Owain

Early Career Teaching Fellow at the University of Warwick. PhD: 'The Grammar School Ideal in British Literature 1944-1996'

[Owain @OwainBurrell]

CfP here for a special issue of Key Words on foreclosure as an aesthetic and material theme in 20thC British literature edited by @ChloeAshbridge and me - looking forward to reading people's abstracts!

[Raymond Williams Society @R_Williams_Soc]

🚨🚨Call for contributors to next year's issue of Key Words, a special issue on 'Foreclosure,' guest edited by Chloe Ashbridge and Owain Burrell🚨🚨 Deadline for abstracts is July 18th, 2025. Read more here: https://t.co/yh80NPpKCu Please share widely.

[Owain @OwainBurrell]

@n_hold The difference in pace etc. is absolutely true, but I love the early chapter (maybe 4 or 5?) which is just a meditation on St Fagan's, which could almost be a short essay itself - more his familiar style sneaking into what's otherwise a thriller

[Owain @OwainBurrell]

Pretty insulting to include Old English as an analogue to living Celtic languages

[Aaron Bastani @AaronBastani]

This is cool.

Every kid in a British school should learn one of Welsh, Gaelige, Scottish Gaelic and old English. Even if just for a term (I’d favour longer).

Learn about the deep roots of these islands!

[Jo Grady @DrJoGrady]

Yesterday Keir Starmer announced Labour will nationalise British Steel and save 2700 jobs.

The Uni of Nottingham put 2700 staff at risk of redundancy.

This is just one university.

Across the UK 15,000 higher education jobs need saving.

Where is the rescue package for our universities?

Cities and towns will be devastated by these job losses.

[Dan Evans @dai_alectic]

Wrote about the long collapse of @WelshLabour and the new fault lines in the country for @prospect_uk

https://t.co/pX9SJOZUib

[adam @resurrecti0ns]

as usual, these courses are actually extremely cheap to run and often end up subsidising other courses for the university, but consultants and management don't respect them and think they need to make the universities look futuristic by opening Raytheon AI Crypto centers instead

[csz @cszabla]

this is what’s happening at many UK unis: management gets involved in a bad real estate bet. huge cuts have to be made as a result. STEM labs etc = expensive but can’t be cut bc STEM good. so the cheap to run humanities programs that subsidized STEM are cut, deepening the crisis

[Bad Writing Takes 🖊️🏳️‍🌈 @BadWritingTakes]

For them, there is quite literally *no difference* between allowing Burnham to take over the party and being booted in a General Election because maintaining their own position is quite literally all they care about.

They will ram the party into the side of a mountain... [3/?]

[John Merrick @johnpmerrick]

I won’t mourn the loss of many Labour councils in three weeks, but it’s a grim prospect that places like Preston — a model for what the left can and should do in power — will be wiped out to send a message to a feckless and rotten Starmer government
https://t.co/mzEmQ1GdTp

[Owain @OwainBurrell]

@le0nardpoetry Absolutely and it taught you to be a better critical reader too by having to have something to say, i.e. it was never just about being able to read a novel quickly, but also being able to read well

[Owain @OwainBurrell]

As an undergrad we were set four novels a week - when you're in the habit of it it's quite easy to read a page a minute and get through 200 pages in a few hours. Lowering the expectations of what people (e.g.students) can read means they never acquire this habit

[Navya @agNavya]

Is it humanly possible to read 200 pages in a single day?

[Owain @OwainBurrell]

@lifeisnotanovel On my MA was someone with a BA in philosophy and he couldn't believe we were expected to read the whole set novel each week - I understand the culture shock to an extent but surely reading shouldn't be a surprise on a literature course... The good old days maybe

[Ewan Gibbs @ewangibbs]

There's going to be a lot of frustrating merging of 'British' with 'English' in this discussion. There is no such thing as a British education system or school curriculum - Scottish pupils study a separate curriculum for separate qualifications. Before we get on to theology ...

[Sam @walespolecon]

New Book Klaxon! You can now preorder my book with University Wales Press, releasing this October :)

https://t.co/qZ4XFQUcaF

[Owain @OwainBurrell]

@lifeisnotanovel Them and engineers in my experience

[Owain @OwainBurrell]

@Alex_Niven Yeah I guess there's that gap between the adult school novel which takes education to be a site of social commentary, and the ancestor of modern YA which uses school as a familiar setting w/ convenience of no parents etc.

[Owain @OwainBurrell]

@n_hold Something to be said for the parallel development of Michael Young's thought and work in setting up U3A and the Open University too, though as an associate of the Labour Party rather than a former Communist like Thompson, say

[Owain @OwainBurrell]

Two excellent threads thinking through class and experience. This one in particular articulates in part E.P. Thompson's argument with Anderson/Althusser in Poverty of Theory - sublimating all experience into a structural analysis is really no history at all, and tells us nothing

[Nate Holdren @n_hold]

another random thought or three related then back to work. As I recall it anyway, in the thread below I was rambling in part about how people living out concrete particularized versions of class relationships form institutions and create ideas of those versions and those more

[Owain @OwainBurrell]

@n_hold Sorry for missing this response, Nate! Yes, the WEA was central as an incubator for lots of New Left thought (RW's Culture and Society certainly) and also as the reason the founders of University & Left Review met - RW met Stuart Hall in Oxford via his adult education work

[Owain @OwainBurrell]

Important to remember the North is also constituted of Cumbria, North Yorks, etc. as well as Manchester, Sheffield, Newcastle - there's a whole rural/small-town Northern-ness which is quite different

[Alex Niven @Alex_Niven]

I swear by far the most terrifying/fascinating part of the country is west Cumbria and it’s barely talked about