Literary survey courses are notoriously difficult to teach, given the limited scope of undergraduate courses. Some of us teach conventional, anthology-based courses, with general introductions to historical periods – a top-down approach to literary history. Others teach a selection of classics in context, using, for instance, critical editions to contextualize each work.

Let us use this forum to discuss successful ways of conveying a sense of the historicity of literature to our students, be it course design, pedagogic methods, or the relation between them.