UPDATED: February 9, 2012
Hard Expectations or Great Times? Making Sense of Dickens Today
A Conference for Teachers - 22 November 2010 - The British Library
Dickens 2012 is an international group of people and institutions who are working together to deliver a year-long programme of events and activities to commemorate the birth of Charles Dickens, which falls on 7 February 2012.
Following Dickens’s own agenda, our programme is designed to make contributions in the fields of culture, learning and the community. We hope that by 2012 people all over the world will be inspired to participate in our campaign and enjoy the extensive festivities.
The English Association, in conjunction with the Dickens House Museum, the Dickens Fellowship and the British Library, is delighted to announce one of the first events in the run-up to 2012, a conference for teachers at the British Library in London.
Speakers will include Michael Rosen, Miriam Margolyes and Amanda Craig, there will be parallel workshop sessions and lectures; launch of the English Association Dickens Essay Prize and the Dickens Project Prize, sponsored by the Dickens Fellowship.
News update - Phil Davis to speak in place of Miriam Margolyes
Programme:
| 9.30 | Registration |
| 10.00 | Welcome and Introduction: Roger Walshe |
| 10.10 | Is Dickens Difficult? Panel Discussion: Ian Brinton, John Mullan, Michael Rosen, Tony Williams |
| 11.00 | Breakout Session 1 |
| 12.00 | Performing Dickens: Phil Davis |
| 12.20 | Lunch |
| 1.20 | Dickens and Film: Adrian Wootton and Michael Eaton |
| 2.00 | Breakout Session 2 |
| 3.00 | Coffee |
| 3.15 | Breakout Session 3 |
| 4.00 | Tea break |
| 4.15 | Dickens Fellowship Prizes Launch |
| 4.25 | Closing Speaker: Michael Rosen |
| 4.45-6.00 | Reception at Dickens House Museum |
| Breakout Session 1 | Breakout Session 2 | Breakout Session 3 |
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Dickensian London Walk (max 20) Tony Williams |
Dickensian London Walk (max 20) Tony Williams |
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Literature in Context Sue Walker |
Literature in Context Sue Walker |
Literature in Context Sue Walker |
Teaching Great Expectations through pictures, Ian Brinton |
Teaching Great Expectations through pictures, Ian Brinton |
Teaching Great Expectations through pictures, Ian Brinton |
Dickens Journal Online John Drew |
Dickens Journal Online John Drew |
Dickens Journal Online John Drew |
English Literature Workshop British Library |
English Literature Workshop British Library |
English Literature Workshop British Library |
Evolving English Exhibition Workshop British Library |
Evolving English Exhibition Workshop British Library |
Cost for the day: £45
We are extremely grateful to the British Library whose sponsorship has allowed us to offer delegates a heavily subsidised conference rate.
Booking now open - download Booking Form
Cancellation Policy
Cancellation up to 2 weeks before the conference (by 5 November): full refund |
Cancellation 1 week before the conference (by 12 November): fifty percent refund |
Cancellation less than 1 week before the conference: no refund |
The Association reserves the right to cancel the conference if insufficient bookings are received by the closing date. |
About the Speakers:
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Ian Brinton until recently taught at Dulwich College, London. He is the editor of the English Association's journal for teachers The Use of English and has taught sessions on Dickens and illustration at the Prince of Wales's Summer Schools for teachers of English. |
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Phil Davis appeared as Smallweed in the BBC’s adaptation of Bleak House, as well as having played other Dickensian characters in his career. He will talk about the process of bringing Dickens to life through drama and then take questions from the floor. |
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John Drew taught for two years as a Visiting Lecturer in Spain, before returning to the UK to work for the Association of Commonwealth Universities. He is currently Senior Lecturer and Leverhulme Research Fellow in English Literature at the University of Buckingham. Publications include extensive work on the Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens, Volume 4 of the Dent Uniform Edition of Dickens' Journalism (edited with Michael Slater), an edition of Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray , and a full-length study of Dickens the Journalist for Palgrave-Macmillan (2003), the first of its kind. He edited a short collection of Dickens's recently discovered 'blacking poems' (The Pride of Mankind, Hedge Sparrow Press, 2006) and is currently directing a major project called Dickens Journals Online to digitise and make available online over 40 volumes of Household Words and All the Year Round, the phenomenally popular Victorian magazines edited by Dickens between 1850 and 1870. |
