BA Culture Literature and Politics

Key details

BA CULTURE LITERATURE AND POLITICS

Start Year

2020

Attendance

Full Time

Award

Degree of Bachelor of Arts

UCAS course code

LQ23

Entry Requirements

BBB

Duration (years)

This degree, taught jointly with UEA’s world-renowned School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing, allows you to combine the study of literature with politics and culture. You will have a great deal of choice in what you study, building a degree that closely reflects your own interests and questions. At the same time, you will develop a range of analytical and practical skills that will serve you in a wide range of future careers.

Whether your interest is in Shakespeare or post-colonial literature, whether it is the literature of Germany, Russia or the United States, there will be modules that allow you to develop your knowledge and understanding. The choice you have goes from the modern day to the Medieval period. It covers poetry, fiction, autobiography and more. It also combines literature with issues of human rights, political satire, and feminist politics. And you’ll have the chance to study topics such as music and comics as well.

You will study the way politics links with the worlds of culture and literature, through modules on popular culture, identity and gender. You’ll also learn about the broader political context, through the study of political ideas and processes.

This is a course that spans several disciplines and subject areas. It makes considerable demands of those who study it, but your efforts will be rewarded in the range of knowledge, understanding and skills you acquire over your three years.

About

Throughout history and into today’s world, literature has been censored, employed as government propaganda, and used for political protest. The same is true for culture more broadly – think of the way music, film, television and digital media have also been used to support campaigns or to exercise power. The links between culture, literature and politics do not end with these examples. Literature often reflects and incorporates world events; it comments on the way we live. In turn, cultural policy and other aspects of government activity create the conditions in which literature is written, published and read.

This distinctive course allows you to bring together the different worlds of culture, literature and politics, and to study them separately and together. It enables you to learn about politics and about literature, but also to explore the connections between the two.

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Course Reference Number: 666577

Important Information

Whilst the University will make every effort to offer the courses listed, changes may sometimes be made arising from the regular review of course programmes. Where this activity leads to significant (but not minor) changes to programmes, there will normally be prior consultation of students and others. Changes may for example consist of variations to the content and method of delivery of programmes, courses and other services, to discontinue programmes, courses and other services and to merge or combine programmes or courses. The University will endeavour to keep such changes to a minimum, and will inform students.

Assessment for Year 1

You will experience a variety of assessment techniques, including essays, exams, presentations, group-work and portfolio work. Some of our assessment is linked to work with professional organisations outside of the University, to help prepare you for your future career. Whatever the form of assessment, we help you to prepare by providing formative feedback and guidance.

Structure

Because the degree in Culture, Literature and Politics covers so much, it is important that you have a solid grounding in the key knowledge and skills. In your first year, therefore, you take a number of compulsory modules that provide the necessary groundwork for your subsequent studies. Through these you will be introduced to the study of culture, media, literature and politics. In addition you will be able to select two optional modules.

Teaching and Learning

Teaching

Planning is now underway in light of the covid-19 crisis to ensure that teaching will continue to be of the highest standard. We are prepared for teaching completely online, and for a mix of online teaching and face-to-face teaching on campus so you can be reassured that, whatever happens, you will be able to start your degree.

You will be taught in a variety of learning environments, from lectures giving an overview of a topic, through to small group seminars where you will debate the work you have been reading that week. You will also have one-to-one tutorials. Your teaching will be focused, interactive, and up-to-date, and we make a point of incorporating current world events and cultural trends into our teaching. You will learn crucial skills, such as how to summarise and analyse information, how to develop and criticise arguments and texts, and how to communicate that information and those arguments in public, at the same time as learning about the intersecting worlds of literature, culture and politics.

Independent study

A degree in Culture, Literature and Politics provides you with real opportunities to learn and study independently. From your first year onwards you will spend time reading, analysing, and critiquing the arguments of others. As you progress, you will have the chance to develop, research and present your own ideas. You can opt, for instance, to write a dissertation on a topic of your choosing while benefiting from the supervision of an academic expert.

