Author: Edward Mills
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An actual PhD update
Today’s post marks a new low for this blog: I’ve managed to craft something that’s (a) shorter than the usual fare, and (b) entirely unrelated to the topic that I promised to discuss last week, the term ‘Anglo-Norman’. This second topic is still forthcoming, but in the meantime I figured that it would be a…
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Medieval Didactic Literature
Okay, I’ll admit it: for a so-called ‘PhD blog’, my contributions so far have been very much focused on the last of those three little letters (‘D’ stands for ‘digressions’, right?). In an attempt to redress the balance slightly, the next few blog posts will constitute my attempt to put things right. Over the next…
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Drawing Conclusions
Today’s blog post is a little different from the usual fare: it comes to you (largely) in picture form.[1] I thought that today I’d share one of the more unique opportunities that teaching English to French students over the summer has given to me: the chance to indulge my unique drawing skills. Alright, I can’t…
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Academic Diaries: 2016-17
My own academic diary for the upcoming academic year is an old favourite: the Palgrave student planner, modelled in last week’s close-up shot. While in France I like to use a French planner – it just makes the whole living-in-France thing a little more authentic – but in the UK I struggle to resist the old…
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Academic Diaries: The Student Planner
When I was younger, one privilege I got to enjoy was the ‘back-to-school’ shop. As the years went on and I became more responsible for my choices of study, I became fascinated by the range of options open to me in terms of stationery and filing: would I use plastic wallets this year? Which colour…
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Academic Diaries: Les Back
A fair chunk of the Sunday before last was spent reading. Much to my shame, this is something that I can’t say nearly as often as I’d like – the flashy lights of the Internet have definitely had some kind of effect on my cerebral cortex in this respect – but I was relieved to…
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Spare me the ‘lecteur’ – Part 4
We finished last week’s blog, in time-honoured fashion, with a classic French-style problématique. As the start of the academic year drew nearer, I was facing the tricky question of how to engage students who were taking my medievalism course, as well as asking myself whether it was even possible to teach modern English using medieval…
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Spare me the ‘lecteur’ – Part 3
If you’ve been following this blog from the outset (thank you!), you’ll likely know there things about me: (a) I like second-person asides; (b) I have an irrational attachment to colons and semicolons; and (c) I never stop talking about my time spent this year working as a lecteur d’anglais at the ENS de Lyon. Today,…
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First steps in Exeter
Some of my readers might be expecting this blog post to be about Brexit. I certainly intend to write about it, but I feel that there are many people in the Remain camp who have articulated their concerns surrounding the result far better than I could. There is certainly a lot for me to think…
Edward Mills 