ESC Newsletter issue 14 by English Subject Centre

English Subject Centre

Newsletter Issue 14 • April 2008

ISSN 1479-7089

‘That is what we do isn’t it?’ The Production of University English

Up Close: a round table on close reading

Susan Bruce

Ben Knights and Jonathan Gibson

Investigating Creative Writing: student perspectives

Reading and Writing Society: the role of English subjects in Education for Sustainability

Steve May

Arran Stibbe

Books Were My Liberation: an interview with Alan Rice

Developing Careers Services for English Students

Nicole King

Jane Gawthrope

This newsletter is published twice a year by the English Subject Centre, part of the Subject Network of the Higher Education Academy. The Subject Centre provides many different kinds of help to English lecturers – more details are available in this Newsletter and on our website (www.english.heacademy.ac.uk). At the heart of all our work is the view that the higher education teaching of English is best supported from within the discipline itself. As well as updates on the Centre’s activities and important developments (both within the discipline and across higher education), you will find articles here on a wide range of English-related topics. The next issue of the Newsletter will appear in Autumn 2008. We welcome contributions. If you would like to submit an article (of between 300 and 3,000 words), propose a book or software review (perhaps a textbook review by one of your students) or respond in a letter to someone else’s article, please contact the editor, Nicole King (nicole.king@rhul.ac.uk) or visit our Newsletter web page at www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/ publications/newsletter/index.php In the meantime, you can keep in touch with our activities by subscribing to our e-mail list at www.jiscmail. ac.uk/lists/english–heacademy.html. The Newsletter is distributed to English departments throughout the UK and is available online at www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/publications/index.php along with previous issues. If you would like extra copies, please e-mail us at esc@rhul.ac.uk

The English Subject Centre Staff Jackie Fernandes: Administrator Jane Gawthrope Manager Jonathan Gibson: Academic Co-ordinator Keith Hughes: Liaison Officer for Scotland Nicole King: Academic Co-ordinator Ben Knights: Director Payman Labaff: Website and Systems Development Assistant Brett Lucas: Website Developer and Learning Technologist Rebecca Price: Administrative Assistant Candice Satchwell: Project Officer for HE in FE

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

www.english.heacademy.ac.uk

Cover Image: Clifton Suspension Bridge, © iStockphoto.

Contents

Contents 02 03

Welcome Nicole King Events Calendar

Articles

‘That is what we do isn’t it?’ The Production of University English Susan Bruce

Investigating Creative Writing: student perspectives Steve May

Books Were My Liberation: an interview with Alan Rice Nicole King

Up Close: a round table on close reading Ben Knights and Jonathan Gibson

Reading and Writing Society: the role of English Subjects in Education for Sustainability Arran Stibbe

Developing Careers Services for English Students Jane Gawthrope

Book Reviews

Teaching & Learning English Literature Ellie Chambers & Marshall Gregory Reviewed by Peter Barry

Doing Creative Writing Steve May Reviewed by David Bausor

News, Reports & Opinions

Event Round-Up

Digital Resources at the British Library Joanna Newman

Desert Island Texts Chris Ringrose

IT Works! Brett Lucas

The Last Word Mick Short

Cert no. SA-COC-1530

Newsletter 14 April 2008 01

Welcome

Welcome Nicole King As this issue of the Newsletter lands in your pigeonhole, spring will have arrived, however beleaguered by late frosts, storms or even snow. Whether or not the forsythia or daffodils have now faded, you’ll know the seasons have turned as your students beat a path to your door in fretful (or perhaps languid) preparation for their exams and essays. As your teaching winds down and you begin to think about exam boards and the summer conference season, take a moment to regroup by immersing yourself in the pages of Issue 14. In Arran Stibbe’s helpful overview, you can find out about Education for Sustainable Development, and why it is central to how we teach Creative Writing, English literature and English language. Consider the challenge of understanding the first-year experience, as Susan Bruce transports us to the scene of a classroom, where learning is analysed through speech, gesture and gaze. Dip into the interview given by National Teaching fellow Alan Rice, whose American Studies work as a teacher and researcher joyously and forthrightly exceed the bounds of ‘English’ – indeed he reminds us what a rich group of subjects ours is. Steve May details his research into the degree expectations and experiences of Creative Writing students around the UK and beyond. He tells how his own practice has changed as a result of what he discovered. Ben Knights and Jonathan Gibson report back on a round table discussion on the topic of close reading and where it figures in current teaching practice. As you read these varied articles you may notice how the idea of practical criticism makes repeat appearances. Indeed, this foundation stone of English studies in the 20th century (and beyond) gets critiqued, admired and casually referenced depending on which of our authors you read.

Further on in the issue you will find our regular features, including Brett Lucas’s column IT Works! where you can learn about some of the latest webbased technologies to support and animate your teaching; Book Reviews contributed to this issue by Peter Barry and David Bausor; Desert Island Texts with ‘castaway’ Chris Ringrose and the new commentary column The Last Word. In this issue’s The Last Word, Mick Short, a new member of the Subject Centre’s Advisory Board, provocatively questions the forked path that now seems to divide English literature from English language. Since the last Newsletter, it has been a busy period for the Subject Centre. You can quickly catch-up on some of the many events we have held over the past eight months in our Event Round-Up, while more extensive event reports are available on our website. There are also several new mini-projects which have been funded, that we’ll report on in the next issue, but you can find out about them now on our website’s Project pages. We are delighted to report that Teaching Holocaust Literature and Film, edited by Robert Eaglestone and Barry Langford, has recently been published; it is the sixth volume to appear in the book series we edit for Palgrave Macmillan, Teaching the New English. Do you have an opinion about our subject? Perhaps you have an idea for a Last Word commentary? Do you have a book on teaching you’d like to review or an article in a previous issue of the Newsletter you wish to respond to? If so, please get in touch. The Newsletter’s success, like our work in general, is down to your generosity and commitment to working with us. Good luck with those exam boards and conference papers.

Nicole King Editor

Recycle when you have finished with this publication please pass it on to a colleague or student or recycle it appropriately.

02 Newsletter 14 April 2008

Events Calendar

Events Calendar Spring/Summer 2008 For further details on any of these (mostly free) events please visit our website www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/events

EVENT: DATE: LOCATION:

The Future of the Taught MA in English 25 April 2008 De Montfort University, Leicester

This one-day event will focus on the changing context of, and pressures on, the taught postgraduate degree in English. Participants will be able to discuss how their departments, and the discipline as a whole, might respond to the different demands of students, funding bodies and employers. There will be opportunities both to consider strategic issues and to share ideas and experiences of practical responses in terms of pedagogy and curriculum design. EVENT: DATE: LOCATION:

Creative Writing: Teaching and Technology 30 April 2008 Manchester Metropolitan University

The aims of this one-day event are to provide a forum for discussion and debate. Topics and presentations will explore the pedagogies of Creative Writing and technology. The purpose of the day is not only to showcase new developments and share practice, but also to provide ample discussion time to think about what issues we are facing. EVENT: DATE: LOCATION:

Learning on the Language/Literature Border 1 May 2008 UCLAN, Preston

This one-day event will look at how students learn and experience English language and English literature in the undergraduate curriculum. The aims of the day are to interrogate the underlying assumptions of the way we approach English language and English literature learning, and to develop an understanding of how we can ensure students get the best learning experience. EVENT: DATE: LOCATION:

Teaching: An Improviser’s Art 1 May 2008 SOAS, London

This event, led by Kevin McCarron, Reader in American Literature at Roehampton University, will draw on the parallels between teaching and stand-up comedy, to suggest techniques and strategies to reduce the burden of seminar preparation.

EVENT: DATE: LOCATION:

What is Literacy in HE Today? 13 May 2008 London, Bedford Square

The English Subject Centre is pleased to introduce the first of its London Evening Discussion Groups. The purpose is to share ideas about teaching with colleagues from across London in an informal atmosphere. The first session will query the definition of literacy in higher education today: Are our students literate enough? How do we identify literacy in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd years? Is one person’s literacy another person’s skill set? EVENT: DATE: LOCATION:

Networking Day for HE in FE English Lecturers 13 June 2008 SOAS, London

If you teach English at higher education level in an further education context, we hope you will join us at this networking event. The event will give people from different parts of the UK a chance to share experiences, curriculum content, ways of working, frustrations and delights. The English Subject Centre will report on work it has been carrying out in the higher education in further education sector, looking at the various models of English higher education in further education, and issues which have emerged as of particular interest or concern to teachers. EVENT: DATE: LOCATION:

Teaching and Research in English: Making the Links 13 June 2008 University of Edinburgh

Bringing together subject-specific current practice and theory in the area of teaching-research linkages, this workshop will encourage teacher-researchers (including postgraduate students) from the areas of Creative Writing, language and literature to share ideas about topics, such as the effect teaching has on research practice, the importance of diverse research interests in curriculum development and provision and do our students care if we are experts in what we teach? EVENT: DATE: LOCATION:

Networking Day for Humanities’ Careers Advisers 16 July 2008 University of Birmingham

The English Subject Centre, in collaboration with Anne Benson (Head of the Careers Service at UEA) is convening a third meeting for higher education Career Advisers with an interest in the humanities. The meeting will provide a forum for careers advisers to discuss and share ideas and experiences, and this year the theme will be engaging employers. Several Careers Services will be showcasing their English Subject Centre-funded projects to enhance services to English students.

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Articles ‘That is what we do, isn’t it?’ The Production of University English In The Production of University English (TPUE) project, English academics and educationalists together investigated how English is ‘produced’ in the everyday classes taking place in a variety of British universities. Here, Susan Bruce describes the project and shows how its methods can be used to shed new light on the interpretative tools which we teach to our students. I suppose … debating is one of the big parts of English isn’t it? It’s being able to express yourself and using language and what you know from literature, and listen and stuff; I suppose that is, that is what we do, isn’t it? (Anna1, Third Year Combined Hons English student April 2007)

Susan Bruce is Senior Lecturer at Keele University, where she teaches Early Modern and 20th-century literature. She is co-editor (with Valeria Wagner) of Fiction and Economy: New Essays on Economics and Literature (Palgrave, 2007) (e-mail s.e.bruce@keele.ac.uk).

Something gets lost in the translation of Anna’s observation onto the page: what doesn’t emerge is the sense of discovery that inhabits her sentence as she speaks it. It’s not just what she says, it’s the way that she says it: her speech is punctuated by hesitations difficult to reproduce in writing, but intrinsic to its significance as an instance of the process (not merely the product) of thinking as it happens in the university teaching space. Anna was answering a question we had put to her class on our third visit to her university (which we call Baxter), as part of TPUE, an English Subject Centre-funded project in which Anna’s class had first participated some months earlier. Detailed more fully in the recent issue of Pedagogy, edited by Ben Knights and Nicole King, TPUE pools the expertise of educationalists2 and English academics3 to examine how English is ‘produced’ in the everyday exchanges of the classroom. Relatively neglected as a focus of research, these exchanges are an obvious proving ground for some of the claims English has made about itself: that it demonstrates a ‘continuous concern with social inclusiveness’ (Holland, 2003); that it is ‘oppositional’ (Rorty, 1982) or particularly ‘democratising’ (QAA, 2000) or, conversely, that its role has traditionally been

to preserve the orthodox and defend hegemonic ideologies from subversive attack (Eagleton, 1983). Such scholarship on English is one context of our research. The other is educationalist enquiry into the changes currently besetting higher education (increased audit, standardisation, larger student numbers, the employability agenda – among others). Some have argued that these changes reshape traditional disciplinary priorities and/or have a disproportionate effect on less privileged students. But (again), there has been little examination of their effects at the level of the classroom. So we are trying, then, to examine the interconnections that do (or don’t) exist between the subject matter and selfconception of English and its pedagogic form, and also to assess the relation between the nature of classroom interactions and the differing levels of resources within which they occur. To this effect, we record and analyse English classes in three ‘types’ of universities: ‘post1992’, ‘pre-1992 non-Russell Group’ and ‘elite’. We pay attention to a variety of modes of communication – gaze, tone, silences, ‘body language’ – consideration of which can sometimes foreground issues other to those which arise from analysis of language alone. From these recordings, we identify key moments which we isolate as clips and/or multimodal transcriptions (figure 1, ‘At the End of the Day’). These we then use as the focus of our investigations, and also as a mechanism of testing our own interpretations against those of the students whose interactions we are analysing.

1 Names of participating individuals and institutions have been changed. 2 Ken Jones (Keele University) and Monica McLean (The University of Nottingham). 3 Also participating is David Amigoni (Keele University).

04 Newsletter 14 April 2008

‘That is what we do, isn’t it?’ The Production of University English

On the occasion referred to above, we had returned to Baxter to show the students two clips of a seminar devoted to The Merchant of Venice, which we had recorded earlier in the year, during which the tutor, Barbara, had asked the students to conduct a ‘trial’ of the play itself. Dividing them into two ‘teams’, Barbara had instructed each to ‘choose a Portia’ who, with the help of her team, would rally and present arguments concerning the text’s politics: was it, or was it not, an anti-Semitic play? The clips we showed on our return to Baxter were clips we were subsequently to use to investigate two sets of questions. One (addressed in our Pedagogy article) involved the interface between English and issues of democracy and authority. The other (the focus of this essay) was that students sometimes use their interpretations of texts, and their seminar discussions of those interpretations, to articulate observations which are as much about themselves as they are about the texts – which are ostensibly the subject of their discussion. In returning to Baxter, we wanted to ask the students what they thought was happening in the clips that interested us. And, for what it is worth, our Baxter students articulated their understanding of the nature of ‘English’ in terms which broadly underscored the way we’d begun to think about the issue in our Pedagogy essay. Thus for Anna, English is not only about learning to articulate her own opinions, but also about learning to listen to other people’s. Interestingly, she and her classmates maintained that English offered them ‘a lot more freedom’ than did other subjects they were taking: History but also (surprisingly, given the degree of autonomy one might expect each discipline to allow its respective disciples) Creative Writing. Both of these were characterised as wedded to a ‘right and a wrong way to look at the text,’ unlike English, which was a subject if not of infinite variety, at least of infinite hospitality: ‘in English lit,’ one student said, ‘it’s like, your opinions are valid and you can sort of say what you feel’. There are shades here of the familiar student claim that English is entirely subjective, that interpretation has no intrinsic delimitation. ‘What, then, if I said to you that The Merchant of Venice was about a train crash?’ Susan asked, in an attempt to challenge this ‘interpretation-

as-absolute-free-for-all’ version of English lit. This perennial (mis-) characterisation of English deserves further research. What do students really mean when they reiterate this ‘anything goes’ claim about English, and what underlies that utterance? Excitement? Delight? Vertigo? And to what degree is it intrinsically associated with the perception we took this student to be articulating here: the proposition that English offers a particular space not merely for self-expression, but for a kind of self-validation? That correlation between the articulation of ideational observations and a process of self-validation, dovetailed with our hypothesis that students’ comments about a text may sometimes act as a vehicle for the articulation also of observations about themselves, of which they themselves may not always be conscious. In the clip we showed the students, Lisa begins by arguing that the play establishes a critical difference between Antonio and Shylock – that this difference is value-laden – and that that value is signalled to the audience by a poetics which aestheticises Antonio’s

Rhianna counters with an appeal to the prestige conferred on Shylock by his ability to access wealth immediately when wealth is needed. She speaks more forcefully than Lisa, and appears impatient, both with an argument which valorises Antonio when all he is able to do is ‘wait around for a ship’, and – perhaps – with a discourse that tacitly privileges figurative language over the power of the event within the plot: Rhianna: But, at the end of the day, the amount of money, as he says it himself, as he says somewhere, um, would a, would a dog have 3,000 ducats to give you? Obviously he’s proving it, the fact that the amount, fair enough, Antonio has these ships full of spices and silks, but at the end of the day it’s, it’s Shylock that can just grab 3,000 ducats and give them lend them ****. So obviously Shylock in some ways has, is of, of higher level of, I can’t describe, commerce, that sort of thing because he has more, he has the more money available to him.

What do students really mean when they reiterate this ‘anything goes’ claim about English, and what underlies that utterance? Excitement? Delight? Vertigo? labour and debases Shylock’s. Her tone is a mixture of hesitancy and conviction, the latter quality most pronounced in the final clause of her first intervention: Lisa: But though they are both merchants, what they are involved in and how they are, um … Their work is described as very different, Um, like, Antonio’s worries over his ships are described in very eloquent and s- ssublime language about spices, the … spreading out of/on [?] the waves, and the waves enthroned … enthroned with his … uh … silks. But, uh, Shylock is the/a [?] rat sneaking in the dark and the, the … sort of, it’s the, … It’s the difference between the sort of glory and beauty of ships and … the petty trafficking that Shylock does: they’re not the same.

[Lisa: Sh-] Rhianna: Whereas Antonio is waiting … around for a ship. And fair enough, if it comes back he’ll have a lot of money, but … whereas Antonio, Antonio has no money at the minute so he can’t – he can’t lend Bassiano [sic] the money and he has to go to Shylock in the first place. And it’s Shylock that can just give this money away – [Lisa: Sh-] Rhianna: without really noticing, so <trails off> Rhianna had arguably drawn the short straw here, in having to defend the case that the immediacy of Shylock’s access to money trumps the cachet afforded to Antonio and his ships.

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‘That is what we do, isn’t it?’ The Production of University English

Figure 1 ‘At the End of the Day’

In this transcript from the Baxter University class, the details of both verbal and non-verbal communication become evident. Key: B: Barbara LH: ‘Lisa’ – woman with curly hair on left-hand side of Barbara RH: ‘Rhianna’ – woman on right-hand side of Barbara AW: Arabella – woman with American accent Timings from transcription taken from the second recording.

Time

Talk

29.48

B: And the fact that they are both involved in commerce, they are both merchants, Shylock is a kind of merchant as well. I think that’s …. ****

Action

Gaze

B: Sitting with legs crossed. She is resting her elbows on the arms of the chair and clasping her fingers together at her chest

B: At RH Then around room – right hand side

Gesturing in circling motion with hand

RH: Downwards

RH: Nods, rubbing arm, then keeps arms folded

LH: At B

LH: Resting hands on books, left foot crossed over right knee 29.54

LH: But though they are both merchants, what they are involved in and how they are, um … Their work is described as very different

LH: Right hand straight up from knee, holding pen in hand. Flicking pen in right hand and making a circular gesture with pen

B: At LH LH: From RH to teacher LH: At teacher

30.04

Um, like, Antonio’s worries over his ships are described in

LH: Swallows

LH: Looking across room, possibly to RH: Thinking

RH: Raise of hand to gesture at boy in her group like a silent agreement about a point he made earlier?

