Publication Date: Jun 2017
RRP: $39.95
ISBN: 9781925495577
Format: Paperback
Size: 153mm x 234mm
Pages: 400
Category: Literary Studies

Required Reading

Literature in Australian Schools since 1945

Edited by Tim Dolin, Jo Jones and Patricia Dowsett

Open Access

Also available as an ebook from your favourite retailer.


Required Reading examines for the first time what students 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 the history of upper-school English and academic literary studies have, since the 1980s, obstructed the advancement of knowledge within both fields of scholarly endeavour.

Authors

Georgina Arnott
Tully Barnett
Don Carter
Jenny de Reuck
Brenton Doecke
Tim Dolin
Kate Douglas
Patricia Dowsett
Alice Healy-Ingram
Claire Jones
Jo Jones
Jacqueline Manuel
Susan K. Martin
Larissa McLean Davies
Ian Reid
Wayne Sawyer
John Yiannakis


Tim Dolin

Tim Dolin is Professor of Literary Studies at Curtin University. He is a member of the editorial board of the Cambridge Edition of the Novels and Stories of Thomas Hardy, for which he is preparing a critical edition of The Return of...
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Jo Jones

Jo Jones is Lecturer in English Studies in the Faculty of Education, University of Tasmania. She has a PhD in Australian colonial historical novels and has taught extensively at Curtin University and the University of Western Australia. Jo has a forthcoming...
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Patricia Dowsett

Patricia Dowsett is a teacher of English and Literature who has taught at both the secondary and tertiary levels in Western Australia. In 2016 Trish completed a PhD at the University of Western Australia. Her research examined ‘The History of Curricular...
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