Michael Eaton, MBE, is a screenwriter who specialises in docudrama. His work includes Shipman, Shoot To Kill and Who Bombed Lockerbie. His fictional work includes Flowers of the Forest and the TV series Signs and Wonders. He has adapted works by George Eliot and Charles Dickens for BBC Radio 4. |
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John Mullan is a Professor of English at University College London. He specialises in 18th century fiction and is currently working on the eighteenth-century section of the new Oxford English Literary History. He also writes a weekly column on contemporary fiction for The Guardian and reviews books for the London Review of Books and New Statesman He occasionally appears as an 18th century and contemporary literature expert for BBC Two's Newsnight Review and BBC Radio 4's In Our Time. |
Photo courtesy Booktrust |
Michael Rosen is a broadcaster, children's novelist and poet, and the author of 140 books. He was appointed as the fifth Children's Laureate in June 2007, succeeding Jacqueline Wilson, and held this honour till 2009. He became an Honorary Fellow of the English Association in 2006. |
Tony Williams taught English in secondary schools from 1969 yo 1997 when he took early retirement. He was Joint Honorary General Secretary of The International Dickens Fellowship from 1999 to 2006 and a Trustee of The Charles Dickens Museum in London at the same time. He was then, and continues to be, Associate Editor of The Dickensian and is a frequent speaker on Dickens in the UK and overseas, to Fellowship and other groups, schools and universities. He is currently an Honorary Research Fellow in Humanities at the University of Buckingham, involved to the 'Dickens Journals Online' project. |
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Adrian Wootton is the first Chief Executive of Film London, the body charged with representing and developing the film and media industry in the capital. |
About the Breakout Sessions
Delegates will attend three sessions – placecs on some Breakout Sessions are limited so early booking is recommended.
Dickensian London Walk—Tony Williams
This walk will explore a part of London with which Dickens was very familiar, to the north of the Euston Road. It was an area of great change in the 19th century and has continued to be so into modern times, but a large number of connections with Dickens's life, times and works, can still be made. The walk will last just under an hour. Limited to 20 places per session.
Dickens Journals Online—John Drew
A demonstration of the way in which Great Expectations and Hard Times (and other texts frequently prescribed by the UK exam boards) were originally serialised in Dickens’s weekly journals – with rare samples from the 1850s and 60s, and information about how to access the originals, with new teaching content, via the internet/interactive whiteboard. Discussion of how National Curriculum assessment objectives can be met in a stimulating way via the Dickens Journals Online website, which launches in February 2012 but can be accessed earlier by registered users.
Teaching Dickens in Context—Sue Walker
An exciting chance to explore the context in which Dickens wrote, looking specifically at crime, punishment and urbanisation and/or money, industrialisation and capitalism through original source materials. Sue will introduce the Literature in Context project and inform teachers how they can get involved.
Teaching Great Expectations: The Lost Home—Ian Brinton
This talk will look at how the illustrations from different editions can offer a magnetic insight into the psychological world of Pip’s lost home. Handouts will be provided containing notes about the text and examples of how various illustrators have looked at the themes of terror and imprisonment.
Evolving English Exhibition Workshop
This workshop will look at differences between standard and non-standard English. Through enquiry-based activities participants will investigate the impact of purpose and audience on language production and examine language variation through time, exploring ways migration, colonisation and trade have shaped the English language.
English Literature Workshop: Why Read/Why Write?
This workshop will explore the roles of the author and reader in meaning making and interpretation. Participants will examine the process of writing as evidenced through original manuscripts of drafts held in the British Library collection and explore various ways of reading through different theoretical approaches.