RH: Initially looking down then to boy, then to LH

very eloquent and s- s- sublime language about 30.14

30.20

spices, the … spreading out of/ on? the waves, and the waves enthroned …

Enthroned with his … uh … Silks But uh Shylock is the/a? rat sneaking in the dark and the, the … sort of, it’s the,

30:30

30.41

LH: Down at paper then to B

LH: Circling hand gesture with right hand B: Nods

LH: To B

LH: Flips pen over, then points it downwards as if pointing at word

LH: Down then to RH LH: Down then at B

LH: Changes grip on pen so thumb is pressing on top of it

It’s the difference

Points pen in air, thumb pressed on top, wrist pointing outwards

between the sort of glory and beauty of ships and …

Moves pen to left hand, lifts right hand with fingers spread, then brushes hair away from left hand side of forehead, then pulls at hair slightly.

the petty trafficking that Shylock does, they’re not the same

Left hand out to emphasise petty Right hand pointing a finger

06 Newsletter 14 April 2008

LH: B, then to RH

LH: At B

‘That is what we do, isn’t it?’ The Production of University English

Lisa: Shylock is a necessary evil. It doesn’t necessarily mean he’s at all respected or gains anything other than the money, whereas Antonio has a lot of respect for, um, his merchanting and his adventuring. Barbara: Because it’s more extravagant …? Alannah: And … Lisa: Yeah, <quieter, trailing to finish> It’s more beautiful. Lisa never explains what she means here by the claim she finally, after two successive attempts, (‘[Lisa: Sh-]’) manages to utter: that ‘Shylock is a necessary evil’. Perhaps she means that capital presupposes usury; perhaps she wants to suggest that one of the roles of Shylock’s enterprise is to throw into relief the nobility of Antonio’s. What she is clear about though, is that Antonio’s cachet derives not from the relative ostentation of his enterprise, but from its beauty. There seems to be quite a lot at stake in this brief exchange. The ground contested is essentially an argument over the relative merits and status of liquid versus cultural capital: the two students don’t use these terms, but those appear to be the concepts they are invoking. But what is not apparent from the transcript was that the content of this argument may mirror the respective social positionings of the students conducting it. All the students in this seminar were white; all bar one was apparently British; about 80% were female. But although the cohort was in many respects homogeneous, the nuances of the language employed by Lisa and by Rhianna seemed to befit not just the arguments each made, but something expressive of a more profound difference between the two women. Lisa, defending the notion that social standing may be generated by and communicated through a plethora of factors of which liquid capital

is only one, often uses two adjectives or examples where one might suffice, and is much more hesitant and exploratory in articulating her claims than Rhianna is. Rhianna, convinced by the claim that money not only talks, but talks louder than any other kind of capital, cultural or

conflated with the pre-eminent importance of material gain: what seem to be otiose actions on Antonio’s part may, in the end, (but only uncertainly) issue in profit, and to the degree that they may, they are rational.

Rhianna’s account of the convergence of interpretation and self appeals then to personality, not to class or social positioning, or ideological affiliation. invested, employs a language which seems implicitly to reflect her confidence in the material reality of the power that control of liquid wealth confers: ‘at the end of the day’, she keeps repeating, it is Shylock who can produce the readies. The phrase, ‘at the end of the day’ is one which accepts and validates one factor as determining. Designed to cut through nuances and hesitations and to foreclose on the possibility of multiple determinations, it is often, as it is here, used in connection with an asseveration of financial motives or contexts as ultimately determining and (tacitly but no less ‘obviously’) rational. The same might be argued of the phrase ‘fair enough’, whose employment often functions to close off alternative explanations even as its speaker apparently admits them. And again, insofar as the locution, as it is used here, acknowledges the rationality of Antonio’s behaviour, rationality is again

The differences between the two students’ lexical choices, then, might signal more fundamental differences between them: their respective interpretations of the text apparently overlap with their own social positionings. Drawing attention to our interest in the relation between the ‘ideational’ aspects of discussion and its ‘interpersonal’ qualities, Susan pointed out that although this seminar, formulated as a role-played debate, raised special issues surrounding the relation of the students’ arguments to their actual beliefs, both, nevertheless, appeared in this clip to be personally committed to the arguments they were making. Susan did not say explicitly that each seemed wedded, herself, to the value system she was attributing to the play, but she did ask what they considered were the most important ideas in the clip they had watched. Rhianna replied: Actually, there’s quite a lot about it here, the role of, sort of, the value of

And, however artificial it is to extract a clip from the fluid, porous space of the seminar (we all know how discussions in seminars circulate and return and are, almost by definition, inconclusive), Lisa seems to get the last word. With quiet conviction she restates and synopsises her case, concluding with what we take to be (despite the ostensible affirmation with which it is introduced) a correction to the teacher’s attempted gloss on what she is saying:

Newsletter 14 April 2008 07

‘That is what we do, isn’t it?’ The Production of University English

commerce and the value of what we class as more valuable sort of thing, like, money-wise or even like personwise as well: there’s quite a lot of question about that sort of, that sort of, scale of things.

been studying, in the verbal jousting of Lancelot Gobbo and Lorenzo. Lorenzo’s similar ethically charged conflation of the honest and the straightforward is encapsulated in his frustrated instruction to the clown to ‘understand a plain man

Close reading is not a strategy that would come naturally to someone wedded to the virtue of the speech of a plain man in his plain meaning; close reading assumes, on the contrary, that meaning is anything but plain, even when it pretends to be so. Here (‘what we class as more valuable sort of thing’) there may be repeated the claim that ready money trumps the promise of future wealth, an assertion Rhianna then reiterates: Antonio has no money; Shylock has thousands and thousands of ducats that he can hand out and not even notice, so therefore Shylock’s kind of the one who has the value at the minute really: you know, it’s all very well saying the ship’s going to come in: that’s like saying, ‘I’m going to win the lottery one day, yes I’m going to be rich’ – but at the minute you’re on two pounds fifty a day … Not quite the same thing essentially. The closest we came to getting any of the students to address the possible correlation between their social orientations and the arguments they made – or, at least, the terms in which they made them – came with Rhianna’s affirmation that underlying both her argument and her self-perception was a valorisation of what she characterised as the direct and unadorned: ‘as my friends all know as well, that’s what I’m like, I’m just a very, very blunt straightforward person’, she said. Rhianna’s account of the convergence of interpretation and self appeals then to personality, not to class or social positioning, or ideological affiliation. But her implicit impatience with the extravagant or over-interpretative, and her implicitly ethical valorisation of the ‘straightforward’, rehearses a contest over language and truth that has been played out before, in the text she has

in his plain meaning: go to thy fellows; bid them cover the table, serve in the meat, and we will come in to dinner’ (Merchant 3.5.52–5). His deceptively simple appeal to the plain, the obvious, the direct, has recently been associated with a class interest counter to that embedded in Launcelot’s witty extravagance4; certainly, for Lorenzo, his own plainness operates as a salutary corrective to the suspicious rhetorical extravagance of the Clown. ‘Oh dear discretion, how his words are suited!’ Lorenzo remarks of Launcelot’s wit: The fool hath planted in his memory An army of good words, and I do know A many fools that stand in better place, Garnished like him, that for a tricksy word Defy the matter. (Merchant 3.5.60–65) Of Lisa, we were unable to enquire what she thought about the relation between what she argued and the more personal aspects of herself: she came in late, and missed the showing of the clips. But if her lexis differed to that of Rhianna, so too did her method: she paid more implicit attention than Rhianna to the way in which the ‘tricksy words’ of the text may be employed in it to ‘defy the matter’. More of what Lisa says in At the End of the Day – her references to the waves enthroned, to the silks, to rats sneaking in the dark and to the petty trafficking – weaves into her own discourse close paraphrases of, or direct quotations from, the play itself. She is also aware that this is her interpretative strategy of choice: while the others are explicit about their preferences for reading for the plot, or for characterisation, Lisa says that

4 See Margaret Tudeau-Clayton, ‘Shakespeare’s Extravagancy’ Shakespeare (1: 1–2), 2005 June–Dec, 136–53.

08 Newsletter 14 April 2008

she looks first at ‘the actual words the text is using, the choice of diction’. Lisa is, in other words, a close reader, and close reading allows her here to articulate something about the text that Rhianna’s account cannot encompass: that there is a correlation in it between the political and the aesthetic – that the latter is not an innocent quality. ‘It’s more beautiful’, she finishes, and she is arguably right that the representation of Antonio’s merchanting at the opening of the play is not only more extravagant, but more beautiful, than the representation of Shylock’s usury. But this observation leads us to a more tendentious proposition, and to a paradox with which we will, for the time being, end. Close reading is not a strategy that would come naturally to someone wedded to the virtue of the speech of a plain man in his plain meaning; close reading assumes, on the contrary, that meaning is anything but plain, even when it pretends to be so. Close reading may embrace values diametrically opposed to those embodied in the phrase ‘at the end of the day’ (for example), which insists on the ultimate readability of action, presupposing a ‘last instance’, by reference to which things will become intelligible, justifiable and clear. We don’t want to align differences of lexis or method in any blunt, one-toone relation to particular ideological interests – to insist, for example, that an appeal to ‘plainness’ must be connected to non-elite class positions, or only ever characteristic of discourses that seek to legitimate particular forms of marketorientated behaviour. But we do want to begin to raise the possibility that if respective attachments to ‘plain meanings’ and ‘armies of good words’ are, like the aesthetics of The Merchant of Venice itself, not innocent either, that may be something we should bear in mind when we teach the tools of our discipline to a body of students who originate from an ever wider social spectrum. And if here, we have illustrated the methodology we’ve developed, which extends the methods of close reading to the rather different ‘text’ of the seminar itself, in future writings one of the things which we may have to think about further, is that close reading might be as inherently political as any other kind of aesthetic methodology is – however much one would wish to think that it was not.

Newsletter 14

‘ The Teaching the New English series is a welcome and timely contribution to the changing canon, curriculum, and classroom practice of English in higher education. 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!

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Newsletter 14 April 2008 09

Investigating Creative Writing: student perspectives

Investigating Creative Writing: © iStockphoto

student perspectives An English Subject Centre funded mini-project

Why are students flocking to Creative Writing courses and degrees? What’s it like to be on one? What do students expect to gain from them? Steve May investigates the student experience of Creative Writing to get answers.

Steve May is Head of Department, Creative Studies, at Bath Spa University. Doing Creative Writing, his book for Creative Writing students, was published by Routledge in 2007 (see page 35 for David Bausor’s review). He is currently working on his 45th drama commission for BBC radio.

The starting point for this project was simple and practical. Creative Writing is a relatively new subject. It has developed in different ways in different places. There’s no consensus about what it is, or what it’s for. However, it’s increasingly popular with students1. It struck me that I had been teaching Creative Writing in universities for 12 years, had been running a large undergraduate Creative Writing department for three, but I had no clear idea of why students were choosing our courses, what they expected from them, how their experience matched (or failed to match) their expectations, nor, taking a broader view, how their attitude to the courses changed during their time at university.

However, none of these gave me quite what I wanted. Module evaluation forms are all very well, but can be treated as a tedious admin chore, and even at their best are course based, not student based, and perhaps, most significantly, take for granted the key factors of motivation and expectation in which I was particularly interested. The surveys of incoming students throw up some fascinating insights, but again run the risk of lack of motivation and involvement for participants (herded into computer rooms in order to enforce compliance). Oral discussions permit a more personal involvement, but also tend to accentuate the loud and diminish the withdrawn. Group dynamics may obscure the subtleties of individual response.

It’s true, for a previous English Subject Centre project2, I had visited various institutions and, wherever possible, talked to students and recorded the conversations, and equally true that at Bath Spa we routinely carry out a questionnaire survey of new students. And of course all tutors administer module evaluation forms to students, and summarise (or are supposed to summarise) these responses in terms of changes in structure or content for individual units.

So, I tried to develop something different, something that avoided: • a tickbox or questionnaire approach • local and limited responses to do with individual courses, modules or tutors • responses that were tied to purely academic concerns • an oral basis

1 See the English Subject Centre Survey of the English Curriculum and Teaching in UK Higher Education (2003), Halcrow Group Limited, with Jane Gawthrope and Philip Martin, available at www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/archive/publications/reports/ curr_teach_main.pdf (accessed 6 December 2007). In the Higher Education Statistics Agency statistics (www.hesa.ac.uk/) ‘Imaginative Writing’ first appears as a subject in its own right in 2002/2003 with 775 full-time undergraduate students. This rises to 2,250 in the most recent (2005/2006) figures (accessed 6 December 2007). 2 For a full range of student (mainly oral) quotes, see Steve May, “Teaching Creative Writing at Undergraduate Level: Why, how and does it work?” (Report on English Subject Centre sponsored research project, 2003, available at www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/archive/ projects/reports/under_creatwrit_bath, accessed 26 January 2006).

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Investigating Creative Writing: student perspectives

• a sense that I cared about what participants said • a sense that what they said could make a difference, if not to their course, to courses in future • an environment where they felt free to say (or not say) whatever they wanted • responses which involved them as people, including their aims and aspirations So, I transcribed some key quotes gathered in the aforementioned English Subject Centre project, and took them into a class of first-year Creative Writing students at Bath Spa. The quotes I used were mostly related to motivation for taking, and expectations of the course: I definitely want to be published, that’s why I’m here. I think all the lecturers maybe spuriously all think that everyone on this course wants to be a writer. I don’t want to be a writer, I don’t want to learn anything, I just want a 2:1. I was desperately looking through clearing, cos originally I chose English and History, but I didn’t get the grades. I wanted to do something as well as Creative Writing, because people don’t take it seriously. My flatmates, writing? They go, “that’s not a real degree”. I didn’t know what to expect and I was very naïve to everything, like seminars, was someone going to come and talk at us? I had no idea what to expect at all. I then led a discussion of the quotes – neither in order, nor exhaustively – trying to follow the interest of the group as we moved from topic to topic. Soon the discussion was progressing energetically – perhaps too energetically. When I invited the students to write down anything they wanted, to do with their experience of Creative Writing, the results were a little cursory and mechanical. I realised that the discussion had been too full: the students had said all they wanted to say orally, and repeating it on paper was tiresome. So, I did the experiment again, and limited the discussion, rousing interest but moving on quickly before people had a chance to say all or most of what they wanted to say. The results seemed much more interesting.

The students were eager and wrote quickly – and (as we will see) were surprisingly articulate. I now had a crude methodology, which I applied across the years at Bath Spa, taking the first-year responses in to second-year students, and second-year

progression and fitness for purpose - student perspectives”. I have to confess that the “English” bit was inserted to make the proposal more appealing to the English Subject Centre. To have limited the survey only to institutions (and students) doing both subjects would have

I was offering something they all valued: a snapshot of their own students’ attitudes, presented in a way they hadn’t been presented before.

responses in to third years. The exercise took about 20 minutes, split into 10 minutes introduction and discussion of “seed” quotes, and then 10 minutes of student writing.

been both impossible and undesirable. Part of the richness of the gathered responses indeed lies in the wide variety of subjects the students are doing alongside Creative Writing.

I found the resulting responses fascinating and informative. Certain key themes recurred, especially to do with confidence (or lack of it), expectations and lack of clarity about the purpose of workshop exercises. It occurred to me that (given the wide variety of auspices of Creative Writing in higher education), it might be even more interesting and informative to repeat the process in a cross section of institutions, to see whether Bath Spa students were representative, or if there were variations depending on institution and kind of course. Coincidentally, at about that time applications were invited for a new series of English Subject Centre mini-projects. I applied and, after a more or less painless process of discussion, peer review and revision, got funding of £5,000, mainly to cover teaching relief, travel and accommodation. The next question was, why on earth would any sane course director let an outsider (and in many ways a rival at that) loose on their students? Surely not an attractive prospect, to have some Justice Overdo prying about looking for enormities? Perhaps some felt like this, but I was pleasantly surprised by how positive most people were whom I approached. And I was offering something they all valued: a snapshot of their own students’ attitudes, presented in a way they hadn’t been presented before.

I wanted to encourage:

The project was (rather grandly) titled “English and Creative Writing: Coherence,

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Investigating Creative Writing: student perspectives

The institutions that were kind enough to host these visits were varied, though perhaps not as varied as I would have liked: several institutions unfortunately had to drop out during the course of the project. Participating institutions were

at another, they pronounced them interesting, but would add something to the effect that “but of course our students are different”. However, on each occasion, it turned out that their students were not materially different, and echoed the

I was terrified about the creative writing module – I had to do it as part of English studies. Lancaster, Chichester, Winchester, Brunel, Northumbria, Columbia College Chicago and, of course, Bath Spa. My thanks to all the course leaders, tutors, administrators and especially students who gave their time and energy in helping me to carry out the project. Geographically the split was: London

South-east England

South-west England 2 North-west England 1 North-east England

USA

The location of Creative Writing within the institutions ranged from self-standing (without film and poetry), through inextricably conjoined with English, to within English and within Drama. My first visit took place in October 2006 and my last in May 2007. I gathered contributions from 237 students, totalling over 23,000 words.

Generally, when I showed student responses from one institution to staff

concerns and attitudes of their peers in other institutions. Yes, there were some differences: perhaps the Northumbria drama/script students (in fact script students everywhere) were more focused and practical, and show a more confident understanding of the purpose of their writing; and the Chicago students showed greater awareness of what to expect, perhaps because of the unique Columbia College Story Workshop method. But these are differences of emphasis. It is fair to say that, for these seven institutions at least, similarities of response far outweighed differences. This survey reveals a broad spectrum of motivation, ranging from the dedicated and committed would-be writer (with varying levels of experience and ability), through people with interest in or talent for writing, including also those who want to teach and those who want to expand themselves as people, people who want to do English in a different way, and (let’s be honest) a proportion of free-loaders. Perhaps I’m being harsh here: those respondents who are honest enough to confess that they chose Creative

Writing just because it sounded like an interesting subject (or in one case “for a bet and to reduce my workload”) are not hugely different from many other students choosing many other subjects – except in one respect. Few of our students will have had any experience of doing Creative Writing in any kind of formalised way before starting the course. Perhaps, for this reason if for no other, it behoves us as teachers to make as clear as possible at the outset to our students how our courses work, what they are expected to do while on the course, and what they’re supposed to be able to do after successfully completing it.

