AustLit

'Dystopian texts represent worlds that are both strange and strangely familiar. This seeming paradox is just one of the ways these works functions as useful and engaging narratives for exploring English concepts in secondary classrooms. Accompanied and guided by their teachers, students can not only engage with the fiction, but also imagine what the world could really be like and how they might change the way it actually is.

'Reading and studying dystopian works offers a vehicle for navigating and negotiating a sometimes disturbing and often disconcerting world - of find power and personal agency in situations of powerlessness, in finding warmth, human connection and self-sacrifice in a world that can seem callous, selfish and devoid of humanity, of finding light beyond the dark.

'This publication is intended as a guide for English teachers as they develop learning sequences for their students that ask them to investigate worlds both imaginary and real. Using contemporary Australian, along with some classic dystopian fiction, it shares insights and provides practical strategies for teaching a broad range of dystopian texts in contemporary classrooms.'

Source: Back cover.

'Required Reading examines for the first time what students have read and studied in the disciplines of English and literary studies at Australian schools and universities after 1945. On the basis of this primary evidence, the authors challenge enduring myths of curriculum history, the history of literary studies, critical theory, and cultural studies. They fill out the picture of how students were encouraged to read: when, where, and in which particular pedagogical and wider social and historical contexts. They relate dramatic changes to curriculum frameworks and syllabi, teaching and learning methods, social and cultural values and assumptions, and the academic discipline of literary studies itself. Required Reading shows, finally, how flawed assumptions about the nature and history of English and Literature have, since the 1980s, obstructed the advancement of knowledge within both fields of scholarly endeavour. Contributors include: Tim Dolin, Joanne Jones, Patricia Dowsett, John Yiannakis, Ian Reid, Jacqueline Manuel, Don Carter, Wayne Sawyer, Larissa McLean Davies, Brenton Doecke, Prue Gill, Terry Hayes, Jenny de Reuck, Susan K Martin, Tully Barnett, Kate Douglas, Alice Healy-Ingram, Georgina Arnott, and Claire Jones.' (Publication summary)