Newsletter 13

English Subject Centre
Newsletter
Issue 13 October 2007
Plagiarism and Plagiarism Studies

Richard Terry
ISSN 1479-7089
Putting Some Sense Back into the System: an interview with Judy Simons
Nicole King
The Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning: the story so far for English
Christie Carson
The Wrong Dora Russell: research-informed learning in a digital world

Jan Hewitt and Tony Nicholson
English Literature at A Level: the shape of things to come

Adrian Barlow
Teaching Welsh Writing in English

Jane Aaron
Is English a Young, White, Female, Middle-Class Subject?

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 HE teaching of English is best supported from within the discipline itself. As well as updates on the Centres activities and on important developments (both within the discipline and across HE), you will nd articles here on a wide range of English-related topics. The next issue of the newsletter will appear in Spring 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 elses article, please contact the editor, Nicole King (nicole.king@rhul.ac.uk) or visit our Newsletter webpage 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 email list at www.jiscmail. ac.uk/lists/englishheacademy.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 email us at esc@rhul.ac.uk.
The English Subject Centre Staff

Jackie Fernandes: Administrator Jane Gawthrope: Manager Dr Jonathan Gibson: Academic Co-ordinator Dr Keith Hughes: Liaison Ofcer for Scotland Dr Nicole King: Academic Co-ordinator Professor Ben Knights: Director Payman Labaff: Website and Systems Development Assistant Brett Lucas: Website Developer and Learning Technologist Rebecca Price: Administrative Assistant Dr Candice Satchwell: Project Ofcer 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: Trafc at Night Getty Images
Newsletter 13
Contents
02 03 04
Welcome Nicole King Events Calendar
Book Reviews
32 33
53 Interesting Creative Writing Exercises by Sue Habeshaw and Colin Evans Reviewed by Douglas Cowie English: The Condition of the Subject by Philip W. Martin Reviewed by Vicky Greenaway
Subject Centre News
Articles
Student Experience
06 10 14 18 22 26 30
Plagiarism and Plagiarism Studies Richard Terry Putting Some Sense Back in the System: an interview with Judy Simons Nicole King The Wrong Dora Russell: research informed learning in a digital world Jan Hewitt and Tony Nicholson
34 35
Student Literary Societies
What advice would you give students starting your course? Michael Aicken
Teaching Welsh Writing in English Jane Aaron
In Every Issue
37 38 40
Desert Island Texts Elaine Treharne
The Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning: the story so far for English Christie Carson
IT Works Brett Lucas
English Literature at A Level: the shape of things to come Adrian Barlow
The Last Word Christie Carson
Is English a Young, White, Female, Middle-Class Subject? Jane Gawthrope
Cert no. SA-COC-1530
Newsletter 13 October 2007 01
Newsletter 13
Welcome
Nicole King
Welcome to the thirteenth issue of the English Subject Centre Newsletter. As we settle into the new academic term, we hope that this issue will provide you with an opportunity to pause and reect on some of the broader issues of teaching our discipline. At the Subject Centre we are approaching 2007-2008 with a sense of renewal and excitement as it brings the continuation of our popular programmes such as the New Lecturers weekend conference in November (see p. 9) and our Heads of Department Networking Day next March. We welcome Professor Lyn Pykett as the new chair of our Advisory Board and say farewell to the outgoing chair, Professor Judy Simons. I had the pleasure of interviewing Judy in July which you can read about on p.10. Elsewhere in this issue you will nd articles about the new A Level specications and how they will impact further and higher education, and about Welsh writing in English and the difculties it has had getting established as an academic subject in HE. Plagiarism and how we deal with it as academics has a fascinating history according to Richard Terry, while Jan Hewitt and Tony Nicholson detail how they created a digital archive at Teesside and simultaneously helped their undergraduates transform themselves from ordinary learners to active researchers. We extend our congratulations to Michael Aicken, the winner in the rst round of the student essay award competition sponsored by the Higher Education Academy. This Open University student was last years runner-up and is to be doubly commended for trying again and succeeding this year. The Newsletter continues to evolve both in terms of content and design. A new item is Desert Island Texts (inspired by BBC Radio 4s Desert Island Discs), which offers a peek onto the bookshelves of colleagues (see p. 37). You will also notice that the Directors Foreword has been replaced by a new Last Word section which is open to Subject Centre staff and the wider community as a space for editorial commentary. I have asked Christie Carson, who recently concluded her role as the Subject Centres CETL Liaison ofcer to pen our rst Last Word. It is connected to her longer article about the CETL initiative and our Renewals conference, also in this issue. Renewals: Reguring University English in the 21st Century, our second international conference, was the highlight of the Subject Centres year. Two years in the planning, it attracted participants from all over the UK, and delegates from Europe and the U.S. too. We thank all who participated and helped to make it a success, but if you happened to miss it look no further than the Subject Centres website where you can watch the fascinating plenary talks given by Professors Alan Liu and Richard Miller, or review the conference Blog penned by Catherine Samiei. It is now ve years since our last international conference, The Condition of the Subject and in the book review section you will nd Vicky Greenaways assessment of Philip W. Martins book of the same name (see p. 33). Despite the time-consuming process of putting on a conference, many other events have lled the English Subject Centres calendar over the past several months. These include a Textbook Roundtable that brought together academics and publishers in March, a oneday event on the subject of Masculinities in Texts, our annual Heads of Department Networking Day in April, the second in a series of events on the First Year Experience, and many others. As always, to learn more about an event you were unable to attend or to garner ideas for new ones, we encourage you to peruse the Events Archive on our website. Although my name appears as editor of the newsletter, like most everything we do at the Subject Centre the newsletter is a collaborative effort which involves not just our staff but also you, the subject community. I am delighted to receive emails about potential articles so please keep the ideas and abstracts owing into my inbox. I would especially encourage contributions from those of you teaching HE in FE or teaching on MA programmes, or who are teaching in a manner that maps onto Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). As ever, of course, we are curious about your particular research interestswhatever they may beand how they inform or have transformed your teaching practice. I hope you enjoy the issue.
Nicole King Editor
Recycle
when you have nished with this publication please pass it on to a colleague or student or recycle it appropriately.
02 Newsletter 13 October 2007
Newsletter 13
Events Calendar
Autumn 2007/Spring 2008
For further details on any of these events please visit our website: www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/events
EVENT: DATE: LOCATION:
Skalds and Skills: teaching Old Norse and Viking Studies 6 October 2007 University of Nottingham
EVENT: DATE: LOCATION:
Teaching World War I Literature 12 November 2007 Oxford University Computing Services
In recent years there has been a growing interest in Old Norse, inuenced by lm and cultural studies and by the trend towards interdisciplinary research. There is now a great variety of ways in which students approach the subject within English Studies. This workshop will encourage discussion of teaching philosophies, approaches and the needs of the various learners, as well as the exchange of good practice and innovative teaching methods. EVENT: DATE: LOCATION: Here Be Dragons? Humanities, Enterprise and Higher Education 10 October 2007 Leeds University
The literature of the First World War continues to be one of the most popular areas of the English syllabus in schools and universities, yet there are questions to be asked of the traditional curriculum and teaching methods. Why has the curriculum been dominated by the British poets of the Western Front, despite the volume of material extending much further? The popularity of WWI literature was rekindled by the anti-war movement of the 1960s, but how is it now viewed against the backdrop of Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq? This one-day workshop is an opportunity for secondary and higher education teachers of WWI literature to discuss these and other related issues. EVENT: DATE: LOCATION: Training Conference for New Lecturers in English 23-24 November 2007 NCLS Conference Centre, Nottingham
It is often asked if enterprise and entrepreneurship are relevant for students in humanities disciplines. In this workshop research into how humanities graduates can gain from learning and experiencing enterprise and entrepreneurship will be presented, as well as discussing ways in which students and institutions can implement and benet from such experiences. The relevance of enterprising skills for ALL graduates, not simply those setting up on their own, will be discussed, as well as problems, setbacks and ways forward. EVENT: DATE: LOCATION: Borderlands: themes in teaching literatures of the Americas 18 October 2007 University of Birmingham
Literatures of the Americas are taught to students on a range of degree programmes, including English literature, American/US Studies, Modern Languages, Canadian Studies, Latin American Studies, Caribbean Studies and Comparative literature. This conference seeks to explore themes that run through contemporary and historical literatures across the Americas and how these impact on teaching. This event is organised by the English Subject Centre and the Subject Centre for Languages Linguistics and Area Studies (LLAS).
Now in its fth year, this event brings together lecturers in their rst or second year of a full-time HE appointment. It aims to share and debate practical teaching ideas and activities as they relate to English as a subject; equip new lecturers with a tool kit of ideas; and establish a mutual support network for participants. A key aim is to encourage and motivate new lecturers to think of themselves as teachers and as researchers. This 2-day event attracts participants from all over the UK. By allowing delegates the freedom to talk about teaching English literature, Creative Writing and English language with specicity and among likeminded peers this event adds a new dimension to local PgCHE courses which are often of a generic nature. Facilitated by Subject Centre staff, the event is delivered through seminars, guest lectures and practical work in groups. EVENT: DATE: LOCATION: Networking Day for Heads of English 27 March 2008 University of Leicester
The purpose of this day is to enable Heads of Department (and those with equivalent roles) to share ideas, experiences and concerns on the issues currently preoccupying them. The focus is on informal networking and exchange in a relaxed context.
Subject Centre News

New Faces
Liaison Ofcer for Scotland
In June we appointed Dr Keith Hughes to take on the role of Subject Centre Liaison Ofcer for Scotland. He will ensure that our services meet the needs of colleagues in Scotland and keep the Subject Centre informed about developments in Scottish HE. Keith lectures in American Literature at the University of Edinburgh, where has taught since 2001. He holds a BA (Joint Hons) in English and American Literature from the University of Manchester, and both a MSc and a PhD in English Literature from the University of Edinburgh. He also holds a Diploma for Teaching in Adult and Higher Education from Birkbeck College, London. Keiths teaching and research interests fall broadly into the two connected areas of African American literature and the black Atlantic. Keith welcomes communications from any English lecturers in Scotland. Please contact him at keith.hughes@ed.ac.uk
Project Ofcer for HE in FE

Dr Candice Satchwell has also recently joined the English Subject Centre as a Project Ofcer working on HE in FE. She is currently a Research Associate and Tutor and Lancaster University as well as a Lecturer at Blackpool and The Fylde College. Candice will be mapping the extent and location of English programmes being delivered in FE institutions within the UK and identifying the issues encountered by lecturers in relation to the development of teaching and learning. We hope that this will enable the Subject Centre to deliver relevant activities for colleagues in the FE sector and to ensure greater awareness of them. Candice welcomes communications from any English lecturers in FE. Please contact her at c.satchwell@lancs.ac.uk
New E-Learning Advocates in English Departments

The English Subject Centre is very pleased to announce the successful E-learning Advocate projects for the 2007-8 academic year. This year three additional English departments will enjoy the benets of a Subject Centre sponsored advocate:
The University of Plymouth (Peter Hinds) The University of Aberystwyth (Louise Marshall & Will Slocombe) Manchester Metropolitan University (Jess Edwards)
More details will be provided on the website soon. In the meantime catch-up on the interesting work being done by the 2006-07 advocates on the project archive pages of our website.
www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/projects/archive/technology/tech22.php
Subject Centre News
English Subject Centre Advisory Board 2007/2008

