Postgraduate Taught Degrees

MA Culture and Modernity (Part time)

Duration:: 2 years
Attendance:: Part Time
Award:: Degree of Master of Arts
School of Study:: Literature, Drama and Creative Writing

Overview
Why Choose Us
Course Profile
Requirements
Fees and Funding
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‘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 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

The School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing brings together writers, scholars, teachers and students in an exploration of the powers and possibilities of literature. Our aim is to make creative writing and critical reading confront one another in ways that sharpen and enliven both.

Literature

We teach and research across the range of English Literature from the fourteenth century to the twenty-first. This coverage is supplemented by our interests in European Literature, in postcolonial writing in English across the world, and in literary and cultural theory.

Translation

UEA is home to the British Centre for Literary Translation, which is both a forum for professional translators and a focus for translation work with undergraduate and postgraduate students of literature. The School of Literature & Creative Writing runs the MA in Literary Translation course.

Creative Writing

For over thirty years UEA has been an important centre for established and upcoming writers, whether they come here as teachers, as students, as writers in residence, or to take part in the long-running literary festival organised by the Arthur Miller Centre and the Centre for Creative and Performing Arts. For more information on our Creative Writing MA courses, please click here

Drama

Our drama programmes combine critical study with creative practice. The theoretical aspect draws on the expertise of LIT as a whole; the practical work is based in the purpose-built Drama Studio. For further information on the Drama sector, please click here.

Literature at UEA is not a complete, finished object of study, but a living practice. Because we also do creative writing, translation and drama, we are aware that imaginative writing is not fixed; it is constantly being transformed, adapted, rewritten and reread. Students are invited to study these processes, and also to be part of them. Click here to see what our students say about studying in the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing.

Among a diverse group of about twenty literature lecturers, there are experts on the various roles that the practice of literature can play, and has played, in society — how it can be something like praying, or like journalism, or like conversation, how it can be a form of political action, or a vehicle for ideas, or a working out of unmanageable experience, or a way of negotiating (or inflaming) differences of class and race and gender. We teach literature not in isolation, but in relation to this untidy bundle of social and psychological purposes.

It follows that we have no great respect for the boundaries that divide one academic discipline from another. We take a lively interest in the work of our colleagues in history, philosophy, film, the visual arts and music, and we encourage our students to do the same. That is why we offer a range of degree programmes which combine literature with other, related subjects.

We run internationally recognised programmes of teaching and research in literature, translation, creative writing, and drama: the important thing about all of these is that they interact with each other.

Year 1
Year 2

This is the first year of your taught Masters programme.

Compulsory Study (20 credits)

Students must study the following modules for 20 credits:

Name	Code	Credits
CRITICAL THEORIES OF THE WESTERN SELF	LDCEM011	20
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.

Option A Study (20 credits)

Students will select 20 credits from the following modules:

Name	Code	Credits
CULTURE AND ITS DISCONTENTS	LDCEM049	20
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)
THE PERSISTENCE OF THE AESTHETIC	LDCEM062	20
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.
TOPICS IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY	PHI-M008	20
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.

This is the second year of your taught Masters programme.

Compulsory Study (100 credits)

Students must study the following modules for 100 credits:

Name	Code	Credits
ENGLISH LITERATURE DISSERTATION	LDCEM03X	90
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.
RESEARCH AND METHODOLOGY TRAINING SEMINAR	LDCEM020	10

Option A Study (40 credits)

Students will select 40 credits from the following modules:

Name	Code	Credits
CONTEMPORARY WORLD DEVELOPMENT	DEV-M002	20
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.
CONTEMPORARY WORLD THEATRE	LDCDM002	20
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.
CREATIVE-CRITICAL WRITING	LDCEM008	20
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, écriture féminine, 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 Hélène Cixous, Maurice Blanchot and T. J. Clark, Theodor Adorno and Eve Sedgwick.
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES IN MUSEUM STUDIES	ART-MU01	20
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.
CULTURE AND ITS DISCONTENTS	LDCEM049	20
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)
DEVELOPMENT PERSPECTIVES	DEV-M003	20
The objective of this module is to explore different theoretical ideas and debates about development in a historical perspective. It focuses on key processes that seek to challenge prevailing ideas of development and the theoretical responses that they continually elicit in response. A key point of the module is to show how development is a resilient and changing ideology, theoretical framework, and set of practices.
EVALUATING NATURE	LDCEM058	20
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.
EXHIBITING EMPIRE	ART-MA60	20
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.
FILM STUDIES: HISTORY, THEORY, CRITICISM	FTMFM023	20
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.
GENDER AND CULTURE	FTMFM064	20
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
HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT: SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY	PSIPM005	20
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.
ISSUES IN MEDIA AND CULTURAL POLITICS	PSIPM03Y	20
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.
LIVING MODERNISM	LDCEM017	20
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.
THE PERSISTENCE OF THE AESTHETIC	LDCEM062	20
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.
TOPICS IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY	PHI-M008	20
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.

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.

Entry Requirements

Degree Subject:: UK BA (Hons) 2.1 or equivalent
Special Entry Requirements:: Sample of work

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 7.0 with a minimum 6 in each section and 7 in writing.

Other qualifications such as TOEFL and CAE are also recognised by the University. Please contact the Admissions Team for further information.

Special Entry Requirements

A sample of your academic writing (for example an essay from your undergraduate degree).

Intakes

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

Alternative Qualifications

If you have alternative qualifications that have not been mentioned above then please contact the Admissions Office directly for further information.

Assessment

All applications for postgraduate study are processed through the Admissions Office and then forwarded to the relevant School of Study for consideration. If you are currently completing your first degree or have not yet taken a required English language test, any offer of a place is likely to be conditional upon you achieving this before you arrive.

Fees and Funding

Tuition fees

Tuition fees for Postgraduate students for the academic year 2013/4 are £5,000 for Home/EU students and £12,500 for International Students.

If you choose to study part-time, the fee per annum will be half the annual fee for that year, or a pro-rata fee for the module credit you are taking (only available for Home/EU students).

Please note that all the above fees are expected to rise for the year 2014/15. We estimate living expenses at £600/650 per month.

Scholarships and Awards:

International scholarships

All international students (outside the European Union) are considered for a scholarship of between £1000 and £2000 towards tuition fees. In order to be considered for an International Scholarship you do not need to make a separate application. Please indicate on your application for admission that you wish to be considered for a scholarship. It is important to make the application as early as possible because they are considered as they are received. So apply early to make sure of the best chance of success.

Scholarships are awarded to students on the basis of academic merit and are for the duration of the period of study (which will be one year). Students of outstanding academic ability will also be considered for Faculty Scholarship Awards, usually in March and May each year, which can be worth up to 100% of the tuition fee. These are highly competitive and prestigious awards. Those students being offered a scholarship will be notified directly by the School of Study.

Home / EU Scholarships, Bursaries and Awards

The Faculty of Arts and Humanities has a number of Scholarships and Awards on offer for 2013 entry. For further information relevant to the School of Literature and Creative Writing, please click here.

Applications for Postgraduate Taught programmes at the University of East Anglia should be made directly to the University.

You can apply online, or by downloading the application form.

Further Information

To request further information & to be kept up to date with news & events please use our online enquiry form.

If you would like to discuss your individual circumstances prior to applying please do contact us:

Postgraduate Admissions Office
Tel: +44 (0)1603 591515
Email: admissions@uea.ac.uk

International candidates are also encouraged to access the International Students section of our website.