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Assessment for Year 2

Structure

Once you are in your second year, you will be able to choose from modules in the key areas of your degree. This means a choice of topics in politics and culture, such as global political economy, language and politics, globalisation and culture, gender and power, the politics of the USA, cultural policy or digital media and society. Your choices in literature may include political theatre or modernism, contemporary fiction or Jane Austen and the Brontes.

Teaching and Learning

Teaching

Independent study

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Assessment for Year 3

Structure

This same kind of choice greets you in your third year, but with greater opportunity to specialise in particular areas of culture, literature and politics. You’ll also have the opportunity to complete a dissertation under the supervision of a member of academic staff.

Teaching and Learning

Teaching

Independent study

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The Course Director can support up to 30 credits off profile over the course of your degree.

Assessment for Year 1

Compulsory Modules

MEDIA INDUSTRIES

Code AMAM4028A

Credits 20

As knowledgeable as you may be about certain media products – like your favourite TV programmes, films, songs, video games or websites – how much do you know about the functioning of the industrial contexts from which these typically emerge? It is easy to forget that standing between us and our favourite media products is a complex structure of interpenetrating cultural sectors and organisations. This module will introduce you to some of the core characteristics of the media industries, providing you with a better understanding of how and why they operate in the ways they do. Throughout the module you will come to appreciate the distinctiveness of the media industries and their products, the implications this has for producers and the broader effects implied for the overall structure of these industries. In addition, you’ll learn about the economic and political organisation of the media industries, the policies and regulations to which they are subject, as well as the divisions of labour determined by their modes of organisation. You’ll begin with a consideration of the particular characteristics of media goods and the challenges involved in commodifying and deriving revenues from them. Following this, you will explore issues of ownership, integration and concentration, before we consider such matters as policy and regulation, creative work, digitalisation, convergence and media systems. Having considered examples of specific media organisations, franchises, texts and sectors, you’ll put your new knowledge into practice by developing your own case study project, aimed at explaining the functioning of one aspect of the media landscape. Across the module you will also gain experience in communicating your ideas in seminars as well as through workshop tasks and written work.

INTRODUCTION TO CONTEMPORARY POLITICS

Code PPLX4052A

Credits 20

Politics is changing. And changing, faster than ever before. The COVID pandemic, the rise of populist movements, environmental challenges, economic crises and the rise of digital politics are reshaping the relationships between states and citizens. Liberal democracy, once thought to be the triumphant political system, is under threat. But perhaps it is being renewed and just reshaped? This module will provide you with an overview of the different ways the subject has been approached so far to assess whether these are fit for purpose in new times. You’ll then be provided with knowledge of a series of case study countries including from Africa, Europe, Asia and the Americas, around the world from our in-house experts. Finally, we’ll explore the nature of these challenges thematically to give you a cutting-edge knowledge of contemporary politics.

READING NOW

Code LDCL4009A

Credits 20

Reading is at the heart of our experience of literature. It is central to the ways in which we think and write about literary texts, and to some of the claims made on their behalf. This module is concerned with what it is we do when we read literature, at university and elsewhere, and why. We will concentrate in particular on four elements: on the practice of what is commonly known as close reading, one of the building blocks of literary study; on some of the ways in which reading has been represented in literary texts themselves; on the kinds of significance, both moral and political, claimed on behalf of reading; and on reading as we do and think about it today, in a world ever more virtual and networked.

Optional A Modules

(20-40 credits)

THEORISING MEDIA AND CULTURE

Code AMAM4033B

Credits 20

This module introduces you to a range of influential thinkers whose work has shaped Media Studies. It will provide you with the foundational knowledge you need to progress with confidence onto more specialist modules in your second and third year. You will compare and contrast how different scholars have tried to explain the role of the media in creating communities, in reproducing social inequalities, but also in driving social change. You will discuss whether we need to study media audiences, media content or media industries in order to understand media power. The module will help you develop your own voice as a researcher and writer. You will learn how to effectively compare and contrast complex theoretical arguments and how to place your own argument within the context of academic debate. You will have the opportunity to apply your knowledge of media theories to a small piece of media research and to express your research ideas not only through writing, but also through a creative media project.

