Robert Eaglestone is Professor of Contemporary Literature and Thought at Royal Holloway, University of London. He works on contemporary literature and literary theory, contemporary philosophy and on Holocaust and Genocide studies. He’s the author of eight books including Doing English (Routledge, 4th edition, 2017), Literature: Why it matters (Polity, 2019) and Truth and Wonder: A literary introduction to Plato and Aristotle (Routledge, 2022), and is the editor or co-editor of 10 more. His paper, ‘ ‘Powerful knowledge’, ‘cultural literacy’ and the study of literature in schools’, argues that ‘powerful knowledge’ and ‘cultural literacy’ are deforming the teaching of literature.