Following the retirement of several long-standing members, the Subject Centre is pleased to welcome a new membership for 07/08 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 CCUE Professor Vivien Jones, Leeds University and CCUE Professor Peter Kitson, Dundee University and English Association Dr Bethan Marshall, Kings 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, Kings College, University of London
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. 10
Four Perspectives on Transition: English Literature from Sixth Form to University, Andrew Green, February 2005, ISBN 090219498 4 Living Writers in the Curriculum: A Good Practice Guide, Vicki Bertram & Andrew Maunder, March 2005, ISBN 090219414 3 English at A-Level: A Guide for Lecturers in Higher Education, Barbara Bleiman and Lucy Webster, August 2006, ISBN 1-905846-03-7 Teaching Shakespeare: A Survey of the Undergraduate Level in Higher Education, Neill Thew, September 2006, ISBN 1-905846-04-5 As simple as ABC? Issues of transition for students of English Language A-Level going on to study English Language/Linguistics in Higher Education, Angela Goddard and Adrian Beard, April 2007, ISBN 1-905846-04-5 The Taught MA in English, Samantha Smith, October 2007, ISBN 1-905846-13-9
Report no. 11
Report no. 12
Report no. 13
Report no. 14
Report no. 15
Articles
While English academics are becoming increasingly anxious about student plagiarism, the prevailing climate of concern has proved favourable for the growth of a new area of academic enquiry: plagiarism studies. Richard Terry (University of Sunderland) reects on the phenomenon.
Student plagiarism is now arguably the biggest dilemma facing universities.(1) That cheating of this kind should have become so rife threatens to undermine the very idea of the university as a morally responsible community of learners and to call into disrepute the awards that such institutions confer. A concerted determination to confront the issue has in recent years spawned its own mini-industry. Conferences and symposia mull over the repercussions for pedagogy posed by the plagiarism outbreak; new software products have become available to assist in the detection of it; and assessment and infringement regulations across the sector have been re-drafted and ne-tuned in order to deter and penalize it. The current malaise is unprecedented in two respects. For one thing, students have probably never plagiarized so widely, and the growth of the internet and the rise of companies dedicated to selling specimen assignments have certainly made plagiarism seem a more viable way of gaining modular credits than was ever the case before. The buying of essays from the internet, moreover, conspires uncomfortably with an increasingly functionalist view of what universities themselves are: namely, organizations dedicated to selling certication to customers. In one sense, companies selling assignments to students are simply challenging universities longstanding monopoly as vendors of higher educational credits.
1 See a 2006 Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) survey revealing that one in six students admitted to copying from friends and one in ten to searching for essays on the net. See Jessica Shepherd, THES, 17 March 2006, p. 1.
What also makes our current circumstances so novel is that not just do universities feel confronted by a problem that has spiralled into an epidemic, but they also feel so constrained in their ability to counteract it. In the old days, it was easy to arraign a student with having copied from a source and so having acted with an intention to cheat. Nowadays, however, the whole idea of intention needs to be negotiated like a mineeld in a culture in which students might well be inclined to contest through law a universitys ability to divine infallibly the nature of their intentions. Many institutions, including my own, have retreated from such dangerous territory and dened plagiarism as essentially a property of a text, not as an act of mental will behind the creation of that text. At the University of Sunderland, the gravity of a plagiarism offence is determined by a combination of factors: the amount of material copied, expressed as a fraction of an entire assignment; the level of the programme at which the student is studying; and whether he or she happens to be a rst-time or repeat offender. The imposed penalty remains indifferent to whether the copying in question is deliberate or accidental. Not surprisingly, what has emerged as the orthodox view is that the best way to deal with plagiarism is perhaps not to confront it but to circumvent it: to design assignments that are plagiarism-proof. This avoids the problems of detection and penalization, but it represents its own form of capitulation, not so much to the students but to the intransigent nature of the problem itself. In concert with the growth of plagiarism as a problem for pedagogy has been a different sort of mini-epidemic: the growth of plagiarism studies. Literary historians have always taken some degree of interest in issues of copying or theft among authors as well as in a few celebrated plagiarism controversies, but never previously could such a scholarly byway be thought to constitute its own academic eld. The last decade, however, has seen an explosion of such studies, including Laura J. Rosenthals Playwrights and Plagiarists in Early Modern England (1996), Rebecca Moore Howards Standing in the Shadow of Giants: Plagiarists, Authors, Collaborators (1999), Shelley Anglil-Carters Stolen Language? Plagiarism in Writing (2000), Marilyn Randalls Pragmatic Plagiarism (2001), as well as a collection of essays edited by Paulina Kewes on Plagiarism in Early Modern England (2003). There seems little prospect of any immediate let-up in the ood of such works, with two further ones, Tilar J. Mazzeos Plagiarism and Literary Property in the Romantic Period and Robert Macfarlanes Original Copy: Plagiarism and Originality
in Nineteenth-Century Literature, already having appeared in 2007. My credentials for writing this current essay rest on the several years I have spent trying to write my own study of literary plagiarism between Dryden and Sterne.(2) What seems to unite most of these books, and to differentiate them from older studies of the same topic, is a concern to investigate not just the incidence of plagiarism but also its very nature as a concept. What precisely is plagiarism that we should nowadays be so horried by it? Where did it come from and did former ages necessarily have quite the same scruples about the matter as we do now? It is, of course, convenient for modern universities to represent their injunctions against plagiarism as upholding a moral absolute, but to what extent is this really the case? Might our condemnation of plagiarism be considered instead as less a matter of pure ethics than of narrow professional etiquette? Plagiarism studies, then, is a eld that explores the provenance of plagiarism as a concept, the uidities concerning what at various times it has been understood to consist of, and the moral reception of plagiarism at different historical moments. Such books also have the added effect of convincing that textual copying, whether condemned or condoned, is scarcely a new phenomenon. Student plagiarists, however much we might be dismayed by their practices, are in good historical company.
Richard Terry is Professor of English at the University of Sunderland. He specializes in teaching eighteenth-century literature and the critical analysis of poetry. He is currently researching into accusations of plagiarism in the eighteenth century. His most recent publication is Plagiarism: A Literary Concept in England to 1775 in English 56 (2007).
the rise of companies dedicated to selling specimen assignments have certainly made plagiarism seem a more viable way of gaining modular credits than was ever the case before
The rst recorded use of the word plagiarism is by the Roman poet Martial when complaining, as he often had cause to do, about a rival poet reading out his verses and passing them off as his own.(3) It is actually a gurative coinage, since plagiarism referred in literal terms to the act of stealing slaves or even abducting children. Even from the outset plagiarism as a term means something bad, to be reprehended. While its not true to say that verbal copying has always and everywhere been deplored, the application of the word plagiarism to any act of copying seems never not to have had the effect of stigmatizing it. Martials indignation about being plagiarized, however, while it might seem to
2 For another essay bringing together student and literary plagiarism (with special reference to Coleridge and De Quincey), see Daniel Sanjiv Roberts Literature, Lit. Crit. or Plagiarism? Spot the Difference, English Subject Centre Newsletter 10 (June 2006). It can be accessed at: www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/ publications/newsletters/newsissue10/roberts.htm 3 For an extended discussion of the development of plagiarism as an idea, see my Plagiarism: A Literary Concept in England to 1775, English 56 (Spring 2007): 1-16.
suggest his possession of the same moral standards as ourselves, is not entirely as it seems. What riles him is not in fact the spectacle of another writer claiming authorship of his own poems, for he could have endured that without the least pang if only he had been paid for the works in question. It is the loss of remuneration that infuriates him. He is happy enough in principle to conspire in a fraud over the actual ownership of the poems. When the idea of plagiarism migrates to England in the mid-seventeenth century, it preserves the same suppositions behind Martials usage of the term. One of these is that plagiarism has to do not with how a work is composed but how it is put before an audience: it means stealing someone elses work while stating it to be your own. As a corollary of this, it also means stealing a work in its entirety as distinct
characterized as a bold, audacious act but from this point it becomes viewed instead as something furtive and secretive. From this point, too, dates the idea that textual referencing provides a sort of antidote to potential plagiarism. Writers of an allusive nature, who want to ward off any possible imputation of plagiarism, start to add footnotes to their works identifying the source of any borrowings.(4) The current OED denition of plagiarism as the wrongful appropriation... and publication as ones own, of the ideas, or the expression of the ideas... of another bears close similarities to one originally penned in 1775.(5) By this point, the modern concept of plagiarism has crystallized. Plagiarism committed by todays students does not fall under the rubric of theft, as it did originally, but of deception. The victim the offence creates
the understanding of plagiarism as an historical phenomenon? How perhaps can our present malaise be usefully informed by the past? Studying plagiarism in earlier periods certainly convinces that standards were not inevitably higher in the past, but also reassures that scope for condemning plagiarists has always existed. Even in Martials day, thieving poets risked being publicly exposed. Yet what has not remained constant is exactly what constitutes the offence, the amount of appropriation necessary to count as plagiarism, and the relation between it and related, though innocent, literary practices such as imitation and allusion. My own research has also cautioned me in particular to distrust the allegers of plagiarism. In earlier times, as in our own, the allegation is one not infrequently tainted by an impurity of motive, either of commercial advantage or professional rivalry. The plagiarism issue in a university context, however, remains crucially different from plagiarism as a general phenomenon. Though often confused with the legal offence of breach of copyright, plagiarism has never been subject to juridical regulation. It remains a matter of professional integrity and individual ethics. Student plagiarism, on the other hand, is proscribed by the regulations of (one imagines) all universities, regulations by which students become bound once they enter an institution. Moreover students, even though they may not always appreciate it, are as much beneciaries as victims of this regime, in so far as universities outlawing of plagiarism helps preserve a level playing eld from which the student body in general stands to benet. Ultimately, whether the example of history recommends lenience or severity in dealing with current-day plagiarism is perhaps not the point. It is an offence, and accordingly subject to penalty, because universities have the rightful prerogative to declare it to be one.(7)
Student plagiarists, however much we might be dismayed by their practices, are in good historical company.
from lifting discrete passages or ideas, as we now tend to view the offence. When seventeenth-century writers express their sense of grievance at being plagiarized, they routinely stigmatize the plagiarist as a thief, thus reecting a notion that plagiarists actually assume possession of the works that they target. Martials concept of plagiarism should not be mistaken for the one we possess nowadays: for us plagiarism involves not so much theft, in any meaningful sense, as deception. Moreover, plagiarists do not as a rule try to lay claim to entire books actually composed by other authors but to components of them: to ideas, passages or expressions. This modern understanding of plagiarism seems to me to be a product of the mid-eighteenth century and involves a fresh understanding of the psychology behind plagiarism. Plagiarism had tended previously to be tends not to be seen as the author whose words have been cribbed but instead the lecturer who gets duped by the plagiarism, or perhaps the other students in the cohort who play by the rules. For us plagiarism is not so much about borrowing material but about not declaring you have done so. This indeed points to a limitation of some current software products designed to identify student plagiarism by calculating the proportion of an assignment that has been appropriated.(6) The problem is that the issue of plagiarism is not primarily one of appropriation but of disclosure, or the absence of it. This essay is an attempt to bring two things into each others orbit. Nearly all academics in English departments will at some point nd themselves faced with the issue of student plagiarism, but how many are aware of the existence of a eld of literary study expressly dedicated to
4 This is true of both Thomas Gray and Charlotte Smith. See Grays letter of 27 August 1756, in the Correspondence of Thomas Gray, ed. Paget Toynbee and Leonard Whibley, with corrections and additions by H.W. Starr, three vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 2: 477: do not wonder . . . if some Magazine or Review call me Plagiary. 5 See John Ash, New and Complete Dictionary of the English Language (1775). 6 The JISC service (www.jiscpas.ac.uk) operating Turnitin UK electronic plagiarism detection involves running essays through a search engine to produce an originality quotient. 7 For more on plagiarism, see the plagiarism pages on the English Subject Centre website.
Newsletter 13
Now in its fth year, this event brings together lecturers in their rst or second year of a full-time HE appointment. It aims to share and debate practical teaching ideas and activities as they relate to English as a subject; equip new lecturers with a tool kit of ideas; and establish a mutual support network for participants. A key aim is to encourage and motivate new lecturers to think of themselves as teachers and as researchers. Conveniently located in Nottingham, this residential, 2-day event attracts participants from all over the UK. By allowing you the freedom to talk about teaching English literature, Creative Writing and English language with specicity and among like-minded peers this event adds a new dimension to your local PgCHE courses which are often of a generic nature. Facilitated by Subject Centre staff, the event is delivered through seminars and practical work in groups and supplemented by guest lectures by leading members of the profession. There is also an online pre-course component delivered through the Subject Centres Moodle platform. Attendees can look forward to lively discussions with topics ranging from:
Is the essay a useful teaching tool? Should lecturing be abolished? Why should I bother with e-learning? Isnt my monograph the most important thing? Can it be a seminar if there are twenty students? You will also learn, among other things, how to exploit educational resources more effectively; be smarter in your career planning; source funding opportunities; and lose your fear of stepping outside the box in your approach to teaching and learning.
I found the weekend very valuable both because it reassured me about the teaching I am already doing and because it gave me new approaches for the future. Most of all it was great to have the time and space to sit and reect on my teaching after a term of just getting it done.
(Dr Anna Barton, Keele University) For more details or to register please visit our homepage or contact the Subject Centre at: esc@rhul.ac.uk
Putting Some Sense Back into the System:

