“At nine o’clock,” as the poet C.P. Cavafy would say, began the 1st online International Student Conference on Literature with the imaginative title given by conference advisor Mr. Costas Giavis: “Rethinking Literature in Schools.” The conference was co-organized by Mandoulides Schools and the Zografeio Lykeio of Istanbul 15 and 16 April, 2021.
A total of 170 students from 22 schools in Greece, Istanbul, Istanbul, the island of Imvros, Nicosia, New York and Johannesburg; 46 teachers from secondary and tertiary education; and 50 selected representatives of the arts and letters had the opportunity to exchange thoughts, questions, and reflections on the teaching of literature today.
Topics discussed:
- Teaching literature in high schools today
- The ideal literature course: suggestions for teaching and reading
- Can poetry really be taught?
- Creative writing or essay writing?
- The role of the reader, the role of the writer, the role of the literature teacher
- Contemporary Odysseys and forbidden texts
- How does the book resist the phantasmagoria of new technologies?
- Foreign literature and literature in translation
- Writers confess: choices, difficult times, joys and impasses
- Literature on stage and the silver screen.
The meeting was held via the Zoom online platform and was broadcast by Livemedia.gr
