BA Scriptwriting and Performance (WW84)

Course Code UNU1WW84301
Duration 3 Years
Attendance Full Time
Award Degree of Bachelor of Arts

Overview
Requirements
Course Profile
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Overview

Drama at the University of East Anglia has been ranked 2nd in the Guardian University Guide 2012, leaving other prestigious theatre and drama schools in its shadow. This programme offers you the opportunity to study creative writing for each of the major dramatic media - theatre, cinema, television and radio - combined with practical, critical and historical studies in dramatic literature and performance. You will be introduced to the specific formats, conventions and techniques of scriptwriting for different forms, and will learn by writing scenes and short scripts, and critiquing each others' work. Working alongside students on other drama programmes, you will develop your writing skills in the context of an understanding of many aspects of theatre work, including acting, rehearsal and production methods. You will be able to opt to do the Drama Internship in year 2, which involves a work placement in a drama-producing organisation or environment and you will be able to take part in production and practical project work.

Course Structure

Year 1

From the start of the first year all drama students (whatever their programme) are introduced to a range of applied and technical theatre skills (including safe use of the Drama Studio and aspects of lighting, sound, stage management and stage design) as well as basic acting, group work and weekly voice classes. In year 1 students will take the compulsory Scriptwriting and Performance module which marks the beginning of your specialist study and prepares you for the detailed work of the second year. Students also take the Analysing Film and Television module. Students also take a number of more practical modules and a spring semester module (currently Postwar British Drama) leads to performance work with staff and MA theatre directors.

Year 2

In year 2, students follow a core of modules dedicated to the theory and practice of writing. There is a compulsory module in each semester, Creative Writing: Drama, focusing on writing for stage and radio and exploring the discipline of screenwriting. Both of these modules lead to the workshopping of scripts. Students on this course will also be able to join others in practical drama work; many students opt to take The Actor and the Text module or the Outreach module which takes performance into a variety of real-world contexts. There is also the opportunity to choose from a variety of modules offered by the School of Literature and Creative Writing and the School of Film and Television Studies. In the second year, there is the option of an internship with a professional venue or company. Many students have made use of the internship option to experience professional work abroad.

Year 3

In the third year, students can choose to be involved in the third year production and / or the third year project (which for Scriptwriting and Performance students means a short written piece for performance by other students). Students also do a creative writing dissertation.

Teaching and Assessment:

Key skills, issues and ideas are introduced in lectures given by all members of faculty. More specialist study is undertaken in small group seminars. These are chosen from a range offered within the School and across the University. You will also spend time studying and researching in the library or carrying out practical work or projects. In most subject areas, you are assessed at the end of each year on the basis of coursework and, in some cases, project and examination results. In your final year, you will write a dissertation on a topic of your choice and with the advice of tutors. There is no final examination. Your final degree result is determined by the marks you receive in years two and three.

For Drama students, teaching is also delivered for some modules in the form of workshops and practical classes. For some modules, practical work is assessed and contributes to your final mark.

Course Organiser

Mr Tony Frost

Course Brochure

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Related Courses

Entry Requirements

We do not include General Studies in our offers. Applicants to this course are expected to have either Drama and Theatre Studies, Drama, Performance Studies or English Literature at A-Level. The combined English Language and Literature A-level is acceptable in lieu of English Literature but A-Level English Language on its own is not sufficient. Applicants should offer a second Arts or Humanities subject at A-Level in addition to the specified A-Level in Drama and Theatre Studies / English Literature. Students studying the IB programe must offer a second Arts or Humanities subject at Higher Level.

A Level AAB including Drama and Theatre Studies or English Literature
International Baccalaureate 33 including a minimum of 5 in HL English Literature or Theatre Studies
Scottish Advanced Highers AAB including Drama and Theatre Studies or English Literature
Irish Leaving Certificate AAAABB
Access Course Please contact the university for further information
HND Please contact the university for further information
European Baccalaureate 80% overall incl English Literature or Drama and Theatre studies

Students for whom English is a foreign language

If English is not your first language you must have a recognised English Language qualification: Minimum IELTS 6.5 with a 6 in each sub-section, or TOEFL 585 (238 CBT / 93 IBT). Please contact us for more information about other qualifications that we may consider.

Interviews

We operate an initial shortlisting process for this course on the basis of the information an applicant provides on their UCAS form. Candidates who are shortlisted will be invited to interview and audition and offers are only made after a successful interview and audition. These take place on Visit Days and include an opportunity to look around the campus, view accommodation, meet current students, talk to staff members and find out more about the course. The interview and audition itself lasts about half an hour and is with one of our Drama tutors. Candidates are asked to perform a short monologue from a selection provided and there is also a discussion which generally covers topics such as your current studies, reasons for choosing the course and your personal interests and extra-curricular activities.

Gap Year

We welcome applications from students who have already taken or intend to take a gap year, believing that a year between school and university can be of substantial benefit. You are advised to indicate your reason for wishing to defer entry and may wish to contact the appropriate Admissions Office directly to discuss this further.

Special Entry Requirements

A-Level Drama and Theatres Studies or English Literature. A second Arts or Humanities subject is also required. General Studies is excluded.

Intakes

The School's annual intake is in September of each year.

Alternative Qualifications

We encourage you to apply if you have alternative qualifications equivalent to our stated entry requirement. Please contact our Admissions team for details.

GCSE Offer

Students are required to have Mathematics and English at Grade C or above at GCSE Level.

Assessment

For the majority of candidates the most important factors in assessing the application will be past and future achievement in examinations, academic interest in the subject being applied for, personal interest and extra-curricular activities and the confidential reference. We consider applicants as individuals and accept students from a very wide range of educational backgrounds and spend time considering your application in order to reach an informed decision relating to your application. Typical offers are indicated above. Applicants to this course who are shortlisted will also be required to attend for interview and audition.

Year 1
Year 2
Year 3

Year 1

Compulsory Study (120 credits)

Students will select 120 credits from the following module(s).

Name	Code	Credits	Period
Analysing Film and Television The module is designed to provide students with core study skills and techniques and methods of textual analysis. The module will cover the analysis of a range of formal features and frameworks such as narrative, mise-en-scene, camera work, editing and sound used in the analysis of film and television. The study skills covered will include use of the library and internet for research, as well as note taking, essay planning and the conventions of academic writing. In the process the module will cover issues such as referencing and plagiarism. It will be taught by lecture, seminar and screening. more...	FTVF1F09	20	Semester 1
Applied Drama and Technical Skills Reserved for students on courses: W400U1, WQ43U1, WW84U1. A mixture of workshops, seminars, physical skills, technical classes, aiming to begin the process of training in all areas related to the delivery of an intelligent performance. more...	LDCD1X01	20	Semester 1
Introduction to World Dramatic Literatures 1 This module examines a wide range of influential plays in several genres, drawn from the work of major European dramatists, and with due attention given to issues of both text and performance. The plays are drawn from the work of Aeschylus, Euripides, Shakespeare, Webster, Wycherley, Moliere and Racine, as well as medieval and non-European theatre. A weekly lecture is accompanied by demonstrations/discussions of central scenes and/or video extracts. more...	LDCD1X39	20	Semester 1
Postwar British Drama This volatile and rich period after World War II in Britain radically transformed the British Theatre and saw the rise of a number of innovative theatre companies throughout the second half of the twentieth century. This module examines British Theatre in context from the 1950s to the 1990s. The module will explore the work of seminal theatre companies, playwrights and directors in the United Kingdom and interrogate the performance styles through the lens of British social history through the decades. Through a detailed examination of dramatic texts, video clips, memoirs, journal articles and newspaper clippings, as well as practical workshops and participatory performances of work from the period under scrutiny, we will explore all aspects of theatrical performance from design to direction. more...	LDCD1X02	20	Semester 2
Scriptwriting and Performance This module begins the process of developing your writing and performance skills in tandem. Weekly sessions will introduce approaches to dramatic writing alongside developmental acting exercises. Only available to students of degree programme WW84, Scriptwriting and Performance. Reserved for students on course(s): WW84U1, WQ43U1, W400U1. more...	LDCD1X04	20	Semester 2
Theatre: Theory and Performance This module investigates theories of theatre through the reading and discussion of key theoretical texts, and through practical workshops exploring voice, movement and performance processes, while continuing elements of the technical skills training begun in Semester 1. This module is only available to students of the degree programmes: WW84 Scriptwriting and Performance, WQ43 English Literature and Drama and W400 Drama. more...	LDCD1X06	20	Semester 2

Year 2

Compulsory Study (20 credits)

Students will select 20 credits from the following module(s).

