmental Writing Programme in Kentucky (Roorda) and an Earthwatch project on Mexico’s Costa Alegre (Keir), arouse serious envy in this reader, and seem likely to have a far more enduring impact on students than courses limited to classrooms and short field trips. First prize for true grit, though, goes to Stacy Alaimo, charged with teaching green cultural studies in the reddest of red states, in the belly of the Beast: ‘the North Texas metroplex’ (370). Dynamic and self-critical though they are, however, neither these accounts nor any of the other essays engage with environmental education research more generally, which can make them seem a little naive in terms of pedagogical theory and methodology. For example, evidence for the effectiveness of a particular canon or programme is attested by course evaluations and (assessed) journal entries submitted to the tutor, which hardly seem likely to yield reliable results. The bravest essay, by David Mazel, asks: ‘Do students who read and write about green texts turn into more thoughtful and effective environmentalists than they might have been otherwise? I have yet to see any empirical research (or even anecdotal evidence) indicating that they do.’ (42) Some of the essays amount to little more than lists of suggested reading; others are interesting but limited narratives of teaching experiences. The most valuable combine critical reflection with practical suggestions for teaching, such as Ursula Heise’s essay on ‘Teaching Ecocritical Theory’ and Anne Raine’s impressive account of ecocritical inflections of such recalcitrant American Modernists as Gertrude Stein and Wallace Stevens. Besides variations on the outdoor classroom, pedagogical innovations are limited to the use of electronic portfolios to produce multimedia reflections on environmental texts (Chandler) and student-led research inspired by Carson’s Silent Spring in the composition classroom (Smith). So although the new MLA anthology includes some exemplary essays, and more generally testifies to the development of sophisticated environmental criticism and theory in the USA, it also unwittingly reveals that research into ecocritical pedagogy remains essentially a hobby.

Greg Garrard, Bath Spa University

Book Reviews

A History of English Literature 2nd edition Michael Alexander (Palgrave, 2000, 2007) Michael Alexander has produced in A History of English Literature a text that will and should endure for many generations. It is an indispensable guide for any Literature student who wishes to have a complete and logical understanding of the traditional canon.

By eschewing the definite article in the title, Professor Alexander does not wish to produce the conclusive version of the history, but rather uses his exceptional knowledge to guide the reader through a select history. The text maintains a well balanced and practical worth, without ever slipping into the mundane, or deviating into the flights of fancy of its author. Alexander follows Leavis’s tradition of English Literature and similar to The Great Tradition (Leavis 1948) is uncompromising, confident and decisive in its inclusions and omissions. However, this is a far more modern text; Alexander does not concur with Leavis's view of the novel as moralised realism and is doing something more than “weeding the garden of literature for Cambridge students” (p307). Instead he equips both teacher and student with an indispensable handbook to English Literature.

Often witty, the text entertains and guides the serious student of literature from the end of the first millennium to the late 20th century, travelling at break neck pace over its thousand year journey. At 484 pages, it manages to transcend what could be a limited remit without deserting it entirely; it is both a careful index of key texts, and also remains rich, relevant and 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 five 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 and the emergence of literary criticism. Perhaps the most useful

aspect is the further reading section at the end of each chapter, signposting the reader, or more presciently the student, to more information on the topic.

The text also furnishes the reader with more than the usual quotes from well thumbed writings but also extracts often overlooked passages, showing the willing reader how to look beyond the rhetoric that often befogs infamous texts. This is evidenced in the outstanding section on Shakespeare’s works and the intertextual interplay that Alexander unpacks. In his analysis of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a school pupil’s stalwart, he draws links with Prospero in The Tempest, the poetry of Walter Raleigh, and the esprit de corps that then beguiled the Elizabethan explorers and now informs the play's lasting resonance. Texts are placed not only in their chronological order but also contextualised within their literary tradition or cultural history. Alexander does not critique the texts but rather entices the reader with enough information to pique their own criticism and exegesis of the selected literature.

This is not a book that highlights the dissident voices in Literature, specifically in the short 20th century section, and the adherence to the conventional white male canon.

However Alexander acknowledges and makes no apology for his populist decision to omit the minor in preference for the major and notes the limitations in his criteria of selection. Otherwise, the book is perfectly weighted not only in its content but also in practical terms. It is comprehensive enough to be an invaluable resource and transportable enough to be treated as a working textbook, rather than a paper weight or desk ornament. My own personal regret after reading the text is that I did not discover it years ago, as an undergraduate. It serves as a useful manual for producing an understanding of the engineering, construction and design of literature. Allowing the reader to not only understand the traditions of the past but also how they continue to shape the present.

