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The Charged Classroom : Reading Like Writers, Writing Like Readers single work   criticism  
Issue Details: First known date: 2011... 2011 The Charged Classroom : Reading Like Writers, Writing Like Readers
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'This essay is haunted by a poem. Reflecting on my experiences of reading and writing as a student and academic, Sylvia Plath's 'Lady Lazarus' makes its presence felt in that 'metaphysical meeting space'. At the heart of the poem is the monosyllable 'charge' and Plath's risky choice to repeat it four times in five lean lines. The repetition insists on the pursuit of generating charge, in all the complex connotations of that word, within the 'geometry of connections' generated by reading. (Author's introduction, 307)

Notes

  • Epigraph: What process was this? What self-complication? What séance of other lives in her own imagination? Reading was this metaphysical meeting space - peculiar, specific, ardent, unusual - She learned how other people entered the adventure of being alive...There were sight-lines, image tokens, between people and objects and words on a page, that knitted the whole world in the purest geometry of connections. (Gail Jones, Sixty Lights, p. 114)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Teaching Australian Literature : From Classroom Conversations to National Imaginings Brenton Doecke (editor), Larissa McLean-Davies (editor), Philip Mead (editor), Kent Town : Wakefield Press Australian Association for the Teaching of English , 2011 Z1851330 2011 anthology criticism 'What role should Australian literature play in the school curriculum? What principles should guide our selection of Australian texts? To what extent should concepts of the nation and a national identity frame the study of Australian writing? What do we imagine Australian literature to be? How do English teachers go about engaging their students in reading Australian texts?

    This volume brings together teachers, teacher educators, creative writers and literary scholars in a joint inquiry that takes a fresh look at what it means to teach Australian literature. The immediate occasion for the publication of these essays is the implementation of The Australian Curriculum: English, which several contributors subject to critical scrutiny. In doing so, they question the way that literature teaching is currently being constructed by standards-based reforms, not only in Australia but elsewhere.

    The essays assembled in this volume transcend the divisions that have sometimes marred debates about the place of Australian literature in the school curriculum. They all recognise the complexity of what secondary English teachers do in their efforts to engage young people in a rich and meaningful curriculum. They also highlight the need for both secondary and tertiary educators to cultivate an awareness of the cultural and intellectual traditions that mediate their professional practice and to encourage a critically responsive pedagogy.' (Publisher's blurb)
         Kent Town : Wakefield Press Australian Association for the Teaching of English , 2011     pg. 307-318
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Last amended 29 Mar 2012 14:03:50
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