an interview with Judy Simons
In July Nicole King spoke to Professor Judy Simons about her long career in higher education, her devotion to the subject of English and the challenges she has faced as female academic coming of age in the 1970s and 1980s.
Professor Judy Simons, currently Pro Vice Chancellor at De Montfort University and until recently, chair of the English Subject Centres Advisory Board will be well known to Newsletter readers for her distinguished career in university leadership roles and as author of books such as Diaries and Journals of Literary Women: From Fanny Burney to Virginia Woolf (Macmillan 1990) and What Katy Read: Feminist Re-readings of Classic Stories for Girls 1850 -1920 (MacMillan 1995; with Shirley Foster). Simons is a woman who is constantly on the go, so those of you who have not had the chance to sit down with her for an hours conversation may not realize what a passionate teacher of English she is nor what surprising things she has to say about management posts in academia. We spoke in Simons spacious, De Montfort ofce on a rainy Friday morning. Her large desk had the expected piles of paper and folders interspersed between three litre bottles of water, a large cup of freshly made coffee and her lap top. Petite and athletic-looking, Simonswho has struck me in previous brief encounters as being reservedhas eyes that sparkle and a smile which broadens to a grin when she talks about literature and working in higher education. When I asked her why she became a teacher and why she chose literature she replied earnestly, It is not anything I have ever questioned. It just seemed a natural progression to me. I couldnt believe when I was an undergraduate that somebody was going to pay me for three years just to read books. I thought that was the jammiest thing that had ever happened! she smiled. And reading to me is still a favourite activity, I cant get enough of it, I just devour books. So then to be able to go and teach literature and just spend all day talking about itI just felt fortunate. I remember when I read Paradise Lost it was on the syllabus at universityI couldnt put it down! I stayed up all night reading because it was just so incredibly overpowering and absorbing. Reading was just superb, and writing about it was really just reading in a more advanced way, it just enabled you to articulate your thoughts about what you had read. I think if youve got a natural interest in your subject and in communicating and enjoying your interactions with students, then teaching is automatically something you do well. Ive just always had a wonderful time talking about ideas with students, and in preparing classes it forces you to reect on your own practice and on the way the subject is developing. I still teach actually she remarks in a tone that manages to be both serious and wistful at the same time. I still teach. Simons began her career in Shefeld just after she nished her rst degree. Simons received a rst class Bachelors degree in English Language and Literature from the University of Manchester and went on to do a Masters degree there, nishing in 1972. I started in higher education in a rather odd way in that I started teaching when I was only 21, on a part-time basis, almost immediately I had graduated. I stopped doing
that when I had children and my family responsibilities really took priority. And then I was offered a full-time post at [Shefeld] Hallam almost by accident in a way that I really dont think would happen now. I do not think that anybody with the sort of qualications I had would now get a post in academia. I am always
your career. I was incredibly demoralized by that experience; it really was very dispiriting and I thought shall I give up now? But I didnt give up, I continued. Every stage of the career has been hard in that way in terms of seeking promotional opportunities. And because of my family commitments [Simons has two daughters]
somebody on the appointments panel had said, she doesnt need a job because her husband has got a high paid job and she doesnt need the extra money
so impressed when I interview young people for jobs in universities now to see how wonderful they are. They have all got brilliant degrees, higher degrees, publications and teaching experience. And I think if it were me nobody would ever employ megiven what I started with. I just think I was really fortunate in that climate, in the sixties, in terms of someone taking me on, being prepared to hire me. The 1970s in academia were a time of few women lecturers and fewer still that had attained the position of power and inuence that Simons herself now holds. Sisterhood was powerful, however, as she recalls: No there certainly werent many women lecturers. And they certainly did not rise to signicant positions. And we were put down. I remember one appointments panel I attended where I had applied for promotion. There was only one position available and it went to a male colleague. I was told by my head of department subsequently that somebody on the appointments panel had said, she doesnt need a job because her husband has got a high paid job and she doesnt need the extra money, it should go to so and so who has been here longer than she has anyway. And the chair of the panel, had, I know, wanted to promote me but was overruled by other people who were swayed by that other argument. That was what the climate was like in the early 1970s. And the person who told it to me was a senior woman, who said you need to know, that this is the sort of thing you will come up against as you progress and you will just have to manage that as part of your career if you are interested in I didnt have a lot of exibility or freedom in terms of moving. The sage advice that Simons received from her senior colleague was supplemented by support she found amongst her peers. It was that early feminist wave and I learned an awful lot from a group of women who are now all very distinguished scholars, who at that time were just young new lecturers like myself. There was a group called Network, which started probably in about 1975. Some of the people whom I met in that Network group are now in professorial positions at other universities, people such as Lyn Pykett, Vivien Jones and Ann Thompson. It was a very strong and mutually supportive group at a time when there werent opportunities to get together with other women scholars and talk not just about womens literature however you interpret that phrasebut also about some of the issues we faced working in what was then a heavily male dominated hierarchy. I was quite surprised to learn that as the author, co-author and editor of nine books, and stacks of articles, chapters, and reviews, Simons did not start to take research seriously at all until mid or late career. The crucial turning point came in the early 1980s after she helped organise what she remembers as the rst womens writing conference in the UK at which she gave a paper on the writer Fanny Burney. I have always been interested in womens voices in writingpublic voices and private voices and the distinctions between them. Fanny Burney was an eighteenth century novelist but she also wrote these extraordinary diaries, which at that time
were largely unpublished. There is an episode in her diary where she describes with great graphic detail and tremendous power a mastectomy operation that she had in 1811, in Paris, without anaesthetic. It is the most extraordinary and powerful description. I was talking about that and the way she writes about it and how different it is from the quite conventional voice which she has in the ction. At that point somebody said to me, you should write a book about this, a publisher got interested, and that was where my rst book came from (Fanny Burney, 1987). Once I started working on that book everything else just fell into place. The book-length publications followed and I went on to do some student guides to Jane Austen and then a big book I did on diaries (Diaries and Journals of Literary Women: From Fanny Burney to Virginia Woolf, 1990) and that became allabsorbing. That part of the careerwhich hadnt really surfaced before where I had just concentrated on the teachingcame in and my teaching took off in new directions and it sort of went on from there. Simons easy wave of a hand as she says this is sincere but misleading. The career that went on from there includes her ascension to Professor, to Department Chair, to Dean and to Pro Vice Chancellor of a university with an undergraduate population of 24,000.
While she says she didnt have the pressures that young academics today must contend with (such as the RAE and league tables) she was nevertheless working in a climate where her notable research activity was less usual than it would be today. Everything was my own initiative she says to me. I am impressed and suggest that this sounds quite desirable, that her career was able to develop organically and follow the path and pace set by her interests alone, she corrects me, Nobody really cared, nobody really cared she shakes
programmes in order to keep up with the new generation of students. And, it is about building and maintaining high standards and giving academic staff, a renewed sense of purpose so they dont get stale. There are so many things that you can do. So when I came into management I found it wonderfully liberating. It was really a new lease on life. I absolutely loved it. In our conversation Simons demonstrated a passion for her current and previous management work that I didnt realise was possible. She spoke of her staff (across
other universities and I think people dont know theyre born, actually, in terms of what they have to do with students. They dont know theyre born! One imagines that given the opportunity, Simons would set them straight immediately. Indeed, while she may admire the clutch of qualications and advanced degrees that todays new lecturers have, she pulls no punches when it comes to their intellectual fussiness in the classroom. Speaking of her early career, she remembers: Well I taught on the literature programme, invariably ctions of different periods, but at that time if you were a literature teacher, you taught the syllabus. I nd now that young people coming in are much more precious about their own specialisms and say Im sorry I cant teach that, its not my period! And you think, come on, you are a teacher of literature and if youre required to go in and teach a class on the lyric you do it! And if you have to then go teach Shakespeare, you do it! Another wide grin appears, as she realises I can be fussy in that way myself so I am relieved when the conversation turns to A Level students and what Simons understands as the challenges facing the subject from the direction of secondary schools.
you are a teacher of literature and if youre required to go in and teach a class on the lyric you do it. And if you have to then go teach Shakespeare, you do it!
her head dismissively. As the interview progresses, I learn that this notion of care and thoughtful, planned career progression is quite important to Simons, who rose through the ranks at Shefeld City Polytechnic and helped usher in the post-92 era, when Shefeld City became Shefeld Hallam. So, I wondered, what advice does Simons have for academics as they attempt to manage their careers? Some, she declares, should consider the attractions of management itself. Even [for] mid career academics, our profession has really not got to grips with the idea of academia as offering a proper career and supported career path. I think the career options are great but at the moment what happens is either you stick with your subject and progress to a chair and then it can just stop. Or, you make a decision to go into management but you often lose touch with your subject. I didnt lose touch however, and when I went into management I found it tremendously rewarding and I found that management can offer you a new outlet for your own creativity. I found it a wonderfully creative job. People tend to think its lling in boring reports and sitting on boring committees and talking about boring issues. And actually it isnt about that at all. It is about seeing new directions; it is about helping and facilitating other people to release their own talents. Its about designing new De Montfort) with an air that combined zealousness with deep affection: [My job is about] helping staff and heads of departments or heads of schools or deans to know/manage their programmes and see the new opportunities. It is trying, as well, as a Pro Vice Chancellor to get some sense into the system. So that if people are weighed down by bureaucracyone tries to strip out that overwhelming administration and make things as simple as possible. It is actually changing the culture at the institution towards wanting to improve rather than thinking all the time that we have got to do certain things because otherwise somebody will come down and police us. . . Simons career of over three decades has been carried out exclusively at new universities and she is their unabashed champion. I am very committed to new universities because I think that we are an absolutely remarkable, unsung success story. We tend not to get students who have got brilliant A Level grades, and when our students leave, they leave with very respectable and sometimes outstanding degrees. You mustnt lower standards, obviously, youve got to put more thoughtful techniques in place in order to help students get to the standard that you want by the time they leave at the end of their three years. And I think we are remarkably good at it. We commit our time in extraordinary ways and I go into
I think what is interesting about undergraduates who come to do English is that their expectations of what an English degree programme consists ofwhether its single honours or joint honours or combinedare changing and I think that has to do with what they now do in the 14-19 age range. I have to say that I regret what has happened to English in schools and in colleges because it has become very functionalist in approach, to assessment, particularly. Students do not come in with the same love of reading that I did. We must not lose touch with those really strong values of what the subject is: which is text and textual engagement, however that is congured . . . If one of the things that we are instilling in our students is the ability to think independently and develop their critical skills and to challenge received knowledge, which I do think is what we are about, you do this by giving them a text. You give somebody a text and you open them up to diverse interpretations whether these be published or whether these be the opinions of their peer group, and their tutorsthat in itself is something that we must not lose, I just think that that is at the heart of the subject and I believe that quite passionately. They get enthusiastic (if you are a reasonably good teacher) and
that enthusiasm will feed their curiosity to want to learn more and learn for themselves. There is a need to understand the ways in which Higher Education is changing and it is about the need to engage, have dialogue, much more with the secondary school sector. So that secondary school teachers understand what it now means to do a degree in English. Equally we need to understand where our students are coming from, what they know and what they need. If I could have some sort of project or post that would enable me to do that, I would really like to do that, I would welcome it; I just think its hugely important. Despite such canvassing for a new post, Simons tells me she is looking forward to retirement, and has gradually cut back her hours at de Montfort to a part-time basis. Im doing too many things; I always do because I nd it quite difcult to say no to things. . . What I would like to be doing is freeing up some time where I can do my own research and writing in a more sustained way than has been possible for me over the past few years. It is a very sad thing to think you have to retire in order to do that! What will you research?, I ask. Well Ive got a number of things.
One of the things is I have been asked to do an edition of the letters of Rosamund Lehman, so that is a possibility. Im in the middle of completing an article on popular writing for children in the 19th-mid 20th century, which Ive found quite fascinating. And then, Nicole, you will nd this comic, but I want to write a literary cook book! I protest that I dont nd that comic, but I doubt she believes me. I cant tell you too much she worries, suddenly demure, because somebody will grab the idea I am only able to coax a few more details from her: Well, I live in France part of the time so I am very interested in European cuisinejust using very simple, good ingredients. But I am interested in meals really, as a social activity, as a way of giving and being generouslike Mrs Ramsay get everybody around the table and like Dickens as well I suppose... her voice trails off and I realize I am not going to get any more information from her about this book project. I suppose I will either have to wrangle an invitation to one of her meals, perhaps offering her a literary reference (James Baldwins The Welcome Table comes to mind) or else queue with the rest of the world once this most intriguing book is published. One thing is for sure: retirement is not going to slow down Judy Simons.
Are you a Head of Department? (or in an equivalent role)

Would you like another English HoD as a buddy: someone with whom to share ideas, experiences, successes and failures?
The Subject Centre has been asked by a group of HoDs to set up a buddy scheme to provide mutual support for those in this challenging role, both newcomers and the more experienced. If you are interested please email esc@rhul.ac.uk including: You name and institution Email address How long youve been a HoD What type of buddy you are looking for (e.g. same/greater/lesser level of experience, similar or different type of institution)
The Wrong Dora Russell:

