Online Event: What does it mean to be a reader?

Reading Lessons: Carol Atherton and Robert Eaglestone in conversation.

The English Association is delighted to celebrate the publication of Carol Atherton’s new book, Reading Lessons. Robert Eaglestone will interview Carol about her experiences as a teacher, exploring how texts read in the classroom in secondary, further, and higher education shape students and teachers alike. All are welcome to attend this free, online event.

Carol Atherton has taught English since 1996 and is currently Head of English at a secondary school in Lincolnshire. Originally from Merseyside, she read English at Oxford before doing a PGCE at Manchester Metropolitan University and a PhD at the University of Nottingham. She is a Fellow of the English Association and a member of the National Association for the Teaching of English. Atherton has written for a range of publications aimed at teachers and students, and she co-authored Teaching English Literature 16–19 (Routledge, 2013). Reading Lessons is her first trade publication.

Robert Eaglestone is Professor of Contemporary Literature and Thought at Royal Holloway, University of London.  He is the author of eight books, including Doing English (4th edition 2017), Literature: Why it matters (Polity, 2019) and Truth and Wonder: A literary introduction to Plato and Aristotle (Routledge 2022), and the editor or co-editor of ten more, as well as the policy pamphlet ‘Powerful knowledge’, ‘cultural literacy’ and the study of literature in schools (2021). He is Deputy Chair of the English Association’s Higher Education Committee.

About Reading Lessons

How can a Victorian poem help teenagers understand YouTube misogyny? Can Jane Eyre encourage us to speak out? What can Lady Macbeth teach us about empathy? Should our expectations for our future be any greater than Pip’s? And why is it so important to make space for these conversations in the first place?

In a career spanning almost three decades, English teacher Carol Atherton has taught generations of students texts that will be familiar to many of us from our own schooldays. But while the staples of exam syllabuses and reading lists remain largely unchanged, their significance – and their relevance – evolves with each class, as it encounters them for the first time.

Each chapter of Reading Lessons invites us to take a fresh look at these novels, plays and poems, revealing how they have shaped our beliefs, our values, and how we interact as a society. As she recalls her own development as a teacher, Atherton emphasizes the vital, undervalued role a teacher plays, illustrates how essential reading is for developing our empathy and makes a passionate case for the enduring power of literature.

This online event is part of the #EnglishCreates Week. Tickets are free but please register your attendance in the eventbrite link below to receive details and link.