Pedagogic Criticism: Reconfiguring University English Studies

by Ben Knights

Overview

This book argues that the history of English Studies is embedded in its classroom practice, and its practice in its history. Some of its foundational struggles are still being lived out today. English is characterized as a ‘boundary’ subject, active in dialogue across a number of imagined borders, especially those between academic and non-specialized readerships. While the subject discipline maintains strong pedagogic principles, many of its principles and values are obscure or even invisible to students and potential students. The book cross-fertilizes the study of English as a subject with the analysis of selected literary texts read as pedagogic parables. It concludes with a call for a return to the subject’s pedagogic roots. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781137278135
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Publication date:	07/01/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	228
File size:	495 KB

About the Author

Ben Knights is Emeritus Professor of English and Cultural Studies at Teesside University, UK, and a former director of the UK HE English Subject Centre. His research concerns the history and day-to-day practice of English and related subjects. His most recent book was Masculinities in Text and Teaching (edited) (Palgrave). 

Table of Contents

Introduction: Pedagogic Criticism.- Chapter 1 Heroic Reading.- Chapter 2 Turning the Screw of Criticism.- Chapter 3 Imaginary Burglars: English Studies and the Hinterland of Thought.- Chapter 4 The Hidden Aesthetic of English Teaching.- Chapter 5 Pilgrims and Progression.- Chapter 6 Fragments and Ruins: Teaching in the Shadow of Catastrophe.- Chapter 7 Getting Close: Masculinities in Literary Pedagogy.- Chapter 8 Writing as Teachers.- Afterword. 

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Woven from a career of researching and teaching literature, this warm, wise, thought-provoking, profound, subtle and rewarding book should be read and discussed by the whole profession. The book’s quiet but assured originality lies in the braiding together of a challenging genealogy of English as a discipline, a deep understanding of the entwining of criticism and pedagogy, and an astute focus on the threads which bind our singular subject. Gently enacting in prose the production of shared meaning that occurs in teaching, Pedagogic Criticism marks a novel form of theoretical understanding that both grows from and returns to the experience of teaching and learning literature.” (Robert Eaglestone, Professor at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK)