MA Culture and Modernity

Course Code DNT2Q9L9201
Duration 2 Years
Attendance Part Time
Award Degree of Master of Arts

Overview
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Course Profile
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Overview

‘Universities will play an important role in securing the country’s recovery and long term prosperity’ (Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, Jan. 2010). The nature of the importance of culture in modernity is one of the most important and uncertain issues today. At a time of increasing demands for public accountability and the unprecedented currency of hybrid concepts such as creative entrepreneurship it is especially important that the arts and cultural institutions are studied alongside, and in relation to, philosophical, economic and political disciplines. The Culture and Modernity MA enables such study with unique flexibility.

Why Study Culture and Modernity at UEA?.

The vibrancy of UEA’s literary and artistic life and its strong commitment to inter-disciplinaritiy make it an ideal place to study this degree. Here students examine a variety of intellectual responses to modernity, engaging in debates across culture through a selection of modules from across the Arts and Humanities, mostly of their own choosing. Such study is reinforced by more generalised teaching in research methodologies and a range of research seminars. The School of Literature has especial strengths in modern writing and critical thinking; its Autumn and Spring literary festivals, in which leading writers take part, and the proximity of the Sainsbury Centre of Visual Arts, mean that the experience of culture on offer here is far from just academic.

The course provides an excellent training in theoretical debate and forms of cultural analysis, hence a strong foundation for further postgraduate study. Alternatively, its breadth and topicality make it a recognised pathway for careers in publishing, teaching, politics, management, journalism, the media and public life in general.

Course Content and Structure

The MA in Culture and Modernity may be taken in one year or part-time over two.
Most students take four modules over two semesters, which are taught in three hour seminars. In addition they produce a dissertation.

There is only one compulsory module, in Critical Theories of the Western Self. In focusing on historical change in the conceptualisation of identity from Descartes to Judith Butler, students become familiar with the transition in philosophical reflection from modern to postmodern thinking. Through acquaintance with different theoretical traditions, they have an opportunity to reflect critically on the processes and implications of intellectual change, and to relate such thinking to other fields such as literature.

Three other modules are selected by students. The first of these is usually taken from a list of about six modules; the other two, from a much longer list of modules taken from Schools as diverse as World Art Studies, Development Studies, Film Studies and Politics as well as from Literature, Drama and Creative Writing, and Philosophy. The modules on offer in just these last two schools include subjects as diverse as psychoanalysis, ‘Studies in Fiction’, ‘Is Art Alive?’, ‘Truth and Illusion in Art’ and ‘Environmental Philosophy’.

After Easter students embark on the dissertation work that forms the final component of this MA. This work is supported by general instruction in research methods and transferable skills that takes place across the degree – all in all, eight sessions, that encompass writing, library and computing skills. When it comes to the dissertation, students are individually supervised on a topic of their own choosing, agreed with their Course Director. This specialist study results in a dissertation of 15,000 words which is submitted in early September.

Course Organiser

Dr Kate Campbell

Year 1
Year 2

Year 1

Compulsory Study (20 credits)

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

Name	Code	Credits	Period
Critical Theories of the Western Self The course introduces students to the major shifts in philosophical thinking about the Western self from Descartes to the twentieth century. The course will provide students with a training in theoretical debate through the analysis and discussion of a selection of the important thinkers on this list: Descartes, Rousseau, Hegel, Kant, Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Bakhtin, Sartre, Foucault, Derrida, Irigaray, Deleuze and Butler. Through acquaintance with different theoretical traditions, students will have the opportunity to reflect critically on the processes and implications of cultural change; and to relate their understanding of the self and philosophy to other fields such as literature. more...	LDCEM011	20	Semester 1

Option A Study (20 credits)

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

Name	Code	Credits	Period
Culture and Its Discontents From trauma theory and Holocaust Studies to critical human rights and refugee studies, thinking about culture's profound discontents motivates much of the most innovative work in the theoretical humanities today. This module focuses on two key theorists of modern experience: Sigmund Freud, for whom the unconscious registered the trauma of modern living, and the political philosopher Hannah Arendt, for whom the horrors of totalitarianism opened up holes of oblivion in the way we think and judge. Reading them together, we will examine the way Freud and Arendt open up a new space to think about the relation between the psyche and the political. Core reading will include: The Portable Hannah Arendt, ed. Peter Baehr (Penguin) The Freud Reader, ed. Adam Phillips (Penguin) The Holocaust: Theoretical Readings (Edinburgh UP) more...	LDCEM049	20	Semester 1
The Persistence of the Aesthetic This module addresses the relation between art and politics by examining the attempt to unmask the aesthetic as ideological. In order to do this, we will acquire a firm grasp of the meaning of 'the aesthetic' and of what it is often taken to conceal, 'ideology'. We will, therefore, begin by exploring what has been called the 'invention' of the aesthetic in modernity, paying particular attention to the emergence of the aesthetic as a category in the eighteenth century as part of debates concerning the public sphere, disinterestedness, and universality. Key figures here will include the third Earl of Shaftesbury, Immanuel Kant, and Friedrich Schiller. We will then move on to consider the precise meaning of 'ideology' in its various forms in the work of Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, and Theodor Adorno. Our focus in particular will be on the way in which the aesthetic has been thought to relate to 'ideology' by these, and numerous other, thinkers from fields such as sociology, anthropology, literary criticism, and art history. But far from simply deploying the tools of ideological analysis as a means to expose the covert politics of the aesthetic as such, we will ask whether the aesthetic is as vulnerable to so-called ideology - critique as has sometime been claimed. We will thus evaluate recent attempts to renovate the aesthetic by figures such as Jacques Ranciere, Isobel Armstrong, J.M. Berstein and others. This module, therefore, will address concerns central to those interested in the history and theory of literary and art criticism, and also in cultural and educational policy. more...	LDCEM062	20	Semester 2
Topics in Political Philosophy This module will be devoted to the interpretation and discussion of important, advanced texts in modern political philosophy, in particular texts by John Rawls, perhaps the most significant political philosopher of the late twentieth century. Rawlsian political philosophy of liberalism will be tested with regard to its soundness in relation to equality, community/society, and ecology. Consideration will be given to looking at what political philosophy might viably challenge or replace liberalism, which tends to be the 'dominant paradigm' in political theory and practice today. Students will also have an opportunity to apply abstract philosophical ideas to current political controversies. more...	PHI-M008	20	Semester 2

Year 2

Compulsory Study (100 credits)

Students will select 100 credits from the following module(s).

Name	Code	Credits	Period
English Literature Dissertation Students are required to write a dissertation of a length as specified in their MA Course Guide on a topic approved by the Course Director or other authorised person. more...	LDCEM03X	90	Semester 2
Research and Methodology Training Seminar	LDCEM020	10	Semester 2

Option A Study (40 credits)

Students will select 40 credits from the following module(s).

Name	Code	Credits	Period
'World Literature' to the 'Global Text' This module will explore the movement from the idea of the `world' or the `international' as a defining category for writers and artists of the twentieth century toward, from the late twentieth century onward, the notion of the `global'. `World literature' was an essential, if often neglected, directive of the humanist mission, and the `international' engendered oppositions ' such as, for instance, the cosmopolitan and the provincial - that governed the works of writers such as Tagore, James Joyce, Katherine Mansfield, Elizabeth Bishop, the filmmaker Satyajit Ray, and V S Naipaul, examples of whose work will be studied for this MA. But do those oppositions, and the universalist basis of `world literature', hold any more in the age of globalisation? How do writers and artists travel, and respond to the old experiences of place and exile, in the globalised world? Does globalisation transcend the provincial, or produce variations of it? What does `world' itself signify as a concept today ' is, for instance, the `world' in `world music' the same as the one in `world literature'? I'd like to reflect on these questions in the company of artists like the Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, the novelist J M Coetzee, the English writer Geoff Dyer, the Indian poet Arun Kolatkar, critics like David Harvey, present-day experimentation in music, while introducing to the frame of the seminar my own explorations as a writer and musician. more...	LDCEM001	20	Semester 1
Contemporary World Development This module is guided by the premise that theoretical perspectives about development are shaped by historical contexts and conditions that shape them. These contexts critically influence the issues and processes that are identified as the key concerns of development. They also impact upon the nature of the agency that is chosen to offer solutions to these concerns. Contemporary World Development explores how key development perspectives inform the most important issues in development today and different kinds of agency. more...	DEV-M002	20	Semester 2
Contemporary World Theatre Contemporary World Theatre examines how twentieth century theatre around the world has been affected by postcolonialism, globalization, immigration and interculturalism. Through an examination of postcolonial performance from former British colonies such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, India, and the West Indies, important theatrical movements in the Americas, new performance styles found in Russia and Eastern Europe, immigrant performance in the United States and Britain, as well as the new 'intercultural' performance styles of directors such as Lepage and Mnouchkine, this course will examine how gender, race and class become key issues in understanding the ramifications of these colliding cultures. more...	LDCDM002	20	Semester 2
Creative-Critical Writing A CORE MODULE FOR STUDENTS ON THE MA WRITING THE MODERN WORLD. Too often, academic critical writing seems to bring pre-packaged language to bear on works whose whole essence and aim is to change the ways in which we see and describe our world. And too often such writing fails to acknowledge the ways in which it itself necessarily participates in the literary `creativity' it is also about. How, then, to write criticism? Criticism which responds inventively to the literature which it analyzes? Criticism which registers, in its own form, language, method and thinking the ways in which it has been transformed by the work(s) of art it encounters? Criticism which recognizes that it cannot rest on received concepts and categories? This module aims to explore those questions. Over the course of the semester will consider ' and experiment with ' a broad range of possible ways of practising creative-criticism, including the `essay' form, auto-commentary, aphorisms, ??criture f??minine, conceptual writing, criticism as performance, inventive `theoretical' writing, camp, and diaristic writing. The module covers creative-critics as different from one another as Anne Carson and Jacques Derrida, Geoff Dyer and H??l??ne Cixous, Maurice Blanchot and T. J. Clark, Theodor Adorno and Eve Sedgwick. more...	LDCEM008	20	Semester 2
Critical Perspectives in Museum Studies This module provides an introduction to the history and theory of museums, from the origins and inception of the nineteenth century public museum to postmodern and contemporary paradigms. It also explores the vast array of perspectives that have been recently integrated in the study of museums, resulting in a new interdisciplinary area of scholarship known as museum studies, in plural. Using targeted readings and specific case studies, students will engage with contemporary debates about collecting and display, memory and commemoration, institutional ethics and social advocacy, the agency of the audience and the changes brought about by digital culture. While learning to analyze key sources, students will also be encouraged to think critically about the larger implications of these ideas in museum practice and challenge current assumptions about the role of museums, their social responsibilities and their possible futures. more...	ART-MU01	20	Semester 1