AN INTRODUCTION TO POPULAR CULTURE IN LATIN AMERICA

Code PPLH4004B

Credits 20

From salsa to samba, fútbol to capoeira, telenovelas to Tex-Mex: Latin American popular cultures combine Indigenous, African and European elements in unique ways found nowhere else on earth. You will examine several Latin American popular cultural forms, and the historical, religious, social and political significance they have for Latin Americans.

INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

Code PPLM4001B

Credits 20

Trump’s Tweets, Corbyn’s “fans”, and personalised campaign messages sent by algorithms…political communication has changed drastically in the last five years. Pundits and some scholars warn of serious dangers to democracy. What are the tricks of the trade in modern political communication and how different are they from those of the past? How does one now succeed to get across a message and gain support? Should we be worried about the implications for political discourse and decision-making? This module will enable you to critically assess the role of communication in national and international politics and help you understand the dynamics among political actors, media and citizens in opinion formation and decision-making. This is a professional practice module in which you will gain skills relevant to the conduct of political communications and to many other work environments, as well as experience working in a team on a task that requires critical thinking and collaborative strategizing. This module is ideal for anyone interested in working in politics, diplomacy, journalism, marketing, or for advocacy or activist civil society groups. Ideas about the power of communications and the ways that various political actors use that power are at the heart of this module. You’ll examine how these actors use the media in political communications. Lectures and readings will cover media effects, how political communication has changed with changes in media technology, branding and celebrity in politics, and soft power with political communication at the international level, as well as the tools used by various political actors, such as political parties or civic movements. Lectures are interactive, using an audience response system and open discussion. Seminar activities include practical tasks as well as ones to enhance understanding of the readings. The first assessed work is a group project in which you will play the role of junior analysts in a communications consultancy and you will work together to assess the political communications of a real political actor, your “client”, producing a report and presentation that includes recommendations for improvement. The second is an essay that gives you the chance to develop your ability to analyse and synthesise. By the end of this module you will be able to identify and describe the actors and their interests in a given political communications contexts, as well as formulate and articulate clear arguments about the relationships between political actors and the media in relation to power and agency. You will have gained experience in a simulated work scenario that will give you skills transferable across a number of professions as you will have delivered analysis and recommendations in a professional-style presentation and report. You will also be able evaluate political communications’ role in an international context, something increasingly necessary in the ever more globalized world both for political and corporate actors.

MODERN READINGS IN PHILOSOPHY

Code PPLP4063B

Credits 20

What am I? What kind of world am I in? How can I know about it? How should I live my life? In this module, you’ll grapple with fundamental philosophical questions that have great personal significance for each of us. You’ll focus on perspectives from the history of modern philosophy (ca. 1650 to 1950). You’ll get to debate the ideas of key thinkers, which might include Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, as well as other less well-known figures. This module will be suitable for you with or without prior experience of philosophy. It is a useful accompaniment to work in early modern history and English literature.

RADICAL PHILOSOPHY

Code PPLP4065B

Credits 20

In this module, we study some of the most original thinkers of the twentieth century, in order to reflect in unconventional ways on the ideas of human association and community as well as evaluate the loss of autonomy produced by cultural invasion and the institutionalisation of values. The basic goal of Radical Philosophy is to present you with a constellation of styles of thinking and forms of criticism that will stimulate you to examine in a rigorous way several thought-provoking perspectives on the idea of social transformation.

