Corpus Christi College Oxford
2 – 8 April 2004

Oxford 2004 marked a return to discussion and exploration of literature in education.

• What is the importance of literature and the humanities in secondary and tertiary classrooms?
• What tools and knowledge do today's students need to read both traditional and contemporary work?
• Where can we make meaningful links with other disciplines, value systems and cultures?
• How are we to articulate the value of literature teaching and literary competence?

Oxford 2004 maintained the distinctive qualities of the Oxford Conference but also included two interrelated professional tracks:

New writing, contemporary canons, critical reputations

We worked in detail around the British Council's anthology New Writing 12, an exhilarating collection of new writing from the UK, though we also looked to previous volumes in the series. Reading and discussion groups, both virtual and real, were set up in advance of the conference. This track explored the politics of canon and reputation-building, the role of creative writing in the classroom and the distinctive significance of reading contemporary work.

Value and assessment

This track examined the variety of ways in which value and assessment are central to the reading and teaching of literature. It addressed the relation between notions of value informing literary taste and issues of assessment – not only how as readers (and as teachers and students) we respond to and differentiate between texts, but also how we assess and evaluate those responses. What are the editorial and pedagogic criteria for the selection of literary texts? What principles underlie the design and delivery of our instruments of assessment?

Both tracks will continue as strong discussion threads that will inform and inspire people after the event.

EVENT CHAIRS

Claudia Ferradas Moi, Sean Matthews, John McRae, Alan Pulverness  

Claudia Ferradas Moi is tenured lecturer in English Literature at the Instituto de Enseñanza Superior en Lenguas Vivas 'Juan Ramón Fernández', Buenos Aires, and is in charge of the virtual classroom on 'Strategies for the Teaching of a Foreign Language' at the Virtual University of Quilmes, Argentina. Founder and co-director of the T. S. Eliot Bilingual Studies Centre, Banfield, Buenos Aires, she has run teacher development courses and presented at conferences in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, the USA, Germany, Ireland and the UK. She has published a number of articles on literature, rock poetry and hypertext fiction and has written teaching materials on contemporary UK writers for the British Council Argentina. She is the author of Rock Poetry in the Creative Language Classroom (DL Books, Buenos Aires, 1994) and one of the contributors to Developing Materials for Language Teaching (ed. Brian Tomlinson, Continuum, London and N.Y, 2003). Claudia co-chaired the Oxford Conference 2002 and 2003.

Sean Matthews joined the School of English and American Studies (EAS) at the University of East Anglia in autumn 2002. His primary interests are in contemporary literature and theory. He has previously held positions at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth; University of California, Los Angeles; and Kyushu University, Japan. He is currently writing projects involving Raymond Williams and the New Left; the British novel of the 1980s; and a revisiting of I. A. Richards's Practical Criticism. For 2003/4 Sean has been awarded a UEA teaching fellowship in order to explore the integration of literature teaching and learning technology.

EVENT CONSULTANTS
John McRae is Special Professor of Language in Literature Studies at the University of Nottingham and holds regular Visiting Professor posts in Brazil, China, France, Malaysia, Spain and the USA. With Ronald Carter he is co-author of the Routledge History of English Literature. He has also written on a wide range of literary and linguistic subjects and is author of Now Read On, a course in multi-cultural reading (1999), and The Language of Poetry (1998), both published by Routledge. With Ronald Carter he is series editor of Penguin Student Editions, which now numbers over 20 titles.

Alan Pulverness is an Associate Trainer with the Norwich Institute for Language Education, and Editor of IATEFL Conference Selections. He has worked as a consultant on language-and-culture materials development projects for the British Council in Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland. He is the author of All in a Word: literature in language teaching (Bell Educational Trust 1989) and co-author of a number of ELT textbooks. He has edited a schools’ edition of Macbeth (Società Editrice Internazionale 2000) and was editorial adviser for The Literary Labyrinth (Società Editrice Internazionale 1993) and The World Wide Reader (Oxford University Press & La Nuova Italia 2001). His most recent publications are Right Now 1 & 2 (Oxford University Press 2000; 2001), Changing Skies: The European coursebook for advanced learners (Swan 2001) and Materials for Cultural Awareness in Developing Materials for Language Teaching (Continuum 2003).

Participants’ contributions

Here you can read Adriana Neagu's review Minds Meet: Oxford 2004 and David Johansson's paper New British Fiction and the Relevance of Symbolism.

Also John McRae highlights some of the top moments from the 2004 conference in an article for our online magazine Literature Matters.