research-informed learning in a digital world
Jan Hewitt and Tony Nicholson report on their use of digital sources to support research informed teaching in an interdisciplinary context.
Look no further than the rst paragraph of your university mission statement or the sub-header from any glossy recruitment brochure and somewhere in the middle of that familiar discourse about dynamism, widening participation and standards, there is sure to be a condent claim that undergraduate teaching is research-informed or research-led. And yet... Over the last ten years, a number of studies designed to collect evidence of this so-called special relationship have concluded that the research-teaching nexus is at best only loosely coupled and often non-existent.(1) In truth these ndings may not come as a great shock; most of us know that, for staff, research and teaching are not just loosely coupled but often locked into erce turf wars, a situation compounded by national funding strategies and by prevailing institutional structures. What should be two complementary areas of academic practice are divided into warring camps, complete with their separatist agendas, committees and cultures. At the student level, an increasingly instrumental approach towards getting the best possible grades often militates against opting for research-based modules that require independent thinking and risk taking. New initiatives to re-engineer this troubled relationship promise to improve things at several levels.(2) At the macrolevel, governments and institutions are now being encouraged to develop strategies that will build productive links between research and teaching rather than simply celebrating their relationship and then effectively letting them go their separate ways. At the micro-level, several new opportunities are also presenting themselves, including the role of research-based learning. At its most straightforward, research-based learning involves researchers bringing their specialist knowledge and enthusiasm to undergraduate teaching, but it can also involve undergraduate students as active agents in the research process; instead of simply absorbing the work of others, they are given the opportunity to do their own research. Within this model, research is not the preserve of a special cadre of academics but for everyone.
1 See Hattie, J. & Marsh, H.W., The relationship between research and teaching: a meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 66 (4), 1996, pp. 507-542. More recent studies have tended to conrm the picture. 2 Useful overviews of this debate are available in Jenkins, A. A Guide to the Research Evidence on Teaching-Research Relations, (The Higher Education Academy, December 2004); Jenkins, A. & Healey, M. Institutional strategies to link teaching and research, (The Higher Education Academy, October 2005); Healey, M., Jenkins, A. & Zetter, R. Linking teaching and research in disciplines and departments, (Higher Education Academy, April 2007)
For a number of years, we have experimented with this approach in an interdisciplinary module that explores changing gender ideologies in the late Victorian and Edwardian era.(3) It is a nal-year module that asks students to undertake small research projects exploring the complex interface between texts and contexts. During the rst six weeks of a twelve-week teaching programme, students are introduced to the main economic, social, political and cultural developments of the late Victorian and Edwardian periods, with a small number of primary and secondary texts forming the focus for class discussion.(4) From the very outset, students are asked to identify their own individual research projects and during the second half of the module the overall emphasis shifts from collective class discussions to individual research, nally leading to research projects of between three and four thousand words. Its an ambitious style of undergraduate teaching and not without challenges. Where can students gain access to a wide range of relevant primary texts? (Collections in local archives and libraries are not always relevant to specialist modules). Many undergraduate students have little experience of using archives and struggle to nd material in the short time at their disposal; in these circumstances, levels of anxiety and frustration can often assume worrying proportions. Over the years, we have tried to address these problems by creating ever-larger Module Readers packed with primary texts, yet these remain limited in scope and expensive to produce. Faced by such challenges, it is hardly surprising that many students avoid the pressures and uncertainties of genuine research by framing projects based on safe canonical texts with plenty of secondary material to fall back upon; after some initial enthusiasm, an exercise that should lead to the production of a research project too often ends up in the form of a long essay. Finally, there is the real problem of maintaining a creative tension between individual research and collective discussion: it is hard to avoid a situation, in other words, where students see wider class discussions as simply irrelevant once they have selected their individual topics. The astonishing growth of online digital resources offers a potential solution to many of these problems. In 2006, Googles controversial claim that it would digitise the complete collections of all major copyright libraries in the USA and Britain attracted high levels of media attention, largely because it threatened to
create a copyright war with contemporary authors and publishers. Prior to this high-prole press release, however, many earlier projects like Project Gutenberg had gone largely unnoticed by headline writers. Yet the work of these pioneering projects had sparked a quiet revolution that now promises to transform text-based humanities subjects like English and History. Google is only one among many players in this rapidly expanding eld. Some projects are run by large commercial rms like Thomson-Gale; two of their most impressive collections - The Times Digital Archive and Eighteenth-Century Collections Online are accessible only through expensive yearly subscriptions, but nonetheless offer revolutionary new resources for research and teaching in the humanities. Other projects are funded by national and local government, whilst projects like Gutenberg are powered by global networks of volunteers. Last but by no means least, thousands of smaller projects are digitising collections based on specic places, people and themes.(5) As we encountered these new resources as part of our own research, we were struck by their potential for teaching. At one level, of course, it was the easiest thing in the world to identify useful collections of primary texts that could then be used to support research-based learning amongst our students. At another more ambitious level, we began to wonder if it might be possible to digitise our own material. Digitised texts carry two principal advantages for all users: they are accessible to anyone via the internet and can be analysed in powerful new ways using keyword searches. The process of digitising texts is relatively simple and cheap, particularly if they are already microlmed; lm can be loaded onto machines that are calibrated to digitise each frame automatically, and if the texts are printed rather than hand-written, they can also be scanned by Optical Character Recognition Software (OCR); this process creates the background text that allows users to search by keyword. However, the results of OCRing can be mixed, depending on the readability of the original print; some of the newspaper pages we digitised, for example, were captured almost completely (90%) and some hardly at all (10%). The important point to register, however, is that digitising and OCRing are surprisingly cheap, costing less than 10p per page, but the real problem comes when OCRed texts need to be proofed; at current rates, this costs somewhere in the region of 1.20 per page, making it far too expensive for most academic budgets.
Jan Hewitt is a senior lecturer in English Studies at the University of Teesside. Her current publications are on popular regional ction in the late nineteenth century.
Tony Nicholson is in the History Section at Teesside. He was awarded a University Teaching Fellowship in 1999 and a National Teaching Fellowship in 2004. He teaches modern British social and cultural history and has a longstanding interest in interdisciplinary teaching. Currently, he is writing a monograph, A New Sense of Place, looking at local identities in the modern world.
3 For more details see www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/projects/archive/technology/tech13.php. 4 Some of the key texts used in class discussions were W.T.Steads Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon; Stokers Dracula; Stevensons Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde; local and national newspaper coverage of the Whitechapel murders; and Elizabeth Robbins and Lady Bells controversial New Woman drama, Alans Wife (1893). 5 For Project Gutenberg see www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page; a valuable overview of the project is provided in Marie Leberts online article at www.etudes-francaises.net/dossiers/gutenberg_eng.htm. Access to Thomson-Gales Eighteenth Century Collections Online and The Times Digital Archive is by subscription, but introductory web pages are available at www.gale.com/EighteenthCentury/ and www.gale.com/Times/. Finding your way through the burgeoning number of websites containing primary texts can be daunting, but there are gateways that offer useful handy points of entry: see, for example, the English Subject Centres own list of useful gateways at www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/nd/links/gateways.php; see also The Victorian Literary Studies Archive at http://victorian.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/.
With the help of a National Teaching Fellowship Award from the Higher Educational Academy, we began experimenting with different digitisation techniques and have just published 10,000 pages of nineteenth century newspapers online.(6) We commissioned a commercial software rm to design an editing package that will allow volunteers (academics, students, members of the general public) to proof and correct texts
see the advantage of creating a valuable collective resource. A smaller grant from the English Subject Centre funded the rst application and evaluation of this online resource in a revamped version of our nal-year module. Drawing on this new technology, the module was re-designed along the following lines and run during the last academic year (2005-2006):
Each theme ran for two weeks, beginning with a lecture and ending with a two-hour class. The lecture was used to introduce concepts and sources and thereafter students worked in groups, allocating specic tasks to individual members. Groups used a VLE (Blackboard) to communicate with each other and to post ndings in a Coordinators Report three days before each class. At the start of each class, Group Coordinators made short PowerPoint presentations of their ndings which, together with their posted reports, formed the basis of class discussion. Students could still chose their own individual research topics, but these had to be linked to the work of their groups, and this helped to forge a stronger link between collective and individual work. Not everything worked perfectly. The module was challenging on several fronts, most notably its heavy use of ICT, its emphasis on research and the central role of group work. Two students had panic attacks in the rst week and ed to more conventional modules, but then things settled down as a new rhythm of research and reporting got underway. Levels of enthusiasm began to rise, but this sometimes led to overlong presentations that left little time for wider class discussion. Finally, despite all our best efforts, one or two students still fell back on secondary texts and settled for long essays. Yet overall, the results were really encouraging. Everyone engaged with the ICT elements in the module, including digitised primary sources, online discussions and PowerPoint presentations.(8) Most students enjoyed their experience of collaborative learning in research groups and recognised the benets of this approach in their feedback at the end of the module.(9) Most importantly of all, many of them
What should be two complementary areas of academic practise are divided into warring camps
online and the site is now being piloted and tested at www.n-e-n-a.co.uk. The current project happens to concentrate on newspapers, but can easily be applied to other texts (novels, plays, poetry, letters, original manuscripts, images etc.) Its great potential is to use the power of the Web to recruit user-volunteers who contribute to the proong process because they We re-structured the module around ve key research themes, each well supported by existing online resources or by digitised newspapers created by ourselves.(7) Students worked in small research teams of ve, so that each member could take responsibility for coordinating the work of one of the ve research themes.
Homepage of the North of England Newspaper Archive
6 There are a number of technical issues that need to be considered in any digitisation project, including copyright, image quality and searchability. The NENA website contains a brief guide to these issues based on our own experience. 7 Examples of existing resources might include Chris Willis Crime, Gender and Victorian Popular Culture at www.chriswillis.freeserve.co.uk/index.html; the University of Minnesota Online Teaching Anthology at http://etrc.lib.umn.edu/uvsota/index.htm; The Casebook: Jack the Ripper at www.casebook.org/. The list could go on. A good example of our own customised resources can be seen at Owen Mulpetres W.T. Stead Resource Site; www.attackingthedevil.co.uk/. Owen was a student on our module and developed a deep interest in Stead; he is now undertaking postgraduate research on Steads early journalistic career. 8 We designed an ICT Induction class at the beginning of the module to make sure that all students were familiar with Web resources, Blackboard Discussion Groups and PowerPoint presentations. 9 A brief summary of the Module Evaluation will eventually be available as part of our project archive on the English Subject Centre website at www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/projects/archive/index.php
began to appreciate the experience of working on the edge of their knowledge, with all the uncertainties and excitements that research engenders. It is an experience that is captured in the online exchange of one particular group about an episode of serialised ction that appeared in the North-Eastern Daily Gazette in 1888. All they knew was that the story was written by someone called Dora Russell. Just thought Id share this, wrote one member on Blackboard. Whilst browsing through The Gazette... I thought it would be interesting to google Dora Russell. As it turns out,, the same student went on, she was quite an interesting lady. She believed that education was just as important for girls as boys, attended Cambridge... She had a variety of great jobs and whilst she did eventually marry Bertrand Russell, they continued to have relationships with other people... She went on to give details of a bohemian lifestyle that seemed to her astonishing for the period. Other group members warmed to the theme. I think this is a fantastic idea, replied one, and was totally impressed when I had a look. What a woman! Reminded me ever so slightly of Virginia Woolf, so I can now see where it started. This also links with... Over the following days, we could monitor this discussion and see how they made links between literary and documentary texts, partly from our own module and partly from texts studied in previous modules. It wasnt easy, but we refrained from intervening as we saw them re-reading the serialised story from different perspectives. They began to wonder, for example, if popular ction in the 1880s might have challenged prevailing assumptions of Victorian respectability as much as reinforcing them. Until... I dont know if I cracked into the correct Dora Russell, the original instigator nally reported in the midst of this mounting enthusiasm. She seems to be a great gure to expand on at some point, but it isnt the Dora Russell from the paper. The Gazette was printed in 1888 and this Mrs Russell wasnt born until 1896! Ooops! For us, that embarrassed Ooops! is tantamount to Eureka! for here were ve undergraduates making a productive mistake. Their discovery of the wrong Dora Russell, a late Victorian writer of newspaper sensation ction(10), led them to construct new perspectives on the social and cultural values of the period. It ultimately prompted them to re-read academic studies on the late Victorian period and rethink their assumptions about the narrowness of its cultural values. By the same token, the productive mistake encouraged them to read what they had originally dismissed as a conventional romance with fresh eyes. Needless to say, once its productiveness was realised, the
crucial gains made from this little detour were not jettisoned as somehow untrue but used to inform and enrich later discussions and projects. Most fundamentally of all, they saw for themselves how all knowledge is provisional.
Two students had panic attacks in the rst week and ed to more conventional modules
Research-informed teaching of this kind rarely if ever produces high-quality outputs that RAE panels might recognise, but it involves undergraduate students in the research process in effect, a powerful form of active learning that helps deepen their understanding of whatever subject they happen to studying. The expanding eld of digitised sources gives everyone increased opportunities to do this kind of work and plays its own part in helping to re-engineer a more productive research-teaching nexus.
10 For the popularity of this earlier Dora Russell see Graham Law, Serializing Fiction in the Victorian Press, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000, pp. 86-88 and volume 6 of Andrew Maunder (general editor), Varieties of Womens Sensation Fiction, 1855-1890, London: Pickering and Chatto, 2004.
Responding to the Newsletters recent articles on the teaching of Scottish and Irish writing, Jane Aaron reports on the current scene in Wales, and suggests ways in which the relative neglect of Welsh writing in English could be corrected.
In the tenth issue of the English Subject Centre Newsletter Gerard Carruthers published a paper, rst given at a study day in 2005, which closed with an exhortation to his colleagues to seize the centre ground for Irish and Scottish literature. To doubt the centrality of these literatures, which are as valuable (not more valuable) than any other canon of literature in terms of skills to be practised upon them, and of cultural and historical knowledge to be derived from them, is, he argues, to succumb to residual British or English assumptions about wholeness or bigness of culture, which revisionists in Irish and Scottish studies, as much as anywhere else, can no longer accept.(1) Carruthers was preaching to the converted - a workshop of scholars and critics of Scottish and Irish literature, many of them engaged in teaching their specialisms beyond the borders of their respective originating nations. At the University of Manchester, for example, where the study day was held, Scottish literature is currently embedded in year 2, 3 and MA English programmes.(2) In a Welsh context, however, these substantial concepts of centrality and embeddedness cannot as yet be said convincingly to denote the position of Anglophone Welsh writing within higher education English teaching, even within Wales itself. Why that is so and how the situation might be remedied are questions which need addressing, and Im glad to have the opportunity to do so briey here. The Welsh Joint Education Council markets its English literature GCSE and A Level courses in England as well as in Wales, but shapes its requirements differently for each country. One of its GCSE assignments requires students to choose an author from different cultures and traditions, and schools in England are invited to study an Anglophone Welsh writer as a possible option here. But writers from England are not listed as other in this way for students in Wales; indeed, it would make little sense if they were, given the predominance of writers from England in the rest of the syllabus.(3) At A Level, schools may choose to teach the work of Welsh writers as an optional item in the syllabus, but the opportunity seems rarely to be taken. When I last attended a south Wales study day for sixth formers, none of the half a dozen or so schools who had sent students to the English literature workshops were teaching any Welsh authors at English A Level. One teacher explained to me that she felt she would be disadvantaging her students if she chose to offer them a Welsh writer for study, as she had no expertise in that area herself. She was well aware that the examining board would expect from her pupils an understanding of the context in which an authors work was written which she felt she could not adequately provide, or not at least in comparison
with the wealth of critical and contextual material she had at her disposal in the case of the more familiar non-Welsh authors on the syllabus. The fact that one of the optional Welsh authors on the syllabus came from the same south Wales valleys town as that in which she taught, and in which she, and her pupils of course, had been reared, was not enough to make her feel condent of taking that step into the unknown world of Welsh writing in English. Clearly, the onus here is on the higher education institutions of Wales to adequately arm prospective teachers of English with an expertise in Anglophone Welsh writing as part of their literature degree. First introduced in 1971, in Trinity College, Carmarthen, modules in Welsh writing in English are now offered in all but two Welsh higher educational institutions, yet only in three of them is the provision as substantial as the University of Manchesters teaching of Scottish Literature. Further, given that the Welsh modules are always optional, the same problems of choice arise for university students as for school teachers: will they risk opting for a subject in which they more often than not have had no prior preparatory instruction at school level, and which is less well supported by secondary critical and contextual material than most of the more familiar literary options? But if they do not opt for these modules in sufcient numbers then, given the market-led exigencies of contemporary higher education institutions, there is limited opportunity for the discipline to develop so as to create new academic posts in the eld, thus furthering the production of critical and scholarly research and publications on Welsh writing in English. It is difcult to envisage any way out of this vicious circle except for the Welsh Assembly Government to make the teaching of at least one Anglophone Welsh text compulsory at English A Level, a step which the Scottish Parliament took with regard to Scottish literature and the sixth form English syllabus some time ago, in the early months of its existence. No doubt the current growth in the teaching of Scottish literature at higher education levels is in part the consequence of that directive. The Assembly would be well advised to announce in advance its determination to make such an innovation, thus providing universities with enough time to ensure that students planning to become teachers of English in Wales acquired the necessary expertise as part of their literature degrees. A few years notice would also allow for the preparation and publication of further contextual and critical studies to support the new development. Such a move would constitute a logical extension of the Assemblys current support for English medium writing in Wales: a policy review it conducted in 2003 led to the establishment and
Professor in English at the University of Glamorgan, Jane Aaron teaches Welsh writing in English modules to all three undergraduate years and at MA level. Her recent publications include NineteenthCentury Womens Writing in Wales: Nation, Gender and Identity and the coedited essay collection Postcolonial Wales.
1 Gerard Carruthers, Revisionism in Irish and Scottish Literature: How far can we go?, English Subject Centre Newsletter, 10 (2006), 10. 2 Murray Pittock, Teaching Scottish and Irish Literature, ibid, 44. 3 See Greg Hill, Sisyphus goes to school, Planet, 161 (2003), 82-5, for a more detailed account of Welsh writing in English in the WJEC syllabus.
funding of the Library of Wales project, designed to ensure that all of the rich and extensive literature of Wales which has been written in English will now be made available to readers in and beyond Wales, according to the series blurb. Edited by Dai Smith, currently Professor at the Centre for Research into the English Literature and Language of Wales at Swansea University, the Library has to date published nine titles, and intends to publish a further ve annually during the coming decade, thus helping to solve one former major occupational hazard for teachers and academics in this eld, that
which the emphasis is on learning how literary language operates. Welsh writing in English provides as varied an array of exemplary models of complex language usage, ripe for detailed critical analysis, as any other literature. And for students in Wales, its immediate relevance to their own situation helps them to make sense of their experience, and that of past generations, while diminishing the sense of distance between author and reader in a manner which can prove inspiring; for readers elsewhere it provides a window on a generally under-represented aspect of British life.
At A Level, schools may choose to teach the work of Welsh writers as an optional item... but the opportunity seems rarely to be taken.
is, the propensity of titles to slip abruptly out of print and become unavailable for teaching purposes. All would not be plain sailing, however, even were the teaching of Welsh writing to be made compulsory in Wales within the English Literature A Level syllabus. Gerard Carruthers article points to two schools of thought, that of the Marxist and the aesthete, which have historically opposed the teaching of a national literature in Scotland and Ireland at higher education institutions, the rst from the point of view of a socialist cosmopolitanism which sees the national focus as narrowly bourgeois, and the second from the point of view of aesthetic greatness, which sees it as promoting inferior works of art for vulgar nationalist reasons.(4) Both of these oppositions have been active within the Welsh system too, but current changes in the nature of English as a discipline weaken their arguments. In the case of the aesthetic opposition, criticisms of the traditional great works canon as severely limited in its representation of social diversity, from the point of view of class, gender and ethnic difference, have gained general acceptance; further, the notion that teaching literature is about inculcating standards of good taste has been discredited in favour of a model in The Marxist opposition, on the other hand, rests upon the assumption that to teach a national literature is to promote an essentialist and homogenous view of national identity, but in fact Welsh writing in English has always worked against the assumption of any such unication. Inevitably from its outset a hybrid construction of English and Welsh cultures, it emerged in the early decades of the twentieth century as a strong corrective to middle and upper class bias within the traditional concept of British literature. Texts like the Communist novelist Lewis Jones Cwmardy (1937) and We Live (1939), or Idris Davies explorations in poetry of the 1926 strikes and the depression which followed them, rooted as they are in the south Wales industrial communities to which their authors belonged, are vivid and compelling in their representation of the class conict which went on to form modern post-war Britain. As a site of cultural tension, it is also rich in texts which focus on the liminal nature of border identities; books like Margiad Evans Country Dance (1932) or Raymond Williams Border Country (1960), for example, are centrally concerned with exploring the complex psychological history of those border communities which make up a good third of the Welsh population.
Both of those last two titles, along with Lewis Jones ctions, feature in the new Library of Wales, but from another point of view that series has as yet proved less than representative, as Margiad Evans is the only woman writer in its lists. In fact, however, in recent years the view of Welsh culture as strongly masculinist has been out-moded, with many inuential female voices winning prominence: it was a woman, Gwyneth Lewis, who became the rst Welsh National Poet in 2005, while in the same year Gillian Clarke was made Cardiff Capital Poet as part of the capitals anniversary celebrations, and a young novelist from the south Wales valleys, Rachel Trezise, won the rst 60,000 Dylan Thomas Prize in 2006. Many contemporary Welsh writings also explore the reality of Wales ethnic diversity, focusing , for example, on the Irish population of Merthyr Tydl (Desmond Barrys A Bloody Good Friday, 2002) or Newport (Catherine Fishers Altered States, 1999), or on African-Welsh identities (Charlotte Williams, Sugar and Slate, 1999) and the long-established mixed-race communities of Cardiffs docklands (Leonora Britos Dats Love, 1995, or Trezza Azzopardis The Hiding Place, 2000). Teaching such texts as these underlines the heterogeneity of the Welsh population and helps to establish the inclusive nature of contemporary Welsh civic identity. Modules which include such material may be in a broad sense nation-building but they certainly do not promote any essentialist or exclusive concept of the nation. Introducing students to this body of literature is a very rewarding experience, but it is to be hoped that, within Wales at any rate, changes will soon be implemented in the idea of what should be taught as English, so that the wealth of anglophone Welsh writing will not come as such an unexpected surprise to literary undergraduates. Essays which begin I was born and have lived all my life in Porth [or Merthyr, or Aberdare, or Blaenclydach, or Ystradgynlais, or as the case may be], and have always loved literature, but before taking this module Id never heard of local writer Gwyn Thomas [or Glyn Jones, or Alun Lewis, or Rhys Davies, or Menna Gallie, or whoever] should really belong to the bad old pre-devolution days and to a past educational order.
4 Carruthers, Revisionism in Irish and Scottish Literature, 8.
Newsletter 13
The Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning:

