English

Creative writing is a new subject area in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) higher education context. It has been recently introduced into the curricula of English Department as an elective module, at undergraduate level, at Salahaddin University-Erbil (SUE) as part of the researchers" doctorial research project. However, introducing and teaching creative writing has required designing an assessment scheme for the whole course. The final project in particular, which is the scope of this study, entails an analytical rubric to ensure a valid and reliable assessment. Therefore, this present study is an empirical enquiry which attempts to design the most appropriate analytical rubric for the final project within the creative writing course taught for 12 weeks at English Department, College of Languages, SUE. It is an attempt to select the criteria that is conducive to teaching and in keeping with the objectives of the course. In order to design the rubric, this study first determines the qualities which should be used as criteria within the rubric. The qualities are taken from a large body of literature and a research visit to the University of Birmingham (UoB). To prove that they are accurate, the qualities have been tested against the content validity of the taught course as well as expert opinion collected through snowball sampling. To substantiate consistency, inter-rater reliability and intra-rater reliability are used and the correlation coefficient between the different scores is measured. The results demonstrate that the analytical rubric provides a valid and reliable tool to assess the creative writing final project. This rubric can be adopted in English departments in non-English speaking countries. It will have implications for further research in curriculum design in general and rubric design in particular in both education and higher education contexts to provide a fair, consistent and accurate assessment tool.

Designing a creative writing (CW) course involves a lengthy, non-linear and multifaceted process. Needs analysis can be used as a starting point for data collection to explore the needs of the course from the perspective of the involved key players and the related areas. This present study is the first round of needs analysis which is part of a larger PhD project. It uses qualitative methods of data collection, namely, non-participant unstructured observations and semi-structured interviews as the first round of data collection at the University of Birmingham (UoB). Thematic analysis has been used to interpret the data and categorise the recurring themes inductively, which will later be compared to the Subject Benchmark of Creative Writing in the UK. The results of this study will be used in the second round of data collection for needs analysis at Salahaddin University-Erbil (SUE) in the larger project that aims to design a CW course at English departments at SUE in the Kurdistan of Iraq (KRI).

In early modern England, a ballad was source of entertainment but also a propaganda vehicle; it circulated news rapidly, but the narratives were manipulated to satisfy the interests of particular parties or the public’s thirst for gossip. “(All news-ballads) were written down to the level of the least intelligent reader”, wrote Hyder Rollins. Available to all classes and easy to memorize, a ballad could creep into the public’s conscience and establish knowledge of uncertain validity. In October 1537, the third wife of Henry VIII, Jane Seymour, gave birth to Edward VI. According to the balladry that publicized the royal birth’s account, the queen was in unbearable pain for numerous days and eventually Edward was delivered by caesarean. As a result, the heir survived but Jane passed away. The ballads on Queen Jane in Francis James Child’s collection, present Jane’s death to have been inevitable and exonerate king Henry VIII of any blame. The king is not associated with decision making when it comes to the caesarian operation; rather, most of the ballads present Jane begging a distressed king Henry to allow for the operation to happen: “Rip open my two sides, and save my baby!”(Child 170, A). Henry is painted to be an ideal husband and his grief is described vividly. This version of events was engraved in the popular mind and Queen Jane’s death was legendised through the persistent reproduction of the ballads, some of which are still being performed today. The ballads, however, are contradicted by historical accounts, some of which support that Jane had a natural birth and died a few days later. Some other sources talk about Henry’s involvement in the incident, saying that he was presented with a choice to save the mother or the child and he chose to save the heir. Comparing ballads and historical evidence demonstrates that oral tradition could prove more powerful than history, for it has the power to eternalise specific events regardless of their accuracy. However, in order to understand the deliberate manipulation of the story, one must explore the balladry’s authorship possibilities and their agendas. The essay explores two probable authorships: the palace and the people and provides evidence on the reasons behind this presentation of events.

PhD Comprehensive Exams Examiner: Dr. Stella Achilleos (Area of focus: music in Shakespeare and early modern drama; music in early modern England) 3. As has been suggested by scholars, in the early modern period music provided the site of an irresolvable set of contradictions, especially as the positive view of music found in the Pythagorean conception of universal harmony and the "music of the spheres" as an expression of the harmonious order of God's creation contended with various complaints that highlighted the unintelligibility or semantic indeterminacy of music as well as others that expressed distrust for the sensuousness of music and its power to appeal to the emotions and the body. Talk about: a) how this cultural anxiety about music is revealed in the literature of the early modern period more broadly and b) how Shakespeare specifically explores the irresoluble contradictions voiced during this period about music.

Emergency Shakespeare is a collaboratively owned theatre company based in an English prison for men convicted of sexual offences. It is the first permanent theatre company of its kind with this population. This article explores the ways in which Shakespeare is used as a way of developing transferable skills such as self-confidence, resilience, teamwork and negotiation with a group of people whom society will stigmatise for their convictions. Constructivist educational methodologies are employed by the Artistic Director to encourage those involved to develop their own sense of autonomy and ownership of the artistic work created.