This volume contains a selection of the proceedings of the British Studies Conference, ‘New Directions, New Opportunities’, held in Puławy, Poland, 9-12 March, 2000. Part of the British Council Poland Teacher Education projects, this was the fourth national British Studies conference in Poland.

Participants’ feedback from the previous British Studies Conference in Zakopane, Poland, in March 1999, had suggested that a future conference should provide input about contemporary issues and have sessions focussing on the methodology of teaching British Studies. It was not difficult to decide upon the issue of contemporary significance, Devolution and Identity, and the methodological theme of Working with Texts gave scope for the multi-disciplinary nature of British Studies.

While focused predominantly on the network of British Studies teachers from State Teacher Training Colleges (55 participants), and universities (15 participants), there were also representatives from state secondary and private schools, and visitors from the United Kingdom, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Kyrgyzstan, and Lithuania. We were also very pleased to host the poets Kathleen Jamie from Scotland and Ciaran Carson from Northern Ireland, who gave readings from their works as well as taking part in a panel discussion on ‘Devolution and Identity.’

Conference proceedings which are edited and published some weeks or months after the event

do not always give the reader the sense of what it was like to be there. This Introduction, therefore, comprises three ‘reflections’ written within a week of the end of the end of the conference, two by the editors, and another by Anna Zubrzycka, from KUL Lublin.

A more traditional introduction to the papers in this volume can be found in the brief previews of each section provided by Alan Pulverness.

Michael Houten British Studies Co-ordinator, the British Council, Poland

Devolution - multiplicity of identities

Two plenaries and eight presentations dealt with the issue, as well as a plenary panel discussion featuring representatives from different parts of the United Kingdom, (the Northern Irish poet Ciaran Carson, the Scottish poet Kathleen Jamie, Alan Pulverness from Norwich Institute of Language Education, and Arthur Green and Aled Llion, who were both currently teaching in Poland). The panel discussion was one of the highlights of the conference with the audience captivated by the passion aroused in the exchanges, (which was thought to be very un-British), while the incisive questions from the floor repeatedly forced the panel to look at the question of devolution within a wider European context. If meaning is created between different interlocutors, as was argued in several conference presentations and most forcefully by Krzysztof Knauer’s Britishness and Cultural Studies: Continuity and Change in Narrating the Nation, the panel discussion provided a truly ‘dialogic’ experience, validating Krzysztof’s quotation from Stuart Hall:

What it means to be ‘British’ or ‘Russian’ or ‘Jamaican’ cannot be entirely controlled by the British, Russians or Jamaicans, but it is always up for grabs, always being negotiated, in the dialogue between these national cultures and their ‘others’. [Hall, 1997:236]

Multiple identities was a common theme running through the debate on Devolution and Identity, from the stimulating opening plenary of Alan Pulverness, and reiterated many times afterwards. While such definitions were by nature pluralistic, negotiable and often fuzzy at the edges, they seemed to reflect the realities of the UK today.

Methodology - multiplicity of voices

The Conference suggested that if there was any truth out there, it could only be glimpsed by an approach which employed a multiplicity of voices and perspectives which aimed at finding the meaning created in the dialogue between them. As Richard Bolt pointed out, “all sources hide as well as reveal - not only facts but attitudes and values”. Presenters not only encouraged us to use multiple perspectives, but also showed how this was possible with texts as varied as autobiography, novels, political manifestos, songs, adverts, cartoons and architecture (as in Zbigniew Mazur’s fascinating Celebrating Britishness: From the Crystal Palace to the Millennium Dome).

The British Studies teacher - multiplicity of roles

The image of the British Studies teacher which emerged from the conference was of one who was involved in a multiplicity of roles. Gyöngyi Vegh’s reflections on her involvement in the Hungarian British Studies textbook project showed this most explicitly. During the course of the project, she says, ‘it wasn’t long before I realised that I am an educator just as much as I am a teacher’, and goes on to add that since then, ‘I have become an amateur ethnographer, a materials writer, a graphic designer and most recently a conference presenter’. Secondary school teacher Eva Komorowska from Warsaw participated in three different presentations during the conference, illustrating her roles as cultural studies tour organiser, materials writer, and school project coordinator. As Gyöngyi says, ‘all of this is daunting but empowering as well’.