Name	Code	Credits	Period
Creative Writing: Scriptwriting (Aut) WW84 STUDENTS TAKE THIS MODULE AND THE SPRING MODULE (LDCC2W24) AS COMPULSORY MODULES. STUDENTS ON OTHER PROGRAMMES MAY TAKE EITHER THE AUTUMN MODULE OR THE SPRING MODULE, BUT NOT BOTH. This module develops students' abilities to invent and understand dramatic texts. Methods include structured exercises in writing drama and the exploration and analysis of a range of plays. Students may specialise in writing for stage/radio or film/television. more...	LDCC2W05	20	Semester 1

Option A Study (60 credits)

Students will select 60 credits from the following module(s).

Name	Code	Credits	Period
17th-Century Writing: Renaissance, Revolution, Restoration This module explores 17th-Century writing in diverse forms, familiar and unfamiliar: the masque, poetry, prose fiction, political prose and the antecedents of what we now call 'journalism'. We will consider the place of these works in society and in their intellectual and cultural contexts, and examine the traffic between literary writing and broader (popular?) print culture. more...	LDCE2Y13	20	Semester 1
Adaptation: Shakespeare On Stage and Screen This module explores the rich dramatic and cinematic traditions of Shakespearean adaptation. It considers a range of adaptations, from the seventeenth-century restoration versions of Macbeth, King Lear and The Tempest to more recent film versions of Shakespeare's plays, examining the light that adaptive transformations may cast on both the original plays and on the different social and cultural circumstances of the new productions. Through exploration of specific adaptations of Macbeth, King Lear and Henry V, The Tempest, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Hamlet, the module explores the place of Shakespeare's plays on the Caribbean stage, in Japanese film, in Germany and Britain in the 1930s and 1940s, and in more contemporary twentieth and twenty-first-century culture. more...	LDCD2X45	20	Semester 1
Animation Animation is one of the most popular and least scrutinised areas of popular media culture. This module seeks to introduce students to animation as a mode of production through examinations of different aesthetics and types of animation from stop motion through to cel and CGI-based examples. It then goes on to discuss some of the debates around animation in relation to case study texts. Example debates include: who animation is for (children?), the limits of the term 'animation' in relation to CGI, the industrial frameworks for animation production (art vs commerce) and character vs star debates around animation icons. A range of approaches and methods will therefore be adopted within the module, including political economics, cultural industries, star studies and animation studies itself. The module is taught by seminar and screening. more...	FTVF2F33	20	Semester 1
Austen and the Brontes: Reading the Romance This module will consider three texts by Austen and the Brontes. A wide variety of literary and historical contexts will be discussed: feminisms, colonialism, impact of war, the social status of the woman writer, representations of governesses, madness and mad women, rakes, foreigners and strangers, minds and bodies, heroes and heroines. We investigate the ways that the lives of the authors of these novels have been told and read as romances. Opportunities will be available to work on film versions. Work on any text by these authors is welcomed in class, coursework and in the examination. more...	LDCE2X28	20	Semester 2
British Cinema and the Past Literary adaptations, historical epics, war films, spoofs, bio-pics and romantic comedies: British films feature a range of filmmaking styles that deal with and represent 'the past'. This module examines the prominent position that period films have occupied within British film culture of the last century. Their enduring popularity among both filmmakers and audiences raises a range of aesthetic, ideological and practical issues. What techniques and conventions do they use to depict the past? What visions of the British past do they offer? What pleasures do they provide for their audiences? How important are foreign audiences and investment? Do films about the past provide escapist entertainment, or do they enable filmmakers (and audiences) to address contemporary concerns? Investigating films such as 'Zulu', 'A Room with a View', 'Elizabeth', the 'Carry On' series and 'The Queen', the module examines the depiction of the past in British cinema from the 1930s to the present. The module is taught by seminar and screening. more...	FTVF2F18	20	Semester 2
Contemporary Writing This module aims to take an open snapshot of different modes of writing in the recent British scene, not a post-war history of the novel. Together with the question of exactly what it means to be contemporary, we shall concentrate on a small number of thematic and/or formal features, looking in particular at more adventurous examples of recent literature. more...	LDCE2Z34	20	Semester 2
Creative Industries Research Internship (Aut) Supervised placements and internships in one or other of the performance orientated creative industries in Britain or elsewhere. As with LDCD2X35, this module is available to students on the three Drama programmes (W400, WQ43 and WW84) in LDC and elsewhere, on prior approval of a viable proposal by the Drama faculty. more...	LDCD2X19	40	Semester 1
Creative Industries Research Internship (Spr) Supervised placements and internships in one or other of the performance orientated creative industries in Britain or elsewhere. As with LDCD2X36, this module is available to students on the three Drama programmes (W400, WQ43 and WW84) in LDC and elsewhere, on prior approval of a viable proposal by the Drama faculty. more...	LDCD2X20	40	Semester 2
Creative Industries Research Project (Aut) Either an extended piece of research and writing on a drama-related topic selected by the individual with the approval of the module organiser, or an approved and supervised solo performance piece. As with LDCD2X20, this module is available to students on the three Drama programmes (W400, WQ43 and WW84) in LDC and elsewhere, on prior approval of a viable proposal by the Drama faculty. more...	LDCD2X35	20	Semester 1
Creative Industries Research Project (Spr) Either an extended piece of research and writing on a drama-related topic selected by the individual with the approval of the module organiser, or an approved and supervised solo performance piece. As with LDCD2X20, this module is available to students on the three Drama programmes (W400, WQ43 and WW84) in LDC and elsewhere, on prior approval of a viable proposal by the Drama faculty. more...	LDCD2X36	20	Semester 2
Creative Writing : Introduction (Aut) An introductory module open only to second year students. It is not available to students on the Creative Writing Minor and is offered as an alternative to other Level 2 Creative Writing modules. The teaching uses structured exercises based on objects, handouts, discussion and visualisation to stimulate the production of prose fiction and poetry. In the first half of the seminar students will write about 'what they know', drawing on notebooks, memories and family stories. In the second half the focus will shift to the work of established authors, using sample texts as a stimulus to students' own writing. more...	LDCC2W11	20	Semester 1
Creative Writing: Scriptwriting (Spr) WW84 STUDENTS TAKE THIS MODULE AND THE AUTUMN MODULE (LDCC2W05) AS COMPULSORY MODULES. STUDENTS ON OTHER PROGRAMMES MAY TAKE EITHER THE AUTUMN MODULE OR THE SPRING MODULE, BUT NOT BOTH. This module develops students' abilities to invent and understand dramatic texts. Methods include structured exercises in writing drama and the exploration and analysis of a range of plays. Students may specialise in writing for stage/radio or film/TV. more...	LDCC2W24	20	Semester 2
Creative Writing: Introduction (Spr) An introductory module open only to second year students. It is not available to students on the Creative Writing Minor and is offered as an alternative to other Level 2 Creative Writing modules. The teaching uses structured exercises based on objects, handouts, discussion and visualisation to stimulate the production of prose fiction and poetry. In the first half of the seminar students will write about 'what they know', drawing on notebooks, memories and family stories. In the second half the focus will shift to the work of established authors, using sample texts as a stimulus to students' own writing. more...	LDCC2W08	20	Semester 2
Creative Writing: Poetry (Aut) This module enables students to test the range of their abilities as writers of poetry. The first half of the course will be exploratory and practical, using structured exercises and handouts to consider such issues as voice, persona, sound, imagery, metaphor, structure and form. In the second half the emphasis will shift to constructive group discussion of students' own work. Aims: The aim of this module is to develop students' expressive and technical skills in writing poetry and to improve students' abilities as editors and critics of their own and other people's work. more...	LDCC2W07	20	Semester 1
Creative Writing: Poetry (Spr) This module enables students to test the range of their abilities as writers of poetry. The first half of the seminar will be exploratory and practical, using structured exercises and handouts to consider such issues as voice, persona, sound, imagery, metaphor, structure and form. In the second half the emphasis will shift to constructive group discussion of students' own work. Aims: The aim of this module is to develop students' expressive and technical skills in writing poetry and to improve students' abilities as editors and critics of their own and other people's work. more...	LDCC2W20	20	Semester 2
Creative Writing: Prose Fiction (Aut) This module enables students to test their abilities and potential as writers of prose fiction. It is not intended for beginners, or those with no experience of a formal creative writing environment. The first half of the course will be exploratory and practical, using structured exercises and handouts to consider such issues as character, genre voice, dialogue and point of view. In the second half the emphasis will shift to constructive group discussion of students' own work. Aim: The aim of this module is to develop students' expressive and technical skills in writing prose fiction and to improve students' abilities as editors and critics of their own and other people's work. THIS MODULE IS EXCLUSIVE TO CREATIVE WRITING MINORS, VISITING STUDENTS FROM EQUIVALENT COURSES AND LIT STUDENTS WITH SOME PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE OF CREATIVE WRITING. ALL OTHER STUDENTS SHOULD ENROL ON LDCC2W08/11 CREATIVE WRITING: INTRODUCTION. more...	LDCC2W01	20	Semester 1
Creative Writing: Prose Fiction (Spr) This module enables students to test their abilities and potential as writers of prose fiction. The first half of the seminar will be exploratory and practical, using structured exercises and handouts to consider such issues as character, genre, voice, dialogue and point of view. In the second half the emphasis will shift to constructive group discussion of students' own work. The aim of this module is to develop students' expressive and technical skills in writing prose fiction and to improve students' abilities as editors and critics of their own and other people's work. THIS MODULE IS EXCLUSIVE TO CREATIVE WRITING MINORS, VISITING STUDENTS FROM EQUIVALENT COURSES AND LIT STUDENTS WITH SOME PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE OF CREATIVE WRITING. ALL OTHER STUDENTS SHOULD ENROL ON LDCC2W08/11 CREATIVE WRITING: INTRODUCTION. more...	LDCC2W14	20	Semester 2
Critical Theory and Practice Through a combination of lectures and seminars, this module will explore changing responses to the central questions of poetics, from Plato and Aristotle in the classical period to contemporary theory. What kinds of truth, if any, do poetry and fictional writing tell? What is the nature of the imagination or the role of invention? How does fictional writing relate to philosophy, religion, rhetoric or science? This module will approach these questions through a combination of historical, theoretical and practical approaches. This module enables students to identify, assess and employ a range of critical methods in their study of literature. more...	LDCE2X15	20	Semester 1
