Teaching the value of literature (and other paradoxes)

In this paper, I report on the new capstone course for the English major at Western Sydney University. The course was delivered against the backdrop of the former federal government’s Job-ready Graduates package, which misrepresented the employment outcomes of humanities graduates, as well as their contributions to the economic, cultural and political health of the country. As the Morrison Government’s higher educational reforms inadvertently demonstrated, the value of literature is difficult to quantify, not least because literature turns the idea of use value on its head. In a political climate hostile to the teaching of university English, the reframing of literary study at university in terms of the value of literature presents pedagogical opportunities I discuss with reference to the choices and approaches adopted in LANG3094: The Value of Literature during the pandemic in 2020–2022.