What students say First, I must note the weight of positive comments. Students praise their courses for a variety of reasons: as interesting, exciting, fun, as giving a chance to use their imagination; because of tutors who are experienced, professional and funny; because of the chance to mix with likeminded peers; as developmental in terms of writing and character: in short, as one first-year student sums it up: This class has sparked something inside of me, an inspiration, a motivation I have been unable to find anywhere else. Another student, coming to the end of their course, perhaps sums up the experience for many: Coming towards the end of the Creative Writing degree, I feel that the course has really worked for me. I have been encouraged to experiment, while always being given support in my preferred genre. The first workshop session was a horrible embarrassment, but as everyone is thrown into it together, a group dynamic forms. In the best Creative Writing groups you feel a real desire to help everyone achieve their own goals, as well as follow your own. I don’t see myself as a professional writer yet, more of a dabbler. However, writing is something that I will always do and who knows, when I’m an old lady in purple, maybe I’ll read the grandkids my published novels. (Year 3 student) This (fairly representative) student has been empowered, enabled to work collaboratively, will continue to write without the overt aim to publish, but harbours semi-secret aspirations in that

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Investigating Creative Writing: student perspectives

direction. Others have been converted from “dabblers” to something more driven and serious: I also now have found the courage to think about being a writer and not just an enthusiastic amateur or – the most dreaded – ‘a simple jotter’. (Year 2 student) However, other students have moved in the opposite direction: I set out with the course thinking that I’d like to become a professional writer. The course has taught me that I don’t have it in me. (Year 3 student) I would contend that this is by no means a sign of failure, either for the student or the course they have taken. As I’ve put it elsewhere3: There are too many people who harbour an untried (and probably unrealistic) longing to write. If you have tried, and can reflect on your experience, and analyse why you don’t want to pursue writing further, you will have learned a great deal, both about writing and about yourself. Further, if your course has been a good course, and you’ve made best use of it, you should have a fairly clear idea of how ‘creative industries’ work, and how work gets sold. You should also, more generally, have learned how to manage a project from initial idea through to completion, and to work with other people in a flexible, supportive and intelligent way. These aren’t negligible accomplishments. They should place you well whatever direction you decide to take. Apart from those who have decided that writing is not for them, there are also recurring doubts, reservations and anxieties, expressed by students across all institutions. The “horrible embarrassment” of the student quoted above, and fear in anticipation of starting the course, are by no means uncommon: I was very scared coming to my first seminar, because I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had trouble finding the room and getting there on time combined with the uncertainty made me very nervous when I sat down. (Year 1 student)

I was terrified about the Creative Writing module – I had to do it as part of English studies. My interest was much more about studying ‘good published literature’ than attempting anything of my own. However, so far it has been fine, and I am actually enjoying the exercises. (Year 1 student) The following student’s expectations in terms of the peer group seem to have been confirmed: Although my initial fears were of a class full of pretentious, psychologically damaged rich kids, and generally annoying wankers, I have learnt to put up with them. (Year 1 student) The same student touches on another common theme – a lack of clarity about the purpose and benefit of in-class exercises (however much fun they might be): Although I enjoy writing in my own time and having the chance to read other people’s work, I’m glad Creative Writing is only one module on my English course.

It is extremely common for students not to realise what they’re learning: I don’t really think the exercises enhance my writing but I assume some people find it a benefit to them. (Year 2 student) Generally I enjoy the course, but I feel that sometimes the exercises that we are asked to do are not beneficial to me as I feel I write better and have more ideas when I am alone and in a creative mood. (Year 1 student) Generally, as students progress through the course, they do come to understand better the purpose of what they’re asked to do in class: At first I was embarrassed with some of the Creative Writing class exercises – I found them hokey and ‘touchyfeely’. As I’ve gotten used to them, I now feel much more comfortable and participate enthusiastically. (Level 2 student) While some of the above students find they work better when alone, outside of class, perhaps equally represented are

I have been encouraged to experiment, while always being given support in my preferred genre. In the best Creative Writing groups you feel a real desire to help everyone achieve their own goals, as well as follow your own. Even the student quoted above who, because of the course, has found courage to think of themself as a writer prefaces that affirmation as follows: Although the exercises seem like a waste [my emphasis], they help me to open myself up to other writers and explore other points of view. With the mastering of such exercises comes a certain sense of confidence – I no longer fear the dreaded workshops and the scrutinous gaze of other writers. I look forward to having my work torn apart as it allows me to build upon it. I also now have found the courage to think about being a writer and not just an enthusiastic amateur or – the most dreaded – ‘a simple jotter’. (Year 2 student)

students complaining about the difficulty of motivating themselves without the stimulation of the workshop environment: I have one lesson on a Friday and the rest of the time I’m expected to be doing work in my own time. I find it hard to get motivated when sitting at home and prefer to be in uni more often with specific lessons to sit and write. (Year 2 student) There are clashes also between the structure of courses, and some students’ sense of individual freedom of expression: I enjoy my personal Creative Writing process, but resent the formalised structure. Ultimately, this course is a means to an end, although I am keen

3 Steve May, Doing Creative Writing (Routledge, 2007) p.117.

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Investigating Creative Writing: student perspectives

for it to become more than just that, less laboured. Undoubtedly I will gain from it, however quite what that will be I’m unsure. Reading this back, perhaps I should be paying more attention. (Year 2 student) It is not uncommon, in a minority of students, to see a dislocation between writing-for-the-course and “real” personal writing:

There’s always someone in the class who I hate and whose writing I hate, there’s also always a rival who I respect and fight with to find out who’s best and then there’s a bunch of people I don’t really give a shit about. (Year 3 student) I used to write all the time before I came to university, and never tried very hard because it was just for fun.

these students’ contributions, written in haste, spontaneously, without warning, planning, or the opportunity to edit, are overwhelmingly articulate, clear and persuasive. Before uni, I wrote a lot on my own. The workload quickly took that away from me, and now, over two years later, I’ve lost a lot of confidence in my prose work, and a lot of, shall I say, raw, unmanaged talent. (Year 3 student) “Confidence” crops up again and again – often as something that Creative Writing courses give to students, but equally as something that students lack, both in themselves and in Creative Writing as a degree course: I would have to agree that people seem to almost look down on Creative Writing – I know people who call it the ‘Mickey Mouse’ part of my degree. (Year 2 student) I think the moment I had to produce a piece of creative work for a workshop I knew I wasn’t a writer, especially if my work was the last to be looked at, because I just felt out of my league. I feel that I write just enough to pass the course and for that reason alone. (Year 3 student) It is remarkable how many students within any given group think of themselves as “the worst writer” – perhaps a quarter or a third. And it would surely be absurd to expect students not to experience some sense of competition in the workshop: I’m not keen on reading out my work … actually I despise reading out my work in fear of being criticised as, generally, I feel that it’s not as good as others in the class. (Year 2 student)

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Here, I have to try really hard every week, and it takes up so much of my time. But it’s all in a quest to not being the worst writer. (Year 3 student) It does seem somewhat strange that we, as writers or experts of literature, whose business involves the intricacies and complexities of human relationships, perhaps subscribe (on the surface at least) to a rather simple model of workshop interaction, based on equality, giving of constructive feedback, taking of same in good measure and co-operation towards mutual improvement. Not all students see things quite that way, nor have unqualified faith in their tutorial input: I am less confident with my writing now, as tutor feedback has proved detrimental to my progression. I find the writing modules slow and frustrating. I thought I would be a good writer one day, now I just think I will finish my degree bitter and slightly twisted. Having one tutor praise your work and then another almost failing you when marking it, suggests to me that it isn’t what your write but who you are writing for. I will continue to write but for me only, and I feel a completely new career path will have to be chosen. I haven’t given up hope though. (Year 3 student) My preliminary conclusions and suggestions are as follows:

• to make sure that from their first workshop or lecture (before if possible) our students are aware of the way our courses work, what they will be asked to do and why. (I will also try to make sure our staff are aware of these things) • to make students aware of the purpose of individual exercises and workshop activities, both in terms of their writing, and of “transferability”, both to other writing genres and activities outside of writing • to make students aware of the changing demands of our courses as they move through the levels, and the progression from directed to self-directed work, and from private experiment to public display • to be aware of the pervasive lack of confidence among a sizeable minority of students in almost every workshop group, and work to build confidence in each individual • to be aware of the “competitive” element that students’ private selfevaluation entails • to be aware of (and respect) the range of motivation underlying students’ decisions to do Creative Writing

Postscript Finally, I need to stress something: these students’ contributions, written in haste, spontaneously, without warning, planning, or the opportunity to edit, are overwhelmingly articulate, clear and persuasive. I’ll leave the last word to this third-year student, whose eloquence and ability to draw the reader into their story for me belie the surface negativity: This exercise sums up my feelings about the course. I sit and think for a while about what I should write, and when I put pen to paper it confirms to me that I am no writer. If the truth be known, I started the course as a bet and to reduce my workload. Our students do learn from our courses: for me the next step is to make sure we make them aware of what they’re learning, and what use it will be to them, and alongside this to work towards a consensus concerning the nature of the subject of Creative Writing in higher education, including (and especially) a definition of research.

Newsletter 14

At last … a resource for teaching Creative Writing in higher education created by creative writers.

Creative Writing: Teaching, Theory & Practice This developing online resource will include: peer-reviewed scholarly articles, book reviews, practitioner interviews, a discussion forum and helpful links to other sites, online articles and other resources to help colleagues to reflect on their own teaching practice. The resource aims to be particularly relevant to lecturers new to the field and students taking modules on Teaching Creative Writing. It will also be invaluable to those who teach modules related to the pedagogy of writing. We need your help. Let’s share our views and our knowledge on how, why and what we teach, when we teach Creative Writing … In the first instance, we invite scholarly articles which consider the following topics.

• Are there theories of Creative Writing? If so, what are they? • What constitutes knowledge and research in Creative Writing? • Why do we teach the way we do? • What skills do we teach our students? • Creative Writing & Pedagogic Research: how do they fit together?

Join the debate! First deadline: 31 August 2008, with rolling deadlines thereafter. Send articles and all enquiries by e-mail to Dr Nigel McLoughlin nmcloughlin@glos.ac.uk Principal Lecturer in Creative Writing, University of Gloucestershire English Subject Centre Project Holder Vice-Chair, National Association of Writers in Education Committee Member, NAWE Creative Writing in Higher Education Network For further info www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/resources/creative/index.php

Newsletter 14 April 2008 15

Books Were My Liberation: an interview with Alan Rice

Books Were My Liberation: an interview with Alan Rice Over the winter, Nicole King met with Alan Rice, a scholar of the Black Atlantic who teaches English and American Studies. He spoke of the rewards of interdisciplinary teaching and of taking his subject expertise, as well as his students, outside the classroom.

‘To shoot hard labour’ is an Antiguan colloquialism that means to work hard, very hard. It came to mind when I met up with Alan Rice last December, in Lancaster. Rice is the sort of lecturer we all wish we had or perhaps strive to be: he is immediately warm, stridently positive about his subject(s) and (a very few minutes will evidence) an intensely serious scholar – the type around whom you immediately, willingly, raise your game. Instead of just the interview, he invited me up to Lancaster to spend the day, have lunch, and do a specialised tour of Lancaster; indeed he does not do half measures. He also, by stealth and by proclamation, reminds one of the privileges and pleasures of being a university lecturer. Rice is Reader in American Cultural Studies and English at the University of Central Lancaster, where he has worked since 1995. He did his undergraduate work at the University of Edinburgh, his MA at Bowling Green State University and earned his PhD at Keele University in 1997. He is the author of Radical Narratives of the Black Atlantic (Continuum, 2003) and co-editor (with Martin Crawford) of Liberating Sojourn: Frederick Douglass and Transatlantic Reform (University of Georgia Press, 1999). As these titles suggest, Rice contributes to many subject areas, but, more than anything, he sees himself as an American Studies scholar and teacher. Always a ‘really interdisciplinary animal’ his undergraduate studies at the University of Edinburgh helped him to understand

16 Newsletter 14 April 2008

his passion for American Studies per se: ‘The most interesting people teaching at Edinburgh,’ Rice told me, ‘were either doing drama or American Literature or History.’ From the beginning of our interview to the end, Rice gave a collective narrative: continuously citing the work and mentorship of others in telling the story of his own development. At Edinburgh, ‘there were these giants of American history – Owen Dudley Edwards, Rhodri Jeffrey-Jones and Sam Shepperson,’ whilst in literature, ‘Colin Nicholson and Randall Stevenson managed to convince me that English wasn’t all bad.’ These men and women, such as Faith Pullin, inspired Rice, who decided then and there that he wanted to be a university teacher. With only a ‘very moderate 2:1’, however, it was an arduous process to get funded for a PhD, and eventually required a detour to the US. In what he described as his ‘hiatus period’, Rice doggedly, but unsuccessfully, pursued postgraduate bursaries. To get by he worked a variety of jobs, usually more than one at time: ‘I worked as a home help, worked cleaning cafes and worked in the afternoons at the National Library of Scotland.’ The idea was, he explained, ‘to keep my eye in research, mainly about jazz music and politics … I eventually got published in the Edinburgh Review but still couldn’t ever get funding to do a PhD’ It was at this early moment in the interview that I thought of that Antiguan phrase. For in addition to working for

wages, and doing research on the side, Alan also became involved in local and community politics. Friends thought he was punishing himself, and after two years of unsuccessful funding applications they tried to convince him to go for something else. ‘I was like Sisyphus; I was just going to carry on pushing that rock up that mountain till I got there.’ On the recommendation of Mary Ellison, the professor he hoped to work with at Keele, he was offered a job as a graduate teaching assistant at Bowling Green State University. Although it was a long way to go, Rice nevertheless reasoned that it was perhaps the only way to get started towards the PhD, and he was proven right: he did a two-year MA in American Cultural Studies in just one year while teaching six hours of English Composition ‘to farmers’ sons and daughters – totally unreconstructed kind of Midwesterners – it was very, very busy, it was very strange, but I loved it.’ Again, the phrase ‘to shoot hard labour’ came to my mind. Armed with excellent grades for his MA, he applied for the Keele scholarship a third time, got it and went on to write a dissertation on the jazz aesthetic in Toni Morrison’s novels, while teaching American Studies to undergraduates. ‘It was a wonderful American Studies department with brilliant, collegial teachers like Richard Godden, Mary Ellison and, the late – and much lamented – Charles Swan, and very interdisciplinary – very much jazz and music and literature and history, all kind of feeding off of one another.’

Books Were My Liberation: an interview with Alan Rice

Given Rice’s postgraduate experiences, it is not surprising that teaching and research have remained symbiotic elements over the course of his career. I was curious however, about what drove him to keep going for the Keele scholarship, and how did he know, as an undergraduate in Edinburgh, that he wanted to be a university lecturer? For Rice, to reflect on his role as a teacher included reflecting on his upbringing, his undergraduate years and the evolution of his research interests in black Atlantic and radical narratives. In the following extracts, from our 90 minute formal interview, I received some fascinating answers.

Becoming a teacher

‘I think I just thought that it is a really important role and it’s something whereby you can make information which is really important, accessible to a group of people who can hopefully go on and do something important with that information. I suppose a lot of it comes from being someone for whom books were my liberation. I was born and brought up on a council estate in Surrey. It’s great being born and brought up on a council estate in Manchester – there’s a working-class culture up there! We don’t have a working class culture [in Surrey], well there is one, but in fact it was at the dog ends of Thatcherism … There was this horrible consumerism all around you and nothing to hold up against it, you know,

just in terms of getting a handle on that world around you. You had working class people just gagging to buy their council houses! For me, what had saved me had been books. I really wanted to give that to other people, I really wanted to be involved in the world of ideas. But also I love performing … I really like the banter of being in a class, taking them on and making them think beyond the box, that’s why I do it.’

get into it straight away at all but once I got into it, I really loved it. When I went away to university at Edinburgh, I used to spend most of my time in record shops, just buying more and more jazz. And then, when I went on to do American literature and American history, I gravitated towards black American literature and black American history spaces ... When I think about it, the reason I did it was because I was wanting, I think, to study a different

what had saved me had been books. I really wanted to give that to other people, I really wanted to be involved in the world of ideas. The pull of black American culture Nearly all of Rice’s publications have either black Atlantic or black American culture at their centre. Where did his interest begin and how did it develop? ‘I think the most important moment for me was probably getting into jazz. My friend Nigel used to bunk off school and sit in his room and play jazz music. He went to a different school than me with different holidays, so I could pretend that I was bunking off school with him but I wasn’t – because I would never do that. I used to sit in his room listening to jazz music from all ages and all periods. I didn’t

culture, (and one that spoke English, because my languages were never going to be good enough) and also I wanted to study radical culture. I did do lots of work on the Levellers and Diggers and all that good stuff, doing history, and I was interested in it, but it was almost, it was always too close. I am very interested in working-class histories, but I’m really glad I’m interested in them now, having come back to them from African American histories, and through that black Atlantic prism.’