Cultural Theory and Analysis This seminar module introduces a range of critical approaches to ideas of culture and encourages their assessment and application, paying particular attention to the role of literature and visual culture (art, film, advertising). Organised broadly historically and focussing on the twentieth century, it considers different appraoches to 'culture', including key debates around the concept of 'high' and 'low' culture and power, the impact of mass culture, culture industries, gender and culture, modernism and postmodernism. Theorists to be studied include Matthew Arnold, Raymond Williams, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, Dick Hebdige, Simone de Beauvoir, Judith Butler and Fredric Jameson. Assessment is by means of joint or individual seminar presentation which is then written up and a longer essay. more...	LDCE2X17	20	Semester 1
Drama Outreach Project Reserved for students on courses: W400U1, WQ43U1, WW84U1. Group practical theatre work which entails public performance to target audiences in the community or on campus. more...	LDCD2X30	20	Semester 2
Eighteenth-Century Writing This module reads major British fiction and some poetry of the eighteenth century in terms of its relation to the development of society which is recognisably modern. We will examine such writers as Defoe, Swift, Pope, Richardson, Fielding and Sterne, and exploring the `rise of the novel', the coming dominance of prose representation in journalism and fiction, the rise of the middle class, the move to an urban cash-nexus society governed by reason and contractual economic exchange, and the construction of new kinds of subjectivities for men and women according to the needs of middle-class patriarchy. In many ways, this module studies the development of the `modern mind'. more...	LDCE2Y11	20	Semester 1
Erasmus Exchange: Spring Semester LDC students going abroad under the ERASMUS exchange scheme for the Spring semester must enrol for this module. Students going abroad under the ERASMUS exchange scheme to Dublin will need in addition to enrol for module LDCE2A01. Further details on the ERASMUS scheme are available from the Study Abroad Office. more...	LDCE2A02	60	Semester 2
European Literature: Encounters With 'Otherness' This module explores critical and aesthetic issues raised by general and comparative literature, issues of 'influence', reception, intertextuality, translation, formal and generic comparabilities, national identity and cultural borrowing. Theoretical questions will be examined through specific examples and case studies, ranging across different periods and geographies; however the focus is likely to be on the twentieth-century. Works studies may include texts by e.g. Kafka, Camus, Sartre, Sebald, Calvino, Celan. more...	LDCE2X24	20	Semester 2
Film Theory This module explores aspects of film theory as it has developed over the last hundred years or so. It encompasses topics including responses to cinema by filmmaker theorists such as Sergei Eisenstein; influential formulations of and debates about realism and film aesthetics associated with writers and critics such as Andr?? Bazin, Siegfried Kracauer, Rudolf Arnheim and Bela B??l??zs; the impact of structuralism, theories of genre, narrative and models of film language; theories of authorship; feminist film theory and its emphasis on psychoanalysis; intertextuality; theories of race and representation; reception models. The module is taught by lecture, screening and seminar. Students will work with primary texts - both films and theoretical writings - and have the opportunity to explore in their written work the ways in which film theories can be applied to film texts. more...	FTVF2F43	20	Semester 1
From Pushkin to Chekhov: Nineteenth-Century Russian Fiction This module offers students the opportunity to study some of the great works of nineteenth-century Russian fiction by authors such as Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Russian writers were convinced that their country's literature had been too dependent on European models and they set out consciously to create a distinctly 'Russian' tradition. What did this involve and why subsequently were the works of the authors like Dostoevsky and Chekhov received so rapturously when they became available in English translations at the beginning of the twentieth century? We will also examine this writing in its social, historical and political context, which raises questions regarding the significance of gender, censorship and empire. more...	LDCE2Z33	20	Semester 1
From Tragic to Epic Performance Through readings of classical and neo-classical generic criticism, as well as through an investigation of performance and staging demands, the module examines classical, post-classical and early modern forms of tragedy, and contrasts them with the complex emergent forms of tragicomedy and (later) epic, which, in different ways, re-model or resist the central experience of tragic reception. The course will look at plays selected from different genres, countries and periods, e.g. classical Greek (Sophocles) and Roman (Seneca) French Neoclassical (Racine), Spanish golden age (Lope de Vega Calderon), English Jacobean (Middleton and Rowley, Ford), Japanese Kabuki, post-revolutionary German (from Schiller to Brecht). By positing strategies for reading and performing such plays, it will thus develop a deeper knowledge of stage history and of complex theatrical styles. It will also engage with critical discourse, especially in aesthetics and genre criticism (Zeami, Aristotle, Castelvetro, Dryden, Lessing, Brecht). more...	LDCD2X47	20	Semester 1
Goodbye to Berlin? Literature & Visual Culture in Weimar Germany This module aims to explore some of the exciting developments in verbal and visual culture of the Weimar Republic between the First and Second World Wars, e.g. experimental theatre, Weimar cinema, cabaret, visual arts, the Bauhaus, etc. Texts considered will include writings by Brecht et al. Thomas and Heinrich Mann, and less familiar authors as well as key films by e.g. Pabst (Threepenny Opera), Lang (Metropolis), von Sternberg (Blue Angel) and others. A particular focus is likely to be representations of gender on page, stage and screen. Active seminar participation is expected. NB: A knowledge of German, while useful, is not a prerequisite; translations are available. more...	LDCE2Z40	20	Semester 2
Literature Studies Semester Abroad: Australia (Spring) A semester spent at an Australian university taking an approved course of study. Restricted to students on Q300U1, QT37U1, Q3W8U1, QV31U1, W400U1, WQ43U1. WW84U1. more...	LDCE2A04	60	Semester 2
Medieval Writing This module is designed to provide an introduction to the study of medieval English language and literature. In a series of lectures and seminars students will work through a small but representative selection of medieval texts, including lyrics, romance, and poetry, in order to develop a working knowledge of the language - Middle English - and an appreciation of different forms and genres found in medieval writing. Medieval texts and contexts will be used as a means of familiarising students with medieval language, and form the basis for further modules in medieval writing that may be taken within the School. more...	LDCE2Y15	20	Semester 1
Modernism The purpose of this module is to study the literature of the early decades of the twentieth century - very roughly 1900-1930 - in particular the work of those authors who attempted to break with received norms of literary style and content. The module is organised as a series of thematic explorations - poetic experiment, memory and desire, myth and innovation, and so on - and thus does not follow a chronological structure. The sequence of guiding lectures focuses its deliberations on a set of specific texts, with their contexts, and these are taken up for discussion in the accompanying seminars. 'Modernism' is this constructed gradually over the semester as a mosaic of closely related issues, each one reflecting on the others. As well as providing an overview of defining textual features, in prose and poetry, the module is concerned also with the interrelation of text and context, offering a range of ways of conceiving of modernist literature as both of, and self-consciously ahead of, its historical moment. more...	LDCE2Z15	20	Semester 1
Nineteenth-Century Writing This module introduces students to classics of nineteenth-century fiction, primarily British but also including two famous French novels to provide comparative foil. The lectures will direct attention to such formal and ideological matters as the free indirect style, literary realism, authorial omniscience and moral didacticism, the representation of history, comic and gothic elements, and the shift towards aestheticism and impressionism in the second half of the century. These features will be related to larger patterns of social change, notably changing relations between social classes, the role of the novel in bourgeois ideology, moral urgency and complacency, the repression of women, the retreat from progressive models of history and the development of a commodifying cultural sphere. more...	LDCE2Z30	20	Semester 2
Performance Skills: the Actor and the Text This module is reserved for Drama majors (W400), Drama/Literature Joints (WQ43), Scriptwriting and Performance (WW84), and Theatre Directing Masters students. Drama Minors wishing to apply must first seek approval for inclusion from Mr T. Gash. The main methods of study are through: (1) individual performance of poems and speeches, (2) scene classes, (3) character study of roles in classic plays. more...	LDCD2X27	20	Semester 1
Political Theatre This module examines the use of theatre and performance - by the State, by oppositional groups, by political activists and by theatre and performance practitioners - to solidify or challenge structures of power. The course looks at specific examples of how theatre and public spectacles have been used in the twentieth century to control or contest the political stage. Examining American, South America, African, Russian, and Eastern European performance in the twentieth century, this class will document and explore through specific performances, videos, dramatic texts and theoretical essays, how performance in theory and practice can be used to explore issues to race, ethnicity, gender, political upheaval and social change within a society. more...	LDCD2X02	20	Semester 2
Popular Music This module encourages students to explore the ways in which popular music has been understood by scholars in the field of media and cultural studies. The module will examine the debates over popular music industries, texts and audiences, and incorporate an exploration of a range of popular musical forms, including folk music, rock, pop, rap and/or hip-hop, and dance music cultures. It will also examine the relations of popular music to other media, such as television and the internet. more...	FTVF2F52	20	Semester 2
Publishing (Aut) The module will be theoretical as well as practical including discussions around the design and editing of a text and what constitutes an editorial policy. Students will be taught how to set up, run and market their own publications (a magazine/book/fanzine) as well as to justify their editorial, marketing and business strategies. This course will be assessed by a portfolio and a piece of coursework. Training on Desktop publishing packages PageMaker and Photoshop will be provided as part of the course. more...	LDCE2X05	20	Semester 1
Publishing (Spr) The module will be theoretical as well as practical including discussions around the design and editing of a text and what constitutes an editorial policy. Students will be taught how to set up, run and market their own publications (a magazine/book/fanzine) as well as to justify their editorial, marketing and business strategies. This course will be assessed by a portfolio and a piece of coursework. Training on Desktop publishing packages PageMaker and Photoshop will be provided as part of the course. more...	LDCE2X06	20	Semester 2