Crossing Boundaries: Women Writers in Modern Europe This module will explore some of the issues and obstacles encountered by women writing in a range of European traditions during the "long twentieth century" - continuing into the 21st with the award of Nobel Prizes for Literature to the controversial Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek (2004 and the Romanian-German writer Herta M??ller (2009). Taking a broadly chronological approach, the focus will be primarily on the impact of the two "women's movements" of the twentieth century on perceptions of writing and subjectivity as they affect women writers in a range of European countries. Within this chronological context and under a number of themed headings, examples will be taken primarily from Western Europe, in particular the German-speaking, French and English literary traditions. Students are however encouraged to make connections with the work of other writers beyond those on the reading list and to make comparisons with the position and role of women's writing in other literatures with which they may be familiar. Seminar discussions will thus consider not merely geographical and physical boundaries but the wider social and textual frameworks within and against which, arguably, a distinctive women's voice (or voices) may be said to emerge. more...	LDCEM028	20	Semester 2
Culture and Its Discontents From trauma theory and Holocaust Studies to critical human rights and refugee studies, thinking about culture's profound discontents motivates much of the most innovative work in the theoretical humanities today. This module focuses on two key theorists of modern experience: Sigmund Freud, for whom the unconscious registered the trauma of modern living, and the political philosopher Hannah Arendt, for whom the horrors of totalitarianism opened up holes of oblivion in the way we think and judge. Reading them together, we will examine the way Freud and Arendt open up a new space to think about the relation between the psyche and the political. Core reading will include: The Portable Hannah Arendt, ed. Peter Baehr (Penguin) The Freud Reader, ed. Adam Phillips (Penguin) The Holocaust: Theoretical Readings (Edinburgh UP) more...	LDCEM049	20	Semester 1
Development Perspectives The objective of this module is to explore different theoretical ideas and debates about development, and place these in their historical and political contexts. We will critically assess the various ways in which development has been conceptualized, from the end of the Second World War to the present day. Topics covered will include modernisation theory; dependency theory; the role of the state; neo-liberalism and the Washington Consensus, neo-institutionalism and the post-Washington Consensus; poverty and basic needs; human development and capabilities; equity and justice; rights and empowerment; and sustainable development. A key point of the module is to show how ideas in development emerge and how they shape policies and practice in development in the present day. more...	DEV-M003	20	Semester 1
European Gothic: Fear and Horror As Trans-National Dialogue Scholars have since Mario Praz in the 1930s long conceived of the Gothic as a European phenomenon, exported and imported between Britain, France, and Germany, but there is surprisingly little attempt to unify this tradition or consider it as a whole beyond the empirical level. This course starts from the question: `What happens if you bring the Gothic Novel, the roman noir, and the Schauerroman together? The course will act as an introduction to the English canon of the Gothic; but we shall look at a range of texts, not as a tight, unified English genre, but as a set of cultural responses (and translations of responses) to the ages of Enlightenment and Revolution. The emphasis is not simply on linear development, but on cultural transmission and the dispersal of ideas between France, Germany and the Anglo-Saxon tradition. The texts have been chosen to reveal a set of conversations with each other and we shall re-read familiar (`central' or 'classic') texts in relation to such themes as the cultural geography of fear; superstition and scepticism and the role of the occult; sensibility and sexual taboo; the nature of the demonic; constructions of the other; the invention and splitting of the modern self; the Machine; the Uncanny; comedy and horror; and the use of self-conscious modes of narration. Note: this module is of interest to literary translators and creative writers. more...	LDCEM044	20	Semester 2
Evaluating Nature This module aims to equip students with a historically informed understanding of the emergence of different theories and modes of evaluation, focusing in particular on the economic, aesthetic, and moral questions arising from the evaluation of nature in particular. Is it, for example, ethically defensible to value nature as a resource? Is a genuinely `ecological' or, indeed, `green' economics conceivable ' and, if so, what would that involve in practice? How sure are we that art in general and writing in particular are good ways to articulate the value of the natural? And is a genuinely `ecological' or `green' poetics conceivable? Addressing these questions will involve exploration both of the history of ideas and of contemporary understandings of natural capital, resource allocation, and moral evaluation. more...	LDCEM058	20	Semester 2