In the classroom When asked what words he would use to describe himself in the classroom the quick fire answer was, ‘chalk and talk!’ and I wasn’t surprised to learn that Rice is quite mobile and energetic, but while his lectures are now ‘very improvised’ this wasn’t always the case: ‘When I first went to Preston I actually wrote out all of my lectures, longhand, that was partly because I didn’t have a year beforehand to kind of sort things out, I was just thrown in the deep end, and I really needed [the script]. But now, especially in the Black Atlantic class, there won’t be a note in sight usually … I tend to do mini-lectures now; 20-minute lectures and then encourage questioning and debate … I am very traditional – I’ve only just started to use PowerPoint – I’ve always used overheads and slides. And I’m not really that keen on it, but increasingly you’re forced into it by the technological world around you. I tend not to put text on [PowerPoint], it’s just a way of showing illustrations with the odd quote. If you’re doing PowerPoint in the way everybody

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Books Were My Liberation: an interview with Alan Rice

else does it, which is, here are the three main points, here are the other three main points – that’s really constrictive, because actually there never are three main points, and that’s my problem with it really – it makes (the lecture) almost a consumerist thing.’

academic that I would never say, never say, those things to students. What they should have been saying to me was something along the lines of “actually, this is the way criticism should be, but if you want to do something more to it you could bring this in or that in.” So what my practice

When I was an undergraduate ... I’d get the essays back from the English literature people saying ‘there’s not nearly enough practical criticism here’ The interdisciplinary way It was clear to me that Rice’s commitment to interdisciplinarity stretched across the various facets of his professional identity. So I asked him to talk about the practicalities and consequences of doing interdisciplinary work and training undergraduates in English and American Studies. His answer, a cross between a lecture and a sermon, was intense and absorbing. I gained a visceral sense of what a student in one of Rice’s no-lectureclasses might experience. ‘When I was an undergraduate in English literature and history, I’d get the essays back from the English literature people saying “there’s not nearly enough practical criticism here – context is great but you’re over-selling your context.” And when I’d get my essays back from historians it would be ‘you’re taking far too long over this source, this document, there’s context there but there’s not enough context.’ And I was determined that when I was an

is about, for instance, showing people a paragraph out of Beloved and then doing almost a mind map but not literally, I don’t do it of that paragraph. So, for instance, you’ve got that paragraph in Beloved which is about cannibalism. You know the one where Stamp Paid is looking at the window and he says “it’s not what racism has done to black people, it’s what racism has done to white people.” Where they’re eating it up, they’re eating themselves up – it’s self cannibalism and its cannibalism and you know it’s a paragraph! And what I suppose I do is to say, in this paragraph we could look at Freud here, we could look at ideas to do with psychology and the whole psychology around cannibalism, but you could also look at the history of the cannibal in postcolonial discourse and the way in which this comes into it. Then there’s the whole thing about American history, and the way in which

the black body which has been eaten in order for the white culture to live and sustain itself, and then you would almost say, well let’s trace that in this novel. At one point in Beloved there’s the line that says the Ku Klux Klan are actually like cannibals – that image goes through the text and each time it has a different kind of contextualisation which leads you to somewhere else. So you can’t hold this text in to a practical criticism – you don’t want to hold it in to a practical criticism, you don’t even want to hold it in to a contextualisation around history, you want to have contextualisation around so many different things. Then you might want to say, well actually, let’s have a look at some of these pictures of lynchings, to talk about the way in which people took away trophies from those lynchings, cut-up the bodies. And that’s what Morrison’s talking about again and again. She’s not just talking about slavery; she’s talking about post-slavery as well. She’s not just talking about Reconstruction, she’s not talking about the 1950s, even. What she’s talking about is the way in which the history of racism has impacted us all. So I suppose what my teaching practice is about is, as an English teacher, and I do teach English students as well as American Studies students, I don’t change one iota when I teach English students. Not one iota do I go back to those days when I was – at times – poorly taught at Edinburgh, being forced into a very narrow view of textual criticism as the be all and end all.’

Escaping the ivory tower Although it is difficult to fathom where he finds the time, a significant aspect of Rice’s life as an academic is the work he currently does outside of the classroom and the university. A key point however, and a lesson to beginning lecturers especially, is that each of Rice’s activities link up – they feed in and feed back into his courses and books, while what he teaches and writes gives him credibility as well as expertise in new environments beyond the walls of HEIs. His passion for this aspect of his working life also has deep roots dating back to those days in Edinburgh. ‘Even before I got into academia, I found people who were working on ideas in a broad sense. We had a reading group, mainly people who were on welfare, on the dole in Scotland, and we were all reading Derrida (this is the mid 1980s).

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Books Were My Liberation: an interview with Alan Rice

We were reading Derrida, and about half of us were then going out on the miners’ picket line the next morning. The other half were saying ‘No!’, and arguing about Derridean ideas around it! But you know some of us were doing both and then we got very involved in the antipoll tax movement. We were involved in community action but were also spending all our spare moments in the National Library reading things like Bataille … One of the guys, a guy called Jack Fuller, actually managed to get some money from the Adult Education to run a Derrida class, and we all hauled into this Derrida class ... that class sort of gave me a community even at that moment when there was no community for me, in terms of there was no department or anything like that. That gave me a real grounding in the fact that ideas don’t just happen in academia, they happen all over the place, and that seemed to me to be a really important lesson from that time in Edinburgh.’ Rice was an early English Subject Centre project holder, on the Americanisation and the Teaching of American Studies (AMATAS) project, and, more recently, he worked with Lancaster city partners on the Slave Trade Arts Memorial (STAMP) project. He has also curated ‘Trade and Empire: Remembering Slavery’ at the University of Manchester’s Whitworth Gallery (June 2007–April 2008). So I inquired about the relationship between his different working environments – his knack for juggling them – and I solicited his opinion on public intellectuals.

Let’s talk about the STAMP project, because I think that’s a really interesting model. ‘One day in 2002 there was a training day for teachers to teach slavery. And Lancaster, to give it credit, was doing some of this work because it is a slave port

organizations like Political Link … We said, there’s a bit of a gap really, there’s the display in the museum which we know is a bit tired, but there’s nothing much else in Lancaster, and the only place people do go to think about slavery is Sambo’s grave, which is tidal – you can’t get there sometimes and you can get cut off there, you know?! So we all sat there and said it would be great to have a memorial wouldn’t it? We said, well maybe we can do this. A group to set up a slave memorial got together … and suddenly we were on the game and having public meetings and then we got some funding which just came out of virtually nowhere! And not just for the memorial but for a whole educational thing around the memorial, so we went into dozens of schools and us organisers spoke to nearly a thousand school children over the life of the project. We then commissioned an artist – the council gave us lots of support – and we now have the first ever memorial to the victims of the slave trade on a quay-side site in Britain. It’s a wonderful memorial but it’s also there permanently, so there’s always a place people can go to find out about slavery.

It gave me a real grounding in the fact that ideas don’t just happen in academia, they happen all over the place, and that seemed to me to be a really important lesson from that time in Edinburgh.

and they were grasping towards getting it into the curriculum. There were about 10 teachers there and we did a day with them. I devised this slavery tableau – a tableau of the Atlantic Triangle, and it worked quite well. I developed it for work with schoolchildren as a way of explaining the Middle Passage, the whole triangle in fact, with 18 different character cards and they move round. The characters are based on characters in my book, Radical Narratives … It’s a dynamic way of teaching, and I use it in my Black Atlantic courses with my own undergraduates, just as a means of a different way of showing people how things work. At the end of the workshop we all sat down – people from the council diversity group, the museum, and the local non-governmental

I’ve got somewhere to take my students now, every single field trip. There’s a memorial right in the town next to me, to take my students to, to show them so they can discuss the issues around that memorial. What they have tended to do is stand by the memorial and start interviewing members of the public about what they think about it and getting different views about it and then writing them up and talking about these kinds of things. So it becomes a whole new method of how to work because of that memorial being there. I love that aspect of it. [The curatorial work] is very important to me as well, it means that I’ve been able to translate a lot of my academic work from Radical Narratives and since into an exhibition, which means being able to

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Books Were My Liberation: an interview with Alan Rice

called ‘Monuments and Memorials of the Black Atlantic’, for our MA course. I think it is a great shame there are not more public intellectuals among academics … It’s a disgrace that the RAE culture means we are not being public intellectuals, both in the sense of having the time to be involved in community actions which feed into your academic work and having the time and energy to do curatorial work … Far too many academics are content to talk only to one another, and I am not content to do that.’

Endings bring a whole new community into that work. So it’s teaching in a different kind of way. The university gave me full support to do this, even though it wasn’t in Preston, which I thought was quite good, because they/we were saying this is about community in the larger sense. But also it fed into my teaching as I started doing weeks, then developed a whole module,

Rice and I had started our day together, disregarding wind and rain, with a tour of places of interest and significance regarding Lancaster and the Atlantic slave trade. I was shown a private residence which is still home to the descendants of a major slave trader, the magisterial Lancaster Priory and parish church where, between the pews and stained glass windows, prominent city fathers have towering plaques detailing their good

Save the Date: The sixth Annual English Subject Centre

New Lecturers Conference 21–23 November 2008

Registration will open soon on our website

www.english.heacademy.ac.uk

20 Newsletter 14 April 2008

works, while history records their extensive dealings in human flesh and the profits they reaped from it. Most movingly perhaps, was when I saw the memorial to victims of the slave trade – the only one in Great Britain at present – the physical manifestation of the STAMP project. We ended the day in Rice’s home having tea with his partner, perusing his library and welcoming his young daughters as they arrived home from school. I have written elsewhere that we don’t often have the opportunity to visit each other’s classrooms, but my day with Alan Rice gave me that and more – I glimpsed a bit of the complex process of how we juggle our identities as teachers, researchers, members of families and tribes. It was quite a day. My last question to Rice was what he’d be doing if he weren’t an academic (and a curator and a community activist). He replied ‘I wouldn’t want to do anything else. It’s about the teaching and it’s about the research and it’s about the project thing. No, I don’t think I could do anything else, it’s in my DNA.’

Up Close: a round table on close reading

Up Close: a round table on close reading Is close reading a dying art? In this extended event report, Ben Knights and Jonathan Gibson highlight current thinking about one of the fundamental processes of teaching and learning in our subject areas.

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

Jonathan Gibson is an Academic Co-ordinator at the English Subject Centre and also writes and researches in the areas of Early Modern and Renaissance Studies.

This English Subject Centre round table in September 2007 – instigated by Mark Rawlinson of the University of Leicester – was a response to the alarm expressed by many colleagues in the higher education community over the perception that the close reading skills of undergraduates are in decline. Alan Brown and Adam Piette provided short reflective talks, and the day, which ended with a session in which three small groups each designed a ‘close reading’ module, included an intensive period of group work on specific poems (Kipling’s ‘The Dykes’ and Simon Armitage’s ‘Not the Furniture Game’). The opportunity to spend time with colleagues practising the skills which were under discussion was a particularly warmly welcomed aspect of a rich and productive event. This part of the day was an opportunity not just to do some close reading but also to reflect upon what that process involved – what presuppositions and knowledge (many of them not necessarily shared with our students) we’d brought to the task. It was also a salutary way of experiencing at first hand the anxieties and excitement of a seminar/tutorial from a student’s point of view. An underlying principle concerned the indivisibility of subject knowledge and pedagogic practice: that in sharing with students our own working practices and intellectual strategies we take part in the perpetual actualisation of the subject1. Indeed, ‘close reading’ has been predicated on a long-standing – though now perhaps residual – insistence within English literary studies that there is no gulf fixed between the specialist knowledge of academics and what students can work out from a text, given confidence, argumentative stamina and a modicum of knowledge. And yet, as Alan Brown forcibly reminded us, there has, all the time, (and not least since practical criticism gave way to critical practice in the 1980s) been a paradox submerged beneath the apparent democracy of the text-focused classroom: that ‘English’ did in

fact have designs on the formation of the subjectivity of its students, and that its teachers and examiners did possess a hidden knowledge or ‘true judgment’ to which students could only aspire to conform2. Many forms of close reading therefore lead to students attempting to guess what is in the tutor’s mind, or, in some cases, adopting a stance designed to demonstrate their superiority to fellow students. The situation at A Level – and a lot of the time in universities – might be described as a kind of ‘cultural obedience’: inviting the production, in response to the actual or implied question ‘what did you think of this, then?’ of formulaic appreciations of texts which students had no intention of reading in their own time. Participants looked back frequently to the origins of close reading in the work of I A Richards and the new critics, highlighting the embeddedness of the original practice of close reading in teaching. Alan Brown stressed the fact that Richards was interested less in the establishment of criteria for ‘good’ interpretation than in the close reading of poetry as a mechanism for the ordering of the mind. Adam Piette looked at the legacy of the American New Critics, whose work implied a hierarchy of readers ranging from less to more skilled, with themselves – an elite of poet-critics – at the top. Whether or not close reading should involve judgments of literary quality was touched upon briefly. One participant described an exercise in which he and his students analysed and compared ‘good’ and ‘bad’ poems – and uncovered a striking unanimity about literary value. Other participants tended to want to distance the critical act from value judgments, in a number of different ways – indeed, it was argued that the encounter with a text in a seminar should engage with the text beyond the issue of liking or disliking. Another colleague distinguished between different types of value judgment, saying that while she found asking students ‘Do you like it?’ in a seminar was

1 See, for example, Susan Bruce, Ken Jones and Monica McLean, ‘Some Notes on a Project: Democracy and Authority in the Production of a Discipline’, Pedagogy 7.3 (2007) 481–500. 2 Cf. Alan Brown, ‘On the Subject of Practical Criticism’, Cambridge Quarterly 28 (1999), 293–00327; Robert Scholes, The Crafty Reader (Yale UP, 2001).

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Up Close: a round table on close reading

counter-productive, asking ‘Is it good?’ could be a useful starting point. She pointed out that students’ enthusiasm for a text could wax and wane in the course of a seminar. It was also quite possible for students to simultaneously dislike a text and enjoy analysing it – a practice, it was suggested, that was valuable in teaching them about the differences between reading for pleasure and reading as a literary critic. Models for this approach could be found in the analytical (rather than ‘appreciative’) approach to texts currently taught at English Language A Level. The importance of picking up and extending immediate student responses to text was highlighted by several participants: ‘not liking’ something in a text was often student shorthand for not understanding something. Another participant described a dramatic contrast between two halves of the same module: the first half was taught in a very ‘topdown’, theory-heavy manner, with the

A number of suggestions emerged from the module design exercise at the end of the day. First of all, that we should articulate (to ourselves and to our students) the skills and conceptual repertoires on which we draw. If we

Many forms of close reading therefore lead to students attempting to guess what is in the tutor’s mind are aspiring to build ‘disciplinary consciousness’ we should not ‘smuggle in’ close reading, but foreground it, and offer students ‘kit bags’ for thinking about figurative language, device and linguistic choice. Stylistics and systematic language study are among the sources of such equipment, and we need to bear in mind that in many universities we have students who will have taken A Level English Language. While we can and should ask

‘not liking’ something in a text was often student shorthand for not understanding something.

result that some students were completely alienated; in the second half of the course, a second lecturer’s student-led approach – built on brainstorming sessions with the students – was much more successful in building student commitment.

which foreground close reading to be taught by experienced teachers. It is dispiriting for students if terminology that has excited them in a close reading course cannot be applied on modules taught by other lecturers. One group suggested

initial open questions of the ‘what did you notice?’/‘what do you think?’ variety, we have to do more work on how to build on the initial responses we receive, on drawing in the less confident or articulate members of the group, and on safeguarding cooperation. There was a plea for modules

that close reading should be thoroughly ‘embedded’, playing a key role in every module on a degree. Another (Utopian) idea was for a year group to reassemble in a final-year module to bring together and interrogate, in unseen close reading, knowledge gathered in previous years. It was also strongly put to us that the close study of form, device and linguistic choice could only benefit from engagement with Creative Writing – itself a form of close reading. Even if our goal is not the teaching of creative writing in itself, one way of releasing the grip of anxiety generated by the apparently authoritative text is to use authors’ drafts or variant texts, or to engage in forms of transformative writing – to invite students to write their own versions or variant texts as a way of getting to grips with style, genre and linguistic choice3. It was felt that Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) could be a potentially invaluable tool in enabling students to unpick texts at their own pace, or to supplement class activity in focusing on the effects of different approaches, students collectively building up layers of interpretations. The teaching of reading ‘pencil in hand’ can readily be translated to forms of annotation and hypertext. It was realised that many of the suggestions made implied making more use of formative assessment than recent regimes tend to encourage, or teachers have time to mark. But there was enthusiastic support for the portfolio of drafts with commentary as a form of summative assessment which could enable students to sustain and move through a cyclical process of reading, writing and revisiting. Classically, of course, practical criticism and new criticism are characterised as approaches brought to bear on context-

3 Rob Pope, Textual Intervention: Critical and Creative Strategies for Literary Studies (London: Routledge, 1995); Ben Knights and Chris Thurgar-Dawson, Active Reading: Transformative Writing in Literary Studies (London: Continuum, 2006).

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Up Close: a round table on close reading

free texts, usually poems (‘the words on the page’). New critical readings are, however, heavily dependent on a wide-ranging cultural knowledge that is arguably more inaccessible than ever before for the majority of today’s students. It is clear, then, that the teaching of close reading must also involve the teaching of cultural contexts of various types. But, at the same time, as teachers we have to try to find ways of providing or pointing towards historical and contextual knowledge without skewing the discussion. Sensitive teaching avoids overwhelming people with specialist knowledge, but equally should not hoard knowledge as though it were only suitable for an inner circle of knowers. Communal close reading (as modelled in the group exercise on the day) seemed to be something favoured by many participants. The module plans produced at the end of the day involved several exercises of this sort, for example, the use of ‘peer-assisted-learning’ (tutorless groups of students). These plans also showcased ways in which comparing responses to a text with those of other students can be powerfully aided by modern technology: on a discussion board, for example, or via an annotation exercise on a wiki. All in all, there seemed to be little appetite for a ‘return’ to the practical criticism of the past. Rather, participants were keen to embed the teaching of close reading within a 21st-century curriculum. Several

spoke of the need to apply the techniques conducted in a suitably generous spirit. of practical criticism to ‘non-literary’ as well In summary (and at the risk of as ‘literary’ texts. We were reminded how over-simplification), the following much close and careful reading – while we recommendations emerge.

the close study of form, device and linguistic choice can only benefit from engagement with Creative Writing were urged to be wary of the reductivism of treating it as a ‘skill’ – is actually practised in a variety of professions. Also, as Adam Piette pointed out, close reading is actually a core activity of many strands of ‘theory’ (think of De Man, Derrida or the New Historicists). There seemed to be a drawing-back from the old idea that practical criticism is something that, in zooming in on a student’s mind in isolation, is a good way of ‘sorting out the sheep from goats’. The feeling of the day seemed to be, rather, that close reading is a desirable element in an English degree that has been skimped on in recent years and that can be incorporated into degree structures without becoming an inquisitorial tool. Despite qualifications and reservations, what emerged (not least from the period of practice) was a sense that ‘close reading’ is coming back to centre stage. That, in any case, it has never gone away as a core element in the teaching repertoire. And that participants shared an enthusiasm for close reading as a pedagogic form, provided it was

• Teach close reading, and from the very beginning of the programme! But be explicit about why and how you are doing it. • Involve all your colleagues: practice close reading across the curriculum. • Don’t be purist. Don’t flinch from drawing on the analytical tools provided by stylistic analysis, or the use of methods of creative response, or from the medium provided by the VLE or the wiki. • Theory and close reading are not incompatible. • History and close reading are not incompatible. • Support students in learning to move between wide reading and detailed, ‘up close’ reading. Summaries of other Subject Centre events can be found on pages 36–39.

