Despite opposition to 'queering the text' by established Shakespeare critics, this essay sets out to ponder the possibility of teaching Shakespeare in a queer context. The essay begins by examining the social and sexual conditions of the early modern period, making the observation that there were a wide variety of sexualities, moral attitudes, and…

The article reviews the evolution of Shakespeare studies over the last 50 years and proposes a narrative to trace its development since the commemoration of Shakespeare's birth in 1964 in three phases: first, the unfolding from the 1970s to the 1990s of what I have called the postmodern paradigm in Shakespeare studies, which I argue breaks with…

This exploratory sociolinguistic study examined D/discourses and writing modes in a Grade 10 English literature classroom wherein students answered literature-based questions by means of both traditional and new literacies approaches. Studies conducted at the intersection of classroom instruction and online affinity spaces are still surprisingly…

Catholic schools and colleges are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain and sharpen their distinctiveness in a climate of secularism, indifference to religion and the shortage of practising Catholics. This article argues that one method of bolstering Catholic schools' mission integrity is to highlight one important feature of its identity…

While "born digital" artefacts such as video games and e-books have been part of secondary school English in Anglophone countries for over two decades, databases of mass-digitised (hence "re-mediated") literary texts are yet to have a significant presence in, or influence on, literary work in subject English. The authors…

Drawing upon my own experiences as a high school English Language Arts teacher, I seek a satisfying response to offer students when they ask, "Why are we reading this?" Such a query often leads teachers and students to consider broader questions of the purposes of literature. This paper presents a hermeneutic exploration of the practice…

Evidence shows that learners' performance is largely influenced by their cognitive beliefs about learning. The main purpose of the present study is to identifying the cognitive beliefs of Saudi English Language major students in order to get a deeper insight into their inner thoughts about studying literature and to find out the effect of gender…

Some universities in Iran have recently witnessed a shift in admission criteria from university admission test performance towards high school records. This sudden change seems to be unwarranted since the predictive power of high school records has not been explored. To fill in this gap, this study aims at showcasing the predictive validity of…

2021 marks the 100th anniversary of The Newbolt Report, the first official report about English, in spirit a liberal document, arguing for an emancipatory English. Since 1870 The School Subject of English [SSE] has experienced several historical phases. One phase [1980-92] is presented as a period of 'harmonious practice', arguing that it offers a…

This paper presents data from an Australian high school classroom, investigating how students and their teacher negotiate readings of literature in order to arrive at meanings that are valued by subject English, as well as understood by the students. Subject English acts a vital agent for the transmission of both literacy and literary knowledge in…

This article reports on the effective use of short videos as part of a microlearning strategy aimed at improving student success and satisfaction in an undergraduate literary history course at Flinders University. Although the pedagogical tenets of microlearning ostensibly contradict the deep, sustained critical attention literary study typically…

The study aimed to determine the English proficiency and literary competence of English major students of CBSUA-Sipocot. The third and fourth-year college students were the respondents of the study. The evaluative-correlational method was employed in the research. Frequency count and percentage technique were used to describe levels of proficiency…

Although performance-based pedagogy has clearly given new life to the study of Shakespeare, with 'performance' or 'active' approaches becoming increasingly dominant as a method, acquiring the status of "the" 'proper' way to teach Shakespeare, it is important to examine the limitations of this method. This article will begin by surveying…

Teacher lack of knowledge outside British and American literature is a major obstacle in teaching World Literature. This article offers the experiences of three teachers teaching the Bhagavad Gita and suggests ways to overcome lack of teacher knowledge when reading cross-culturally.

This essay explores the way that the social interactions of the classroom play a role in shaping sign production. It examines the talk of one second year Advanced Level English literature class in North London during their study of John Webster's "The Duchess of Malfi" through the lens of Volosinov's theories of language. It seeks to…