Resources

Writers Make Worlds

Contemporary Black and Asian British writing is changing how we see and read literature in English today
Writers such as Aminatta Forna and Andrea Levy, Daljit Nagra and Kamila Shamsie, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Bernardine Evaristo, have created work that fundamentally challenges prevailing ideas of British literature.

Reading them reminds us that British writing has a diverse range of backgrounds and many different histories.

This website offers ways into exploring this exciting work.

English Faculty / Oxford World's Classics Shakespeare Webinar Series

In this free webinar series, Shakespeare expert Professor Emma Smith explores a different Oxford World's Classics Shakespeare title each month. Emma will be in conversation with the writers of the new introductions specially commissioned for this series, discussing the play and how we might approach it differently in the twenty-first century.

Ten-Minute Book Club

The Ten-Minute Book Club is a new way to enjoy literature that is designed to spark rich conversations about reading.

It aims to make a great conversation about literature possible, and to offer a quick and accessible way into some of the greatest writing by extraordinary writers from all backgrounds, guided by Oxford’s expertise on exciting authors and books.

Great Writers Inspire

This collection of freely available literary resources is aimed at students from sixth-form to university, their teachers, and at lifelong learners. It contains lectures, eBooks and contextual essays for reuse by individuals and the educational community. Resources could be included in course packs, browsed for extended project work or in preparation for university study, or set as additional reading around specific central texts.

You can search by writer or different themes, such as Feminist Approaches to Literature, Modernism, Biography and Life-writing, and First World War poetry.

LitHits

Guided by curators from the University of Oxford's Faculty of English—covering a vast range of periods and types of literature—LitHits helps users to break free from reductive algorithmic recommendations and create a new reader-footprint, driven by how reading fits into their lives, not by what everyone else is buying. The curators mix surprising suggestions alongside more well-known genres, and are always thinking of new ways to help people find literature that speaks to them.

Professor of Poetry newsletter

In this new series, A.E. Stallings, Oxford’s Professor of Poetry, will explore a contemporary poem from a new book or anthology or journal and explain what she admires about it. You can sign up to receive each issue in your inbox, or browse previous issues online.

Approaching Shakespeare

Approaching Shakespeare is a series of audio podcasts within Great Writers Inspires by Professor Emma Smith on Shakespeare’s plays. Each lecture in the series focuses on a single play by Shakespeare, and employs a range of different approaches to try to understand a central critical question about it.

WillPlay

WillPlay is an interactive, AI-powered reimagining of Shakespeare’s plays for school students, created by researchers in the English Faculty in collaboration with a local games company. It takes the form of a social-media chat-app, with accompanying images, emojis and “stories”. In other words, it uses the visual, verbal and media language of its players to engage an educational age group which can be hard to reach. WillPlay is an active experience allowing students individually to engage and interact creatively with Shakespeare’s stories, language and characters via an accessible medium.

Prismatic Jane Eyre teaching resources

The Prismatic Jane Eyre Schools Project drew on translation as an educational tool to explore how Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel has been translated since its publication in 1847 and how its plots and themes can be used as a springboard for new creative works.

The bank of teaching resources created aims to allow more young people to enjoy creative translation activities based on Jane Eyre. The Project’s resources are available on the Stephen Spender website and the Prismatic Translation website.

Contagion Cabaret

The Contagion Cabaret is an irreverent look at plagues and pandemics, past and present. Killer germs, superbugs and pestilential plagues have long fascinated writers and musicians. Join a cast of actors, scientists and literary researchers to take a long view on the crisis of the moment. From Angels in America to Mary Shelley, from obscure Victorian Medical Parlour Songs to Fascinating Aida’s Herpes Tango, The Contagion Cabaret is riddled with infectious extracts from plays, poems, journalism and music, past and present.

Poetry writing activities

Writer Kate Clanchy created a series of filmed poetry activities which aim to inspire and support creative poetry writing in schools. The exercises work particularly well in multicultural schools where pupils speak many different languages and help to demonstrate how languages can be used as a tool for creativity.

The activities were devised by writer Kate Clanchy and supported by the Prismatic Translation strand of the Creative Multilingualism research programme, led by Professor Matthew Reynolds.

Examples of nineteenth-century non-fiction texts

To help teachers, we provide a range of sample texts from primary sources which fit within our research project’s themes. All of them are taken from the database we will eventually make available online, so teachers can also have access to further ideas as to nineteenth-century periodicals. The extracts we offer are formatted (as far as possible) as they would appear in an AQA exam script: in 11pt Arial font, with a brief introduction to the source and a glossary of vocabulary students couldn’t be expected to know.

These resources were produced by the Diseases of Modern Life project.

English Faculty podcasts

Explore over 300 podcasts by our leading academics on many fascinating topics, such as Modern Fairies, Medieval English, Poetry with Simon Armitage, and War and Representation.

Science Gossip dataset

This project brought together historical and literary research in the nineteenth century with contemporary scientific practice, and looked at the ways in which patterns of popular communication and engagement in nineteenth-century science can offer models for the present day. Using the citizen science platform Zooniverse, nearly 10,000 online volunteers tagged more than 160,000 illustrations in the digitised pages of popular science periodicals from the nineteenth century.

The Science Gossip dataset, combining both images and classifications, is freely available on Oxford’s SDS platform.

Resources

Writers Make Worlds

English Faculty / Oxford World's Classics Shakespeare Webinar Series

Ten-Minute Book Club

Great Writers Inspire

LitHits

Professor of Poetry newsletter

Approaching Shakespeare

WillPlay

Prismatic Jane Eyre teaching resources

Contagion Cabaret

Poetry writing activities

Examples of nineteenth-century non-fiction texts

English Faculty podcasts

Science Gossip dataset

Information about:

Information for:

Quick Links

© 2018 - Faculty of English Language & Literature, St Cross Building, Manor Road, Oxford, OX1 3UL
email: english.office@ell.ox.ac.uk or tel: +44 (0)1865 271055

Resources

Writers Make Worlds

English Faculty / Oxford World's Classics Shakespeare Webinar Series

Ten-Minute Book Club

Great Writers Inspire

LitHits

Professor of Poetry newsletter

Approaching Shakespeare

WillPlay

Prismatic Jane Eyre teaching resources

Contagion Cabaret

Poetry writing activities

Examples of nineteenth-century non-fiction texts

English Faculty podcasts

Science Gossip dataset

Information about:

Information for:

Quick Links

© 2018 - Faculty of English Language & Literature, St Cross Building, Manor Road, Oxford, OX1 3UL email: english.office@ell.ox.ac.uk or tel: +44 (0)1865 271055

© 2018 - Faculty of English Language & Literature, St Cross Building, Manor Road, Oxford, OX1 3UL
email: english.office@ell.ox.ac.uk or tel: +44 (0)1865 271055