Who’s there? An Overview of Ghosts in English Literature & Critical Theory 

On Wednesday evening, fifteen of our students from Years 10,11,12 & 13 went to a lecture by Mr J Connell; it was a ‘super-curricular’ opportunity as part of Urmston Grammar School’s ‘Community Lecture Series’. The lecture ranged over all manner of interesting facts and aspects of critical theory – from Marxism – a ‘spectre haunting Europe’- through the great thinkers and theoreticians of the 20th Century, such as Freud and Derrida – but also encompassing films such as ‘The Shining’, a range of literary texts, and even an episode of ‘The Simpsons’. This was a great taste of what a university lecture would be like, and the manner in which critics discuss texts that we study now in school, but at a higher level. The GCSE set texts ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘An Inspector Calls’ both featured in what was an exhilarating and fascinating journey though the big ideas of the last 200 years.  

Mr Ahern