Education for Sustainable Development – Small Grants

The Higher Education Academy is offering grants of up to £2,500 for projects relating to Education for Sustainable Development. Further information can be found on the Academy’s website www.heacademy.ac.uk/ourwork/learning/sustainability The deadline for applications is noon on 23 April.

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Reading and Writing Society: the role of English Subjects in Education for Sustainability

Reading and Writing Society: © Getty Images

the role of English Subjects in Education for Sustainability

Arran Stibbe explores the role that English language, English literature and Creative Writing can play in the rereading and rewriting of society that is taking place as the world adapts to the new realities of the 21st century.

Arran Stibbe is Senior Lecturer in English Language at the University of Gloucestershire. He is founder of the Language and Ecology Research Forum (www.ecoling.net), chair of the EAUC Education for Sustainability Group and designer of the course Language & Ecology which was highly commended in the 2007 Green Gown awards for its contribution to Education for Sustainability. (E-mail astibbe@glos.ac.uk)

There has, quite rightly, been some suspicion about the current high priority that Education for Sustainability has assumed within higher education, and some questions about the relevance of English subjects. Peter Knight, Vice Chancellor of the University of Central England, wrote in The Guardian that: ‘It is not the job of universities to promote a particular political orthodoxy; it is their role to educate students to examine critically policies, ideas, concepts and systems, then to make up their own minds’ (Knight 2005). However, the literature on Education for Sustainability holds up exactly the ideal that Knight describes. The skills that students gain to become ‘sustainability literate’ are precisely the ability to critically examine policies, ideas, concepts and systems, and reflect on values in order to make up their own minds about the role they will take in society in the future. As an example, Engaging People in Sustainability contains chapters on ‘Critical Thinking and Reflection’, ‘Systemic Thinking’ and ‘Imagining a Better Future’, but leaves it up to students to decide what that future is, and to discover paths for arriving there (Tilbury and Wortman, 2004). What Education for Sustainability additionally requires, however, is that systems are not examined as if they existed in isolation, but examined in the context of the other systems they relate to and have an impact on (Sterling, 2004; Dawe et al, 2005). Without understanding the interconnection and interdependence of economic, social, cultural, religious and biological systems, students will find it hard to live their lives or perform leadership roles in ways which contribute to a more sustainable society.

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Discussions of what, exactly, ‘sustainability’ is, are often marred by one sentence definitions which cannot possibly encompass the range of social, economic and environmental concerns that the world is currently facing. This article starts with a brief characterisation of sustainability in terms of energy descent and social adaptation, but there are many other ways to characterise it. Indeed, Education for Sustainability necessarily involves students in clarifying the concept for themselves in light of their evolving understanding of the interconnection of systems, their ongoing clarification of values and the emerging scientific evidence. For English subjects, Education for Sustainability requires an understanding of the role that language and literature play in the construction of social, economic, cultural and religious systems, and the impact of these systems on the larger systems which support life. The outcome is sustainability literacy, which leading sustainability educator Stephen Sterling describes as ‘the ability to understand (‘read’) and influence (‘write’) society’, (Sterling, 2005). He means this metaphorically, but reading (and listening) is one of the primary ways that we understand the society around us, and writing (and speaking) is one of the primary ways that we influence that society. English subjects, therefore, have a key role to play in Education for Sustainability. This article gives one perspective on what Education for Sustainability involves, before describing the important role that English subjects can play, and are already playing, within it.

Reading and Writing Society: the role of English Subjects in Education for Sustainability

Education for Sustainability Education for Sustainability is not about handing down technical information about the environment or encouraging students to recycle or buy a hybrid car. Instead, it actively involves students in a fundamental reconsideration of the direction in which society is heading, given increasing awareness of the embeddedness and dependence of society on natural systems, and the current state of those systems. One way of thinking about the current situation is as a turning point in history, a transition between an ‘energy ascent era’ and an ‘energy descent era’ (Roberts, 2005; Heinburg, 2004). During energy ascent, fossil fuels were used in exponentially increasing amounts to create an enormous surge in consumer goods, transportation and food production in industrialised countries, with a corresponding rapid increase in population, greenhouse gas concentrations and ecosystem degradation. In the rush for economic growth, little attention was paid to natural limits, or even to whether the forms of growth that occurred actually increased people’s well-being. At the peak of the ascent era, there was intense pressure on universities to equip students with the skills necessary for the UK to increase its prosperity in a globally competitive world. The influential Dearing Report, for instance, included statements such as ‘competitive advantage for advanced economies will lie in the quality, effectiveness and relevance of their provision for education and training’, (Dearing, 1997), but failed to consider the impact of ‘competitive’ economies on the environment or on the long-term sustainability of society. We now have the ultimate imperative to enter an ‘energy descent era’. If not, then the imminent peaking of oil production, combined with population growth, expanding resource requirements from developing countries, the impact of climate change and ecosystem degradation will make it increasingly difficult, and ultimately impossible, to meet basic needs of the world population. The consequences for other species would also be severe, with a wave of extinction predicted on a scale not seen since the dinosaurs were wiped out. The changes required for sustainability are too large to be achieved only through alternative

energy sources, increasing technological efficiency, recycling, or other ‘fixes’ which have minimal impact on ways of life. Nothing can ‘fix’ or ameliorate an exponentially increasing consumption of resources and production of waste within a finite planet. Instead, widespread social and cultural change is both necessary and inevitable, either to rapidly change the direction that societies are heading, or at least to adapt to a very different, and less hospitable, world if that direction cannot be changed. Unlike the energy ascent era, however, there is still potential for energy descent to be handled in ways which take into consideration both the limits of natural systems and people’s well-being. It is still possible for energy descent to be accompanied by social and cultural ascent as some of the unintended disadvantages of over-consumption (manufactured desires, dissatisfaction, obesity, debt, stress, traffic, alienation etc) are reduced, and positive low-consumption alternatives

Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and the Learning and Skills Council via their sustainability strategies. HEFCE states: ‘Our vision is that, within the next 10 years, the higher education sector in England will be recognised as a major contributor to society’s efforts to achieve sustainability’ (HEFCE, 2005). While external pressure can be threatening, the new priority placed on human society, culture and values gives humanities subjects a crucial role in 21st-century education.

The role of English subjects English language While climate change, pollution, ecosystem degradation and injustice are the symptoms of unsustainability, the root causes lie in population size, the power gained through advanced technology and the social and cultural systems which direct this power towards overconsumption, waste and disregard of the natural world. Social and cultural systems emerge through human interaction, and language plays a primary role in that interaction.

Education for Sustainability is not about handing down technical information about the environment or encouraging students to recycle or buy a hybrid car. embraced (meaningful connection with other people, community celebrations, cultural pursuits, physical exercise, engagement in and re-enchantment with the natural world, etc) (see De Graaf et al 2005). In other words, sustainability is about those who have their basic needs met working towards being more rather than having more, so that all can meet their basic needs and the ecosystems which support all forms of life can flourish. There are, of course, many other ways that ‘sustainability’ could be characterised, but whatever the priorities and the path to be taken, it is the current students who will be leading the world into the energy descent era and living with the consequences. There is now strong pressure on universities to help students prepare for new and emerging realities. The pressure comes from the United Nations via the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005–2014), the UK Government in the Securing the Future plan, and both the Higher Education

The study of English language can help students to understand how phonological, grammatical, semantic and pragmatic features of language can combine together to form a wide range of discourses. These discourses model and construct social reality in particular ways, and hence influence how people behave and how they treat the world they live in. By critically examining discursive constructions, such as those of progress, success, development, consumerism, scientism, convenience, free trade and economic growth, students can gain insight into the forces which have built and reproduce an unsustainable society. The following are some specific examples of the kind of texts which students at the University of Gloucestershire have within an ecological framework (see Ecoling, 2008). a) Financial advertisements’ promise of spiritual fulfilment if readers take out a loan and use it to buy luxuries.

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Reading and Writing Society: the role of English Subjects in Education for Sustainability

c) Perfume advertisements’ promise of self-transformation and romance if readers buy their scent. d) The animal industry’s use of language to justify environmentally damaging intensive farms. e) Economic textbooks’ construction of the fictional insatiable consumer. f ) Advertising’s efforts to make the insatiable consumer a reality. g) Reductionist ways of describing the natural world in environmentalist, ecological and conservation discourse. h) Representations of the natural world in nature writing, television programmes and films. Students examine texts such as these in the context of the larger discourses they draw from, and the models of the world that these discourses perpetuate. The aim is for students to gain skills in exposing discourses which act against their interests and the interests of what they value in the world, and gain skills in resisting those discourses if they so wish. Resistance could be at a personal level (eg resisting the widespread model that over-consumption leads to happiness by consuming less), at a corporate level (eg resisting narrow discursive constructions of the ‘bottom line’ and raising questions about the ultimate ends a company is serving) or at a political level (eg resisting discursive constructions of the economy which represent increases in GDP as positive, no matter what their source). Whatever forms of resistance students decide to follow, English language provides the analytical and rhetorical skills necessary to argue beyond the level of the truth or falsity of isolated propositions, to a deeper critique of the models of the world which underlie particular forms of discourse. Critical Discourse Analysis and Rhetoric are already a standard part of the English language curriculum, and Education for Sustainability merely extends the coverage of sexism, racism, homophobia and other human-only concerns to consider the impact of social systems on the larger systems which support life. Sustainability literacy cannot, however, be simply a matter of objectively sorting

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discourses into the two categories of ‘contributes to a sustainable society’ or ‘contributes to the demise of humanity’. For one thing, discourses are relative. E F Schumacher, for instance, established a discourse based on the model of ‘Small is Beautiful’, because the discourse of ‘Big is Better’ was (and still is) over-dominant in society, not because of an intrinsic superiority of the small. Also, in a complex world, any fixed, objective, algorithm for categorising discourses would be partial and contestable, and attempts to impose criteria for dismissing certain forms of discourse could be interpreted as spreading political dogma. It is therefore necessary for students to construct their own continuously evolving framework, updated in response to what they discover through texts, direct experience of social and ecological systems, values clarification and emerging evidence. It is this framework which provides students with a means of evaluating discourses in terms of their potential to contribute to sustainability. It can never be a ‘perfect’ framework, but students necessarily conduct analysis within academic frameworks, and Education for Sustainability simply requires that the frameworks take into consideration the ecological systems that humans exist within. In addition to discourse analysis, there is another way that English language can contribute to Education for Sustainability. Unlike many subjects, English language gives consideration not only to written academic English but to a wide diversity of forms of English, including oral English, informal English and regional varieties. This is important because, as sustainability educator Chet Bowers points out, many existing social practices within local communities link people and place in ways which contribute to sustainability. Examples include social activities based around family and friends, community interaction, appreciation of local nature, crafts, sharing of resources/labour among neighbours and local cultural events and celebrations (Bowers 2001, 1993). These practices are communicated orally and informally, and passed on from generation to generation through languages and varieties of language local to the bioregion. However, there is a tendency within education for specific local knowledge of this sort to be

de-valued in favour of the abstract, the global, the technical and the academic. While global/scientific knowledge is essential in realising the scale of the problems that humanity is facing, changing the direction of society requires action at all levels, including the specific, local and concrete level. English language, then, provides a chance to celebrate orality and dialectal variation, helping students to recognise that insights into sustainability can come from geographically rooted oral sources as well as written, centralised, science-based sources. English literature English literature has a key role to play in Sustainability Literacy. Books are, after all, an important source of discourses which have an actual or potential impact on the sustainability of society, from technologyglorifying science fiction novels to nature writing so powerful that it helps readers to regain their lost enchantment with the natural world. On one hand, the historical dimension of literature helps students to understand from where some of the key discourses which have led societies along an unsustainable path have developed. On the other hand, within the vast range of literature there is a wealth of diverse discourses to be explored. Some of these discourses could contribute to reinventing social reality and reorienting society towards a sustainable future. The potential of books to contribute to more sustainable ways of being is central to the rapidly evolving area of ecocriticism (Garrard, 2004, ASLE-UK, 2008). Ecocriticism started out as a form of literary criticism with an environmentalist

b) The conflation of the size and speed of cars with the personality of their drivers in car magazines and television programmes such as Top Gear.

Reading and Writing Society: the role of English Subjects in Education for Sustainability

agenda, focused mainly on British and North American romanticism and nature writing. How students approach nature writing, and the criteria they use to criticise it, depends on their own evolving ecological framework. Students could, for example, critically appraise nature writing on the power it has to help its readers a) to move beyond reductionism, valuefree disinterest, or utilitarian economic calculation b) to discover alternative ways of relating with the natural world, such as embodied, respectful, emotional, grateful, engaged, aesthetic, or empathic forms of interaction c) to iscover value within human and natural systems and therefore work to protect them d) to promote the kind of close observation necessary to learn from productive, yet zero-carbon and zero-waste natural, systems e) to fulfil higher human needs through contact with local nature rather than through the ultimately counterproductive accumulation of possessions Underlying all of these potential criteria is the question of how much power nature writing has to encourage readers to look beyond words and books and to interact directly with the natural world. As Gilbert White wrote, ‘If I should have induced any of my readers to pay a more ready attention to the wonders of creation too readily overlooked as common occurrences … then my purpose will be fully answered’ (in Wood, 2007). On the other hand, students can also look for factors which might be counterproductive to encouraging more sustainable relationships with the natural world, such as piety, elitism, scientific inaccuracy, shallowness or tediousness. Criticism of nature writing alone, however, is not enough if the agenda is an environmentalist one. Many of the discourses which have a negative impact on the environment have no explicit consideration or mention of natural systems at all, which is why they are so potentially destructive. For example, books and other cultural forms which promote lavish and extravagant lifestyles, reliance on inappropriate technology or absorption in the human-only world are just as important to criticise from a

sustainability perspective as those which encourage communion with nature. In fact, the current trajectory of ecocriticsm is towards a broader focus, including texts such as science fiction, science writing and cyborg writing as well as other types of cultural artefact such as films, television programmes, zoos, or paintings (Armbruster and Wallace, 2001). Criticism of books and other cultural artefacts which promote unsustainable social practices is essential because it is provides a dark background against which alternatives can shine out and be discovered.

great potential for university education to promote the creation of alternative discourses which can help to open up new perspectives and directions for society. Very few other disciplines offer students the chance to experiment with language and create new forms of expression which move beyond the limitations of abstract/ technical/academic language. Creative Writing, of course, does not take place in isolation, but involves studying both language and literature. Through studying language, students get an understanding of the way that features

the current trajectory of ecocriticsm is towards a broader focus, including texts such as science fiction, science writing, and cyborg writing, as well as other types of cultural artefact such as films, television programmes, zoos, or paintings. When students do discover alternative discursive models within literature which could help society to move towards sustainability (for instance, in the writings of E F Schumacher, Rachel Carson, William Morris, Gary Snyder, Gilbert White or Vandana Shiva), several paths open up for putting these models into practice. One way is for students to apply the models directly to their own lives, for instance reflecting on the different quality of experience gained in watching TV or going shopping to time spent talking with friends or interacting closely with nature. Another way is promotion of the books themselves, as essential reading to prepare for life in the changing world of the 21st century. A third way, and a very important one, is for students to creatively weave aspects of the discourses they discover, and the models of the world that lie behind them, into their own speaking and writing. Creative Writing The recently updated Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) subject benchmarks have recognised a ‘striking increase in the number of programmes involving elements of creative, imaginative and transformative writing’, and have explicitly included these forms of writing within the subject benchmark statements (QAA, 2007). The growth and popularity of Creative Writing as an academic discipline offers

of language come together to form discourses, and the impact that these discourses can have on the sustainability of society. Creative Writing offers a chance to write ‘against’ destructive discourses, by incorporating but simultaneously satirising and subverting them. Students can also seek out alternative discourses in world literature which are currently marginal in mainstream society but have a potentially important role to play in the transition to a more sustainable society. It is then possible for them to take up these discourses and creatively rework them, mix them with other discourses they have discovered or created, and use them as a basis for their own Creative Writing. In doing so, they can revitalise forms of language from the past which have taken on a new significance and importance in the present. Perhaps even more important than revitalising newly relevant discourses from the past is the creation of completely new alternative discourses. If students have an understanding of the complex interactions between human systems and the larger natural systems they form part of, and are critically aware of the destructive power of certain mainstream discourses, then they may be able to create new, radically different ways to write society. At present, we do not have the answers to what a completely sustainable society or culture

Newsletter 14 April 2008 27

Reading and Writing Society: the role of English Subjects in Education for Sustainability

would even look like, never mind how to achieve it, so imagination and creativity, combined with futures thinking, are central to Education for Sustainability. There is one important element in the creation of new discourses which goes beyond intertextuality (drawing patterns from previous texts), beyond creativity and beyond imagination, and that is the ability to draw insights from direct engagement with, observation of, and participation in human and natural systems. Ultimately, if we follow the chains of intertextuality to their end, all writing is rooted in the nondiscursive world; it is in close observation of the reality beyond words that students can search for forms of discourse which go beyond the well-worn discourses of an unsustainable society. In the same way that daffodils impressed themselves into written forms through being observed by Wordsworth, students can act as vehicles for human and natural systems to impress themselves into the written world in ways which make people take notice of them in new ways. What is required is one of the three main aspects of Education for Sustainability identified by Dawe et al, (2005): reconnecting with reality. By this they mean direct engagement with real-life issues and experience, local communities, other people and nature – an engagement with the particular and real rather than just the abstract and invented. The creative side of Education for Sustainability, then, requires the development of new skills in engaged, participative observation of reality, skills which can only be gained in active learning outside the classroom. There is, of course, no need for Creative Writing to be associated only with novels, poems or plays – finding new directions for society in a rapidly changing world is going to require creative rewriting of all aspects of society. Students will leave university and go on to take up a variety of professions, and in all of them there are possibilities for using language in ways which contribute to sustainability, whether in business presentations, e-mails, parliamentary debates, newspaper articles, textbooks, agricultural handbooks, social speeches or casual conversation. With the benchmarks prioritising a wide range of assessments in addition to essays, it is possible to provide students with opportunities to practise a variety of ways to engage creatively with the society they live in and contribute to the sustainability of that society.

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Conclusion This article has briefly discussed the important contribution that English language, literature and Creative Writing can make to Education for Sustainability, or more generally, education which helps students prepare for the energy descent era of the 21st century. Although the three disciplines were discussed separately, it is in combination that they have most to offer. The ability to ‘read’ and ‘write’ society can be gained through awareness of how discourses have constructed an unsustainable society, through the exploration of a great variety of discourses from world literature, through creatively

weaving aspects of the most promising discourses into writing, and using imagination to create new discourses, ones which open up more sustainable directions for society. In the documentary The 11th Hour, Paul Hawken says: ‘What an exciting time to be born, what an exciting time to be alive, because this generation gets to completely remake this world.’ Education for Sustainability in the English Subject area is about helping students prepare to do exactly that. Acknowledgements: Thanks to Greg Garrard and Kate North for invaluable comments on the first draft.

