This article provides an account of a collaborative teaching and learning project conducted in the English programme at the University of Tasmania in 2015. The project, Blended English, involved the development, implementation, and evaluation of learning and teaching activities using online and mobile technologies for undergraduate English units. The authors draw on the project’s findings from survey and focus group data, and staff reflective practice and peer review, to make the case for increasing technology-enhanced teaching and learning in English literary studies. The blended approach described in this article has the capacity to enhance disciplinary learning; increase accessibility for students in remote and regional areas; facilitate deeper scholarly enquiry; and encourage staff to develop innovative, collaborative, and flexible teaching and learning practices. Appendix 1 presents examples of the project’s practical outcomes, as well as outlines of and reflections on three of the activities developed during the project.
This paper argues that literature has much to contribute to the theoretical work of island studies, and not just because literary texts provide evidence of the ways islands are conceptualized in different historical and cultural contexts. To this end, it discusses Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide (2004), a novel which actively theorizes key concepts in island studies. The Hungry Tide is set in the Sundarbans, an “immense archipelago” in the Ganges delta, and tells the largely forgotten history of the forced evacuation of refugees from the island of Morichjhãpi in 1979. The liminal space of the Sundarbans, the “tide country”, is an extraordinary setting for a literary exploration of the relationship between postcolonial island geographies and identities. Ghosh’s depiction of the “watery labyrinth” (Ghosh, 2004: 72) and “storm-tossed islands” (Ghosh, 2004: 164) of the Sundarbans raises and addresses questions, which should be at the heart of the critical meta-discourse of island studies.
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