Exhibiting Empire This module aims to address those aspects of imperialism and cultural representation that have become the focus of studies in critical museology, anthropology and art history in the past decades. Drawing on and assessing analytical approaches fashioned in post-colonial studies, the module will enable you to debate the visual and material cultures of empire. You will be encouraged to approach historical material within a comparative framework. Through the use of wide ranging historiical, cultural and theoretical case-studies we will develop a committed approach to investigations of the entangled and contested nature of imperial representations. Whilst some of these studies will relate to the British East India Company and the Raj in India, others will draw attention to the processes of empire-building, colonisation and de-colonisation in other global contexts. Issues and debates in studies of visual culture and material culture will be linked directly to histories of collection and display in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, encompassing the Great Exhibition, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Indian Museum, and various other national and international institutions. While intended for art history students, the module may also be of interest to students of cultural geography and history, as it will bring in related themes, such as 'centre/periphery' relations, the global south, knowledge networks and subaltern studies, and this may also allow students of art-related fields to operate and interact in wider disciplinary contexts. more...	ART-MA60	20	Semester 2
Film Studies: History, Theory, Criticism This unit aims to provide key terms of reference and research skills in the study of film; to identify key objects, theories and methods in the analysis of film; and to provide a sense of historical development of film. Intended learning outcomes: a) Knowledge and Understanding. By the end of the unit should: have some of the key skills for the study of film at M level; have an awareness of the debates between different approaches to the study of film; be familiar with the key objects, theories and methods in the analysis of film; have some familiarity with the historical development of film. b) Intellectual Skills. By the end of the unit students should be able to: apply the key approaches to the analysis of film; assesses the debates between these different approaches; construct coherent and independent arguments. c) Professional Skills. The unit will develop students' ability to: select, sift and synthesize information from a variety of primary and secondary materials; write accurately and grammatically and present written material suing appropriate conventions. d) Transferable Skills. The unit will also develop students' ability to: manage a large and disparate body of information; use IT to word process assessed work; speak and write cogently about a chosen subject area. more...	FTVFM023	20	Semester 1
Gender and Culture Providing a conceptual overview of feminist research approaches, this module examines the role of culture in the construction of contemporary gender relations. Exploring a range of case studies, such as film, television, food and sport, it provides an interdisciplinary perspective on cultural texts, their audiences, markets and regulation. The module explores both theoretical and methodological issues and covers a range of theoretical approaches, including media studies, cultural studies, gender studies history, law and economics. By the end of the module students will have developed understanding of: ' a variety of feminist approaches to the analysis of cultural texts, their audiences, markets and regulation. ' the relationship between cultural texts and their socio-economic and political contexts and the importance of gender in analysing culture. Additionally students will be able to ' critically reflect on the place of gender in media research ' apply feminist research methodologies to the analysis of cultural texts and audiences more...	FTVFM064	20	Semester 2
History of Political Thought: Social Contract Theory This module examines in depth selected works of political thinkers who are seminal to the Western tradition of political thought, including Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. Their work will also be compared thematically, with a focus on ideas such as the social contract, political obligation, property, individual rights and freedom. The approach is analytical rather than historical and contextualist. The module's focus on the study and interpretation of key texts enables students to develop skills of textual analysis and critique. more...	PSIPM005	20	Semester 1
Issues in Media and Cultural Politics This module explores key issues within media and cultural politics. The module is divided into separate blocks and spread over two semesters. Each block deals with different aspects of media and cultural politics, including identity and power, communication and culture. more...	PSIPM03Y	20	Year Period
