A canon of collaboration: literary value, student voices and diversity in contemporary studies of literature

Sadler, Steven

Abstract

Intense competition for students and financial support in a market-led, businessorientated academic context, as well as adverse political fallout from the ‘canon wars’ and ‘culture wars’ of the early 1990s has resulted in the Arts and Humanities needing to make their case in terms of their ‘value’. Yet the complex concept of value is poorly understood. As a result, value so often proves elusive as a measure by which literary studies may make its case and thereby abate dwindling numbers of higher education students choosing to literary studies.

Meanwhile, academic study is underpinned by marketization and commodification resulting in students increasingly being considered as ‘customers’ seeking greater choice and agency in the process of deciding what, where, and how to study. Yet opportunities for students’ voices to be considered directly in these discourses often prove as elusive as the definitions of value that may underpin their agency and help abate dwindling numbers of students.

By employing an original, constructively interdisciplinary approach that incorporates theories and debates from the Arts and the Sciences, this thesis articulates value as a cross-pollinated construct. It proposes that value judgments about literature and its study are a function of not only extrinsic benefits but also individual intrinsic experiences, intuitions, and feelings, the interpretation of which can be best informed by incorporating knowledge form other disciplines such as psychology and sociology.

This supposition – that value judgments are multivalent and multifaceted – is at the heart of a data survey tool which asks a cohort of students questions informed by myriad aspects about value. This establishes practically if students value the study of literature, and literary texts in the same ways as academics and other stakeholders in education, past and present, including the extent to which students value diversity, choice, and agency in the construction of their curricula.

Citation

Sadler, S. (2024). A canon of collaboration: literary value, student voices and diversity in contemporary studies of literature. (Thesis). Keele University. Retrieved from https://keele-repository.worktribe.com/output/885039

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Aug 16, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 16, 2024
• Public URL: https://keele-repository.worktribe.com/output/885039
• Award Date: 2024-08