the story so far for English
Reporting on both the Renewals Conference and her 18 months as CETL Liaison Ofcer, Christie Carson highlights some of the innovative solutions colleagues around the world are applying to teaching English in the 21st century.
The Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETLs) came into being two and a half years ago and June 2007 marked the halfway point in their funding. As a result the English Subject Centres Renewals conference in July was signicant for those involved in CETLs and provided a forum both for dissemination and for discussion of the CETL initiative. The core theme of Renewalsreguring university English in the 21st centuryalso happens to be at the heart of a group of CETLs which I have come to know well. The engagement of these CETLs in the conference presents an opportunity to review both the event and history so far of those connected to the English subject community. Between January 2006 and July 2007 I worked as the CETL Liaison Ofcer in the English Subject Centre. During that period it was my task to develop relationships with, and to understand the activities of, ten of these CETLs in order to draw conclusions about how this work might inuence the discipline more widely. The objective of the post was to develop a symbiotic relationship with the ten CETLs most closely associated with English in order that we might benet more widely from this exciting and unprecedented development. The high level of involvement of the CETL community in the Renewals Conference demonstrates the potential of the strategy of integrating the CETL conversation with a wider discussion about the changes taking place in the discipline. assessment and also toward reading have changed.(1) The aims and objectives of Renewals were designed to highlight the issues that are arising from such changes and these are exactly the issues that the CETLs are also trying to address over the long term. As Professor Elaine Showalter declared in her introductory remarks at Renewals, the conference was a truly international affair, which opened up the debate taking place in the UK to cross-fertilisation with ideas coming out of the United States where student attitudes and practices have been moving in new directions for some time. She lauded the fact that we had invited to the conference two key innovators from the US, Professors Alan Liu and Richard Miller, and she also highlighted the areas where UK higher education differed from the US in terms of the environment in which we work. Drawing on her experience in the 1990s as President of the Modern Language Association, she said American HE practices, were paralyzed by competition and complacency while the UK has the equally alliterative advantages of communication, commitment and centralisation.(2) In this comment she was referring specically to the kinds of dialogue which have been undertaken by the English Subject Centre but which are also taking place increasingly through the Centres for Excellence.
Christie Carson is a Senior Lecturer in English at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her main teaching area is Shakespeare in performance. She has been working towards involving the work of contemporary performers and theatre practitioners in teaching. Dr Carson is the co-editor of The Cambridge King Lear CD-ROM: Text and Performance Archive and author of King Lear in North America, an article on this CD and the principle investigator of Designing Shakespeare: an audio visual archive, 1960-2000. http://ahds.ac.uk/ performingarts/ collections/designingshakespeare
In governmental terms the CETL initiative was developed as a change management strategy. The government saw a need for change and put money As Professor Judy Simons pointed out in her Renewals into giving colleagues the job of managing that welcoming address, the students we are teaching today change as they saw t. What might be considered a coercive approach from on high was understood have changed in a number of ways. In particular she by Showalter as one of the greatest strengths of the noted how their approaches to learning have changed British environment. The experiences of the Centres as have their approaches to technology. Our students for Excellence, I would suggest, also support the now often work as well as study and so may well interact with the library and their course work at odd or claim that it is possible to gain great benets from a unsocial hours. She remarked that their attitudes toward centrally sponsored initiative. The CETLs I have been
1 Judy Simons Pro Vice Chancellor at De Montfort University, Welcome to Renewals: Reguring University English in the 21st Century, Thursday 5 July, Royal Holloway University of London 2 Elaine Showalter, Professor Emeritus of English at Princeton University. Opening Address at Renewals: Reguring University English in the 21st Century, Thursday 5 July, Royal Holloway University of London
working with have developed new skills in talking about their teaching. Participants have also been given the gift of time and money to develop new learning practices and to create new learning spaces. Most importantly, however, the existence of the CETLs has opened up a dialogue between colleagues about how students and the environment in which we are teaching are changing in the 21st century. This discussion has resulted in a serious attempt to rethink the profession and the position of the university in our society. Of course, these are questions that are not being raised by the CETLs exclusively, however, within the CETLs we can see positive and concrete examples of what new models of teaching and learning might look like.
CETL initiatives two main aims: to reward excellent teaching practice, and to further invest in that practice so that CETL funding delivers substantial dividends to students, teachers and institutions. Although many CETLs are dedicated to generic themes such as employability and assessment, the English Subject Centre identied ten whose work would be of greatest interest to our community. Four of these are concerned with developing creative practice in teaching in the humanities. The remaining six address forms of learning and assessment that are of particular relevance to the English community.
The project: Phase 1
The aim of my year and a half long project as Liaison Ofcer was to develop links with Background the selected CETLs in order to create a The CETLs came about, in part, to act mutual understanding of the work going on as a counter balance to the Research in these two distinct organisations. A key Assessment Exercise. This HEFCE initiative, goal was to make the CETLs aware of the which was instigated by the 2003 White resources available to them through the Paper The Future of Higher Education English Subject Centre in terms of expertise aimed to develop a means of rewarding and existing dissemination opportunities. specic departments and institutions that It was hoped that through discussion and were developing innovative pedagogic involvement joint activities might arise. practice. Thus when 74 CETLs were The project was, in fact, split into two approved in England and Northern Ireland parts. During the rst seven months in January 2005 the national network of I was charged with creating concrete Subject Centres turned their attention to relationships with the four CETLs that thinking about ways of working with this address the ways in which students can new network of pedagogic laboratories. engage with creative practice (ArtsWork In order to understand how to achieve Learning Labs at Bath Spa; The Capital this end it was essential to consider the Centre at Warwick; C4C Collaborating
for Creativity at York St John and the Centre for Employability through the Humanities at Central Lancashire). What these four CETLs share is a focus on the complex question of how students can learn creative and practical skills alongside their academic study. In each case these CETLs have developed intellectual and physical spaces that provide an opportunity for students to work towards a professional level of creative work. The six Learning Labs at ArtsWork at Bath Spa aim to create new courses that rely on student work and on interaction with the creative industries. The CAPITAL Centre at Warwick University aims to bring the practices of the rehearsal room into the classroom through the enhancement of current and future modules. Taking Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) activities into universities in England but also taking the expertise of the University back to the RSC is a central aim of this CETL. The C4C: Collaborating for Creativity CETL has developed a programme of 25 projects working to expand the work of existing modules. These projects and the creative space built for the CETL have been developed with an aim of involving the local artistic community in York. In a similar way the Centre for Employability in the Humanities at Central Lancashire is developing its work through Realistic Work Environments (publishing, media, museum and gallery, theatre and events) in a way that is designed to further the work of the students in conjunction with developing links with the local community. I felt it was essential to draw together key members of staff from these four CETLs in order for them to be able to share experiences and expertise. Thus, after I made separate visits to each of them, our rst collaborative meeting was held in May 2006. While all CETL staff were deeply involved in the specic local challenges of overseeing capital projects and hiring and training new staff, a number of key points of overlap were identied. These included: employability through Real Work Environments (RWE), creativity in English through performance and creative writing, issues around practicebased research and the documentation of creativity, the challenges of rewarding creativity, interdisciplinarity and the real changes to teaching brought about by new learning spaces. All four of these CETLs, despite working with quite different institutional and departmental
Ben Knights, Judy Simons and Rick Rylance at the Renewals Conference.
cultures, found parity in terms of the challenges they faced when shifting to a teaching practice that was more practical in its approach. Through the discussions instigated by this meeting it became clear that the English Subject Centre had two quite different but related potential roles; rst, it could provide information about pedagogic research, as well as models of good practice, and second it could provide a dissemination platform for the results of this research. Joint events were seen as a productive model of collaboration in the rst instance. The aim of these events was to, on the one hand, showcase the work of the CETL and, on the other, set it in a wider context of teaching and research in the discipline. Following these principles two successful events were planned. The rst, Teaching Shakespeare (September 2006), brought together the launch of a report on this topic conducted by the English Subject Centre with an opportunity to highlight the work of the CAPITAL Centre at Warwick University.(3) The second event, Working it out: situated and work-related learning in the Humanities (March 2007), brought together two of the CETLs (CETH and ArtsWork) to share their experiences with a wide ranging audience of career advisors and academics.(4) At each event care was taken to place the work of the CETLs alongside similar work happening in institutions that did not contain CETLs. Indeed, it is important to acknowledge that while there are institutions that have beneted substantially from the new source of funding which CETLs provide, others have felt excluded from the apparent windfall. One of the aims of the work of my project was to extract lessons from the CETL work, which was often, by necessity, locally focused, to see how it might prove useful for the wider English community.
project or staff member that was dedicated to working within an English Department. Two of these CETLs focus on Enquiry-based and student directed learning: CEEBL: Centre for Excellence in Enquiry-Based Learning at the University of Manchester and CILASS: Centre for Inquiry based Learning in the Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Shefeld. Working along a similar theme is the Centre for Promoting Learner Autonomy at Shefeld Hallam University. More specically focused CETLs include the Centre for Excellence in Assessment for Learning at Northumbria University with an emphasis on new forms of assessment and the Centre for Career Management Skills (CCMS) at Reading University which looks at employability. Finally, the only CETL in the group to come from Northern Ireland, St. Marys Writing Centre at St Marys University College Belfast, looks more broadly at the issue of writing skills across the curriculum in all subjects. What came out of this second phase discussion with CETLs was a sense that across the disciplines university lecturers are struggling with very similar challenges. These included many of the issues raised at the Renewals conference: increasing class sizes, inexible and inadequate teaching spaces, increasing cultural diversity, the pressures imposed on students by the rising cost of education and the sense that students were increasingly
nding the shift to the independent learning model of higher education a struggle. Staff in all of the CETLs expressed their enthusiasm for having opportunities to discuss these issues with a broader group of colleagues than they were accustomed to addressing. Extending the discussion into more formal outcomes that could be published was seen as a huge advantage of the CETL work. Therefore in this second group of CETLs the work of the English Subject Centre was focussed on drawing out the specic project work going on in English and bringing it to the attention of a discipline specic audience. The Renewals conference gured prominently in these discussions, as did the submission of articles to the special UK issue of the journal Pedagogy.
The Relationship between the English Subject Centre and the selected CETLs
In taking a proactive approach to working with a group of selected CETLs the English Subject Centre has been able to participate in this relationship quite successfully. The CETLs are in a position to supply the Subject Centre with a great deal of concrete information about how teaching practice is changing. The Subject Centre therefore can rely on the CETLs for edivence to help to make its cases in policy discussions about the changing face of the discipline. The CETLs can in turn rely
The Project: Phase 2

The aim in the second phase of the project was to initiate discussions with an additional six CETLs which were more generic in their approach to pedagogy and therefore were tackling disciplines beyond the humanities. These six CETLs had a much wider remit but they each had at least one specic
Renewals delegate Moira Baker (Radford College) presenting her paper Bringing the Global home: the use of digital technology in an international women writers course.
3 Event archive for Teaching Shakespeare which contains videos of the presentations www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/events/event_detail.php?event_index=147 4 Event archive for Working it out: situated and work-related learning www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/events/event_detail.php?event_index=151
on the Subject Centre to place their work within a wider national context. It should be noted, however, that the CETLs have grown in strength and direction over the two and half years since they were established and increasingly they have been in a position to instigate their own dissemination activities. As one example amongst many, the CETH at UCLAN has launched a refereed journal to look at issues surrounding work-related learning.
Further reading
Renewals: Reguring University English in the 21st Century www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/renewals/ Professor N. Katherine Hayles, Literature as a Computational Practice www.dartington.ac.uk/drha06/mainspeakers/index. asp#hayles The Future of Higher Education 2003 White Paper www.dfes.gov.uk/hegateway/uploads/White%20Pape.pdf HEFCE CETL announcement www.hefce.ac.uk/learning/TInits/cetl/
Conclusions
Initially the aim of the CETL Liaison project was to single out the work of a small group of CETLs in order to create a dialogue that would be of benet to the English community as a whole. By meeting at an early stage with key staff in each of the designated CETLs it was possible to gauge the most useful ways of working collaboratively. Such work has included joint CETL events, conference participation and publications. In the future it is my hope that the work of the CETLs will be integrated into the work of the community in a seamless way. However, at this early stage in their development it seems essential to highlight how large a shift in practice is taking place, particularly towards a student-led model. To colleagues who feel they have been entirely unaffected by the CETL work I would suggest getting involved in the increasing number of events and conferences that these Centres are hosting, for the CETL initiative as a whole is destined to provoke a much wider debate about how we serve students and our own interests as teachers in the long run. If the face of the university is to change to meet the challenges of the 21st century then participation in thinking through those changes seems an essential activity for colleagues across the discipline. The outcome of the CETL initiative has been to extend the pedagogic debate and to develop a language for speaking to the government about the changes that are taking place. Radical shifts of practice in Higher Education cannot be fully resisted, largely because they are the result of societal shifts; however, the CETL work has given a voice to academics working at the coal face of teaching. By sharing practices across institutions and across disciplines this work can help to reinvigorate the profession by using government funding and interacting with government policy in a proactive way. In the face of mounting pressures for change it is essential that the experience and engagement that Richard Miller (in his plenary lecture at Renewals) suggested we instil in our students, is also being developed in us. The CETL initiative is a chance for academics to learn through doing as well as giving students the opportunity to take this approach. The RAE has gone a long way to support the model of competition and complacency that Elaine Showalter says has caused paralysis in the US. The CETL initiative is designed to counteract that tendency by appealing to our desire to share practices and experiences in a way that can support and foster productive institutional and national change in our shifting education environment.
Selected CETL Websites

English Subject Centre CETL Homepage www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/resources/cetl/ index.php The Capital Centre (Creativity and Performance in Teaching & Learning) University of Warwick www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/capital/ The Centre for Employability Through the Humanities (CETH) University of Central Lancashire www.uclan.ac.uk/facs/class/cfe/ceth/ ArtsWork Bath Spa University http://artswork.bathspa.ac.uk/ C4C: Collaborating for Creativity York St John University www2.yorksj.ac.uk/default.asp?Page_ID=2942&Parent_ ID=1761 Centre for Promoting Learner Autonomy www.shu.ac.uk/cetl/autonomy/index.html Shefeld Hallam University Centre for Excellence in Assessment for Learning Northumbria University http://northumbria.ac.uk/cetl_a/ Centre for Career Management Skills (CCMS) University of Reading www.rdg.ac.uk/ccms/index.php CEEBL - Centre for Excellence in Enquiry-Based Learning University of Manchester www.campus.manchester.ac.uk/ceebl/ CILASS - Centre for Inquiry-Based Learning in the Arts and Social Sciences University of Shefeld www.shef.ac.uk/cilass/index.html
Read Christie Carsons editorial commentary in this issue of the Newsletter on page 40
St. Marys Writing Centre St Marys University College Belfast www.stmarys-belfast.ac.uk/writingcentre/default.asp
English Literature at A Level:
the shape of things to come

