In light of recent concerns in the United States and the United Kingdom regarding the rote and restrictive nature of English literature instruction, this article offers an approach to teaching literature rooted not in knowledge, as literary pedagogy is often conceptualised, but instead in understanding. Reading for understanding extends beyond…

This letter was first read as a seminar paper in the Institute for the Humanities in Africa at the University of Cape Town in which I offer a series of provocations about what our current moment asks of us. It is concerned with the future of literary and cultural studies (in English) at that university and in South Africa in the wake of the…

The myth of home is what distinguishes children's literature from adult novels (Wolf 1990). Nodelman and Reimer ("The Pleasures of Children's Literature," 2003) write that while "the home/away/home pattern is the most common story line in children's literature, adult fiction that deals with young people who leave home usually ends…

Thirty years ago, every American academic going on a research trip or a sabbatical to England carried a copy of David Lodge's comic classic, "Changing Places" (1975), which told a tale of two 40-year-old professors of English literature and two embattled campuses in the eventful spring of 1969. An ineffectual British academic, Philip…

Western Europe has been constructed in the field of education abroad as a "traditional" location: in some sense or another that label is used to suggest that it has a kind of static or dormant significance. In reality, Western Europe is an enormously rich location for study abroad precisely because it is a fluid learning environment that…

Using virtual worlds as media for learning and teaching gives rise to the potential for many unique ethical problems. Some of these arise due to the nature of the engagement with these virtual worlds, in which the students create a virtual representation, called an avatar, which may enable a sense of embodiment, and hence exposure, within the…

Examines English language pattern poetry from England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, the Commonwealth countries, and the United States. (FL)