An Immersive Literature Day at The Commandery
Sixth Form English Literature students visited The Commandery’s ‘Littlebury Room’ with its beautiful exposed beams and spent the day in workshops and lectures exploring their set texts. The visit started with a session on how to approach Section A of the ‘Hamlet’ paper. The students were then introduced to one of our guest lecturers, Alex Round. Alex delivered two excellent sessions on the Gothic, looking specifically at how to answer the critical appreciation question, reading lesser-known unseen Gothic extracts followed by a recap of the final chapters of ‘Dracula’, with a particular focus on ‘othering’ in the text. Alex is currently in the final editing stages of her PhD thesis: ‘Sisters in Art: Reassessing the Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood’. She is also a qualified English teacher and has taught the OCR specification; this year, she is an Associate Examiner of A Level Literature for OCR. Alex was able to bring both an academic post-graduate approach while also linking her knowledge very closely to the Examination Board requirements and assessment objectives, something the students found very helpful.
The afternoon session welcomed our second guest lecturer, Dr Sharon Young, from the University of Worcester. Sharon is the course leader for English Literature, and her teaching interests include Renaissance, Restoration and eighteenth-century literature, women’s poetry, and literary theory. Sharon’s research focuses mainly on women’s poetry of the early modern period, Renaissance revenge tragedy and women’s manuscript culture. Sharon delivered a very interesting and insightful lecture on ‘Hamlet’ as a revenge tragedy offering the students a fresh interpretation of looking at ‘Hamlet’ as both a typical revenge tragedy but also a play that explores ideas about the judicial system. Pupils were invited to look at Hamlet in different roles, such as a detective, a theatre director, a judge, a jury and an executioner.
Our Sixth Form students enjoyed discussing their texts with the lecturers asking insightful questions whilst being able to experience seminar and lecture-style sessions common at university.
Mrs Laura Bond, Teacher of English and Assistant Head of Year (Lower Sixth)