The revised A Levels in English Literature contain some unexpected innovations, and raise new issues of transition to English Studies at HE.
In their English Subject Centre Report, English at A Level: A Guide for Lecturers in Higher Education (August 2006), Barbara Bleiman and Lucy Webster summarised what they thought would be the likely features of the revised A Levels in English Literature, English Language, and English Language & Literature. These revisions were to be the consequence of a major curriculum restructuring, announced by Ruth Kelly (the then Education Secretary) in 2005: As we write, (March 2006) A Level is undergoing a process of revision, based on the Education White Paper of 2005. The likely changes will be: i. A reduction from 6 to 4 assessed modules, to reduce the assessment burden on students and schools. ii. A rationalisation of the Assessment Objectives, probably leading to three or four AOs in each of the subjects, with no step up between AS and A2 and the increase in challenge being demonstrated by tasks and outcomes. iii. A streamlining of the specic content requirements to make it easier to create coherent courses. For instance, Awarding Bodies may be given more exibility about whether to place particular requirements in AS or A2. It also seems likely that the ruling out of any texts in translation will be softened, with a requirement that the majority of texts should have been written in English. iv. An increase in the minimum number of texts studied from six to twelve. The aim is to develop more varied ways of reading than only the close reading encouraged by a handful of set texts. v. The introduction of an extended project, with students choosing whether to focus it on a subject area or make it more cross-curricular. This is likely to be voluntary and may be the equivalent to an AS exam in value and size. vi. More challenging questions at the end of A Level exams, or another mechanism for ensuring that there is sufcient stretch in A Level. viii. A possible increase in internal assessment to 40% and internal assessment made compulsory. Most of what Bleiman and Webster accurately foreshadowed is now enshrined in the revised Subject Criteria for the three English AS and A Level subjects. These were published by the Qualications and Curriculum Authority (QCA - the body which regulates all pre-HE statutory assessment in the UK except Scotland), in September 2006, and provide the template which the Awarding Bodies (formerly Examination Boards) have to use in creating the AS and A Level specications (formerly syllabuses). The present article is both an update on what the QCA Subject Criteria and the proposed new specications in English Literature are offering and an attempt to identify some of the issues they raise in terms of transition from A Level to the study of English in Higher Education. It will also draw attention to two parallel developments raising further issues: the
Adrian Barlow is Director of Public Programmes at the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education. He is the author of Second Reading: Debating the Future of English at A Level (English Association 2005).
forthcoming Oxford University English Literature Admissions Test (ELAT), and the proposed new alternative to A Level English Literature, the Cambridge Pre-U qualication in English.
The Subject Criteria

When the revised Subject Criteria for all subjects were nally approved in September 2006, they conrmed that A Level English modular examinations will indeed be streamlined so that students will take four modules instead of six: two for AS and a further two (AS) for the full A Level. In a signicant change from the present arrangements, synoptic assessment is now to be spread between the two A2 units, and not concentrated in a single, nal unit. Essentially, A2 has been dened as being inherently synoptic. Assessment Objectives have been reduced to four, each applying both to AS essentially the rst half of a two-year A Level course - and to A2, the second half. Content requirements have been similarly adjusted. For instance, it is no longer a requirement that all three genres (as dened by QCA: simply prose, poetry and drama) be covered at both AS and A2, so long as at least two texts representing each genre are covered during the course as a whole. There is an extended series of periods 1300-1800, 1800-1945, post1990 from which texts must also be selected. This last is welcome: previously there was no requirement to study any texts post-1900. Texts in translation are allowed back into the fold (they had been explicitly excluded in 2000). Most signicantly, the minimum number of texts to be covered during a full A Level course has been increased from eight to twelve. How the Awarding Bodies (the Boards) dene text here, and whether they require them not only to have been covered during A Level teaching and preparation but also to be examined at the end of the course, has led to some intriguing differences between the proposed new specications, which will be summarised below. Given that the number of examined units has been reduced to four, the Boards have had to take seriously QCAs instruction that texts for study should be chosen so that they illuminate one another and encourage groupings that facilitate links or contrasts to support a coherent course of study. (English Literature Subject Criteria, 3.3)
Quietly dropped from the Criteria were any references to an extended project or to stretch and challenge - almost the only two elements of the original proposals for A Level reform in the Tomlinson Report of 2004 that Ruth Kelly had indicated she would preserve. Unexpectedly, however, coursework for English was preserved and indeed extended: it will now be mandatory, incorporated into both AS and A2, and carrying 40% of the total marks for the subject. This has provided all the Boards with an opportunity to introduce an element of creative writing or at least re-creative response, and will lead to one of the most signicant developments in A Level teaching since the introduction of modular assessment. Most of the new specications place this creative or re-creative/transformative writing requirement in the AS coursework unit. It will be a real challenge for teachers to develop appropriate pedagogies and methodologies, and for students to develop skills and condence, in this approach to creative/critical response all within what will be an even more crowded AS course of little more than two terms teaching time. The value of re-creative or transformative writing as a tool for developing and demonstrating critical responsiveness to language is well understood, but relatively few teachers and examiners are experienced in using it as an effective means of assessment.
OCR and WJEC) are still waiting for accreditation by QCA. This is due before September, and may mean that some details of the current proposals will be changed. The main outlines, however, are already clear. It is signicant that the Boards take different approaches to the requirement that 12 texts should be covered in the course. Indeed, they dene texts in different ways. Whereas OCR for instance requires reference to twelve whole texts in their examinations, AQA(a) makes clear that texts for wider reading may at AS include extracts; at A2 candidates must show evidence of having studied the equivalent of three texts. Edexcel will allow the inclusion of play reviews as texts. One of the set texts for AQA(b) will be a pre-released anthology of critical material. It remains to be seen whether QCA will allow these denitions of texts to meet their requirements for a wide range of literature of sufcient substance and quality to merit serious attention (3.7). Approaches to the assessment of set texts vary widely too: Edexcel proposes two open book examinations; OCR, two closed book papers. WJEC and AQA(a) and (b) will allow an open book examination at AS but a closed book examination at A2. The assessment of Shakespeare is another issue to which the Boards have responded in very different ways. In the present specications, assessment of Shakespeare must take place in AS (though some allow further study of Shakespeare at A2). Now the minimum requirement is much more open, see table below:
The Proposed Specications

At the time of writing (June 2007) the specications proposed by the mainland A Level Awarding Bodies (AQA, Edexcel,
Awarding Body AQA(a)
AS or A2, and Unit title A2: Extended Essay and Shakespeare Study
Assessment method Coursework: students select an extract (60-80 lines) for detailed commentary, linking it to the play as a whole Coursework: one essay on a Shakespeare tragedy on an aspect of dramatic/tragic genre Coursework: one essay on any Shakespeare play, to include comparison with another play and analysis of critical response Closed book examination: one essay on a specied text, responding to a view of the play Closed book examination: one essay comparing a Shakespeare play with another, non-Shakespeare text
AQA (b)
AS: Dramatic Genres
Edexcel
AS: Explorations in Drama
OCR
A2: Drama and Poetry pre-1800 A2: Shakespeare and Poetry in Context
WJEC
The titles of the units in which the Shakespeare assignment occurs, and the variety of assessment methods and tasks, indicate how far the experience of students applying to read English after A Level may vary. It is worth noting, too, that the requirements listed above are minimum requirements: some students may have the opportunity to study additional Shakespeare texts during their course. By contrast, however, students who take the combined English Language and Literature A Level are not required by the QCA Subject Criteria to have studied Shakespeare at all. The need for Shakespeare study to take place alongside the other eleven texts, and to be assessed as one assignment within four units, has led to the kind of linking with other texts seen in the Edexcel and WJEC specications. Groupings of text by genre or theme are now a key feature of the specications. The most extreme example is AQA(a) which requires the texts selected for study at AS to be linked to one of three themes: either Victorian Literature or World War One Literature or Identity in Modern Literature. For A2 its theme is Love through the Ages. AQA(b) by contrast, focuses on genres, with Narrative and Drama as the main focus of AS and, at A2, either Elements of the Gothic or Elements of the Pastoral. It is particularly in the A2 synoptic units (though the term synoptic has really lost the sharp focus it had in the Curriculum 2000 specications) that these groupings come into their own. OCR for instance lists a series of suggested topics and genres which teachers and students can choose as the basis for an extended coursework essay of 3000 words. Indeed, it is a feature of all the proposed specications that there is a greater element of free choice, offset however by the number of papers in which texts are paired. In the proposed OCR Unit 3 (Drama and Poetry pre-1800) candidates will have to answer one of a series of generic questions by comparing two texts: one poetry, one drama. This could see essays, for instance, comparing the religious poems of John Donne with Marlowes Doctor Faustus. The revised and reduced Assessment Objectives (now four, with no additional AOs reserved for A2) have led to an apparent reduction of emphasis on contextual study and a return to greater emphasis on close reading. Not all the specications, however, invite or demand study of unseen material under exam conditions and sometimes the close reading
is limited to discussion of a single poem or passage from a prepared text. Edexcels is the only one to include response to unseen material in both AS and A2 written papers. The issue here is one of particular concern, since lack of condence in close reading skills was the single most signicant complaint lodged against students making the transition to rst year courses, in the English Subject Centres recent Reports on Transition and on Shakespeare in HE. It is a moot point, too, whether all the revised specications will be equally helpful to those students preparing for the new English Literature Admissions Test (ELAT) for applicants to read English at Oxford. This examination is a 90-minute test involving comparative analysis of two or three linked unseen passages. It is in fact curious how out of step, in terms of unseen close reading, the UK subject criteria have become. Unseen critical comment and appreciation is a compulsory element of the Baccalaureate International (IB), and of the international option (OIB) of the French Baclaureate; it also features in the US Advanced Placement English examinations, in the Singapore Highers and in the A Levels of Cambridge International Examinations (CIE). Most signicant of all, CIEs new Cambridge Pre-U qualication, to be introduced in 2008 as a direct rival to UK A Levels, will contain a compulsory unseen paper worth 25% of the total qualication. Like the new UK A Levels, the Pre-U will consist of four units; unlike them, however, it will be a linear syllabus, with all four papers (including one compulsory coursework element, Personal Investigation) being taken at the end of the two-year course. Again, unlike A Levels, there will be no assessment at an intermediate standard (AS). The minimum number of texts set for examination will be six, but the syllabus stresses the need for wider reading, both as preparation for the Unseen paper and as preparation for transition to HE - the underpinning principle of the Pre-U as a whole. Teachers will face a daunting choice when the specications are nally accredited by QCA. This is still scheduled for September 2007, giving English Departments a year to develop new schemes of work and (in some instances most notably teaching re-creative and transformative writing for AS coursework) new methodologies and expertise. The new ELAT test will be introduced this autumn for students
applying to read English at Oxford in 2008; the rst examination of the new AS examinations will be January 2009, and of A2 examinations January 2010, with rst certication of the new A Level in Summer 2010. June 2010 will also see the rst session of the Pre-U in English. When Curriculum 2000 was introduced, HE English departments and Admissions Tutors complained that they had been left in the dark about the changes, not having been adequately consulted about their possible impact on students applying to read English Studies. Questions of transition have become increasingly insistent, and have been highlighted by the English Subject Centres recent Reports on Transition and on Shakespeare; now, with these new specications, a new set of questions will arise: Will the new specications mean that students are better prepared for transition to English at HE? What impact will the signicant increase in compulsory coursework, and the accompanying reduction in units of assessment from six to four, have on teaching and learning? Is raising the number of texts to be studied likely to stimulate wider reading? How well do the new specications address the perceived need for greater emphasis on close reading? Does it matter that the assessment of Shakespeare will now vary so much between specications? How well do the new QCA Subject Criteria map onto the revised QAA Benchmark Statements for English? To discuss these questions and their implications for schools and HE, the English Association is holding a conference at University College London on 6th October, specically designed to bring together A Level teachers and Admissions Tutors. This introductory survey of the shape of things to come must end with two caveats: rst, that the discussion above has focused on English Literature, to the exclusion of English Language and English Language & Literature; and, second, that the nal A Level specications, when accredited by QCA, may incorporate adjustments and changes to the drafts published so far. What is not in doubt, however, is that the new Curriculum 2008 will be no less far-reaching in its impact than its troubled predecessor of 2000.
Newsletter 13
New NTFS Fellows

The winners of the 2007 National Teaching Fellowship Awards have been announced. Among them, the English Subject Centre is delighted to congratulate Linda Anderson (Reader in Creative Writing at the Open University), Alan Rice (Reader in American Cultural Studies at the University of Central Lancashire), Duco van Oostrum (Senior Lecturer in the School of English at Shefeld University) and Jane Sunderland (Senior Lecturer in Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University). They are among the 50 individual award winners each of whom will receive 10,000 to be used for personal development in learning and teaching. The National Teaching Fellowship Scheme (NTFS) recognises and rewards teachers and learning support staff in higher education in England and Northern Ireland for their excellence in teaching.
You can nd further information about the award and see the full list of 2007 Fellows on the Higher Education Academy website: www.heacdemy.ac.uk/ourwork/professional/ntfs
T3 Teaching, Topics and Texts

www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/resources/t3/
If youre wondering how to begin your seminar tomorrow, or have a fresh idea for teaching a particular text, T3 is for you. Organised by text and topic, T3 is a growing resource of teaching ideas designed by and for hard-pressed English lecturers. To encourage you to share yours, were offering a 10 book token for each one (up to a maximum of 50 per applicant).
Heres one of our most recent entries:

Text Theme Activity Paradise Lost by John Milton Plot and Character Curriculum vitae
Students are asked to prepare a Curriculum Vitae for one of the characters in Paradise Lost. It may be helpful to provide a template or outline of the appropriate categories for a CV. This encourages students to read through and across the text, picking out the detailed information Milton provides as to the history of many characters, often also central in terms of plot or theology. Submitted by: Helen Smith (University of York)
Is English a Young, White, Female, Middle-Class Subject?

