Neil Bowen traces the rise, fall and rebirth of the peripeteia project — a not-for-profit initiative created to connect A-level English students and teachers in literary discussion, from its original online forums and free academic seminars to today’s relaunch on a new home-built website

Free to its members and free too from commercial interests or sponsorship, the peripeteia project was created and launched about 15 years ago with the aim of promoting literary discussion among A-level students and teachers from different institutions across the country and even internationally.

Peripeteia was designed to create a network through the building of bridges. A virtual bridge to span the teeming gap between study of English Literature at A-level and at university; a virtual bridge to connect schools, colleges, students and teachers separated by geography and competition, and a virtual bridge to cross the no-man’s land between Independent and state sectors and back again. Together these bridges form the network along which high quality discussion about literary issues can zip along.

The original website was hosted by an American hosting service and featured forums on a wide range of topics, from Post Colonial Literature to Gothic fiction and everything literary in between. The USP of the project was that rather than students passively receiving information, the knowledge on the website was generated through discussion and diaolgue between its members. Members could post material into these forums and other members could respond, so that students learnt from each other. In effect, the website encouraged a great big literary conversation in which students were active participants and where their voices and opinions were valued and nurtured.

In addition, as the project developed, a series of online seminars was organised each year, so that most months students could discuss a literary topic or text with a leading academic expert in that field. After the seminar, the discussion was archived for anyone to read.

I remember how, out-of-the-blue, two pupils from a state school in Kent contacted me to express their astonishment and gratitude for being able to take part in a revision seminar on Othello which they’d found enormously helpful. They couldn’t believe that someone had arranged this for them at no cost and just for their and other members’ benefit. That sort of thing really made the effort and cost or running the project worthwhile.

Peripeteia exists to enrich and deepen an individual or a class’s understanding of a text, topic or genre by relocating that understanding in a broader literary discussion with students and teachers from other schools, cultures and backgrounds.

Also inspiring was the fact that all the academics who ran seminars, some of whom are very distinguished in their field, generously gave up their time for free to help students. This, in itself, sent an important and heartening message to students whose anxities about exam performance are often exploited online by commercial opportunists. The seminars also provided a handy bit of easy outreach for universities and created a positive impression of University English departments.

Frequently the academics were amazed by the quality of the discussion and by the enthusiasm with which the students took part. That too was inspiring and gave all the students a huge confidence boost.

Initially I had thought that online, typed discussion might feel more artificial, awkward and stilted than a live seminar in a seminar room among students. Many of the academics, however, reported that the students participating in the peripeteia seminars were far more communicative than the ones they taught in university. It seemed that this form of non-face-to-face discussion with Professor X or Doctor Y was less intimidating for students and they felt liberated to say what they really thought about the literary topics under discussion.

Death of the old website

Unfortunately, over time the functionality of the hosting service decreased. For many months, I had to send increasingly irritated messages to the chat bot that was meant to sort out technical issues that could shut the website down for a day or make it freeze in the middle of literary discussion. Over time, this service also stopped functioning properly, despite the cost of running the website rising to around £500 per year, money I personally invested in the project.

Eventually, during the Covid period, with the website frequently malfunctioning, I decided to stop paying the hosting service to run peripeteia and stopped running the online seminars. All the rich archive of material that had been generated over fifteen years of literary discussion was still there and new material could still be posted, so I left it at that.

In 2024, perhaps not very surprisingly, the hosting service folded. But it came as a huge shock that, without warning, when the company went bust, the whole peripeteia website — fifteen years of work — disappeared forever into the internet ether. I made some forlorn attempts to recover the huge archive of material, but there was nothing to be done. It was all gone.

The new peripeteia

This year, with the help of a student at school studying computer science A-level who created from scratch a new peripeteia website as part of his A-level coursework, I’m relaunching the project. At first, I’m going to start slowly, with just a few seminars each year and occasional posts, but hope to build the project back up to something similar to what it was before.

The website is homebuilt and we will have to solve any technical issues ourselves, but we’ve already hosted a successful seminar on The Bloody Chamber & the Gothic and have upcoming seminars organised on Hamlet with long-time collaborator and all-round superstar, Professor Emma Smith and on Frankenstein with the excellent Dr Andrew Green.

Though membership is free, to off-set the costs, books produced by peripeteia press are now advertised there. Other than that, the peripeteia project remains a not-for-profit initiative aimed at helping as many A-level English students as possible and promoting our subject as widely as possible.

It is a project that aims to promote collaboration, a collective effort to help each other and spread a love of our subject. Membership has no obligations, other than not abusing the project by inappropriate posting. The more English teachers and English students that join — particularly those willing to share their thoughts, resources, questions and expertise — the better it will get for everyone involved.

To become a member of the peripeteia project, check out the website and follow the instructions. If you’re interested in hosting a seminar, get in touch with Neil.