Reception and Audience Studies in Film and Television This module seeks to understand the ways in which audiences engage with film and television. It will introduce students to some of the key research on, and theoretical debates about, audiences and the processes of reception, from work on encoding and decoding, through studies of the social activities of television consumption, to research on marketing, critical reception and exhibition. It will also introduce some of the methodological issues involved in the actual practice of doing audience studies. In this way, the module will not only encourage students to learn about the study of film and television audiences, but also equip them with the tools necessary to undertake their own studies. The module is taught by seminar. more...	FTVF2F29	20	Semester 1
Research Training The module is designed to provide students with the key concepts and methods necessary to devise and execute an independent research project whether using traditional academic methods or practice based research. As a result, it will cover the key processes involved in devising and focusing a research project, reflexively undertaking the research itself and writing up one's results. In the process, students will be shown how to position their work in relation to an intellectual context; devise the research questions that are practical and realistic; and developing research methods through which to address these questions. The module will be taught by lecture and seminar. more...	FTVF2F34	20	Semester 2
Romanticism 1780-1840 Romantic Literature is often thought of as poetry, primarily work by Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats and Bryon. But the signs and forms of Romantic sensibility can also be found in a much broader constituency of writing practice: the novel, letter writing, the essay, political and aesthetic theory, and writing of all kinds taken as social commentary. This module is taught through a combination of lectures and seminars. more...	LDCE2X26	20	Semester 2
Shakespeare The aim of this lecture-seminar module is to help you become a better reader of Shakespearean drama. He was writing between about 1590 and about 1610; obviously his plays speak to us over a great cultural distance, and we can find fresh ways of reading them by exploring the theatrical, generic and historical frameworks in which they were written and staged. The lectures, then, will introduce a range of contexts, and the seminars will seek to turn them to account in the reading of the dramatic texts themselves. more...	LDCE2Y04	20	Semester 2
Television Genre Work on television genre continues to draw on theories developed in relation to film, despite the fact that these theories have been heavily criticised. Not only can this ignore the differences between film and television genres, it can also work to privilege film over television, so that television is often seen as an inferior copy of genres developed elsewhere. The module will therefore explore the theory of genre in relation to television, the historical development of television genres, and the operation of genre in the production, mediation and consumption of television and its programmes. The module will also examine these debates in relation to concrete case studies. The module is taught by seminar and screening. more...	FTVF2F54	20	Semester 2
The Business of Film and Television The module provides an intensive introduction to the business of film and television; including the development, financing, production, distribution and exploitation of films and television programmes. It is based around a detailed understanding of the film and television value chain, showing how different businesses and creative people work together to create and exploit programmes. It will also cover the process by which scripts or TV programme ideas are written and developed. Emphasis will be placed on UK, European and American Independent film models, as well as the US studio model. It includes a wide range of recent case studies and real-life examples, with companies from Pixar to Working Title, and film-makers from Ken Loach to Terry Gilliam. Issues raised will include the impact of new technologies; changing business models; the conflict between commerce and art; entrepreneurship and managing creative people; and the complex and difficult relationships between writers, directors, producers, executives, financiers, and distributors. It is a practical forward-looking course about current and future business practise, which will be a valuable foundation for anyone interested in working in the media, film or television sectors. It will also be valuable to anyone studying film and television programmes and culture, so that they can fully understand the financial and business context in which programmes are created. By the end of the module you will know how films and TV programmes get dreamt up, how they get developed, and how they get financed and distributed. You will learn how the industry actually works. more...	FTVF2F35	20	Semester 1
The Writing of Journalism (Aut) The Writing of Journalism is concerned with journalism as a practice, and a genre. By examining different types of writing involved in a range of journalism, including short news stories, running stories, online journalism, reviews, and feature writing (including interviewing), we will identify and develop the skills needed to produce these. In addition to writing journalism themselves, students will examine journalistic writing and critical work about issues in the writing of journalism to probe and challenge their own ideas and assumptions about the practice and production of journalism. Rather than see the practice of journalism and the critical study of journalism as distinct activities, this course aims to engage students as critical readers and writers whose work is informed by both contexts. In so doing, students will gain a greater understanding of the demands and conventions of journalistic writing, develop and sharpen their own work, and gain the discursive flexibility to navigate the writing of journalism today. The module demands a high level of participation, as it is based on discussion, peer-workshops, and practical experience of reading and writing news and feature articles. Regular writing and participation in workshops count towards assessment. Due to the nature of this module, students who work in English as a second or foreign language should meet LDC's EFL score of 6.5. All prospective students are advised that the module involves weekly work to develop effective - and professional - journalism practices. more...	LDCC2W27	20	Semester 1
The Writing of Journalism (Spr) The Writing of Journalism is concerned with journalism as a practice, and a genre. By examining different types of writing involved in a range of journalism, including short news stories, running stories, online journalism, reviews, and feature writing (including interviewing), we will identify and develop the skills needed to produce these. In addition to writing journalism themselves, students will examine journalistic writing and critical work about issues in the writing of journalism to probe and challenge their own ideas and assumptions about the practice and production of journalism. Rather than see the practice of journalism and the critical study of journalism as distinct activities, this course aims to engage students as critical readers and writers whose work is informed by both contexts. In so doing, students will gain a greater understanding of the demands and conventions of journalistic writing, develop and sharpen their own work, and gain the discursive flexibility to navigate the writing of journalism today. The module demands a high level of participation, as it is based on discussion, peer-workshops, and practical experience of reading and writing news and feature articles. Regular writing and participation in workshops count towards assessment. Due to the nature of this module, students who work in English as a second or foreign language should meet LDC's EFL score of 6.5. All prospective students are advised that the module involves weekly work to develop effective - and professional - journalism practices. more...	LDCC2W28	20	Semester 2
Theatres of Revolt: Nineteenth-Century European Drama Beginning with Ibsen and Strindberg, this module examines the development of modern forms of drama during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, addressing modern concerns - self and society, gender, sexuality, social and class conflicts, creation and destruction, the unconscious - and deploying experimental types of theatre by Chekhov, Maeterlinck, Wilde, Hauptmann, Buchner and Wedekind, as well as the two seminal Scandinavians. We will be looking at versions of Naturalism, Symbolism and Expressionism as modernist modes in drama and suggesting ways in which these shape and anticipate later developments. There will be opportunities to view some of the plays on film. Assessment is by means of seminar participation, one piece of textual analysis and one longer essay. Drama students may include a performance element as part of the assessment. more...	LDCE2X07	20	Semester 1
Three Women Writers The writings of Edith Wharton, Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf intersect with discourses of 'new women' and gender as well as feminism, and social and cultural history. This second level seminar develops historicist and generic understanding as well as exploring women's identity through these authors' writings, which move between realism and modernism. Special attention to just one writer is possible in the final essay. Particular attention will be given to some of Virginia Woolf's lesser known writing. more...	LDCE2Z38	20	Semester 2
War Lives: Writing Britain in World War II World War II brought the horror of war home to the British. War invaded the country in new ways: it reshaped Britain's landscapes, radically altered the social practices of everyday life, and shattered people's very sense of what it meant to live. As one writer remarked, the war "worked at a thinning of the membrane between the 'this' and the 'that'. War life, for many, was hallucinatory, and the struggle to write the war, and its peculiar relation to Britain's home-front, invades the writing of the 1940s in strange and unpredictable ways. This module examines both fiction (short stories and novels) and non-fiction (essays and letters) by writers such as Elizabeth Bowen, A. L. Barker, Angus Wilson, Henry Green and Patrick Hamilton, as well as critical work on the literature of the period, to examine how writing in and about Britain during the Second World War struggled to account for the uncertainties and instabilities of war lives. more...	LDCE2X34	20	Semester 2
World Literature: Reading Globally The term 'world literature', coined by Goethe as a means for promoting universal understanding, and then taken up by Marx and Engels as a symbol of modernity, has today become not only a booming area of academic research, but also a publishing phenomenon. This module introduces literature from around the globe, specifically texts that have had and continue to have an impact on an international readership and that frequently demand a self-consciously different mode of reading, one that recognises otherness while simultaneously finding points of commonality. Primary texts will include the ancient Babylonian epic Gilgamesh, the classical Japanese Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, The 1001 Nights, the King James Version of the Bible, as well as more contemporary works by authors such as Bei Dao, Orhan Pamuk, Salman Rushdie, Tayeb Salih and Yoko Tawada. To contextualise our diverse readings, a range of critical and theoretical explorations of what it means to read (or to write) beyond the borders of a national literature will also be studied. The vital role of translation, understood in both the linguistic and cultural sense, in creating the world literature text will further ground much of the discussion. more...	LDCE2X29	20	Semester 1
World Performance	LDCD2X16	20	Semester 2
You may also pick any of the modules that begin with: LDCD2X03 LDCE2Z07 LDCE2X32 LDCD2X48

