THE 12th ANNUAL LIBERLIT CONFERENCE FOR the DISCUSSION AND DEFENSE OF THE ROLE OF LITERARY TEXTS IN THE ENGLISH CURRICULUM will be held at Nihon University, College of Humanities and Sciences on June 14, 2025

June 14, 2025 at Nihon University, College of Humanities and Sciences

Theme: Core Concepts, Key Ideas: What Really Matters in Literary Studies?

Among academic disciplines, literary studies stands out for its lack of clearly articulated content, objectives, and methods. While a biology major must acquire basic knowledge about the structure of living organisms, and an economics major must study the fundamentals of supply and demand, a literature major studies what the instructor likes and/or believes worthy of attention. What really matters, it seems, can change from one instructor to the next.Does this mutability effect how the broader public sees – or does not see – literary studies? Is the increasingly precarious state of literary studies (and the humanities in general) related to our inability (or refusal?) to discipline our discipline?As higher education becomes more corporatized, student populations shrink, social media overshadows serious reading, and AI takes over the jobs of knowledge workers, will there be any place for an educational enterprise that cannot plainly define itself? And how can we account for literary studies’ wavering prominence in a way that makes sense to those outside literary studies?Liberlit 12 has always been a forum for rethinking literary studies. In keeping with Liberlit’s pedagogical focus, we want to emphasize for our students and for the powers that be what it is that really matters. In keeping with the theme, here are some topics and questions to consider:• Are literary studies’ key pedagogical objectives universal? Do they apply to Japanese or other classrooms?• The historical, theoretical, political, aesthetic, or intellectual foundations of literary studies.• What is worth preserving, and what should change?• Historical or socio-cultural contexts that deserve more critical and pedagogical attention.• Is the national literature paradigm still relevant?• Integrating or engaging in critical dialogue and/or pedagogies that cross disciplines.• How does the study of literature relate to questions of justice, ethics, literacy, and culture?• Preserving or re-introducing literary study in elementary, junior, and senior high schools

The liberlit manifesto

established 2010

We believe literature to be an essential element of the English curriculum in Japan, and its vital future presence must be ensured and defended. By ‘literature’, we mean authentic texts that use language in creative and careful ways to tell stories, convey impressions, express original opinions, pose critical questions and demand more than simplistic, pragmatic responses. Those texts could include poetry, novels, plays, movies, songs, TV series, or thoughtful authentic writings on culture, society, or history. Teaching literature always means teaching much more than just language. This conference will address attitudes and approaches to ‘literary’ texts in English.We lament the ongoing ‘dumbing down’ and ‘infantilisation’ of English education in Japan and the consequent marginalization of literature in the curriculum at all levels. Our conviction is that literature offers learners access to the kinds of creative, critical, and non-complacent views of the world that Japanese students sorely need and indeed, in many cases, crave. Literature has the power to engage and motivate second-language learners; its potential for multiple interpretations develops the minds of students who often believe that every question has but one answer, and the authenticity of literary texts respects them as intellectually maturing adults. Eye-opening materials and mind-widening methods should be an integral part of the education process at all levels, but are essential at university level before students go forth to live among the complexities of the ‘real’ world.The conference will explore the idea that it is unkind and disingenuous to deprive students of the marvelously varied, meaningful, and challenging content that only great works of literature and thoughtful authentic writings on culture can offer. It will also explore techniques, methods, and ways that literary texts can foreground the roots of education, liberate English language into maturely creative uses and instigate a freer, bolder expression of original opinions. With your participation, we hope this conference will open up an active and collaborative community of thought, reflection, inquiry and discussion. We hope to make this conference the first step in an ongoing forum in which we can establish how, where, and why literature should rightly figure in Japan’s English curriculum.

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