Innervate: Online Essay Journal
ISSN: 2041-6776
Welcome to Innervate, the online journal of undergraduate work in the School of English at the University of Nottingham. To innervate, as defined in the Oxford English Dictionary, means ‘to supply... with nerve-force’ and its usage here is inflected by the work of F.R. Leavis, who applied the term in reference to the idea of the University. In Leavis’ view, English ought to provide the central nexus of university life, engaging with a range of different disciplines in a process of informal dialogue and intellectual exchange. The School of English, then, has a duty to facilitate a creative interplay of ideas, the value of which cannot be quantified in terms of money earned or facts produced, but which nevertheless is capable of exerting a positive cultural force on society more broadly.
The essays contained in this journal represent the very best work produced by our final-year undergraduate students. They provide a manifestation of the creativity and intellectual dynamism that exists at the heart of what we do as researchers, teachers and learners of English. I trust that they will energise and excite you as much as they have their initial readers.
The essays included in the journal are selected from high scoring coursework submissions on our final-year modules - typically the highest marked submission from each relevant module (or one of the highest marked in the case of a tie). Essays have not been extensively copy-edited, but students have been invited to revise them in view of the comments provided by the tutors who marked them initially.
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