Literary and popular-cultural works are not treated as interchangeable vehicles for developing competences, addressing social issues, or providing motivational classroom stimuli. Instead, the point of departure is their specific aesthetic, medial, historical, and reception-related characteristics. Particular attention is paid to works situated between popular circulation and canonisation in educational contexts, as well as to the ambivalences that are easily smoothed over in their subsequent cultural and pedagogical appropriation.
This approach is reflected in published work on texts such as The Wall, Under the Skin, and the Sherlock Holmes stories, as well as in editions of canonical and popular literature for the EFL classroom. Current projects extend this programme through research on British popular music and culture, including The Smiths and 2 Tone, and through work on narrative structure and reading processes that develops a text-centred and reception-oriented approach to literature education.

Prof. Dr. Peter Hohwiller