Are you teaching
Princess and the Hustler?
We have designed a workshop for teachers and students of GCSE English Literature on Chinonyerem Odimba’s Princess and the Hustler and feminist magazines. This workshop is hosted by the Women’s Library, LSE.
How can reading magazines develop our understanding of literary texts and their contexts? In this 90-minute interactive workshop, students will have a rare and exciting opportunity to explore a range of feminist magazines first-hand. Through guided activities, students will use magazines drawn from the collections at the Women’s Library as resources for identifying, analysing and interrogating the key issues in GCSE set texts. This particular session will focus on Chinonyerem Odimba’s play Princess and the Hustler (2019), a new addition to the AQA GCSE syllabus, which explores questions of beauty and racism against the backdrop of the 1963 Bristol Bus Boycott.
The workshop activities are designed to enhance students’ ability to discuss the social factors that shape a literary text; in doing so, they address the claims in GCSE examiners’ reports that students often struggle to explain a text’s contexts in relevant and persuasive ways. By the end of the workshop, students will be able to demonstrate how debates about Western beauty standards in feminist magazines (including Shrew, Spare Rib and Outwrite) inform Odimba’s representation of particular characters and events, and will understand how to use these magazines for developing nuanced and contextualised readings of the play.
If you would like to join one of our free, London-based workshops, please contact us on library.learning@lse.ac.uk to discuss dates and availability.
