The last few decades have witnessed a growing interest in the benefits of linking the learning of a foreign language to the study of its literature. In fact, the emphasis on working with culturally authentic texts is one of the central claims for curriculum reform in EFL/ESL teaching nowadays. Moreover, the latest developments in text-based teaching point to a curriculum in which language, culture, and literature are taught as a continuum. 

Nevertheless, the incorporation of literary texts into the language curriculum is not easy to tackle. Many linguists refer to literary content as extremely demanding for both teachers and students. Not surprisingly, many teachers tend to avoid using literary texts for this reason. 

This panel takes W.S. Merwin’s line “Day after day we wake to the Island” as motto and challenge to rethink islands not just as utopian and paradisiac places, but to understand them as specific places, in the context of the environmental crisis, and from the perspectives and methodologies of the Environmental Humanities.

At the 2nd International Laurence Sterne Foundation Conference (26-28 October 2017, in Bydgoszcz, Poland) Prof. Peter de Voogd will be convening the panel "Sterne and (Post)Modernism revisited".

Paper proposals should be sent to peterdevoogd@fastmail.fm and j.lipski@ukw.edu.pl; the deadline is 15 July 2017.

The panel will cover various aspects of Sternean echoes in later literature, revisiting some of the issues addressed in the collection "Laurence Sterne in Modernism and Postmodernism" (ed. Peter de Voogd, David Pierce; Rodopi, 1996).

THE LITERARY ENCYCLOPEDIA

CALL FOR PAPERS – MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERARY WORKS