Free Choice Study (40 credits)

Students can select modules worth 40 credits from the course catalogue with the approval of their School.

Year 3

Option A Study (30 credits)

Students will select 30 credits from the following module(s).

Name	Code	Credits	Period
Creative Writing Dissertation (Aut) This is an advanced level module which is for final year CW minors. The module allows students an opportunity to write a substantial short story (approximately 6000 words) or drama script (60 pages) or collection off poems (15-25 poems, totalling between 270 and 290 lines) and to develop an understanding of their own motivations, influences and processes through the production of a reflective self-commentary (2000 words). This module aims to encourage independent learning and the initiation and development of new creative material in a way that provides a grounding in the disciplines necessary both for postgraduate research and the professional practice of writing. more...	LDCC3X07	30	Semester 1
Creative Writing Dissertation (Spr) This is an advanced level module which is for final year CW minors. The module allows students an opportunity to write a substantial short story (approximately 6000 words) or drama script (60 pages) or collection of poems (15-25 poems, totalling between 270 and 290 lines) and to develop an understanding of their own motivations, influences and processes through the production of a reflective self-commentary (2000 words). This module aims to encourage independent learning and the initiation and development of new creative material in a way that provides a grounding in the disciplines necessary both for postgraduate research and the professional practice of writing. more...	LDCC3X08	30	Semester 2

Option B Study (90 credits)

Students will select 90 credits from the following module(s).