Optional B Modules

(0-20 credits)

INTRODUCTION TO BRITISH SIGN LANGUAGE I (SPRING START)

Code PPLB4033B

Credits 20

How would you converse with someone who is deaf? At work? In school? In an emergency? How can you avoid typical faux pas due to ignorance of a different culture? Can a 'signed'/'visual' language 'convey as adequately' as a 'spoken' language? These questions highlight the central learning achieved in this module. This is a course in British Sign Language assuming no prior, or minimal knowledge of the language. Throughout the course you will discover aspects central to the Deaf World and its Culture, and how to communicate through a unique 'visual' language, a language that uses your hands and body to communicate! Teaching and learning strategies involve signed conversation (from early on), role-play, and lots of games and exercises that make a truly 'fun and enjoyable' module to take. You will learn a little about the history of the Deaf and Sign Language itself, and its long battle to be recognised. You will discover how using your body and hands can be an exciting and meaningful way of communicating. You will acquire q wide range of easily usable vocabulary, a deeper look into various features that make the language unique, and very different to spoken languages. On successful completion of this module you will have developed knowledge and skills that will enable you to communicate with a Deaf person. You will be able to take your British Sign Language studies onto the next level, broadening your knowledge and developing further, the skill within this amazing 'Visual' language. Please note that very occasionally subsidiary language modules may be cancelled due to low enrolment. Students who are found to have a level of knowledge that exceeds the level for which they have enrolled may be asked to withdraw from the module, at the Teacher's discretion.

BEGINNERS' ARABIC I (SPRING START)

Code PPLB4045B

Credits 20

Its aim is the mastery of the alphabet: the script, the sounds of the letters, and their combination into words. Also, it introduces basic Arabic phrases and vocabulary to help you have introductory conversations. You will develop essential speaking, listening, reading and writing skills as well as a solid understanding of the structure of the language in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). Some aspects of the Arab world and culture(s) are covered.

BEGINNERS' GERMAN I (SPRING START) - A1 CEFR

Code PPLB4047B

Credits 20

Have you ever wished you could order your mulled wine at the Christmas market in German? How would it feel be to be able to introduce yourself in German or survive a basic conversation in the language? Or do you simply want to understand what makes the Germans, the Austrians, or the Swiss tick? These questions highlight the central learning you will achieve within this module. Our beginners’ course in German is perfect if you have very little or no prior knowledge of the language. You will gain the confidence to use German in basic conversations as you develop a first understanding of German sounds and essential grammar. You will build up a bank of key vocabulary to survive in real-life situations. You will also gain a greater awareness of German traditions and ways of thinking to help you make sense of a country that is deeply rooted in the heart of Europe. In a relaxed environment you will participate in classroom-based activities, working in pairs and groups to try out and be creative with new sounds, words and phrases. The fun of language learning will never be far away and promises to give you the confidence to make the first steps in German. As well as speaking and listening to each other you will discover the joy of understanding an authentic German text and to write an amazing first paragraph in German. A first course in German will enable you to add a vital skill to your CV. At this crucial political and cultural moment in time the study of the German language and culture will without doubt make you a more attractive graduate and informed global citizen, whatever your specialism or area of interest. Please note that you should not have a level of German that exceeds the level of this course. This module is designed for students with no prior or very limited knowledge of German.

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Important Information

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. Where this activity leads to significant (but not minor) changes to programmes and their constituent modules, the University will endeavour to consult with 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. In some cases optional modules can have limited places available and so you may be asked to make additional module choices in the event you do not gain a place on your first choice. Where this is the case, the University will inform students.

Students must ensure they select an even balance of modules across both semesters. The Course Director can support up to 30 credits off profile over the course of your degree.

Assessment for Year 2

Compulsory Modules

Optional A Modules

(60-100 credits)

ARTS AND HUMANITIES PLACEMENT MODULE

Code HUM-5004B

Credits 20

This module will provide you with the opportunity work within a creative/cultural/charity/ heritage/media or other appropriate organisation in order to apply the skills you are developing through your degree to the working world and to develop your knowledge of employment sectors within which you may wish to work in the future. The module emphasises industry experience, sector awareness and personal development through a structured reflective learning experience. Having sourced and secured your own placement (with support from Career Central), you work within your host organisation undertaking tasks that will help you to gain a better understanding of professional practices within your chosen sector. Taught sessions enable you to acquire knowledge of both the industries in which you are placed as well as focusing on personal and professional development germane to the sector. Your assessment tasks will provide you with an opportunity to critically reflect on the creative and cultural sector in which you have worked as well as providing opportunities to undertake presentations, gather evidence, and articulate your newly acquired skills and experiences.