Further Reading Armbruster, Karla and Kathlee Wallace (2001) Beyond Nature Writing: Expanding the Boundaries of Ecocriticism. University of Virginia Press. ASLE-UK (2008) www.asle.org.uk/home.html Bowers, Chet (1993) Education, Cultural Myths and the Ecological Crisis: toward deep changes. Albany. State University of New York Press. Bowers, Chet (2001) Educating for Eco-justice and Community. University of Georgia Press. Dawe, Gerald, Rolf Jucker and Stephen Martin (2005) HEA Subject Network Consultation report: Sustainable Development in Higher Education: current practice and future developments. Available at www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/York/documents/ourwork/tla/sustainability/ sustdevinHEfinalreport.pdf De Graaf, John, David Wann and Thomas Naylor (2005) Affluenza: the all consuming epidemic. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler. Dearing, Ron (1997) The National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education Report. Available at www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/ncihe/ Ecoling (2008) Language and Ecology Research Forum. www.ecoling.net/journal.html and www.ecoling.net/courses.html Garrard, Greg (2004) Ecocriticism. Routledge. HEA (2005) Questionnaire on Sustainability Orientation of Subject Centres: response of the English Subject Centre. Available at www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/archive/resources/sustain/ sustain_report_bspa.doc HEFCE (2005) Sustainable development in higher education. Available at www.hefce.ac.uk/ pubs/hefce/2005/05_01/ Heinburg, Richard (2004) Powerdown: options and actions for a post-carbon world gabriola: New Society Publishers. Knight, Peter (2005) ‘Unsustainable Developments.’ The Guardian, 8 February. Available at http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/story/0.5500.1407543.00.html QAA (2007). Subject benchmark statements: english. Available at www.qaa.ac.uk/academicinfrastructure/benchmark/statements/English07.asp Roberts, Paul (2005) The End of Oil: the decline of the petroleum economy and the rise of a new energy order: London: Bloomsbury. Sterling, Stephen (2004), ‘Higher Education, Sustainability and the Role of Systemic Learning’. In Peter Corcoran and Arjen Wals (eds) Higher Education and The Challenge of Sustainability, Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 49–70. Sterling, Stephen (2005) ‘Sustainable literacy: skills for living well into the future.’ Ethos 6 May. Available at http://csf.plymouth.ac.uk/files/sterlingFull.html.txt Tilbury, Daniella and David Wortman (eds) (2004) Engaging People in Sustainability. Zurich: Union Internationale pour la Conservation de la Nature et de ses Ressources. Available at www.aries. mq.edu.au/pdf/EngagingPeopleV5.pdf Wood, Michael (2007) Michael Wood on Gilbert White. Available at www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/ documentaries/features/gilbert-white-wood.shtml

Newlsetter 14

English Subject Centre Advisory Board 2007/2008 Our Advisory Board meets twice a year and is chaired by Lyn Pykett. • Professor Simon Dentith, University of Reading • Professor Robert Hampson, Royal Holloway, University of London • Professor Liz Jay, Oxford Brookes University and Council for College and University English (CCUE) • Professor Vivien Jones, Leeds University and CCUE • Professor Peter Kitson, Dundee University and English Association • Dr Bethan Marshall, King’s College, University of London • Professor Lyn Pykett (Chair), University of Wales, Aberystwyth and CCUE • Professor David Roberts, Birmingham City University • Professor Rick Rylance, University of Exeter • Professor Mick Short, University of Lancaster • Professor Ann Thompson, King’s College, University of London

prizes for completion!

Survey on Accessibility advice The JISC TechDis service provides advice and guidance on the use of technology to achieve a more accessible experience for students and staff in higher and further education. In order to assess their impact in the higher education sector, and to inform their future work areas, they are undertaking a web-based survey. They are seeking responses from anyone and everyone working in higher education, from a wide range of subject disciplines, role areas and institutions. They are offering everyone who completes the survey the chance to be included in a draw for one of eight £25 book tokens (usable online and in stores), although it is also possible to complete the survey anonymously. As a JISC-funded service, TechDis must deliver what the sector requires in terms of advice and guidance on accessibility, disability and technology. This is your chance to help ensure that the interests of your subject area or your role group are represented and your needs are met in this area. Even if you have never heard of TechDis please tell us so using the survey – this is still very valuable information! The survey can be found at http://tinyurl.com/3DTQFY – it should take between two and 10 minutes to complete, depending on the amount of information you wish to include in your responses. The TechDis team would like to thank you in advance for completing the survey.

Newsletter 14 April 2008 29

Developing Careers Services for English Students

Developing Careers Services for English Students Jane Gawthrope reports on how the Subject Centre is helping English lecturers and Career Services work together to enhance students’ career development. Three questions: • Do you know where your institution’s Careers Service is? (1 point). • Have you ever been there or visited its website? (1 point plus a bonus point if it’s in the last year). • Can you name the careers adviser responsible for English? (1 point). Jane Gawthrope is the Manager of the English Subject Centre.

I suspect that most readers are struggling to score more than a point or two, which is why the English Subject Centre has been trying to encourage English departments and Careers Advisory Services to work more closely together for the benefit of students. Although, as an English lecturer, you may see yourself as spending much of your time ‘unfitting [your] pupils for the lives they will eventually have to lead’ (John Carey in the Listener, 1974), they generally expect to obtain a graduate-level job. To obtain that graduatelevel job students need to be competent not only in their chosen subject, but have the self-confidence to apply the generic skills and subject knowledge they acquire at university to a changing workplace. (And before you turn over at the mention of the ‘skills’ word, I should remind you that the ‘skills’ most commonly highlighted by employers include problemsolving skills, communication skills, analytical skills and critical appraisal, exactly the sort of ‘skills’ you look to develop in your students.) A common theme running through my encounters with careers advisers is that English students have these skills in plentiful quantities, but are poor, or perhaps lack confidence, in understanding how they might be applied to the workplace. When it comes to articulating to a recruiter what they have gained through three years of studying literature, many graduates struggle to get beyond, ‘Well, I’ve read a lot of Victorian novels, but you won’t be interested in that ...’. (The Student Employability Profile www.english.heacademy. ac.uk/explore/projects/archive/careers/careers5. php, published by the English Subject Centre helps students to link the skills listed on the English Benchmark Statement to those typically sought by employers.)

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We know that most students who choose to study English do so because they enjoy the subject rather than to fulfil specific career ambitions, but they are no different from other students in their expectation that higher education study will enhance their chances of getting a good job (see http://tinyurl.com/2ofblm). This perhaps explains the other comment frequently made by careers advisers, namely that English students are often reluctant to engage in career planning, are under the misapprehension that their degree alone will be sufficient to get them any job they want, and that they appear frightened by the employment treadmill. This is the backdrop to the Subject Centre’s work with Careers Services: we wanted to bring academic departments into closer contact with Careers Services; to make the Careers Services on offer more tailored to the inclinations of English students; and also to ensure that student take-up of these services was encouraged by the department. In the summer of 2006, following a networking day for careers advisers working with humanities students, we offered small grants of £750 to Careers Services for one-year projects that enhanced their services for English students. This attracted 25 applications, but budgetary constraints meant that we could fund only 10. This number of applications indicated to me the high level of commitment, enthusiasm and professionalism abounding in Careers Services, and I was disappointed that we could not support more projects.

Building bridges In some departments, English lecturers and careers advisers met for the first time in order to put together a proposal, so even some projects we were unable to fund benefited from the way that the grant created a focus for a joint meeting. Several of the funded projects initiated active collaboration between Careers Services and departments for the very first time. The projects running some sort of event had to involve departments simply because of timetabling arrangements, but careers advisers acknowledged that students were more likely to attend if invitations were issued by the department through e-mails or on its Virtual Learning Environmental (VLE) pages

Developing Careers Services for English Students

Funded Projects 2006/2007

valuable experience of teamwork, project management and using IT as well as producing a resource of value to others. English students at Liverpool University produced a set of podcasts on commercial awareness based on interviews they conducted with employers. At the ‘Careers Action Day’ at Reading, students expressing interest in journalism were asked to write articles and were then given feedback by a professional, so active student involvement was a feature of several projects.

Institution

Careers Adviser

Description

Birmingham

Melanie Billingham

Alumni event

Brunel

Stephanie Darking

Careers magazine and website written by and for students

Edinburgh

Janet Forsyth

Careers workshop and handout for first years

Gloucestershire

Nicki Castello

Web resources

Graduate Prospects

John Bellerby

Online chatroom

Get ‘em early

Hertfordshire

Catrin Davies

Survey, workshops and web resources

Liverpool

Diane Appleton

Podcast and printed guide on commercial awareness

Northampton

Andrea Duncan

Resource pack of PDP materials

Reading

Claire Jones

Careers Action Day

Sheffield

Hilary Whorrall

Workshop

Three of the projects had the explicit aim of engaging students in career planning at an earlier stage in their university experience: a project at Edinburgh, for example, delivered a careers workshop specifically for first years. Although it may seem burdensome to confront students who have only just negotiated the bewildering university-choice-hurdle with yet another set of dilemmas about careers, it is necessary if they are to make the best of their time at university. The Edinburgh workshop informed students about the skills and experience in demand in the job market and how they might be developed through work experience, voluntary and extra-curricular activities while at university. A survey of secondand third-year students conducted by the Hertfordshire Careers Service concluded:

or in lectures. “Buy-in from academic staff is key,” said one adviser. In other projects, academic staff had a higher level of involvement. At Birmingham, for example, they helped to recruit alumni speakers through personal contacts, and Northampton staff participated in the delivery of workshops supporting the Personal Development Pack (PDP) pack that was developed. The ‘Careers Action Day’, run at the University of Reading, was a co-operative endeavour between the department and the Careers Service, and inaugurated a new era of collaboration.

Student involvement and new technology

Gone are the days when Careers Services consisted of rooms lined with ring-binders stuffed with information on occupations and companies. Most information is now delivered online, and supplemented by a battery of profiling tools and practice tests. And it’s not just a matter of replacing printed with web resources: the ‘Graduate Prospects’ project in Manchester ran a series of nationally available online chats with careers advisers; although the numbers participating in real-time were As with academic departments, the growth disappointing (43 in total), over 800 have in student numbers has meant that Careers accessed the archive versions since. Services are trying to do more with less, Several of the projects aimed to generate and it is often the fitting of services to the web resources specifically for English needs of particular discipline groups that students, and in some has been sacrificed. As well as building cases these resources relations between departments and were produced by Careers Services, several projects reported students themselves. that being able to tailor an aspect of the “Student commitment service specifically for English students and enthusiasm has raised the profile of the service as a whole. been inspirational,” Stephanie Darking at Brunel said, “I have said one project seen more English students than formerly leader. There is as a result of the higher profile of the obviously a double Careers Service and had more frequent benefit with these contact with students.” projects in that the students involved gain

A significant majority of students were not well-established in their career exploration, and many were planning to enter careers in which they could draw on the skills developed in their degree, but without clear understanding of the additional skills and expertise they would need to cement their application in a highly competitive market.

Eng-zine, a website written by and for students at Brunel University.

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Developing Careers Services for English Students

In fact, only 8.7% of students surveyed had any work experience in the sector they wished to enter. “This is worrying in particular given the large numbers hoping to enter highly competitive sectors in which one works one’s passage through unpaid or low-paid work for a lengthy time,” said Catrin Davies, although she goes on to say, “those who did have experience linked to their aspirations and in a relevant sector had obtained highly impressive and serial experience”. Another 8.7% could report no work or voluntary experience at all, even while at school. Catrin said: Several of these students nonetheless assessed themselves as informed on the requirements for entry to their future career, and ... erroneously in my opinion, as prepared for entry (‘I have researched skills sought and have identified several examples of how I have demonstrated these’). Many of this minority appeared misinformed on the value of a degree alone without underpinning evidence of application of their skills in the wider world … Interestingly, in general, those students with more senior work experience were more modest in their claims to have the skills and experience to enter it. Those students with little or no work experience assessed themselves as well informed and prepared to meet the demands of their chosen field. Although we may resent the fact that students are placed under these pressures at a time when we would wish they are focused on study, in order to obtain a graduate-level job it is becoming increasingly necessary for students to demonstrate a blend of selfunderstanding, generic skills and subject understanding and to be able to provide evidence to back up claims or assertions. In more leisurely decades, students were able to provide this evidence in the natural course of engagement in student clubs and societies, but in today’s more pressurised environment careers advisers can offer support in identifying gaps in experience and suggest more structured ways of addressing them. PDP can be a way of guiding students through this process: the project at Northampton aimed to make clearer links between academic study and workplace skills

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through exercises aimed to encourage PDP processes piloted in workshops.

In conclusion The projects we supported in 2006/2007 enhanced the range of resources available to assist in the personal and career development of English students. Notably, they were not narrowly focused on crude targets, such as improving the first destination statistics. They generated innovative ways of delivering services, and these innovations and the wider experiences of the projects were shared

year of funding. Because of the success of the last round of projects we are supporting a further six in 2007/2008. I hope that this article encourages readers to make contact with their Careers Service or at least welcome any approaches from them. At the Networking Days it is evident that careers advisers are keen to build closer relations with academic departments, as well as being full of ideas for new ways of engaging humanities students. Very often, it is just endorsement and timetabling support they need from the department rather than any resource-

intensive input. At the very least, you should see if you can increase your score in the introductory quiz! More information on all the 2006/2007 careers projects can be found at: www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/ projects/archive/careers/careers6.php and on the 2007/2008 projects at www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/ projects/archive/careers/careers7.php

Funded Projects 2007/2008 Institution

Careers Adviser

Description

Portsmouth

Julie Bush

Identifying and developing employability skills

London, Birkbeck

Diana Omololu

Podcast for mature students

Aberdeen

Regina Jäschke

Media vodcast

St Andrews

Bonnie Hacking

Enterprising English – using your degree to start your own business

Salford

Peter Ireland

Employer-led workshops for Creative Writing students

York St John

Liz Whitaker

Resource for English language graduates

Newsletter 14

Is that really you at the front of the class?

T3 – Teaching, Topics and Texts www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/resources/t3/ If you’re wondering how to begin your seminar tomorrow, or have a fresh idea for teaching a particular text or topic, T3 is for you. Organised by text and topic, T3 is a growing resource of teaching ideas designed by and for hard-pressed English, Creative Writing and English Language lecturers. To encourage you to share yours, we’re offering a £10 book token for each one (up to a maximum of £50 per applicant).

Here’s one of our entries: Topic

Critical Theory

Text

Simulations by Jean Baudrillard

Activity

Brainstorming Baudrillard’s Four-Stage Model of the Sign

Following a lecture on or a set reading of the relevant parts of Baudrillard’s Simulations, provide the group with a handout detailing Baudrillard’s four stages of the sign as a reminder. Divide the whiteboard into four columns – one for each of the proposed stages. Brainstorm examples and get the group to attempt to classify each example into the appropriate stage of the model. As they do this, and find that some examples sit less easily within one category than others, they should be able to begin to critique the model, by exposing its strengths and weaknesses through attempting to apply it. I find this a useful way of © Getty Images

not only getting students to grapple with theory ‘hands on’, but also to encourage them to take issue with it where necessary. Submitted by: George Selmer (Anglia Ruskin University).

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Book Reviews Teaching & Learning English Literature Ellie Chambers & Marshall Gregory Sage Publications, in the series ‘Teaching & Learning the Humanities in Higher Education’, 2006 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007) English has the largest subject cohort of A Level candidates, and there were 38,000 undergraduates reading for English degrees in the UK in 2005/2006. So where did it all go right? The answer must surely be ‘in the classroom’, for it would be odd to assume that our students are initially attracted to the discipline by our research. Higher education teachers are now required to take courses on the basics of teaching (quite rightly), but the generic aspects of these training courses seem pretty well universally loathed. If the training is to be more in accord with what the trainees themselves see as their needs (as it surely must), then there have to be subject-specific books like this one, for the training is given not before but while starting to teach at degree level, and that reduces the average trainee’s toleration of generalised otiosity virtually to zero. This book certainly begins to meet the need for materials which offer tightly focused, practical, subject-specific support. There isn’t a great deal of competition, but Elaine Showalter’s Teaching Literature (Blackwell, 2003) is an outstanding predecessor – lively, witty, quirky and wise. There is also the more genre-based collection Teaching Literature: A Companion, edited by Tanya Agathocleous and Ann C Dean (Blackwell, 2002). The present book is more ‘cross-cultural’ than these, in the sense that it is not based mainly on teaching in the US, and I would classify it as more an ‘informational’ than an ‘inspirational’ book. It opens with an overview chapter, ‘The discipline today’. We are not, surely, ‘in crisis’ any more, but workloads are killing, the ‘quality’ machine goes on producing its paper cities, and the ‘grant capture’ beast devours what energy is left. The second chapter asks, ‘What is good teaching?’ and uses a class on Joyce’s ‘Araby’ in answering the question. The third considers the teaching of literary theory and of academic writing, and chapters follow on planning and course design, on specific teaching methods, on assessment and on the evaluation of teaching. A number of very helpful appendices are available, not between the covers, but on the book’s website (these days more and more books have websites, for increasingly – whether tutors or students – we read only primary texts on the page, and do most of our critical reading on the screen). However, I couldn’t get to the website by the route given on page vi, but by www.sagepub.co.uk/upm-data/9680_011352.pdf

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An important chapter in a book such as this is the one called ‘Methods of teaching’, and here I found the material sometimes a little thin, with scope for expansion in a second edition. There is little specific, for instance, on Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs), though the topic is briefly touched upon on page 189. Specific commentary would have been welcome on the use of products like the Blackboard ‘family’ of ‘learning management’ systems (from the fiercelycorporate, Washington DC-based organisation) or the more recent Moodle (which is ‘free and open-sourced software’, so we have bad cop and good cop options). Like most of my colleagues, I use VLEs all the time, and see them wherever I go as examiner. The days of badly assembled photocopied handouts seem to be over (thank goodness). Further, putting JSTOR links on a VLE is the only way I have ever found of getting undergraduates to read articles in academic journals. The section on lecturing also seemed rudimentary – it’s little more than a paragraph, in fact. Yet this is surely the aspect of teaching likely to provoke the greatest sense of anxiety and insecurity, and much more is needed in a book like this on how to shape a lecture and give it impact, pace and interest. Increasingly, PowerPoint is the norm – a great and powerful aid, in my view, and infinitely forgiving as a system – but the term is not mentioned in the book. PowerPoint becomes unhelpful when over-packed slides are presented in tricksy ways – phrases arriving on the screen accompanied by drum rolls and bullet noises, and the like. Why do people do this? Because they can, is the only answer. Some basic advice and principles for this kind of presentation would therefore have been welcome. On the other hand, much else in the book is well judged – it says sensible things, for instance, about plagiarism, and points us in the direction of the most recent detection aids, and is helpful on the topic of assessment by portfolios, with examples of such tasks in the website appendices. Overall, this is a thorough and practical book in which new and not-so-new lecturers will find a good deal of valuable and thought-provoking material.