Name	Code	Credits	Period
Writing Life: Biography and Creative Non-Fiction How do writers attempt to capture 'life' in all its various forms? What, if any, are the different requirements in writing the life of a famous (or not so famous) person and that of a city or landscape? What about the 'life' of travel or food and how do you approach writing about the natural world? These are just some of the questions that this module sets out to address. We will be reading a wide variety of texts, from the 'traditional' biography to some of the more experimental examples of creative non-fiction. From Samuel Johnson to essays in The New Yorker, all human (and non-human) life will be there! Students may choose between writing their own piece of Biography or creative Non-Fiction as their final project or submitting a critical essay. more...	LDCE3X46	30	Semester 2
Chaucer This module explores Chaucer's major writings in their historical, cultural and literary contexts. The module will introduce Chaucer's writing in a range of genres and will examine his works' representation and exploration of society, identity, chivalry, politics, religion and gender, and will also consider the medieval reception of Chaucer's writing. Previous experience of medieval literature will be useful but is not required. more...	LDCE3Y05	30	Semester 1
Children's Literature This module offers students the chance to learn about children's literature and its development and also to try to write a piece of children's literature themselves. It starts with the history of children's literature, looking at its use as a pedagogical tool, moving through Aesop's fables, fairy tales, Mother Goose, Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and examining other authors such as A.A. Milne, Dr. Seuss, Roald Dahl, Sherman Alexie and Nancy Garden, amongst others. The course looks at issues of genre and content as well as historical context. By studying the development of children's literature, this module also analyses the development of the concept of childhood in Western society. more...	LDCE3X67	30	Semester 1
Contemporary Drama and Film The module will examine emergent voices and trends in recent theatre, film and television (mainly British but with some American or European contributions). Issues covered include the (questioned) demise of explicitly political drama and the appearance of previously silenced voices (e.g. gay and lesbian themes, feminist playwrights and writing ethnicity, physical theatre practitioners). more...	LDCD3X34	30	Semester 2
Drama and Literature: the Question of Genre This seminar will explore the boundaries between drama and other genres (kinds, art-forms, media) in an attempt to investigate a number of interrelated theoretical questions. We shall explore these issues via various types of activity - practical criticism, critiques of literary theory, performance analysis, dramatising prose narrative. The set texts are works of literature which do not quite fit generically - particularly plays that seem to be in some sense 'epic', or novels in some sense 'theatrical', ranging from Shakespeare in the 17th century through to Gay and Fielding in the 18th and Dostoyevsky and Chekhov in the 19th. more...	LDCE3X06	30	Semester 2
Drama Dissertation An independently researched dissertation of 8000 words on some aspect of drama or dramatic literature, performance theory and practice. This may treat drama in the medium of theatre, TV, film or radio, or it may take the form of a drama script (45-60 minutes running time). more...	LDCD3X35	30	Semester 1
Drama Dissertation An independently researched dissertation of 8,000 words on some aspect of drama or dramatic literature, performance theory and practice. This may treat drama in the medium of theatre, TV, film or radio, or it may take the form of a drama script (45 - 60 minutes running time). more...	LDCD3X36	30	Semester 2
Drama Production (Year 3) This module covers the development and delivery of a full-scale theatre production (usually of a scripted, possibly classical play): involving planning, rehearsal, technical contribution, performance and self-evaluation. more...	LDCD3X33	60	Semester 1
Drama Projects Individual performance projects with supervision, leading to presentation (usually before the external examiner). Only available to Drama majors, approved minors and Drama/Literature joint students. more...	LDCD3X38	30	Semester 2
Early English Drama This module focuses on the medieval and early sixteenth century period, exploring conceptions and deployments of drama. Comparative work of different forms of drama, the drama and other artistic media, and the drama and social attitudes will be encouraged. You will explore whether drama successfully produces civic unity; how audiences are addressed and constructed; the theatricality of how the Biblical past is imagined, the significance of staging, place, and gesture; the social and political functions of drama, the representation of women; and protests against the drama from various quarters. Our period ends just as the suburban professional theatre was establishing itself in London in a form that was fundamentally influenced by these much earlier dramatic activities. We shall explore how spectacle and ceremony enabled pre-Reformation communities to celebrate their existence and assert an often contested or otherwise problematic sense of their cultural identity. more...	LDCE3Y81	30	Semester 1
Fin De Siecle: Fantasies of Decadence and Degeneration Max Nordau's 1892 Degeneration, attacking fin de siecle decadence, draws together fears of cultural decline and corrupting artistic practice through pseudo-Darwinian thinking about devolution. Yet Nordau's urgent and apocalyptic claims about 'diseased' art draw an ambivalent response from contemporary writers, such as those associated with the aestheticism and decadence of The Yellow Book. It is within the fantastic, however, that Nordau is most directly confronted and social norms most explicitly deformed by art. Wilde's swift move from pedestal to pederast may remove a key figure, but texts such as The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Novel of the White Powder; Dracula; Wells' science fiction dystopias and, more recently, Moore and Campbell's From Hell, rehearse, react to, or reflect upon such concerns. These writings share a central tension: are the effects of decadence and degeneration offering pessimistic prophesy or optimistic alternatives? This module would complement nineteenth-century options and offer a perspective on the Modernist module. For students also taking the Gothic it would be related, although usefully focusing on the closing years of the nineteenth century with a different emphasis. more...	LDCE3X50	30	Semester 2
Henry James: Questions of Art, Life and Theory In this module students engage with the range of Henry James's writing and also the reproduction of his life and work in contemporary culture. This module aims not simply to add to understanding of James but also to explore the issues that his work raises in relation to the art and history of fiction, philosophy and cultural reproduction. It is suitable not only for literature students who want to study this writer who spans realism and modernism, and short stories, literary criticism and fiction, but also for creative writing students and literature and philosophy students. The final assignment will have a creative writing option that comprises a piece of creative writing with a critical reflection. It can be taken by students who have studied modules in nineteenth-century writing or modernism. more...	LDCE3Z42	30	Semester 2
John Milton's Paradise Lost Paradise Lost is perhaps the finest poem in the language. Its ambition is breathtaking: it begins before time, ends with time, spans the whole of the created universe, and yet focuses on a single, human relationship, on betrayal, recrimination and reconciliation. It is an attempt to explain the co-existence of evil and an omnipotent good God, a response to defeated political aspirations, and an attempt to create a republican poetics. In the module we will read the poem intensively, and seek to understand it in its historical context. Was there a republican aesthetic? How did writers respond to the collapse of radical political ideals and (comparative) religious toleration when 1660 brought the restoration of Charles II? How have literary historians participated in the occlusion of Britain's republican traditions? While there are no pre- or co-requisites, some knowledge of seventeenth-century literature or history, especially through LITE2Y13 Seventeenth-Century Writing, would be an advantage. more...	LDCE3Y70	30	Semester 2
Literature and Deconstruction In an interview with Derek Attridge, Jacques Derrida describes literature as `this strange institution which allows one to say everything'. This module explores the writings of Derrida and related thinkers alongside a range of literary texts, including works by Keats, Shakespeare and Joyce. Through a combination of lectures and seminars, we will think about the strangenesses of literature, look at the ways in which it is an `institution' and consider the kinds of freedom ' of speech, writing and thinking ' it permits. Our aim throughout will be to establish the possibilities for literary criticism opened up by deconstruction. The module is open to everyone, but may be of particular interest to those who studied critical theory in the second year. more...	LDCE3X87	30	Semester 1