Living Modernism A CORE MODULE FOR STUDENTS ON THE MA WRITING THE MODERN WORLD. The word modernism was applied only retrospectively to the texts written at the beginning of the twentieth century; and that retrospective naming has worked to define an ever-shifting field of cultural activity. This course aims to introduce students to `living modernism', a phrase that highlights the mutually informing relationship of contemporary writing and modernism. In the first 5 weeks, students will be asked to read James Joyce's Ulysses and Franz Kafka's The Trial. The course then considers the ways in which Joyce's and Kafka's writing continues to animate critical and creative knowledge. In weeks 6-12, critical and literary questions of law, justice, exile, and narrative voice will be posed out of modernism. The living legacy of modernism will be considered in different ways; as literary influence, (Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go as a Kafkaesque meditation on exile, for instance), as critical quotation and interpretation, (Jacques Derrida's claim, for example, that Kafka's `Before the Law' is a staging of justice and literary interpretation), and linguistic or thematic interaction (Lolita as Nabokov's Joycean writing of exile in America). There will be a particular focus on how Joyce and Kafka write law, justice and exile as global, rather than state-based, categories, and the importance of these transnational visions for their continuing influence. Authors explored will include James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Vladimir Nabokov, J. M. Coetzee, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jacques Derrida, Giorgio Agamben, Mladen Dolar, Denise Riley and W. G. Sebald. more...	LDCEM017	20	Semester 1
Philosophy and Literature Seminar The main aim of this course is to explore philosophical themes which arise naturally in the reading of literature, and literary issues which arise naturally in the study of philosophy. Literary texts may well include a selection from: Shakespeare, Pope, Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson, Arnold, Conrad and Beckett. Philosophical texts may well include a selection from: Plato, Augustine, Montaigne, Descartes, Goethe, Nietzsche and Wittgenstein. Two important themes for discussion will be the rise of physical science and its impact on philosophy and literature; and how different conceptions of philosophy and literature affect the way in which they are written (or not written). Assessment will be by two coursework essays. more...	PHI-M028	20	Semester 2
Philosophy of Literature Seminar The topics of this module will be chosen from amongst the following: the definition and purpose of literature; the nature of literary language, fiction, fictional characters, narrative, genre, literary criticism and interpretation; the relevance of author's intention, the role of the reader, and the relationship between literature which is read and that which is heard and seen; aesthetic evaluation, taste, subjectivity and objectivity; whether literature can convey truth and knowledge, and the relationship between aesthetic judgement and ethics. Students submit two essays of 2,500 words each. more...	PHI-M021	20	Semester 1
The Persistence of the Aesthetic This module addresses the relation between art and politics by examining the attempt to unmask the aesthetic as ideological. In order to do this, we will acquire a firm grasp of the meaning of 'the aesthetic' and of what it is often taken to conceal, 'ideology'. We will, therefore, begin by exploring what has been called the 'invention' of the aesthetic in modernity, paying particular attention to the emergence of the aesthetic as a category in the eighteenth century as part of debates concerning the public sphere, disinterestedness, and universality. Key figures here will include the third Earl of Shaftesbury, Immanuel Kant, and Friedrich Schiller. We will then move on to consider the precise meaning of 'ideology' in its various forms in the work of Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, and Theodor Adorno. Our focus in particular will be on the way in which the aesthetic has been thought to relate to 'ideology' by these, and numerous other, thinkers from fields such as sociology, anthropology, literary criticism, and art history. But far from simply deploying the tools of ideological analysis as a means to expose the covert politics of the aesthetic as such, we will ask whether the aesthetic is as vulnerable to so-called ideology - critique as has sometime been claimed. We will thus evaluate recent attempts to renovate the aesthetic by figures such as Jacques Ranciere, Isobel Armstrong, J.M. Berstein and others. This module, therefore, will address concerns central to those interested in the history and theory of literary and art criticism, and also in cultural and educational policy. more...	LDCEM062	20	Semester 2
Topics in Political Philosophy This module will be devoted to the interpretation and discussion of important, advanced texts in modern political philosophy, in particular texts by John Rawls, perhaps the most significant political philosopher of the late twentieth century. Rawlsian political philosophy of liberalism will be tested with regard to its soundness in relation to equality, community/society, and ecology. Consideration will be given to looking at what political philosophy might viably challenge or replace liberalism, which tends to be the 'dominant paradigm' in political theory and practice today. Students will also have an opportunity to apply abstract philosophical ideas to current political controversies. more...	PHI-M008	20	Semester 2
You may also pick any of the modules that begin with: PSIIM005

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.

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MA Culture and Modernity

Why Study Culture and Modernity at UEA?.

Course Content and Structure

Year 1

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