Teaching Literature: Text and Dialogue in the English Classroom PDF
Preview Teaching Literature: Text and Dialogue in the English Classroom
TEACHING THE NEW ENGLISH SERIES S TE RE SN SD AY FY DN MN CT P XI HR EV EO TN NT OT EO UO LE A I EU PTI MI YU ACI RVI VI LI OG R DE ORAT LICNI INAT LISO LYNI EGTI IAAT TIAT SEAR AL YTER ABOG ARRET TICGR SISCO ROEC TIORIS MORET RET LEL J I ILC P S I UB NA DP A IS L I R NO I AR D M T L Y E D I LE IN T M T I G N N N A I G F I E D TEACHING LITERATURE Text and Dialogue in the English Classroom Edited by BEN KNIGHTS Teaching the New English Series Editor Ben Knights Teesside University Middlesbrough, UK Teaching the New English is an innovative series primarily concerned with the teaching of the English degree in the context of the modern university. The series is simultaneously concerned with addressing excit- ing new areas that have developed in the curriculum in recent years and those more traditional areas that have reformed in new contexts. It is grounded in an intellectual or theoretical concept of the curriculum, yet is largely concerned with the practicalities of the curriculum’s manifes- tation in the classroom. Volumes will be invaluable for new and more experienced teachers alike. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14458 Ben Knights Editor Teaching Literature Text and Dialogue in the English Classroom Editor Ben Knights Teesside University Middlesbrough, UK Teaching the New English ISBN 978-1-137-31108-5 ISBN 978-1-137-31110-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-31110-8 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017937742 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover design by Emma Hardy Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom S e ’ P erieS ditor S reface One of the many exciting achievements of the early years of the UK English Subject Centre was the agreement with Palgrave Macmillan to initiate the series ‘Teaching the New English’. The intention of Philip Martin, the then Centre Director, was to create a series of short and accessible books which would focus on curriculum fields (or themes) and develop the connections between scholarly knowledge and the demands of teaching. Since its inception as a university subject, ‘English’ has been com- mitted to what is now known by the portmanteau phrase ‘learning and teaching’. The subject grew up in a dialogue between scholars, critics, and their students inside and outside the university. Yet university teach- ers of English often struggle to make their own tacit pedagogic knowl- edge conscious, or to bring it up to a level where it might be shared, developed, or critiqued. In the experience of the English Subject Centre, colleagues found it relatively easy to talk about curriculum, but far harder to talk about the success or failure of seminars, how to vary modes of assessment, or to make imaginative use of virtual learn- ing environments or web tools. Too often, this reticence meant falling back on received assumptions about how students learn, about how to teach or create assessment tasks. At the same time, we found, colleagues were generally suspicious of the insights and methods arising from generic educational research. The challenge for the extended group of English disciplines has been to articulate ways in which our own subject v vi SErIES EDITOr’S PrEfACE knowledge and forms of enquiry might themselves refresh debates about pedagogy. The need becomes all the more pressing in the era of rising fees, student loans, the National Student Survey, and the characterisation of the student as a demanding consumer of an educational product. The implicit invitation of the present series is to take fields of knowledge and survey them through a pedagogic lens. ‘Teachers’, people used to say, ‘are born, not made’. There may be some tenuous truth in this. There may perhaps be generosities of spirit (or, alternatively, drives for didactic control) laid down in early childhood. But the implication that you cannot train or develop teachers is dubious. Why should we assume that even ‘born’ teachers should not need to learn or review the skills of their trade? Amateurishness about teaching has far more to do with the mystique of university status than with evidence about how people learn. This series of books is dedicated to the develop- ment of the craft of teaching within university English Studies. Ben Knights Emeritus Professor of English and Cultural Studies Teesside University Visiting fellow UCL Institute of Education c ontentS 1 Introduction: Teaching? Literature? 1 Ben Knights 2 Contrasts: Teaching English in British and American Universities 17 Gretchen H. Gerzina 3 Transition and Discontinuity: Pitfalls and Opportunities in the Move to University English Universities 31 Andrew Green and Gary Snapper 4 The Shame of Teaching (English) 51 rosie Miles 5 Transition into the Profession: Accuracy, Sincerity and ‘Disciplinary Consciousness’ 67 robert Eaglestone 6 ‘Getting in Conversation’: Teaching African American Literature and Training Critical Thinkers 81 Nicole King vii viii CONTENTS 7 Beyond the Essay? Assessment and English Literature 99 Jonathan Gibson 8 Critical or Creative? Teaching Crossover Writing in English Studies 115 Chris Thurgar-Dawson 9 Teaching ‘Literature+’: Digital Humanities Hybrid Courses in the Era of MOOCs 133 Alan Liu 10 Teaching Stylistics: Foregrounding in E.E. Cummings 155 Dan McIntyre and Lesley Jeffries 11 Teaching Historically: Some Limits to Historicist Teaching 173 Simon Dentith 12 Towards an Unprecedented Ecocritical Pedagogy 189 Greg Garrard 13 Opening up the Seminar: Children’s Literature, a Case Study 209 Pamela Knights Index 249 a e bout the ditor Ben Knights is an Emeritus Professor at Teesside University, UK, and former director of the HE Academy English Subject Centre. His book Pedagogic Criticism: Reconfiguring University English Studies is due with Palgrave in 2017. ix
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