Literature and Human Rights Reading key philosophical, political, legal and literary texts, this module will track the emergence of human rights as a cultural idea from their conception in the eighteenth century, through to the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and beyond in the period after World War Two. The module will address the following questions: What type of human being was presupposed by the declarations of rights? How did the novel help form perceptions about rights and human sympathy? In what ways did the UDHR re-imagine concepts of human rights after the Holocaust? How were these changes reflected in new forms of post-war writing, such as post-colonial and late modernist writing? How can we think about the relation between rights and literature today? This module will suit students who have enjoyed the challenges of philosophy and literary theory. It should also appeal to those who are interested in thinking seriously about the relationship between literature and its `real world' applications and significance. more...	LDCE3X54	30	Semester 2
Literature and Philosophy This module explores the relations between literature and philosophy and differing understandings of the self, love and ethics through close reading of philosophical and literary texts. It is organised chronologically and moves from the classical writing of Plato to modern literature. The module designed for final year students who are studying Literature and Philosophy. It is also open only to students in Literature who have taken modules in Philosophy in years one and two; or by special concession at the discretion of the module organiser to other students who have substantial experience in both Honours level Literature and Honours level Philosophy. more...	LDCE3X45	30	Semester 1
Literature Dissertation: Post-1789 (Aut) This module is an advanced-level module, for final year students only. It provides students with the opportunity to write an 8000-word dissertation on literature of the period from 1789 to the present day (excluding American literature). The dissertation topic must be agreed by a supervisor, and both topic and supervisor approved by the module organiser by the end of the previous semester. more...	LDCE3X15	30	Semester 1
Literature Dissertation: Post-1789 (Spr) This module is an advanced-level module, for final year students only. It provides students with the opportunity to write an 8000-word dissertation on literature of the period from 1789 to the present day (excluding American literature). The dissertation topic must be agreed by a supervisor, and both topic and supervisor approved by the module organiser by the end of the previous semester. more...	LDCE3X18	30	Semester 2
Literature Dissertation: Pre-1789 (Aut) This module is an advanced-level unit, for final year students only. It provides students with the opportunity to write an 8000-word dissertation on literature of the period up to 1830 (excluding American literature). The dissertation topic must be agreed by a supervisor, and both topic and supervisor approved by the module organiser by the end of the previous semester. more...	LDCE3Y77	30	Semester 1
Literature Dissertation: Pre-1789 (Spr) This module is an advanced-level module, for final year students only. It provides students with the opportunity to write an 8000-word dissertation on literature of the period up to 1830 (excluding American literature). The dissertation topic must be agreed by a supervisor, and both topic and supervisor approved by the module organiser by the end of the previous semester. more...	LDCE3Y78	30	Semester 2
Madness, Medicine, Science and Women's Writing in the Regency This module will study late 18th-century and early 19th-century writings in the context of scientific and medical innovation. We consider whether it may be appropriate to view the work of novelists such as Maria Edgeworth, Jane Austen and Mary Shelley as a response to, and even a protest against these newly (or, more correctly, nearly) professionalised, male-dominated worlds. These women writers often concern themselves with the 'consumers' as well as the providers of the services offered by these professions; this module considers why that might be and how this kind of contextualisation might impact upon our readings of their work. more...	LDCE3X75	30	Semester 1
Medieval Arthurian Traditions From Welsh folklore to Monty Python, the tales of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table have excited and intrigued generations. Why? To answer this question we explore the development of the legend from its twelfth-century Celtic roots through to a number of twentieth-century film adaptations. How the legend has been translated across form, genres, cultures and ages will be studied, including examples from Middle English Arthurian Texts, translations of the Welsh Mabinogion, of Monmouth's Latin chronicle and French romance texts. This module will enable students familiar with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to enhance their awareness of the wider Arthurian traditions within which this text belongs, but is also suitable for students who are encountering medieval literature for the first time. more...	LDCE3Y82	30	Semester 2
Mind, Body and Literature The sense of loss in a Hardy poem, the parallel universe of a science fiction story, the sombre world of a Scandinavian crime novel: all have in common that they make the reader think, feel and possibly act. Drawing on an understanding of literature as writing which both engages and affects us, we look at a variety of literary texts (e.g, by Blake, Hardy, Lawrence, Hughes) and consider what they have in common with the everyday (clocks, teddy-bears, congregation ceremonies) and the bizarre (zombies, unicorns, ghosts). We consider how we understand text worlds, how metaphor relates to the body, whether real emotions can arise from fictional texts. Participants should have an open mind, a desire to understand literary theories, and a readiness to think outside the box. more...	LDCE3X09	30	Semester 1
Nervous Narratives `We all say it's nerves, and none of us knows what it means', says a character in Wilkie Collins' 1860 novel, The Woman in White. Our aim is to think about how a discourse of the `nerves' ' the `nervous temperament' and nervous illness ' can be both so pervasive culturally and so slippery in its meaning. This interdisciplinary module takes you from the late 17th century, when the concept of `neurologie' first emerged, to the 21st century, linking literary, medical and philosophical writing to explore the representation of the `nerves'. The historical range of the module is not meant to imply a transhistorical understanding of nervous illness or temperament, but rather will enable us to analyse the historically specific nature of the nervous body and what it is made to mean, culturally, within different contexts. In this way, we will be working with issues as diverse as religious `enthusiasm', hysteria and hypochondria, sensibility, sensation, fear of modernity, manliness and effeminacy, shell-shock, PTSD and the concepts of the healthy or fragile body of the nation. Spanning time and genre, the literary texts studied will take us from the earliest, Jonathan Swift's satire, A Tale of a Tub (1704) up to the contemporary: Siri Hustvedt's novel, What I Loved (2003) and her analytical memoir, The Shaking Woman, Or, A History of My Nerves (2010). more...	LDCE3X83	30	Semester 1
Poetry After Modernism This module will survey a wide range of post-war British poetry actively engaged with the Modernist tradition of Eliot, Pound and others. Reading critical texts alongside poems, it will introduce students to lesser-known writers, such as the Welsh poet Lynette Roberts and the Scottish poet W.S. Graham, as well as considering well-known English poets such as Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes from a Modernist perspective. Recognising the influence of contemporary American verse on experimental poets such as J.H. Prynne and Paul Muldoon will also be an important theme. A chronological syllabus will take students from 1945 up to the present day, and there will be a chance to write creatively as well as critically as part of the assessment. Students wishing to take this module must have taken LDCE2Z15 Modernism. more...	LDCE3Z60	30	Semester 2
Poetry of the Long Nineteenth Century The poetry of the nineteenth century is often thought of as being caught between the two stools of Romanticism and Modernism. This module examines the development of poetry from Romanticism to Modernism, and asks in particular whether the poetry of the nineteenth century can claim our attention in its own right, rather than as a late avatar of Romanticism or as a foretaste of the excitements of Modernism. The focus of the module, then, is on close critical engagement with a large range of nineteenth century poetry and poetics, including the work of poet-critic Matthew Arnold, poet-priest Gerard M. Hopkins, and of other writers from Christina Rossetti to Algernon Charles Swinburne. Due notice will also be taken of nineteenth-century continental and American poetry. more...	LDCE3X71	30	Semester 1
Queer Literature and Theory This module offers students the chance to learn about LGBTQ literature and its development in English-speaking countries, as well as approaches to queer theory. This means analysing sexuality and gender and the representation of such identities in literature. Authors studied may include Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, Alison Bechdel, Gore Vidal, and Sarah Waters, as well as children's books and young adult novels by Alex Sanchez, Nancy Garden, Ellen Wittlinger, and Marcus Ewert. Authors of theoretical texts looked at may include Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Judith Butler, Leo Bersani, and Teresa de Lauretis. Understanding how LGBTQ characters are featured in literature also helps us to see how queer people are understood in a given society in general. This course also aims to look at a variety of genres in order to see how these different text types work and how they approach similar material in different ways. more...	LDCE3X58	30	Semester 2
