Using adaptation theory and my own novel, "Shield Maiden," published in 2023 by Hachette, I examine how history of the English language (HEL) scholarship intersects with creative writing and writing craft. I've identified a large gap in our knowledge and understanding of how HEL can give us perspective and access to ancient texts and…

An examination of school curriculum documents which guide teaching in Caribbean schools indicate that while some efforts have been made to infuse ESE into some subjects, very little progress has been made in incorporating it into the teaching of English. One pedagogical technique to address this situation is ecocriticism. The authors conducted…

This article interrogates the role of retrieval practices in an urban, multicultural London classroom. With the advent of cognitive science-based approaches in recent years, retrieval has become a central tenet for testing foundational knowledge in English literature. I consider the implications of retrieval for classroom discourses concerning…

The recent inclusion of "cultural capital" into the English Ofsted Education Inspection Framework (2019) caused a ripple of discontent within some educational circles, with some suggesting it is indicative of 'white, middle-class paternalism'. Here, we consider the political rise of Bourdieu's concept of 'cultural capital' within the…

This article explores how, in English classes in secondary schools, students can perfect moral concepts such as love, honesty, and happiness. As the philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch explains, people can perfect, or refine, moral concepts by paying attention to reality and altering their concepts in line with what is real. For Murdoch, the…

Education, be that on a moral, social or intellectual level, in a formal setting or via lived experience is "Bildungsroman's raison d'être." 'Moments of crisis' and the resultant demonstration of the journey towards awareness of personal autonomy, agency, identity and place are discussed via geographical imagination. This article…

While "Rebecca" is not currently a set text for A-Level English Literature, this paper argues that the novel's multi-faceted richness would justify its inclusion in any list of recommended texts. Divided into four interconnected parts, the paper offers, firstly, some approaches to the reading and teaching of fiction, generally. The…

Disrupting the canon of Eurocentric literature often used as a whole-class novel study in the secondary English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum is needed in order to push back against white hegemony in and out of ELA spaces. This disruption needs to occur at the teacher preparation level through discussion, examination, and curriculum development,…

This essay considers the assumption that the study of English involves engaging students' imaginations to explore a range of interpretations and hypothesise about meaning. It goes on to explore the reading positions of two students in a Year 10 class, who were studying "A Christmas Carol" at GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary…

With millions of non-native English language users, English has gained the position of 'global language' in the last century. English literature also has a significant number of non-native writers from around the world. While grasping their own cultures in English, these non-native writers have been transforming English language to a remarkable…

In this reflection I discuss my experiences teaching E. M. Forster's canonical novel "The Longest Journey" (1907) to third-year university students. I argue that there are a multitude of benefits in employing queer pedagogies for teaching English. I consider how queer pedagogies might go beyond questions of representations and visibility…

The last few decades have witnessed an interesting new dimension in creative writing as a number of novelists have addressed literary theory in their literary texts, thus acting as creative metacritics. One intriguing writer who addresses theory in her fiction is the British novelist Jeanette Winterson. In this paper I intend to present Winterson…

Mikhail Bakhtin's dialogism in a novel promises the creation of a domain of interactive context for different voices which results in a polyphonic discourse. Instead of trying to suppress each other, the voices of the novel interact upon the other voices in a way that none of them tries to silent the other ones, and each one has the opportunity to…

This paper is prompted by the author's experience as a researcher of English literary education in three different geographies over the past three years: Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. Affect theory, as discussed in this paper, concerns atmospheres, surfaces, bodies, emotions, moods, vicinities and capacities. Drawing on affect theory,…

The relationship between history and ethics may seem irrelevant at first; however, these two have been related during the long history of war, violence and mass killing. The need of history to ethics is for saving itself from all the violence and terror. Emmanuel Levinas as a philosopher has tried to define ethics in a way that suits the terrible…