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Introduction: Teaching? Literature?

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Teaching Literature

Part of the book series: Teaching the New English ((TENEEN))

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Abstract

This chapter provides a context for those which follow. A re-examination of university English pedagogy takes place in the context of fundamental change in higher education systems in Britain, North America, and across the world. Yet as a border subject, Literature (like English itself) has always been characterised by vibrant pedagogic traditions and by a fluid curriculum. This chapter makes a case for the need to return to those pedagogic traditions, and—in an era of the ‘student experience’—for recognising the importance also of the teacher’s own self-aware experience. As a subject and discipline, English Literature, it is suggested, takes place and is constantly reshaped at multiple intersections, not least those between ‘ordinary’ and academic reading. In different ways, all the essays in this book aim to explore the literary education as a process as well as or as much as the acquisition of a body of knowledge.

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Further Reading

  • Arts and Humanities in Higher Education (Sage) is an indispensable forum for articles and debates traversing the borders of subject knowledge and pedagogy. An online selection of articles in the English Studies field is available at http://ahh.sagepub.com/site/includefiles/vsu2.xhtml.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Teesside University, Middlesbrough, UK

    Ben Knights

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  1. Ben Knights
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Correspondence to Ben Knights .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Teesside University, Middlesbrough, United Kingdom

    Ben Knights

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Knights, B. (2017). Introduction: Teaching? Literature?. In: Knights, B. (eds) Teaching Literature. Teaching the New English. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-31110-8_1

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