Regency Women Writers This module situates the work of various women writers of the Regency period in literary and historical contexts. The main texts under discussion are by Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Hays, Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, and Maria Edgeworth. The unit considers themes which - although not exclusive to women's writing at this time - occur strikingly frequently in the work of Regency women. These themes include sanity, madness and ideas about the mind, and literary devices such as the love-mad woman. Health, ill-health and the development of medicine are central to these fictions and the course, and we also discuss the figure of the doctor, the quack and the 'psychiatrist' in these texts. We look at writings by Regency women travellers whose destinations ranged from Italy to Bath, Sweden and Revolutionary France. more...	LDCE3X80	30	Semester 2
Revenge Tragedy: Ancient and Modern This seminar explores the different ways in which the concept of revenge has been conceived and represented in a range of dramatic texts. The module covers three distinct groups of primary materials: classical tragedy (in translation) including Aeschylus's Oresteia; early modern revenge tragedy including works by Shakespeare, Tourneur and Kyd; and modern cinematic explorations of the revenge formula including Get Carter, Old Boy and Tarantino's Kill Bill movies. Topics discussed include the relationship between classical and Christian attitudes to revenge, contemporary strictures upon private vengeance, the representation of justice through the ages, the limitations of the revenge tragedy formula. more...	LDCE3Y86	30	Semester 2
Satire `Satire is problematic, open ended, essayistic, ambiguous in relation to history, uncertain in its political effects, resistant to final closure, more inclined to ask questions than provide answers, ambivalent about the pleasures it offers' (Dustin Griffin). The aim of this module is to investigate the problematic territory of satire. Using examples from modern and contemporary fiction and journalism alongside early modern and classical satire, we will formulate a critical and conceptual map, which will in turn allow us to discuss some of the problems of satire (those of genre, of gender, of politics, of morality, of history), and to explore some of the paradoxes of its strategies and functions (freedom versus limits; subversion versus conformity; transformation versus stasis). Writers under discussion will include Juvenal, Horace, Swift and Pope; John Dryden, Aphra Behn, and Lady Mary Wortley Montague; Evelyn Waugh, Stella Gibbons, and Jonathan Coe. more...	LDCE3X62	30	Semester 2
Shakespeare: Shadow and Substance Platonist epistemology permeated Elizabethan culture: the aim of this module is to explore the relationship of Shakespeare's topic of the world as a stage to Neoplatonic conceptions of perception, politics, poetry and love. more...	LDCE3Y36	30	Semester 2
The Condition of England Novel 1818-2000 This module will examine the classic nineteenth-century 'Condition of 'England' novel alongside mid-to-late twentieth-century representations of England (and myths of national identity). Attention will be given to post-colonial writing as a significant part of the question: What is it to be English (or British)? more...	LDCE3Z09	30	Semester 1
The Gothic This module seeks to cover some 'canonical' texts of the Gothic Novel (1764-1820) in Walpole, Radcliffe, Mary Shelley, and to consider some later developments of the gothic mode in later 19th and 20th centuries: Poe, Le Fanu, Stevenson, MR James, Elizabeth Bowen, David Storey and Angela Carter. The course also seeks to introduce students to some of the theoretical and historical arguments around the contested nature of the term 'gothic', the Uncanny, the subversiveness or otherwise of this kind of writing, and its relation to the novel genre. more...	LDCE3X41	30	Semester 1
The Literature of World War One The module will examine representations of World War One. As a Level 3 module, the focus will be inter-disciplinary. Literary materials will be contextualised using historical and other sources. Use will also be made of memoirs, letters, diaries, and photographs. Students will be encouraged to conduct research using the internet and other facilities. more...	LDCE3Z10	30	Semester 2
Through the Looking-Glass: Nonsense and Modern Writing It's widely recognised that modernist literature is characterised by a revolution of the word. Less widely recognised, and little explored, is the relationship between modernist linguistic experimentalism and literary nonsense, as practised by Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, and others. This course will begin with these well-known nonsense writers and explore their roots in earlier nonsense, including Shakespeare's, before going on to examine some of the adventures in language of major modernist and postmodernist writers. Authors studied are likely to include late Joyce, early Auden, Stein, Stevens, Cummings, Crane, Nabokov, Koch, Muldoon, Ashbery. The course will also set these avant-garde writers in the unfamiliar context of the mainstream fantasy writers who also come out of Carroll and the nonsense tradition, most likely Tolkien and Peake, whose imaginary worlds are based on their own invented languages. This is not a course on children's literature, but on some very challenging modern literature, though it should appeal to those who take a childish pleasure in wordplay and fantasy, and equally to those intrigued by philosophical issues around language. It would follow on very well from the second-year Modernism module. more...	LDCE3X01	30	Semester 1
Traumaturgies: Reading and Writing Trauma Across Contexts Trauma haunts the writing of the twentieth century. Slavery, war, patriarchy, terrorism, genocide, colonialism, modernity, technology and post-modernity: these legacies demand to be written and read, and engender a writing singular to their traumas. Yet the writing of these wounds, and the critical work that reads it, raises fundamental questions about whether trauma can ever be represented or understood. Spreading beyond their contexts, these questions effect their own traumas, cracking open our assumptions about what it is possible to read, to write, and indeed to think. Working roughly from the turn of the twentieth century to the present, this module reads a selection of theoretical, literary and critical texts that aim to write and read trauma across cultural, historical, personal and public contexts. more...	LDCE3X91	30	Semester 1
Ulysses This module will provide students with the opportunity to read one of the most famous, yet notoriously unread, novels of the twentieth century. The module has a number of aims. First, it will give students the time and opportunity to try to read and understand James Joyce's Ulysses. Secondly, the module will introduce students to some of the formal innovations typical of modernist writing through the close analysis of techniques such as interior monologue and mythic analogy. Thirdly, it will allow students to read a wide range of responses to Ulysses, both among Joyce's contemporaries, and in the history of twentieth century criticism. Fourthly, the module will situate the text historically, with a particular focus on the way that the text's obscenity affected its reception and circulation in the 1920s and 1930s. more...	LDCE3Z50	30	Semester 2
Virgil's Classic Epic This module will explore the centrality of Virgil's Aeneid to Medieval and Renaissance culture. It will examine developing attitudes to the Classical literary legacy and accommodation and reinvention of Virgil's epic poem within new religious, political and literary contexts. The course will begin with exploration of Virgil's poem on its own terms before turning to reworkings of the 'Aeneid' by Augustine, Dante, Chaucer, Douglas and Marlowe, the Renaissance invention of a 13th Book to 'complete' Virgil's poem, and the recasting of classical epic within the very different conventions of medieval and Renaissance romance. Previous experience of classical or medieval literature is not required. more...	LDCE3Y18	30	Semester 2
You may also pick any of the modules that begin with: LDCE3X37 LDCE3Z64 LDCD3X46 LDCE3X94

Disclaimer

Whilst the University will make every effort to offer the modules listed, changes may sometimes be made arising from the annual monitoring, review and update of modules and regular (five-yearly) review of course programmes. Where this activity leads to significant (but not minor) changes to programmes and their constituent modules, there will normally be prior consultation of students and others. It is also possible that the University may not be able to offer a module for reasons outside of its control, such as the illness of a member of staff or sabbatical leave. Where this is the case, the University will endeavour to inform students.

UEA

Literature, Drama and Creative Writing Courses

Literature, Drama and Creative Writing

BA Scriptwriting and Performance (WW84)

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Year 3