By Jane Gawthrope, Manager, English Subject Centre
A brief analysis of recent UCAS admissions data suggests further challenges lie ahead for diversity and widening participation in English.
In order to shed some light on the background of students in our discipline, the English Subject Centre recently commissioned from UCAS an analysis of applicant data. Data for 2004 were analysed by age, ethnicity, social class and disability and the highlights are presented here. UCAS also supplied data for comparator subjects (sociology, media studies, American studies, history and philosophical studies) and English itself was presented in terms of two subject codes: Q3 English Studies and W8 Imaginative Writing. Unless stated otherwise, English is used here to refer to the sum of Q3 English Studies and W8 Imaginative Writing. The gures show that, set against comparator subjects, English attracts more applicants under twenty, more female applicants, more applicants from high socio-economic groups and more applicants from grammar and independent schools. Imaginative writing attracts more applicants over twenty and more male applicants than English. Details are given below.
Getty Images
is 68% and for all UCAS applicants 69%. The highest socioeconomic classication higher managerial and professional occupations generates 24% of applications to English (19% for comparator subjects and 22% for UCAS applicants as a whole.)
School Background
Data on previous institution type shows that English attracts a higher proportion of applicants from grammar (10%) and independent (19%) schools than comparator subjects (5% grammar and 9% independent.) For UCAS applicants as a whole, 7% come from grammar and 12% independent schools.
Age Group and Gender

English applicants are notably young with 86% under 20 years. (80% of all UCAS applicants are under 20, and 82% for comparator subjects.) The prole for imaginative writing is different however, with only 71% of applicants being under 20 and therefore more applicants coming from older age groups. English Studies students (Q3 only) are predominantly female (72%), although imaginative writing is more balanced with 55% of applicants being female. Comparator subjects taken together show that 60% of applicants are female. Only media studies has a majority of male applicants 54%.
Discussion
There is little to nd in these gures to challenge the stereotype of the English student as a young, white, middle-class female who is more likely than other students to have come from an independent or grammar school. However, we should bear in mind the different statistics are in some ways reporting the same thing, for example children from higher socio-economic groups are more likely to go to independent school. Nevertheless, despite the ongoing strength of applications to English overall (up 7.6% in 2007 compared to 2006), these gures obviously raise concern about diversity within the discipline at present and in the future. On most measures English is less diverse than other liberal arts subjects, although imaginative writing does appear to recruit a more diverse cohort than English per se. The fact that English is a popular A Level subject means that the pool of applications is pre-determined. English doesnt have to sell itself to potential students as a new subject. Is it because English enjoys a sustained and healthy level of applications that it has not gone out of its way to attract non-traditional students and diversify its intake? Between 2008 and 2018 the number of 18 year-olds in the UK is set to fall from about 800k to 700k, so competition for students between universities and disciplines must intensify in response to the demographics. Complacency about recruitment, either in terms of its overall level or its makeup, is therefore dangerous to the future health of the discipline.
Ethnic Group
Ninety-one percent of applicants to English are white with applicants from other ethnic groups ranging from 1% to 4%. This compares with 83% of all UCAS applications in the white group. If we look at comparator subjects, sociology and media are the most diverse with 85% and 84% of white applicants respectively, whilst American studies and history and philosophical studies are the least diverse with 93% and 92% of applicants being white.
Disability
Only 4% of English applicants declare a disability which is in line with comparator subjects and UCAS applicants as a whole.
Socio-Economic Group
Seventy-three percent of applicants to English come from higher socio-economic groups; the equivalent for comparator subjects
Newsletter 13
Book Reviews
53 Interesting Creative Writing Exercises
Sue Habeshaw and Colin Evans (Technical and Educational Services, Bristol 2006)
There is no shortage of creative writing manuals on the market, most of them aimed uncomfortably at a space somewhere between professional teachers of creative writing, students in creative writing classes taught by professional teachers of creative writing, and people who think that a book can teach them all they need to know about the art of ction. It is refreshing, therefore, to nd this book, the contents of which are no more and no less than what it says on the cover. As the authors state in the brief introduction, This is a book of fty-three creative writing exercises that we have chosen because we have found that they help students to develop their writing skills, extend their repertoire, experiment with genres and styles and generally produce satisfying pieces of writing. The exercises are grouped into seven self-explanatory sections: Starters; Story; Poetry; Dialogue; Writing from experience; Writing process; Feedback. Each exercise is described in a thorough and straightforward manner and attempts to explain why the exercise is useful and what learning outcomes can be expected, as well as potential pitfalls. The why this exercise is useful part often borders on the redundant and/or pedantic, but may also be useful to inexperienced teachers of creative writing. The book is aimed solely at creative writing teachers, and focuses on the classroom experience, but without providing a prescriptive program for teaching the subject. For this it is to be commended. It presents a wide range of practical exercises and, most helpfully, often suggests ideas for variations. Many of the exercises seem to be designed for inexperienced writers, but then, inexperienced writers are most in need of instruction via useful exercises, and virtually every single exercise could be adapted, where necessary, to suit advanced classes. Many of the exercises, however, are extremely timeconsuming (90 minutes to two hours), which makes them difcult to incorporate into a 12-week course. On the other hand, for courses that run longer, or in which the focus is solely on writing (rather than on creative writing as part of a program of literary study), this may be less of a problem. Many of the exercises also focus on autobiographical starting points, which could, if proper care is not taken by tutors, lead students in overly solipsistic directions in their classroom writing. One nal qualm is that the book features a subtle product placement for Metaplan, a corporate group communication system, which is unnecessary and in somewhat bad taste. Ultimately the aim of 53 Interesting Creative Writing Exercises is to provide blueprints for exercises as a teaching aid for tutors. As such, it is a practical and welcome addition to the creative writing manual market.
Douglas Cowie, Royal Holloway, University of London
Are you...
...incorporating any form of work-related learning (for example placements, case studies, realistic work environments) within an HE English programme?
If so we would very much like to hear from you. Together with Dr Helen Day of the Centre for Employability in the Humanities at the University of Central Lancashire, the Subject Centre is producing a guide to work-related learning in English, and wishes to draw on current practice. If you have something to contribute, please email jane.gawthrope@rhul.ac.uk and we will contact you.
Book Reviews
English: The Condition of the Subject

Philip W. Martin, Editor (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006)
I have tried to think of an aspect of English studies that this volume does not cover and in all honesty I cannot think of one. The title English: The Condition of the Subject plays on the various interpretations of the discipline available to the English scholar. Though it initially seems declarative, its double meaning undermines that rst impression. The reader cannot fail to pick up on these double meanings: Philip W. Martin opens his Introduction by discussing them. The Condition of the Subject doesnt just point to a diagnostic assessment of the discipline but puns upon the title terms contingent meanings of conditionality and subjectivity. The title therefore indicates the relativism and fragmentation of the discipline and its practitioners in its current state. Evidently, this book will not offer a single diagnosis or denition of university English. The contents of the volume certainly reect the titles relativist meaning. As I said, theres not an angle or approach I can think of that isnt accounted for or covered. What this engenders is a rewarding if at times dizzying reading experience. With so many perspectives accounted for, conict inevitably occurs. And therein lies much of the joy and value of this book: to see how much is contradictory within English studies today and yet to notice how incompatible approaches continue to exist side by side in the discipline. Two examples will sufce, though the volume contains many more. First, a number of essays on different topics agree in aligning English with the Humanities & Social Sciences; Ronald Carter claims a greater inclusion of Linguistics, of the study of demotic speech alongside the written word, will bring English Departments to contribute to direct social evaluation and analysis. By contrast others indicate the subjects future will reach into the Arts; Graeme Harpers essay on the inuence and implications of the increasing popularity of Creative Writing within English Departments certainly points in this opposite epistemological direction. Second, two essays that consider canonical selections in the colonial and postcolonial contexts (Natasha Distiller on Shakespeare studies in South Africa; Revathi Krishnaswamy on Indian writing in English) consider, with very different conclusions, the sociopolitical effects of English Literature as imperially exported ideology. But in opposition to this are essays that abstract the discipline into the purely intellectual. Mark Robson argues for the value of English in its apolitical isolation from the world in his defence of Impractical Criticism and Craig A. Hamilton agrees with Robsons abstracted reading of the discipline in his argument for its role as the study of the Imagination and the Life of the Mind. Inevitably the broad range of subjectivities that form the volume make challenging demands on the reader, who is required to be as intellectually diverse as is the subject itself. The specialised vocabulary of the different subject positions can be alienating and difcult at times. But these difculties have been anticipated. Philip W. Martin structures the essays under three broad chapter headings which help the reader to initially process the separate positions of each. In addition the contributors take evident care to outline their eld to the reader before making their case; I must point here to Natasha Distillers essay for its masterful management of a complex background made easy for the uninitiated reader. In fact this volume is laudably self-aware of the negative implications of its own fragmented composition. Martin notes in his Introduction that a call to unity is paradoxically the common theme of these very different essays: A number of the contributors here write of the necessity for homogenising practice or understanding, be that theoretical, pedagogic, or conceptual. English has been celebrating its latitude for some time now, but there are warning voices in this volume suggesting intrinsic weaknesses in this liberalism (p.11) There is a fascinating tension in this volume, then, inasmuch as it displays the very diversity it seeks to dispose of. So, whilst the volume is suitable for dipping into, I hesitate to recommend this approach. The value of the book is precisely in the experience of its totality: its breadth, its conicts, its debates. True, reading across the many disputing voices may not shake me from my belief in the validity and priority of my own approach to the Subject. There is a little too much proselytising in some of the approaches and the exorbitant display of such a number of opinions is less likely to convince me of my particular wrongness than a focussed and unied argument for any one case may have. However the volume is not designed to convert the reader to a particular position contained therein. Rather it aims to inform the reader beyond the particularity of their own subject-position and thus to draw them into the much needed debate over the future of the subject. In this, English: The Condition of the Subject is entirely and deservedly successful.
Dr Vicky Greenaway Post-doctoral Research Fellow Royal Holloway, University of London
The Student Experience
Student Literary Societies

Chatsworth House
In a bid to revive the tradition of student literary societies, the Subject Centre is offering start-up funds to departments. Students at St Martins College were among the rst to take advantage of this opportunity.
Vicky Backhouse, a former student at St. Martins College, reports that As third years, my friends and I felt that St Martins students would benet from an English Society. We thought that the society would be a great way to encourage students to take their passion for English literature away from lecture halls and seminar groups. We hoped that by running trips to places of interest such as Stratford-upon-Avon and Bront Country and inviting guest speakers to workshop with the students, that it would enhance grades, and help them make the most of their university experience. To get started we needed funding, which is where the English Subject Centre helped us enormously. We were awarded 500 to help us to get our Society up and running. I am happy to say that our rst trip to Chatsworth House in Derbyshire was a great success. It was amazing to see rst hand, the inspiration behind Mr Darcys Pemberley, in Jane Austens Pride and Prejudice. It was a wonderful experience and one which our members thoroughly enjoyed.
English Subject Centre Funding

The English Subject Centre is offering one-off, seedcorn payments of 500 to help departments encourage literary/ cultural activities that do not directly support course modules. Some of these activities might involve collaboration with (and attract part-funding from) local arts organisations. Projects the money might be used for include the following: the development of student groups and literary societies talks by visiting speakers reading parties
creative writing activities theatre trips a website a magazine lm screenings play-reading groups
Whats the Catch?

It is a condition of the funding that, within one year after receiving the grant, a case study of c.2,000 words be produced,
describing the project and giving an account of what has been learnt from it and what the benets to students have been. The case study will be posted on the Subject Centre website and may be written by either a student or a member of staff (or both). It is expected that, in all cases, students will be closely involved with the planning and organisation of the funded activities. A full-time permanent member of staff must, however, be named as contact for the Subject Centre and will be responsible
for approving expenditure. Please note, applications from existing societies will only be considered if they involve new activities.
Summary of the activities for which you require funding and the reasons why you think they will benet students. Details about the activities (type, number). The number and level of students you expect to be involved. How the money will be spent. How you propose to continue the activity beyond the funded period. Any other supporting information that you feel to be appropriate.
Applying for Funding

If you would like to apply for this funding, please send a proposal of about 250 words describing the activities you would like us to fund to Jonathan Gibson (jonathan. gibson@rhul.ac.uk) at the Subject Centre. The proposal should contain the following information: Contact details (name, email address, postal address, phone number).
Every year the Higher Education Academy sponsors a student essay writing competition on a set topic. Each subject centre picks its winner who is then entered into the next round. While he did not gain the grand prize, Open University student Michael Aicken did pen the 2007 winning essay from English and won 250. We are pleased to present his essay on the Academys set topic:
What advice would you give to students starting your course?

Michael Aicken, Open University
I am a mature student studying part-time (whilst working full-time) for a BA Honours in Literature at The Open University (OU) and my advice here is given with the hope that it will be useful to someone contemplating a similar course of action. In offering advice on studying for a degree in literature, it is difcult to forget one of literatures most famous scenes of advicegiving. In Act One of Hamlet, Polonius advises his son, Laertes, on good conduct and faultless living as Laertes prepares to return to study in France. Polonius speaks a series of pithy maxims, whose impact is perhaps best shown by his inability to follow his own advice to Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice. In this play of good counsel ignored and bad counsel followed, it is sobering to all would-be givers and takers of advice to recall that both Polonius and Laertes come to a sticky end. Samuel Johnson memorably described Polonius as one who excels in general principles but fails in the particular application and so, with Dr Johnson in mind, I intend in this essay to offer advice of as particular application as possible. My rst piece of advice is not to spend too long in contemplation. As Samuel Johnson said Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent. Consideration of studying part-time for six years, of contracted leisure time, and of sunny weekends spent essay-writing may not benet from prolonged reection. My personal experience is that the various demands on ones time tend solely to increase with age, and that two years spent considering starting a degree course are two years which would have been more productively spent enrolled on the course. It can be a formidable prospect to initially enrol on a full-length part-time course, such as the OUs Introduction to the Humanities, and I would recommend trying a short, inexpensive, taster course rst. My rst attempt at OU study was the twelve-week course Shakespeare: An Introduction. In completing the two assignments, I was given: condence that I could nd time for study; reassurance that I still enjoyed studying; useful practice at exercising my rusty essay-writing skills; and, not least, 10 points (out of 360) towards my degree. My second piece of advice is on preparatory reading. It is always advisable to read as many set-texts as possible
EC012 Newsletter 13.indd 35
5/10/07 14:19:35
before the course begins (and, for the OU, reading lists are available online), but it is also a good time for the indulgence of reading, for example, that lengthy novel youve always wanted to read; as, with the course underway and course materials and set-texts to read and re-read, the appeal of reading for pleasure, say, the 900 pages of David Coppereld will be small. (And, yes, its still sitting unread on my shelf.) As well as set-texts, the most productive preparatory reading that I undertook for my course was in reading both literary essays and about how to write literary essays. Instructive essays full of useful examples of how to present an argument, and how to engage with current critical debates are perhaps most readily available in the introductions to books in series such as Oxford Worlds Classics, Penguin Classics, and The Everyman Library. For more particular advice on writing undergraduate essays there are plenty of self-help books available; my favourite is Practical Criticism by John Peck and Martin Coyle. It is an excellent guide
on how to efciently structure an essay and how to develop an argument based on close reading of a text. Its chapter Twenty Questions based on hints and tips for poetry analysis helpfully provides answers to those questions that you may think of, but often feel too embarrassed to ask: questions such as What is the worst mistake anyone can make in poetry criticism?, What is [an] examiner looking for? and, vitally, Why is the word O used so often in poetry?. In common with many literature students, I came to the subject through my love of novel-reading and it is the study of poetry and drama that I need to work hardest at. For poetry, my best investment has been The Norton Anthology, a large, single-volume, chronological anthology which, by a mix of casual browsing and close reading, has given me a practical introduction to 1000 years of poetry in English. I have enjoyed reading poems that I might otherwise not have read and, by ipping backwards and forwards, from the poems by Christina Rossetti,
for example, I have been able to put her writing in context with that of her contemporaries. My other advice for poetry is extremely practical try writing some yourself. This could be done by taking the OUs short course Start Writing Poetry. I took this course and I found that my enjoyment and appreciation of the craft of, for example, writing sonnets and villanelles, has been enhanced by my own meagre attempts at writing in these forms. For drama, my advice is again practical try to see as much as possible if not at the theatre, then on lm. I have found it particularly helpful to read a play (or, more usually, an opening scene) and then to compare my thoughts about staging and performance with the decisions made in a production that I have subsequently gone to see. To succeed in a literature degree you will need, among other things, knowledge of social, political and literary history, a technical vocabulary of literary terms and an ability to write lucidly in support of your ideas. This is a daunting prospect, and it can seem difcult to know where to start. Samuel Johnson once commented on teaching that while you are considering which of two things to teach your child rst, another boy has learnt them both and, following this, my advice is not to worry where to start, but to get started. You will ultimately have to discover which methods work best for you, and this will undoubtedly be taken by following advice from different sources and, through trial and error, nding what you prefer. In this spirit, my nal piece of advice is a blend of both Samuel Johnson and Polonius. As Johnson said of reading, A man ought to read just as inclination takes him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good, and as Polonius said to Laertes, to thine own self be true.
Recommended Texts
Ferguson, M., Salter, M.J., and Stallworthy, J. (eds.)(1996, 4th ed) The Norton Anthology of Poetry, New York, W.W. Norton & Company. Peck, J. and Coyle, M. (1995, 2nd edn) Practical Criticism, Basingstoke, Palgrave. Watch this space for details on next years competition
EC012 Newsletter 13.indd 36
5/10/07 14:19:37
desert island texts
Getty Images
In this new regular item, lecturers registered in our Directory of Experience and Interests www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/nd/colleagues/index.php highlight their favourite books. Sign up today, and your desert island texts could feature in the next Newsletter.
Elaine Treharne
Julia Donaldson and Axel Shefer, The Gruffalo.
A wonderful childrens book that my daughter knew by heart when she was two. So convincing was she that we thought she could actually read.
John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America.