Natalie Clark 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 first 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 Senior Lecturer in English at Liverpool John Moores University, and author of Masculinity in MaleAuthored Fiction 19502000: Keeping it Up (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Her research focus is currently on the 1950s, and she is writing Good Brave Causes, the Fifties volume of the Edinburgh History of Twentieth Century Literature in Britain (forthcoming, 2011).

Edwin Morgan, Collected Poems Our greatest living poet. I used to run a literary summer school in Edinburgh, and we had the privilege of having Edwin Morgan come through from Glasgow to read to us. Around 35 nationalities were represented among our students – every single one was rapt throughout, and The Loch Ness Monster’s Song brought the house down. Morgan is a realist, a romantic, an experimenter, a master of traditional forms, and an inspirational translator.

Tove Jansson, The Summer Book The most difficult choice I had to make here was which one of Jansson’s books to include – any of the many incarnations of the Moomins would have been wonderful to have, or The True Deceiver, or Fair Play: all of them incredibly spare and moving and wise. In the end, I settled on this one – probably the best book I’ve ever read about women, young and old – and a handbook for sanity, humour and emotional sustenance on even the tiniest of islands.

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 first 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 find 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 infinitely 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 five 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 Disneyfied.

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 first 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

The Last Word

Aidan Byrne teaches in the English and Media/ Cultural Studies departments at Wolverhampton University. His PhD (2007) explored masculinity in 1930s Welsh novels and his research interests cover 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 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 flu is the plague which occasioned

room, the question is ever more pertinent in the era of cuts,

Bocaccio’s Decameron, The Faerie Queene prefigures 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 –

My colleagues and friends have committed themselves to a life of the mind: they inhale and enthuse about ideas to all and sundry

and if you fear the march of the Tories, A Child In Time charts the near future.

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

flies 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

I chose an English degree carelessly, with little thought of employment: the idea of being funded to read and talk about books for three years was quite enough – I feel for my students, tyrannised by the vanishing job market and mocked by society at large for their artistic leanings. At the end of my time, postgraduate work was suggested and the same principle applied. The idea that someone might actually pay me to carry on in the same vein was a revelation.

to what Baudrillard would call the ‘simulation’ (as opposed to the symbolic) model: PowerPoint, ‘learning outcomes’ and a certificate which encourage a consumerist experience. The result of this intellectual poverty on the part of our political leaders is generations of students unaware of their own potential and that of literary study: one student informed me that she ‘doesn’t really like reading’ and a new graduate said he could no longer read for pleasure because his analytical skills had stripped away 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 firmly. 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 ‘fill skills gaps

practice to managerialism.

in the economy’, I fear for those refugees from call-centres and factories who fill my classes looking for ‘something else’, whatever that may be: aspiration must now only be monetary.

As funding is cut and fees rise, such students will fall away, but beyond the material, the discourse of education militates against the pursuit of education for its own sake, or for aims wider than that of the acquisition of employable skills.

‘Knowledge is power’ wrote Bacon – how wrong he was. In our situation, knowledge has been reduced to ‘transferable learning’, equipping obedient students for employment.

What’s been stripped away is the transformational quality of English, of intellectual daring enabled by the discovery of non-linear, emotional, other ways of thinking the world. Of 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

T3

is the Subject Centre’s popular database of teaching tips contributed by and for English and Creative Writing lecturers. Browse this stimulating collection of pithy seminar ideas and then add an idea of your own.

Contribute to T3 and earn up to £50 for your teaching ideas!

We’ll give you £50 of book tokens for any five teaching ideas submitted to T3.

Handy new T3 features include: • Searching by period, genre, pedagogical approach and author • An easy process for submitting ideas • Easy printing

T3 is at www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/resources/t3/index.php

The English Subject Centre supports all aspects of the teaching and learning of English Literature, English Language and Creative Writing in higher education in the UK. It is a Subject Centre of the Higher Education Academy. www.heacademy.ac.uk

The English Subject Centre, Royal Holloway, University of London Egham TW20 0EX T 01784 443221 • esc@rhul.ac.uk www.english.heacademy.ac.uk