This article reports the outcomes of an exploratory small-scale study to compare lecturer and student conceptions of critical reading at a research-intensive UK institution. Analysis of lecturer and student interviews in four humanities subjects suggests differences in the way lecturers and students conceptualize and articulate the practices of critical reading. Lecturers conceptualize reading as creative and intertextual, a defamilarization of personal experiences of the world and the development of relational ways of understanding through close reading. Conversely, students are found to (...) conceptualize reading as evaluating different perspectives, domesticating new experiences into existing personal value schema and apprehending the text as object. The discussion considers the pedagogical implications of these differences for developing reading practices in the humanities classroom. The article also reflects on the relationship between the capacity to participate in the discourses of criticality and the capacity to enact critical encounters with texts as readers. (shrink)

This article argues that the digital humanities can be seen as a humanities project in a time of significant change in the academy. The background is a number of scholarly, educational and technical challenges, the multiple epistemic traditions linked to the digital humanities, the potential reach of the field across and outside the humanities, and the ‘digital’ as a boundary object. In the article, four case studies are used to exemplify the digital humanities as a humanities project, and it is (...) suggested that the field can be seen as a trading zone and meeting place rather than a strained ‘big tent’. In this way, the digital humanities can accept scholarly and technological challenges in relation to the digital as well as being an important place for thinking about, experimenting with and rethinking the humanities. (shrink)

Though a cornerstone of all research and evaluation, rigour in scholarship is a relatively recent concept, which is poorly defined and never interrogated. This article traces the dark history of the idea, beginning with intolerance, harshness and punishment, and slowly rising to something admirable in the industrial period, whereupon it is immediately seen in opposition to creative method. The text argues that, in the arts and humanities, rigour is only legitimate when built around dialectical relationships with subjectivity. It calls for (...) the deconstruction of rigour as an academic ideal that superintends the voice and imagination of the artist or scholar. (shrink)

Based on a review of its historical evolution and the contributions of significant writers in the field, this article addresses perennial questions of purpose, content and pedagogy in education in the arts and humanities and, more broadly, liberal education. Taking cognizance of the educational significance of service-learning and practical knowledge, it calls for a revitalization of arts and humanities education by drawing on elements of feminist theory as expounded by Jane Roland Martin and the emphasis on praxis, service and pedagogy (...) in the writings of Paulo Freire, Ira Shor and others in the tradition of critical pedagogy. (shrink)

This article brings together reflections on the impact agenda from two separate sources: a conference at the University of Warwick in August 2009, and a speech given at the University of Leeds some weeks before. It develops these reflections with particular reference to Modern Languages, reviewing how the Humanities probe other value systems, deal with the singular and provisional, and take discourse as their product and process in ways that offer both theoretical and pragmatic benefits. The article suggests that, rather (...) than simply jumping on the bandwagon of ‘measurement’ and the market where impact is concerned, the Humanities should explore ways of rethinking the outdated, simplistic ‘marketmimicry’ that Michael Sandel critiqued in his 2009 Reith lectures. (shrink)

In this article, we present a new perspective on how to combine inquiry-based, problem-oriented learning with practices in the Humanities. Our particular interest is how the initial phase of findin...