The Oxford conference uses lectures and workshops to explore current theoretical issues and teaching practice, and is aimed specifically at those teaching English literature overseas.

From Critical Reading to Creative Writing

Corpus Christi College, Oxford

9 - 15 April 2000

Are we encouraging a full range of writing as well as reading practices in our students?

How much can an awareness of the creative process and an active engagement with the making of texts help to develop students’ critical skills?

What is the relation between critical and creative thinking in the teaching of English Literature at the beginning of a new century?

These are some of the questions which were addressed by the Oxford 2000 Conference on the Teaching of Literature. Over the course of the week, drawing on the experience and expertise of a wide range of professional practitioners (including creative writers, academics and the participants themselves), delegates explored these issues in an atmosphere which was itself both critical and creative. Particular themes and features included:

• readings and linked workshops by leading writers and teachers (many of the contributors are both)
• practical sessions exploring the critical and creative dimensions of reading and writing at both university and school levels, especially overseas
• particular attention to modes of writing that encourage active participation in the making and re-making of texts, including the use of imitation, parody, adaptation and other forms of re-writing
• discussion of the implications of such approaches for everything from curriculum planning and choice of texts to classroom strategies and task-design
• a forum on the opportunities and obstacles facing the development of ‘creative writing’ in its widest sense, especially where English is not a first language
• a preliminary list of recommended reading and resources, which is collaboratively extended over the course of the conference
• a social programme including a literary walking tour of Oxford

The chairs were Professor Marion Lomax of St Mary’s College, Strawberry Hill (poet, librettist, critic and editor; author of The Peepshow Girl, Raiding the Borders, and Stage Images and Traditions, Shakespeare to Ford, and Chair of the National Association of Writers in Education) and Professor Rob Pope of Oxford Brookes University (teacher and text-book writer; author of Textual Intervention: Critical and Creative Strategies for Literary Studies, The English Studies Book and the forthcoming volume on Creativity in the New Critical Idiom Series).

Among those who contributed were the writers Helen Dunmore, Vicki Feaver, Matthew Francis, Beverley Naidoo and Bernard O’Donoghue; also David Constantine, John McRae and Jeff Wood.