Abstract
There is potential for shame and shaming in the relations between lecturers and students, but the shame of teaching that is the subject of this essay is the shame that circulates between academics and which is communicated—subtly or not so subtly—by the professional cultures in which we work in English Studies. In particular shame emerges in the negotiation of prestige and status between research and teaching. This essay thus explores various aspects of academic formation and identity within the discipline and suggests ways in which shame potentially deforms our norms of the idealised English Studies academic. Drawing on studies of shame ranging from Darwin to queer theory the essay ultimately gestures towards a twenty-first-century higher education English Studies in which understandings of ‘academic becoming’ are multiple and diverse. The English academic of the emerging future values and commits to teaching and research together, held in productive tension.
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Miles, R. (2017). The Shame of Teaching (English). In: Knights, B. (eds) Teaching Literature. Teaching the New English. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-31110-8_4
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