Looking for something to read over the summer? Our friends in the York St John Alumni Group have launched a new online book club.
For more information, head over to their blog.
To sign up, just send them an email: alumni@yorksj.ac.uk
Happy reading!
Texts and Contexts: a student-led publishing project
By Jenny Prout, second year English Literature student
The Texts and Contexts Project is facilitated by the Head of Programme for English Literature, Dr Liesl King, who works with a group of students on the Literature at Work module. This year there were six of us who came together to create the anthology for 2016. The anthology comprises extracts from some of the best work produced by students over the past year, and interviews with the featured students. The project gave us the opportunity to put forward the English Literature Programme’s Contribution to Create ’16, the Faculty of Arts end of year festival.
As a group, we had regular meetings to discuss our thoughts on the content, layout and design of the new anthology. We also had meetings with Liesl to discuss our progress with her, so that we were on the right track. We worked really well together because we kept in constant communication and presented our own ideas as well as listening to each other’s. Members of the team were individually responsible for choosing extracts, editing them and sending out interview questions to students selected to appear in the anthology.
One of our aims was to improve the anthology from the previous years. The biggest change that we made was including illustrations, created by the art students, to accompany each module description. I’m also pleased to say that we were able to include a bigger volume of work, so that many more students were recognised for their talent. The module descriptions themselves were also re-written by the module tutors, in their own words, making the anthology more accessible for the new students that are looking to join the university. To put our own stamp on the project we included an afterword, signed by the team.
Overall, this project was very rewarding as we got to hold a finished product in our hands. If you decide to take the Literature at Work module, I would recommend taking the opportunity to get involved in the Texts and Contexts project, as you can gain so many skills. If this is something you take part in I hope you enjoy it and learn as much as I did!