Peter Barry Aberystwyth University

Book Reviews

Doing Creative Writing Steve May (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007)

There has been much debate over whether something as individualised and nebulous as Creative Writing can actually be taught. The recent boom in creative writing courses at university level suggests that growing numbers of students hope that at least some elements of good writing can be. This book seeks to provide an introduction for those prospective students, specifically those contemplating one or more undergraduate courses in any aspect of Creative Writing such as fiction, plays, poetry or scriptwriting. It offers a readable and informative overview of what studying Creative Writing will involve, together with advice about how to get the most out of such a course. Hemingway once observed that the art of writing lies in applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair, and there is unfortunately no way around the fact that learning to become a writer inescapably involves writing, and then writing some more, and then more writing. But part of that process can usefully involve studying the many aspects of learning how to write: beginning to read as a writer, how to manage to write regularly, learning to edit (and re-edit) effectively and nowadays, of course, thinking about how to pitch work for publication. All of these skills can be learnt from a well-designed Creative Writing course. The book’s emphasis on how university study can develop these skills makes it an excellent primer for undergraduates on the methods that will be used to teach them these basic “tools of the trade”. The author is himself a Creative Writing lecturer, and often uses incisive examples from his own teaching.

Read Steve May’s article on the student experience of Creative Writing, on pages 10-14.

The book describes the process of choosing and studying a Creative Writing course clearly and succinctly. It is divided into three parts of two or three short chapters each. The first part discusses the reasons why someone might want to study Creative Writing, and what to look for when choosing a course. The second part explains what students will actually be required to do as part of a university course. The third part suggests ‘best practice’ working habits to learn and apply the skills taught. Each chapter ends with a summary of its main points, and includes many “In Practice” writing exercises to introduce tasks that students will likely be asked to do. There is a good extended discussion of the format and requirements of the Creative Writing workshop, which includes suggestions about how to read other students’ work as a writer, and how to provide critical feedback that stimulates the editing process. This is valuable because the workshop is likely to be a new experience for many students, as well as a potentially daunting one for any would-be writer. There are also welcome explanations

of the practical aspects of university study, such as the means of assessment, which can often include students submitting not just the expected creative pieces but also self-reflexive essays on their own writing practice. The book stresses that both writing and university study have to be undertaken systematically. The approach is particularly appropriate for this subject, since to succeed first as a student and then as a writer requires developing work habits that involve writing regularly and editing work rigorously. The book is also mindful that studying Creative Writing is, for many, the first step on the long, uncertain road to publication. It strives to remind students of the ongoing value of the skills being learned – so, for example, advice about how to best present writing for assessment will also be useful when later submitting work to agents or publishers. The book concludes with some exploration of alternative career paths, and some insightful case studies of writers who also studied Creative Writing. These also serve to apprise students of the difficulties in studying a subject where career success is notoriously elusive. The appended Further Reading section of additional resources is handy and up to date, although the relevant parts might have been better placed at the end of each chapter. The book will be most suitable as an introduction for those prospective students who have no clear understanding of what it might mean to study writing as a university degree subject, since it sets out well what to expect and what to prepare for. The simple prose, together with a well-designed structure and layout, makes the book ideal for undergraduates. It would be most appropriate for students to read before commencing an option or course, or else in its very early stages. The book could also be used as a basic introduction for the growing numbers of MA students, particularly those who have no undergraduate experience of studying Creative Writing. One minor drawback is the recommended retail price of £11.99 – a slim paperback introductory text such as this might be more attractive to students at under a tenner. Hopefully, the price will not prove too discouraging, since anyone considering studying Creative Writing at undergraduate level who reads this book will gain an accurate understanding of what will be involved. Reading it will not guarantee that they will go on to write as well as Hemingway, but it should certainly make them better-prepared students.

David Bausor Royal Holloway, University of London

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Event Round-up

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In 2007 the English Subject Centre ran or co-sponsored 15 events. By the time you have read this, another six will have occurred in the first four months of 2008. Events are dedicated to a range of current issues and concerns relevant to teaching and learning in English Literature, Creative Writing, English Language, and frequently, quite specific curriculum areas. We are always interested in supporting or co-sponsoring events of interest to our subject community, so if you have a suggestion for an event or are interested in involving the Subject Centre in an event you have already planned, please let us know via the ‘propose an event’ page of our website at www.english. heacademy.ac.uk/explore/events/index.php. Supporting documents on these web pages tell you how the Subject Centre can help and give guidance on designing events. The English Subject Centre also sponsors teaching-related strands or panels at research conferences by paying the travelling costs of speakers. Again, for full details of how to propose an event or apply for sponsorship, please visit the Events pages of our website. Below you can catch up on a few of the events and panels which have taken place over the past eight months. This roundup was compiled with the assistance of Scott Hames, Adrian Hunter, Jane Gawthrope, Shoshannah Holdum, Jonathan Gibson and Nicole King. For a more comprehensive sense of our rich events programme please peruse our Events archive web pages, which house details of all the events we have run in the past along with associated materials.

Teaching Confessions of a Justified Sinner (University of Stirling, 7–9 August 2007) This English Subject Centre sponsored workshop session took place at the From Ettrick to Empire: New Perspectives in James Hogg Studies Conference. The session considered a range of approaches to Hogg’s best-known and most widely taught work. The workshop format allowed participants to share classroom strategies and experiences, including the difficulty of framing the text historically, culturally and formally. Papers contributed by Scott Hames (University of Stirling), Adrian Hunter (University of Stirling), Graham Tulloch (University of Flinders, Australia), Silvia Meganthal (University of Konstanz, Germany) and Caroline McCracken-Flesher (University of Wyoming) addressed topics such as how the text risks alienating students, the challenges presented by choosing whether to stress political and cultural contexts, the text’s linguistic diversity and how students engage with its characters. A lively and wide-ranging general discussion followed, in which further strategies – including making topical connections between the text and current political events, eg comparing Wringhim’s ethics to those of a suicide bomber – were explored. Several contributors urged that the novel be presented in the context of Hogg’s overall achievement, rather than as the near-miraculous fluke of a rustic savant. The session was reminded that the latter impression tended to reinscribe (unfounded) contemporaneous suspicion concerning Hogg’s authorship of the novel.

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Teaching Contemporary Women’s Writing in the 21st Century (University of Brighton, 15 September 2007) This event was conceived by Gina Wisker (University of Brighton) and organised with the assistance of the English Subject Centre. The aim of the conference was to explore the variety of contemporary women’s writing and the ways lecturers are currently making it accessible through teaching and learning in higher education institutions. Papers explored a great variety of topics, such as children’s literature (Dave Simpson, University of Brighton), using film, video and YouTube when teaching students how to be critical readers (Amy Palko, University of Stirling), using Postcolonial and African American gothic fiction to discuss ideology and interpretation with students (Gina Wisker), the enduring interest in Daphne de Maurier’s life and work among both scholars and students (Ella Westland, formerly University of Exeter) and the challenges associated with introducing feminism – ‘the F word’ – into a university’s writing curriculum (Siall Waterbright, Queensland University of Technology). Alice Rideout and Susan Watkins (Leeds Metropolitan University) addressed the topic of ‘Mothers and Daughters reading and writing across the generations’, with stimulating examples of curriculum initiatives and Marion Treby (The Open University) discussed the challenges of carrying out postgraduate research on Toni Morrison. An afternoon keynote address and reading was delivered by creative writer and lecturer Mimi Thebo (Bath Spa University). The day brought together a great mix of senior and junior colleagues, and there were even one or two students in the audience, all of which fed into a lively panel discussion at the end of the day. In conversation with the audience, the panel, which included Clare Hanson (University of Southampton), Lucie Armitt (University of Salford), Alice Rideout, Susan Watkins and Gina Wisker, reprised and debated some of the day’s stand-out issues, such as the important differences between women’s writing, feminism and the study of gender; the relatively low status that some departments continue to accord the teaching of women’s literature, and most contentiously of all, the perceived lack of interest by 20-something year olds with regard to feminism and its various histories. All were agreed that more such conferences and opportunities to share practice with regard to teaching women’s writing would be very welcome.

Borderlands: Themes in Teaching Literatures of the Americas (University of Birmingham, 18 October 2007) This one-day conference, co-organised by John Canning of the Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies and the English Subject Centre, was hosted by Dick Ellis (University of Birmingham). The event brought together scholars from a range of disciplines including History, English, American Studies, Spanish and Latin American Studies, and the Visual Arts. The conference aimed to identify and discuss burgeoning themes in teaching literatures of the Americas, an area characterised by complicated boundaries and borders and a multilingual landscape. Presentations included film screenings (Marcus Wood, University of Sussex); a discussion of French Creole borderlands in Louisiana and Kate Chopin’s short fiction (Robert Lewis, University of Birmingham); the myth of Latin American ‘boom’ literature and what tutors can do to counteract it (Phillip Swanson, University of Sheffield); Cuban literature’s ability to teach students to question singular linear histories (Luis Perez, Princeton University); how American literature captures the imagination of Birmingham students doing research module work (Sara Wood, University of Birmingham) and the struggle behind convincing students and staff of ‘the point’ of teaching Chicano Studies in the UK (Thea Pitman, Leeds University). In her closing remarks, Claire Lindsay (University College, London) stressed the centrality of language to any discussion of borderlands, and that working on these themes usually entails working at the margins of disciplines. She reminded the audience that bilingual aesthetics and linguistic hybridity are key characteristics of borderlands culture.

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Event Round-up

Here be Dragons? Humanities, Enterprise and Higher Education (University of Leeds, 10 October 2007) The aim of this Subject Centre event, as the title suggests, was to weave together the hard-edged, entrepreneurial world typified by the BBC2 television series Dragons’ Den, (where hopeful entrepreneurs pitch new business propositions to a group of wealthy, but sceptical, ‘dragons’ on the hunt for investment opportunities), with the world of humanities scholarship as symbolised by quaint and un-evidenced designations on ancient maps. This ‘weaving together’ succeeded, not least because participants came from a mix of university roles and various academic disciplines. Val Butcher, formerly a Senior Adviser on employability for the Higher Education Academy and a veteran of the ‘Enterprise in Higher Education’ initiative of the late 1980s, pointed out that complaints about graduates’ lack of business awareness had been around a long time, in fact since the late-Victorian period. The authors of the recently published Here be Dragons? report, which drew on interviews with enterprising humanities graduates, showed that far from shunning entrepreneurial careers, humanities graduates were often found in self-employment, freelancing or starting businesses. Although rarely motivated by money or status, they had been attracted to entrepreneurial careers by the flexibility, variety and inherent interest they offered. Several of the graduates interviewed referred back to their degree studies as times when they developed the subject-related skills and intellectual and personal qualities that sustained their careers. Yet such recollections were often mixed with regrets about how their lecturers could have ‘done more’ to create opportunities to learn about the practicalities of the business world and finding sources of funding. The report contains various suggestions for how the humanities in higher education can do more to support and encourage students wishing to take this career path. Two Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) (The White Rose CETL for Enterprise based in Leeds and the Centre for Employability in the Humanities at the University of Central Lancashire) demonstrated just how they are doing this by creating both intellectual and physical environments where students can generate and pursue creative ideas. Pauline Kneale of the White Rose CETL cited the example of two Leeds University students who had set-up a mobile made-tomeasure suiting service for women, visiting customers in their offices. Professor Kneale’s point was that enterprising behaviour doesn’t have to be rooted in subject knowledge: these were Business Studies students not Textile Studies students, as she had first assumed. (We were given to understand that the textile studies department was somewhat peeved that their students hadn’t thought up the idea!) Taken overall, the day presented evidence that many Humanities Students have all the right attitudes, energy and creativity to become ‘dragons’ if they so wish, and higher education can contribute in intellectual and practical ways to fostering these qualities and helping students to build a future upon them. Presentations from the event can be found at www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/ explore/events/event_detail.php?event_index=164 A PDF of the Here be Dragons? report is at www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/archive/publications/ reports/enterprise.pdf or printed copies can be requested from esc@rhul.ac.uk

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Event Round-up

Texts in Translation (Humanities Research Institute, University of Sheffield, 31 January 2008) Texts in Translation was another event jointly organised by the English Subject Centre and Shoshannah Holdum of Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies (LLAS). It was hosted by the Humanities Research Institute (HRI, www.shef.ac.uk/hri/). The event provided a welcome opportunity for lecturers working in both English literature and Modern Languages to come together and discuss the challenges and opportunities of teaching literature using translated texts. The issues are different in the two subject areas. Literature teaching in Modern Languages departments has to increasingly use translations (a practice previously frowned on) as a result of shifts in the nature of its student intake. Many courses in English departments, meanwhile, have used texts in translation as a matter of course over many years. Throughout the day, participants highlighted the analysis of translation(s) in the light of knowledge of the source text. Less discussed – though arguably crucial for English departments – was the question of how (or whether) lecturers should teach translated texts without themselves having expertise in the language of the original. A succession of stimulating papers was followed by a roundtable discussion-cum-question and answer session led by Leon Burnett (University of Essex). In his keynote address ‘Discovery, annexation, foreignisation: world literature in translation’, Peter France (University of Edinburgh) gave a masterly overview of both the history of translation in the post-Renaissance period and key issues in translation studies. Focusing on (and, in part, deconstructing) the critique of ‘invisibility’ in translation practice undertaken by theorists such as Lawrence Venuti, Professor France highlighted the need for analysts of translation – both staff and students – to think beyond simplistic binaries. In an equally thoughtful and subtle analysis, Mark Robson (University of Nottingham) used Derrida’s and De Man’s engagement with Benjamin’s ‘The Task of the Translator’ as the basis for reflections on the impossibility and the necessity of translation and the relation of the practice of translation to the teaching of ‘impractical criticism’. Two papers unpicked distortions, biases and peculiarities in translations of particular texts as examples of material that might be discussed with students. Karen Seago (London Metropolitan University) looked at translations for children of a wide range of texts, including Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels and the Harry Potter books. While Valerie Henitiuk (University of East Anglia) described an innovative compilation of 47 translations in 13 different languages (spanning 130 years) of one section from the Pillow Book by Sei Shôna-gon Dr Henitiuk’s anthology will provide staff and students with a rich vein of material on orientalism, gender and subjectivity as well as on the dynamics of translation. Detailed case studies of teaching practice were given in three papers. Margaret Tejerizo (University of Glasgow) explained how she is currently applying ideas from Alison Phipps’s book Learning the Arts of Linguistic Survival to the teaching of Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate. One element involves bringing together Translation students and students working on the Holocaust in a joint session focusing on Raphael’s ‘Sistine Madonna’, an image of particular importance to Grossman. Penny Simons (University of Sheffield) showed how the shock value of modern four-letter words can be used as a pedagogical tool to explore obscene French fabliaux, such as the ‘Lai du lecheor’. Inquiry-based learning methods – including an investigation into the theme of obscenity in online publication – and Creative Writing (the composition of obscene pastiches of later literary genres) are used by Dr Simons to deepen students’ understanding of the functioning of scatalogical medieval material. Rhian Davies (University of Sheffield) spoke about an attempt to wean students off translation and to persuade them instead to use an online edition. The electronic text used in Dr Davies’s teaching, Galdós’s Torquemada en la hoguera, was developed as a scholarly resource. In teaching sessions in the ‘collaboratory’ at CILASS (the Centre for Inquiry-based Learning in the Arts and Social Sciences www.shef.ac.uk/cilass/index.html), Dr Davies’s students, working in pairs, explored the electronic edition, following exercises mounted on the local WebCT VLE. Pedagogical leveraging of this sort – within a VLE – of online scholarly materials is a model that could be very productive for lecturers across both Modern Languages and English to follow. The last paper to be delivered, by Robin Kirkpatrick (University of Cambridge) was read in absentia as Professor Kirkpatrick was unable to attend the colloquium. The paper described the experience of working with English Literature students, lacking a training in Italian, on Dante in the original. With wit and verve, Kirkpatrick highlighted some of the ways in which this approach to teaching had fed into his new verse translation of the Commedia for Penguin. He showed that it is possible for committed students of English literature to work at an advanced literary critical level on a text in a foreign language at the same time as developing basic expertise in that language. There are important lessons here for English departments: teaching of the sort described by Kirkpatrick could perhaps involve closer collaboration between English literature and Modern Languages departments – something that would surely be welcomed by all attendees at this successful event.