A hugely entertaining book lled with humour and pathos that I read while on a road trip in the south-west USA. It was my introduction to Steinbeck (and his poodle).
Elaine Treharne is Professor of Medieval Literature at the University of Leicester. She is the Convenor of the English Association Special Interest Group, The History of Books and Texts: www.le.ac. uk/engassoc; Chair of TOEBI: www.hcu. ox.ac.uk/toebi/ and Principal Investigator, The Production and Use of English Manuscripts, 1060 to 1220, http:// www.le.ac.uk/ee/ em1060to1220/ index.htm
Giuseppe di Lampedusa, The Leopard.

This has to be one of the most evocative, extraordinary books ever written. I read it after being to Palermo and was glad not to recognise any of modern-day Sicily in it.
Thomas Hardy, A Pair of Blue Eyes.

Any Hardy would be in my list of top books, but this one remains a favourite.
Anonymous, The Vercelli Book.

This tenth-century book of sermons and poems is a must-read! Among its other vibrant texts warning of the need to be penitent in anticipation of Doomsday, The Dream of the Rood stands out as a poetic masterpiece that is second to none.
Katie Wales, A Dictionary of Stylistics.

Sounds dull, but isnt! Should be bedtime-reading for every English Language and Literature lover.
Louisa May Alcott, Little Women.

Didnt every female reader want to be Jo until she turned down Lauries proposal of marriage? Sigh.
IT Works!
Brett Lucas casts his eye over recent developments in the world of e-learning
News
E-literacy skills materials
Stacy Gillis at Newcastle has completed a terric project designing an information literacy skills module for rst year undergraduates which has generated a lot of reusable material for all of us. Nine modules were created and each one is a potential source of ideas as well as stimulus for thinking about ideas of your own. The great thing about VLEs is that they enable you to deliver essential material like this online while your students are doing other things with you in the classroom. Whether used on their own or weaved into existing modules these resources are well worth checking out. http://tinyurl.com/2rw8p8
Brett Lucas is the Learning Technologist and Website Developer at the English Subject Centre.
What is my Avatar going to wear to class tomorrow?

Just when you were beginning to master teaching in this life, keep your eyes peeled for exciting new teaching ideas to emerge from Second Life. Second Life is a 3D virtual world that is capturing the imagination of educators around the world. The English and PALATINE (Dance, Drama and Music) Subject Centres have joined up with a team headed by the Kings Visualisation Lab for an EDUSERV funded project. The project involves the importing of a range of pre-existing 3D theatre models, ancient through to Elizabethan, into the Second Life environment and supplementing these with existing and new interpretative content and a spectrum of original interactive tools, scenarios and automated tutorials. The ve educational projects which have been selected will provide explorations into the new creative pedagogy of Second Life and include Virtual Poiesis, performance of Renaissance plays, staging of improvisational theatre (Commedia dellarte) as well as exploration of set design and space. http://tinyurl.com/2l6gts
Teacher Training Videos

Russell Stannard, a lecturer in ICT and Multimedia at Westminster University, has created a website to showcase his growing archive of training videos for teachers. The videos use screen capture technology and so are extremely easy to follow. Current videos include: How to use Blackboard, How to create blogs, and 24 Tips for PowerPoint. Well worth a look www.teachertrainingvideos.com/
New Books
Download the free online book (made available through the Creative Commons License): Theory and Practice of Online Learning (Athabasca University, 2004) by Terry Anderson & Fathi Elloumi (editors). http://cde.athabascau.ca/online_book/
IT Works!
Tools
Slideshare
is the YouTube for presentations, a place where you can upload your presentation then share it with the world. The downside is that your presentation is saved as a ash le which means no special effects, transitions etc., and just like YouTube people can leave comments. There is also a feature allowing you to embed presentations in your blogs. A useful tool to disseminate a set of slides quickly. www.slideshare.net/
EMPRESSR
is a web-based presentation authoring tool. You can actually create presentations online using the tool, upload your assets like pictures, sound etc. and share it with others. If you are constantly having problems with incompatible fonts and formatting in PowerPoint, or Mac vs. Windows issues but you have guaranteed web access this might be a useful tool. www.empressr.com/index.aspx
Wmatrix
is a software tool for corpus analysis and comparison. It provides a contemporary web interface to the USAS and CLAWS corpus annotation tools (grammatical tagging), and standard corpus linguistic methodologies such as frequency lists and concordances. It also extends the keywords method to key grammatical categories and key semantic elds. How about using it with your students? Contact paul@comp.lancs.ac.uk to give it a try.
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, cellphone 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!
Adobe Digital Editions

is a free eBook reader for your PC. The interface is simple and intuitive to use and there is a library and reading mode, bookmarks and even bookshelves to organise your books. Free sample books are available. www.adobe.com/products/digitaleditions/
Edutxt
is a tool that enables you to send mass SMS messages to your students. Check rst because your university may already have it. To make things easy there is even a Moodle (VLE) plug-in. www.txttools.co.uk/edutxtInfo.do
Focus on
PRISM
PRISM is a new interdisciplinary learning website produced by our sister organisation PALATINE (the Dance , Drama & Music Subject Centre). Prism allows lecturers and students to view and assemble collections of exemplar works from the subject areas of dance, music, theatre, architecture & design, art and lm in some of the inuential art movements of the modern period in Europe and the United States. Works, productions and artefacts are grouped by movement (or ism). Exemplars are contributed by subject specialists and each one is accompanied by a rationale that includes examples of how the work might be used in learning and teaching across the creative and performing arts. The resource also allows users to save material in a password protected area and upload new coursework to the website. http://prism.palatine.ac.uk/
The Last Word
In recognising that students no longer possess or, in fact, in many cases value the kind of deep attention that University education has always fostered it is necessary to come to understand the expertise that is involved in what Katherine Hayles called hyper attention(1). Students ability and even expectation that they can and will tackle several tasks at once can be usefully integrated into a creative model of teaching. In facilitating hyper attention in the classroom not only can a new kind of social interaction evolve but new kinds of creative outcomes might be developed. Through the work of CETLs (Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning) many students have been given greater power to inuence the process and outcomes of their own learning. This is not to say that old methods of teaching should not continue or that deep attention should be abandoned. At the July 2007 Renewals Conference Richard Miller convincingly argued in favour of the benets of attentive reading. On the contrary, we must acknowledge that greater social diversity and economic pressures in education can be addressed through a number of innovative strategies. Students seem to come to university less prepared to study in some respects but they are innitely more technically procient than they have been in the past. If the students skills in this area can be usefully harnessed to enhance their learning experiences then this must be seen to be a positive development. In their plenary talks at Renewals both Alan Liu and Richard Miller indicated how technology has helped redene the role of the lecturer inside and outside the classroom. Alan Lius extraordinarily expansive approach to addressing the Web 2.0 world not only detailed the way in which developments in web technology have changed attitudes towards authorship and authority but also how our current anxiety mirrors ideas about loss of control and loss of inward knowledge, dating back to the development of the technology of writing. For those of us trying to engage our students with ideas about academic rigor the cloud of contributors who create collective documents, such as Wikipedia, present real questions. While Liu has developed a research policy for the use of this particular online resource he highlighted how difcult it is to push students, who are pressed for time, to move beyond the answer that is good enough.(2) Richard Miller emphasised an approach to teaching students in the age of distraction. His answer is to give students encouragement and training in the art of focusing their attention. The job of the Humanities, he said, was to teach the students to grapple with complexity and ambiguity, not to try to erase it. The aim of his teaching, which attempts to gain the benets of reading in slow motion, is to engage the students in the importance of addressing multiple perspectives.(3)
The Last Word
Why CETLs Should Matter To You by Christie Carson, Royal Holloway, University of London
I believe it is essential to gain a balance between deep and hyper attention and while other hierarchies are usefully breaking down in the universities there must remain a hierarchy of experience or else the purpose of a university education disappears. The activities which surround the CETL programme have raised these issues in an important rst step towards looking at the university experience in the 21st century. The national CETL conference held at the University of Warwick in March 2007 began by looking at the very specic work of individual Centres but ended by beginning to address the much bigger question of the future shape and function of the university as well as the future role of the academic. By bringing teaching colleagues into a national dialogue about the nature of specic practices in specic institutions it has been possible to open up quite fundamental but extremely important and pressing questions that must be addressed about our future. For many of us working in a university today is a very different experience from the one we witnessed as students or even experienced as junior lecturers. What has been interesting in speaking to colleagues who are working in these Centres for Excellence is to discover how similar their stories are. While most have passed through a period of resistance or frustration with the current state of affairs, by pursuing personal and often quite institutionally specic approaches to teaching, these colleagues have developed new skills and wider recognition for their work. Therefore one of the more general outcomes of the CETL work has been a reinvigoration of the profession from within. Those colleagues who have had the opportunity to be involved in the pedagogic discussions instigated by the CETLs in their own institutions or in institutions they have visited have repeatedly reported their surprise and delight to discover other colleagues tackling similar problems and challenges in the classroom. If it has done nothing else it seems that the CETL initiative has made it possible to be unashamedly passionate about teaching once more. The activities of the CETLs might be seen to be somewhat removed from the daily activities of some colleagues. However, I would argue that what this initiative has developed is a much greater engagement with pedagogic research both in the discipline and across disciplines. The discussions around and coming out of the CETLs have helped to highlight the fact that the issue of a changing student body is not localized. In coming to understand how universal this social trend is, it has become essential to acknowledge the necessity of making changes in pedagogy that address the students we have rather than the students we once had or would like to have. The focus of these changes has been a movement towards social and collaborative learning. Therefore to understand the activities taking place in the CETLs is to understand the changes that are taking place in the profession more generally.
1 Professor N. Katherine Hayles, English Department, University of California, Los Angeles, set out the difference she sees between deep attention and hyper attention in a Keynote address entitled: Literature as a Computational Practice presented on 5 September 2006 at the Digital Resources in the Humanities and the Arts Conference at Dartington College of Arts. 2 Alan Liu Knowledge 2.0? The University and Web 2.0 a plenary talk at Renewals: Reguring University English in the 21st Century, Thursday 5 July, Royal Holloway University of London www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/archive/mediaplayer/player.html 3 Richard E. Miller Reading in Slow Motion: The Humanities and the Work of the Moment a plenary talk at Renewals: Reguring University English in the 21st Century, Saturday 7 July, Royal Holloway University of London www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/archive/mediaplayer/player.html
Forthcoming...
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.
The English Subject Centre, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham TW20 0EX T 01784 443221 esc@rhul.ac.uk www.english.heacademy.ac.uk

Newsletter 13

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Newsletter 13

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

English Subject Centre

Plagiarism and Plagiarism Studies

The Wrong Dora Russell: research-informed learning in a digital world

English Literature at A Level: the shape of things to come

Teaching Welsh Writing in English

Is English a Young, White, Female, Middle-Class Subject?

The English Subject Centre Staff

Cover Image: Trafc at Night Getty Images

Subject Centre News

Student Literary Societies

Teaching Welsh Writing in English Jane Aaron

Desert Island Texts Elaine Treharne

IT Works Brett Lucas

English Literature at A Level: the shape of things to come Adrian Barlow

The Last Word Christie Carson

Is English a Young, White, Female, Middle-Class Subject? Jane Gawthrope

Cert no. SA-COC-1530

Newsletter 13 October 2007 01

Nicole King Editor

02 Newsletter 13 October 2007

EVENT: DATE: LOCATION:

EVENT: DATE: LOCATION:

Newsletter 13 October 2007 03

Subject Centre News

Project Ofcer for HE in FE

New E-Learning Advocates in English Departments

04 Newsletter 13 October 2007

Subject Centre News

English Subject Centre Advisory Board 2007/2008

The English Subject Centre Report Series

Newsletter 13 October 2007 05

Plagiarism and Plagiarism Studies

06 Newsletter 13 October 2007

Plagiarism and Plagiarism Studies

Newsletter 13 October 2007 07

Plagiarism and Plagiarism Studies

08 Newsletter 13 October 2007

Newsletter 13 October 2007 09

Putting Some Sense Back into the System:

10 Newsletter 13 October 2007

Newsletter 13 October 2007 11

12 Newsletter 13 October 2007

Are you a Head of Department? (or in an equivalent role)

Newsletter 13 October 2007 13

The Wrong Dora Russell:

14 Newsletter 13 October 2007

The Wrong Dora Russell: research-informed learning in a digital world

Newsletter 13 October 2007 15

The Wrong Dora Russell: research-informed learning in a digital world

Homepage of the North of England Newspaper Archive

16 Newsletter 13 October 2007

The Wrong Dora Russell: research-informed learning in a digital world

Newsletter 13 October 2007 17

Teaching Welsh Writing in English

18 Newsletter 13 October 2007

Teaching Welsh Writing in English

Newsletter 13 October 2007 19

Teaching Welsh Writing in English

4 Carruthers, Revisionism in Irish and Scottish Literature, 8.

20 Newsletter 13 October 2007

Newsletter 13 October 2007 21

The Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning:

22 Newsletter 13 October 2007