Alan Pulverness Norwich Institute for Language Education

In the course of a very rich and stimulating weekend, a number of consistent themes emerged:

“Texts in tandem” or “1 + 1 = 3”

Various presenters made the point that the study of texts is invariably enhanced when they are set in opposition, or in apposition, to each other, rather than being examined singly. Aspects of an individual text which may remain concealed are thrown into relief when the text is read (or viewed) side by side with a parallel text. This was evident in the report of the joint project by Polish and Hungarian teachers, in the contrast between the respectively ornate and plain styles of Edmund Burke and Benjamin Franklin, in a comparison of texts by T S Eliot and Julian Barnes, and can also be seen throughout the materials produced by the Polish materials writers (British Studies Materials for English Teachers in Poland: A Cross-Cultural Approach). In fact, both texts will benefit from being ‘read’ in this way - one plus one can equal three.

The power of personal narratives

Another recurrent theme was the way in which history can be read from the perspective of the ‘lived experience’ of individuals. Such personal histories appeared in a range of first-person testimonies, from the Jewish immigrants in the East End of London at the turn of the century to an itinerant Irish navvy in 1950s England to a contemporary squatter. Not simply a means of “making history fun” (the title of one presentation), but a valuable counterbalance to the accumulated weight of more institutional, official history, whose very peculiarity or idiosyncrasy gives it a different kind of authority.

The continuity of texts, lives…

An overarching theme for me was the wealth of connections set up between all kinds of texts and the lives they represented or narrated. Texts which might have been studied purely for their linguistic or literary qualities were viewed from a more comprehensive perspective. These texts - literary, autobiographical, political, social - were examined, questioned and interpreted for what they could tell us about real lives.

…and learning: experiential methodology

An impressive number of presentations - whether they were dealing with literature, history, nationalism or political cartoons - employed or advocated highly interactive approaches, so that the value of personal perspectives was extended from content to methodology.

Co-operation, collaboration, exchange

As an occasional visitor to Poland, I was struck by the degree of positive professional exchange amongst all the participants from different educational sectors - a distinct contrast to my impression at the first British Studies conference in 1997.

Teacher development & personal growth

Another very gratifying impression for an occasional visitor was the spirit of professional development evident not only in the formal presentations, but in the poster displays, the networking meetings and not least in all the informal discussions around the conference centre.

Multiplicity of perspectives

Participants should have left Puławy more uncertain than ever about what constitutes Britishness, or indeed if the concept is meaningful any longer. But it was precisely the variety of perspectives debated during the conference that made it such a fascinating - and positively inconclusive - experience.

Janus-face or Mirrorball?

Finally, a shiny new image. The conventional representation of the face of Janus (see the cover of the British Council’s British Studies Now No 5) looks in two directions - C¹ n C² - but Simon Gill’s suggestion of the multi-faceted disco mirrorball provided an even more suggestive metaphor for the diversity of cultural identities.

Anna Zubrzycka Catholic University of Lublin (KUL)

As I saw it, the general direction that the conference took was to investigate “worlds (cultural texts) in opposition”, confront them with one another and interrogate them to reveal with delight that the  “truth” is not “out there”, as in The X- Files, thus esoteric and removed for all but the most hardy of intellectuals, but “in-between”, and “within the dialogue”, and highly accessible to anyone who cares to sharpen their perception. As Adam Dalton remarked in his talk on ‘Apparent Paradoxes in British culture and its literature’, “one text only illuminates itself, but 1 text + 1 text = 3 texts”, each illuminating the other to form a new, third text. Not only was this a recurring theme in the many interesting presentations we saw, but a methodological tool for keeping the audience gripped to their seats. It was also personified in Hague and Blair during question time in parliament in Irmina Wawrzyczek’s talk ‘New Labour, New Society’.

Presentations given on source texts and first-hand accounts - everyday details that allow people to understand one another across time and cultures - went a step further and examined the tension lying between factual truth and emotional truth, judging neither to be right or wrong, but exploring deeper into seeing life as a journey, and within its mythological context e.g. from innocence to experience, rites of passage, the descent into the underworld. On a more practical level, these source texts are in themselves a particular personal way of understanding and it is important to explore the layers beneath them - why they were written in the way they were - for example, to address a particular social issue or debate at the time.

The useful practical sessions included valuable information on how to surf the web and access source material for our students. The session on networking was particularly important for me as Cultural Studies seems to be a very “individualistic” discipline, where teachers face the choice of either using rather pedestrian guide books of the What is Britain? type or creating an entirely novel and personal approach to shaping their courses. The very nature of the subject, its flux and change, seems to imply that the latter is the only valid approach. Guidebooks are useful - but mainly for their hidden messages and “cultural texts”. Therefore, I was extremely delighted to hear of a new collection of essays and articles edited jointly by Polish and British academics, (Britishness and Cultural Studies: continuity and change in narrating the nation), which will be more relevant for our needs.

Finally, I very much appreciated the many reflections concerning globalism versus the individual. In all, a rich and varied weekend, which revealed just how creative this field is for individual practitioner-teachers, who themselves constantly give it new directions.