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Digital Resources at the British Library

Digital Resources at the British Library Joanna Newman, Strategic Partnerships Manager of the British Library’s Higher Education Team, outlines some of the new services of interest to English lecturers. The British Library is conscious that making its resources available online is crucial if it is to respond to the demands of the ‘Google Generation’ and to retain its role in supporting the UK knowledge infrastructure. Lynne Brindley, DBE, Chief Executive of the British Library, said recently, “we have adopted the digital mindset and have seized many of the opportunities new technology offers to inspire our users to learn, discover and innovate.” Digitisation is bringing new opportunities to explore sound and image archives, manuscripts and rare materials in new ways, and opens up fresh possibilities for classroom teaching. The British Library is developing an ever-growing range of online collections, providing a vital resource for teaching, learning and research, and some of these are described briefly below. If you are already using one of these resources in your teaching, the English Subject Centre would welcome a contribution to its database ‘T3 – Teaching, Topics and Texts’ www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/ resources/t3/index.php or a case study www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/publications/ casestudies/index.php (for which £150 is paid). Turning the Pages www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ttp/ttpbooks.html Explore unique treasures held at the British Library online, leaf through ancient manuscripts and magnify the details. Highlights include William Blake’s sketchbook, Jane Austen’s handwritten History of England and glimpses of medieval life from the Luttrell Psalter. Hidden Treasures Brought to Life www.bl.uk/ttp2/hiddentreasures.html Explore some of the treasures hidden in public libraries across the UK, which were revealed in 2007 following a competition held by the British Library, in collaboration with the Society of Chief Librarians, Scottish library authorities and Microsoft. The winning entries include the Diaries of William Searell of Beddgelert 1844–1846, which vividly depict Welsh rural life in the mid-19th century, as seen through the eyes of a 14-year-old boy. Also included are the Dorset Federation of Women’s Institutes’ War Records 1939–1945, a compelling snapshot of life on the Home Front, illustrated throughout with photographs and beautiful drawings by hand and containing stories of evacuees, jam making, enemy air men, barrage balloons and the coming of the US Army. Sounds Familiar? www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/ Explore the richness of regional and ethnic minority

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speech from across the UK, along with case studies and learning activities geared towards A Level and undergraduate English language students. Collect Britain www.collectbritain.co.uk/collections/dialects/ Access thousands of items relating to the language, culture and history of Britain. Highlights include extracts of regional dialects, documenting how we spoke and lived in the 20th century, illustrations from medieval manuscripts and a selection of maps and images dating from AD 800. Archival Sound Recordings www.bl.uk/sounds/ Listen to thousands of recordings of spoken word, music and environmental sounds from the British Library Sound Archive, available free online to UK further and higher education institutions. From performances by African poets to sounds of steam engines to an interview with Margaret Thatcher, these recordings provide a rich resource for crossdisciplinary studies. Theatre Archive Project www.bl.uk/projects/theatrearchive/homepage.html Gain insight into British dramatic history through the Oral History of British Theatre 1945–1968, with over 100 transcripts of interviews with actors, stage managers, theatre goers and more. British Newspapers 1800-1900 http://newspapers.bl.uk Browse and search through millions of pages of historic British newspapers. New conservation and imaging techniques and a cross-searchable platform offers unparalleled access and discoverability to this valuable archive. The website also includes essays and contextual materials written by expert scholars to help non-specialist users with analysis. Electronic Theses Online Service A new resource, that will go live in summer 2008, is the UK electronic thesis service, EThOS. EThOS will enable free access to the full text of electronic theses through a single point of entry, and digitising theses on demand as required by readers. This collaboration between the British Library and the higher education community will transform access to the more than 14,000 theses produced in the UK each year, representing a rich and vast, but up to now almost invisible and untapped, resource for students and researchers. EThOS will also make UK theses openly available for global use, providing an international showcase for some of the best of UK research.

desert island texts

In this column, we highlight lecturers and their favourite books. In every issue we will invite someone who is registered in our Directory of Experience and Interests www.english. heacademy.ac.uk/find/colleagues/index.php to highlight their favourite books. Sign up today, and your desert island text could feature in the next Newsletter.

Chris Ringrose Richmal Crompton: William the Showman One of the funniest books ever written. Richmal Crompton is a great ironist. I remember reading this with our son Matthew when he was small, and we laughed till we cried. Literally.

Henry David Thoreau: Walden

Chris Ringrose is Principal Lecturer in English at the University of Northampton, where he is Head of Learning and Teaching in the School of the Arts. Chris is involved in the Subject Centre’s E-Learning Advocate Project, has published recently on children’s literature, contemporary fiction and life writing, and is Contemporary Literature Editor for The Annotated Bibliography of English Studies.

Prophetic, inspiring and profound. Also, I love Thoreau’s sense of humour (though some say that’s an oxymoron). In 1995, when visiting Concord, I walked around Walden Pond; that was a moving experience, despite the sunbathers. There is little plaque on the shore, marking the site of the cabin that Thoreau built with his own hands in 1845.

William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Lyrical Ballads I was sold on Wordsworth from the day I read a few lines from The Prelude: “Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me/With stinted kindness” and of his going homeward “by the margin of the trembling lake”. Visiting the bookseller in 1798 to buy Lyrical Ballads would have been a treat. Excellent value: you get The Rime of the Ancient Mariner as well.

Charles Dickens: Little Dorrit As graduate students in the 1969–1970 Dickens seminar at the University of Alberta, we read the complete works at the rate of one book per week – a great reading and discussion experience. I can recall every student in the seminar, as well as Tony Ward’s inspiring commentaries. What a revelation Little Dorrit was when its turn came round.

Vladimir Nabokov: Pnin Well, anything by Nabokov, really. Pnin is a great comic novel, but also a melancholy and touching account of exile and the brutalities of history.

Yvor Winters: Collected Poems Majestic and underrated. The early free verse is haunting, too, as is the recording of Winters reading ‘A Summer Commentary’– a luscious meditation on living and learning intoned in his characteristically dour, steady tones.

Brian Glanville: Book of Footballers Originally published in 1978, then revised and reissued for the World Cup of 1982. Each of these portraits is a prose poem; Brian Glanville really can write. The 300-word evocations of Puskas, Di Stefano and Ruud Krol are terrific.

Jack Kerouac: The Dharma Bums Rolling odyssey that is a curious mixture of the carnal, the spiritual and haphazard poetry (if poetry can be haphazard). When I was 18 I wanted to be Japhy Ryder. I don’t think I ever really wanted to be Jack Kerouac – he was too wounded and vulnerable, heading for an early ending.

Gary Snyder: The Back Country Inimitable eloquent simplicity in poetry. Has climbing the Sierras, sharpening axes, chopping wood, making a campfire and cooking a stew ever been so stirringly written about? Gary Snyder had impeccably ‘green’ credentials even back in 1965.

Dorothy Livesay: The Two Seasons: Collected Poems A great woman and a great radical Canadian poet. I’d like to think I would recognise her qualities as a writer even if I did not owe her so much as a person.

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IT Works! Brett Lucas casts his eye over recent developments in the world of e-learning.

News The Student Experience of E-learning and E-resources

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

What exactly are the next generation of students like? Have you had enough ‘PowerPoint puff’… would you like to uncover the truth? Two fascinating reports have recently been released which debunk many of the myths about technology-enhanced teaching and provide some important food for thought. The JISC Student Expectations Study, published in September 2007, looked at current provision levels at school/college and student expectations of ICT provision at university. www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/publications/studentexpectations The second report, commissioned by the British Library and JISC, and published in January 2008, entitled Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future, looks at how the specialist researchers are likely to access and interact with resources in 5–10 years’ time. www.bl.uk/news/pdf/googlegen.pdf There is an interesting podcast to accompany the report too www.jisc.ac.uk/media/avfiles/news/stories/2008/01/podcast26googlegeneration.aspx

19th-Century Newspapers Resource Launched A new resource is available free of charge to all higher education and further education institutions courtesy of the JISC. It offers national, regional and local 19th century British newspapers, taken directly from the holdings of the British Library. The collection contains over two million from 48 titles and unlocks extensive newspaper content which is invaluable for the researching and studying of 19th-century history. http://gale.cengage.co.uk/britishlibrarynewspapers/

Two Fascinating Must-see Plenaries If you weren’t able to come to Renewals, the Subject Centre’s 2007 conference last year, then you certainly missed the interesting plenary sessions by Alan Liu (Knowledge 2.0?: The University and Web 2.0) and Richard Miller (Reading in Slow Motion: The Humanities and the Work of the Moment). Fortunately, you can view the lectures in the Subject Centre’s mediaplayer … www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/archive/mediaplayer/player.html

New Books • What Every Student Should Know About Researching Online by David Munger and Shireen Campbell Publisher: Pearson, 2007 ISBN: 978-0321445315 • Internet Research Skills by Niall O Dochartaigh Publisher: Sage 2007 ISBN: 978-1412911139

42 Newsletter 14 April 2008

IT Works!

Tools Ning Can you see the educational potential of social networking tools for your students or year groups? … or would you like to set one up for your staff or research colleague or even as an alternative to a website for a forthcoming conference? Ning is an online service that enables you to set up your very own network complete with personal pages, forums, video and photo sharing, etc. www.ning.com/ If you would like to understand social networking a little better then navigate to this JISC document: Web 2.0 and Social Software: An Introduction www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/publications/web2socialsoftwarev1.aspx

Vodpod This web-based tool enables you to build up your favourite online video collections from around the web (a browser plug-in enables you to save directly when you find web video you like) … organise them and then play your videos wherever you want to share them with your students by embedding them in a web page, class blog, Facebook, Myspace etc. http://vodpod.com/

Voicethread Imagine you had the ability to upload an image or video to a webspace for your students to access and annotate by posting their responses to it, all viewable by everyone else who has access. Sound interesting? Voicethread is quite simply an amazing tool and one that has enormous potential. The software allows you to weave conversations around images, documents and videos. These conversations need not just be text; they can be video or audio messages presented via a webcam/headphones. The visual layout is great and the outputs can be embedded in other web pages beyond the site itself. The creators have even set-up a site specifically for those with institutional software difficulties! Follow ‘Browse’ on the home page for lots of examples of how to use it http://voicethread.com/ or the educational version http://ed.voicethread.com/

Quivic Quivic is a quick video converter – get it? Anyway, this useful piece of software allows you to download video from YouTube and convert it for playback on a PC, iPod, mobile phone or PSP. A demo is available with limited function (30 seconds only) but £10 buys you the program. No need to worry about the web connection anymore!

90+ Online Photography Tools and Resources The site names speaks for itself … definitely everything you ever wanted to know … http://mashable.com/2007/06/23/photography-toolbox

Darik’s Boot and Nuke This free resource which will completely wipe your hard drive … so this is a good way of preventing identity theft and an essential tool if you are replacing old kit and don’t fancy taking a hammer to your hard drive! It’s also useful for comprehensively cleaning your system of viruses and spyware http://dban.sourceforge.net/

Focus on …

Other bits and bobs …

Open Educational Resources

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

Putting together online courses can be very time-consuming but it is well worth the effort. Until fairly recently, if you were looking for inspiration it has been difficult to find inspiring examples of online taught courses from other institutions because of password restrictions. Now, thanks to the rise and rise of ‘Open Courseware Initiatives’ (OCI) more and more e-learning materials are being placed online for anyone to peruse, download and use. OCI has been pioneered by Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Have a look and check out their English literature offerings at http://ocw. mit.edu/OcwWeb/Literature/index.htm. The UK has recently joined the party with several high-profile launches, including the resources at the Open University’s OpenLearn (http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/) and Nottingham’s nascent Unow (http://unow.nottingham.ac.uk/).

• 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 February 2008. • You can access all the links on this page directly in the online version of the Newsletter.

Newsletter 14 April 2008 43

The Last Word

Mick Short is Professor of English Language and Literature at Lancaster University (e-mail m.short@lancaster.ac.uk). His introductory web-based stylistics course is free for all to use at www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/projects/stylistics/start.htm, and is available via links from the English Subject Centre and The Poetics and Linguistics Association (www.pala.ac.uk/) websites.

The last word – not? You could have knocked me down with a feather when I was invited, last summer, to join the Advisory Board of the English Subject Centre. ‘Flattered’ doesn’t even begin to describe it. I said yes immediately, before they changed their minds! As a stylistician, someone who researches and teaches the detail of how we interact with, understand and are affected by the language of literary texts, I have always felt that I belong equally to the worlds of English language and English literature, even though I teach in a department of Linguistics and English Language and don’t have much contact with my literary colleagues these days. Part of my exhilaration came from the fact that English Studies must have noticed I was there. Many English departments, including the one at Lancaster, do not have colleagues working in stylistics. Moreover, I live in a strange world where I interact mainly with other stylisticians, a breed who feel occasionally attacked, but mainly ignored, by the two worlds, Linguistics and English, which, like Ted Hughes’s water lily, they fearfully inhabit.

We don’t think, as is sometimes claimed, that texts must have one and only one interpretation (indeed, I don’t know any stylistician who holds that belief). What most excited me, however, was that I now had the chance to talk to people teaching English literature again, as I have lots of questions to ask and things I want to debate. So I also blithely accepted the consequent ‘punishment’ of writing something for this Newsletter, as it meant that I could begin to renew an old acquaintance, hopefully through new friends. When I first came to Lancaster I was in the English department, taught some literature courses as well as English language and stylistics, and regularly collaborated with a small group of literature colleagues interested in language as well as literature. I enjoyed this immensely but when, in the 1980s, the English department was deemed to be too large (an unfashionable idea these days, of course) and was split up, I was assigned to Linguistics and the co-operation and collaboration with my Literature colleagues gradually drained away. So, is there anyone out there who is up for co-operation and debate? What I will try to do below is to raise some theoretical issues which concern me and which I think have considerable pedagogical knock-on effects.

44 Newsletter 14 April 2008

Perhaps the biggest difference between the stylisticians and most of the literary critics I have read concerns the nature of textual understanding. From the perspective of most critics, stylisticians cling to the quaint idea that the range of reasonable textual understandings (and also textual effects – which are to a large degree dependent on understanding, as far as I can see) is rather small. We don’t think, as is sometimes claimed, that texts must have one and only one interpretation (indeed, I don’t know any stylistician who holds that belief). In the 1970s my literary colleagues used to say that there could be as many understandings of a poem, say, as there were readers of it, and many contemporary literary theorists have taken the idea of plurality of understanding even further. Derrida’s ‘différence’, Stanley Fish’s ‘interpretive communities’, the general ‘push’ in deconstructive and postmodernist approaches to criticism, and the fondness for ‘resistant’ readings in gender-, post-colonial- and cultural-studiesbased approaches to literature come to mind. How can such a wide difference of view be understood? First of all, the stylisticians are more interested in understanding how we arrive at readings that, as Rob Pope has put it, go ‘with the grain’ rather than ‘against the grain’ of texts. Indeed, I find it difficult to see how one could have a ‘resistant’ reading if one had not first arrived at a ‘receptive’ reading to resist. I’m not against challenging current socio-political orthodoxy. Far from it. But I do wonder whether literature, rather than non-fictional reality, should be the site for that kind of struggle. The reason I worry about this matter is that I value the things which seem to get pushed aside in the process of struggle, namely the aesthetic and affective properties of texts that make us want to read them in the first place (and keep them on our bookshelves and recommend them to others) and the pedagogical importance of helping students to engage sensitively with good literary texts and appreciate their special properties (something which involves close reading, at the very least, and arguably close textual analysis too). My students are pretty good at emoting and disagreeing at the drop of a hat, but they seem to have more of a problem with describing accurately the texts I ask them to interact with. Let us now turn to more ‘receptive’, non-resistant readings. Clearly, we are all different, and so can have different personal understandings of, and responses to, texts. But I am continually struck by how my stylistics colleagues (and my students) and I seem to agree rather a lot about how we understand and are affected by particular texts, even though we don’t agree about absolutely everything. This is the thing which, in my view, most needs explanation. The position that there are as many understandings/ readings as there are readers (something which has never been adequately tested in my view), does not, I think, distinguish

properly between (a) two different interpretations of a text, (b) two minor variants of the same interpretation and (c) different levels of abstraction in apparently competing interpretations. And I think that the failure to make these important distinctions has unfortunate pedagogical, as well as theoretical, consequences. When I was still in Lancaster’s English department, I was struck by the fact that, in spite of their stated views, my literary colleagues often seemed to push their students towards a rather restricted range of meanings and (partly consequential) effects in seminars. It seemed to me that they acted more like I A Richards, William Empson and similar critics whose views had already become rather unfashionable (but I still like!). I would like to know what happens in classroom discussions of literary texts now. The stronger versions of plurality of understanding I have read about in more recent critical and cultural theory (though I certainly wouldn’t claim to have read it all!) would seem to lead logically to a style of teaching which would be maximally ‘inclusive’, ‘accepting’ and uncritical of what students say about texts in class. Is that true, or is there now an even bigger mismatch between theory and practice? If there is, this is something Stanley Fish would approve of, I guess, as he has argued that ‘theory’ has no practical consequences. But, like academics in other subjects, I think that theory and practice should be intricately connected, that practice should test and inform, and so change, theory – and that we should teach how we preach. I think that students should be helped to understand that it important to be accurate about texts, even if they want to resist them. If they do not develop adequately the ‘transferable skill’ of analytical interpretative precision, how will they come to

appreciate, with any accuracy, what makes great pieces of writing so valuable, or hold down those jobs in the media, the civil service or publishing, which they all seem to hanker after? I hope, in other words, that there is still a helpful inconsistency between what students are taught ‘abstractly’, in the critical theory lectures I hear about, and what happens in textual discussion in class.

I value the things which seem to get pushed aside in the process of struggle, namely the aesthetic and affective properties of texts that make us want to read them in the first place Is the inconsistency I saw still there? Have you all moved on so much that your literary criticism and mine are so at odds as to be completely different beast? (I recently heard a public lecture on criticism by Terry Eagleton, applauded to the rafters, in which he never referred to, let alone examined, a single literary text, as he developed his view of criticism as a branch of political struggle or what the linguists call critical discourse analysis.) Would you be interested in working with stylisticians like me to understand, through co-operative, reader-based empirical work, what exactly counts as a different interpretation or reading of the same text, what counts as a reasonable interpretation and what pedagogical consequences all this might have?

The English Subject Centre Report Series Our Report Series is now well-established. Copies of all reports are available on our website at www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/ resources/general/publications/reports and most are circulated in paper form to English Departments in the UK. Further copies are available on request, subject to availability. Send your request to esc@rhul.ac.uk

Published Reports: Report no. 16

Teaching the Teachers: Higher Education and the Continuing Professional Development of English Teachers

Report no. 15

The Taught MA in English

Report no. 14

As simple as ABC? Issues of transition for students of English Language A-Level going on to study English Language/Linguistics in Higher Education

Report no. 13

Teaching Shakespeare: A Survey of the Undergraduate Level in Higher Education

Report no. 12

English at A-Level: A Guide for Lecturers in Higher Education

Report no. 11

Living Writers in the Curriculum: A Good Practice Guide

Newsletter 14 April 2008 45

The English Subject Centre supports all aspects of the teaching and learning of English in higher education in the United Kingdom. It is a Subject Centre of the Higher Education Academy www.heacademy.ac.uk As one of its activities, the Subject Centre gathers and disseminates information to the subject community.

English Subject Centre Supporting teaching and learning in English Literature, English Language and Creative Writing across UK Higher Education.

The English Subject Centre, Royal Holloway, University of London Egham TW20 0EX T 01784 443221 â&#x20AC;˘ esc@rhul.ac.uk www.english.heacademy.ac.uk