Teaching the New English

More than perhaps any other genre, crime fiction invites debate over the role of popular fiction in English studies. This book offers lively original essays on teaching crime fiction written by experienced British and international scholar teachers, providing vital insight into this diverse genre through a series of compelling subjects.  Taking its starting-point in pedagogical reflections and classroom experiences, the book explores methods for teaching students to develop their own critical perspectives as crime fiction critics, the impact of feminism, postcolonialism, and ecocriticism on crime fiction, crime fiction and film, the crime short story, postgraduate perspectives, and more.

This volume explores how Young Adult (YA) literature is taught in university-level courses. Both an emergent field of academic study and a popular phenomenon, YA fiction increasingly reaches beyond its target demographic. The chapters examine the contemporary socio-political trends with which YA fiction engages. Questions of representation and "own voice" storytelling are key aspects, as are issues of climate change, extinction and climate anxiety. This book considers the literary history of YA writing, drawing on Children's Literature, Science Fiction, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction, and shows how YA literature is taught across these sub-fields. It also shows how the teaching of YA fiction spans Creative Writing programmes in the UK, as integrated parts of modules with thematic topics such as "climate emergency" or "social justice" in the US, and within Education programmes globally. The book provides a reflective framework for integrating YA literature into teaching, highlighting the opportunities presented by YA literature for widening participation in higher education and as a pedagogic tool for strengthening minority own-voice representation.