LGBT AND BEYOND: SEXUAL CULTURES, QUEER IDENTITIES, AND THE POLITICS OF DESIRE

Code HUM-5007A

Credits 20

How do notions of gender and sexuality shape culture, and how are in turn our understanding and experiences of gender and sexuality shaped by cultural production? How important are other times, places and identifications – associated with class, race, ethnicity – to these understandings and experiences? And to what extent can a film, an image, a testimony, or a place capture such complexity? Addressing these questions from an interdisciplinary approach, the aim of the module is to explore the ways in which gender and sexuality are constituted through a broad array of experiences, practices, and cultural products. The module focuses on issues raised in classical and contemporary research in history, politics, media, cultural studies and visual cultures such as: representation and cultural production; subjectivity; identity; identification; bodies and embodiment; performance and performativity; among others. Overall, by exploring theory in conjunction with queer cultural production that explores questions of power, identity, and desire across different racial, national, and cultural landscapes, the module aims to problematise how gender and sexuality are not stable identities or classifications but are instead processes involving normalisations, hierarchies and relations of domination that can be challenged, troubled and/or queered.

VIDEOGAMES: THEORY, PRACTICE, AND RECEPTION

Code HUM-5008B

Credits 20

This module offers students the opportunity to develop a comprehensive understanding of the cultural, political, and economic contexts of the videogames industry, and the techniques and principles used in game design. The module will give an overview of the key academic debates from video game history from production to reception, considering the current state of the industry, issues of representation in games, and study of games culture within a broader context. The module will provide students with the opportunity to play and critique a variety of games hardware and software. In addition, the module provides an understanding of hardware platforms and software tools used in the creation of videogames, making use of UEA's Media Suite to offer a practice-based component to aid in the understanding of the principles behind games development. Students will be able to learn entry level games design practices. No previous experience of coding or games development is required to undertake the module, just an interest in the subject.

GLOBALISATION AND FRENCH CULTURAL IDENTITIES (LEVEL 5)

Code PPLF5006B

Credits 20

Do you want to explore what makes the French so French? Is there any such thing as a French cultural exception? How has society and the relationship between the French and the French state or religion evolved over time and how has that shaped social behaviours, attitudes, laws, and values in France? These are some of the questions that will be the subjects of this module, available for students with or without any prior knowledge of the French language. By taking this module, taught and assessed in English, you will gain a deeper understanding of French society and important aspects of its institutions. You will understand France's attempts to retain its cultural identity, despite trends of homogenisation. You will look at themes such as education, arts, politics, literature, and thought, and examine questions such as the role of the state, the support of the film industry, the history and legacy of Cartesian reasoning, centralisation, and universalism. Those themes will be discussed, sometimes challenged, through the exploration of a range of illustrations, documents and readings. By the end of this module, you will have developed awareness of important and structuring features of French culture, you will have developed intercultural skills. If you are a student in international relations, you'll have a better understanding of what influences social and political representations, constructions, and decisions. As a student of languages, you'll be able to support your comprehension and expression skills by a thorough understanding of the French culture.

INTRODUCTION TO THE EUROPEAN UNION

Code PPLI5044A

Credits 20

Who rules the EU? What does it do concretely for EU citizens? How democratic is it? How serious are the challenges it is currently facing, from the reform of its economic governance to Brexit? To explore these questions, and more, you'll examine the development, structure, nature and functions of the European Union. You'll look at the history and theories of European integration from the 1940s to the present day. You'll explore the institutions and processes which run the EU, and demystify its main policies. The aim of the module is not only to ensure that you understand the ‘nuts and bolts’ of what the EU is and how it works. You'll also examine critically and articulate contending arguments on key issues such as the role of the member-states in the European system of governance; the EU's democratic credentials; the causes and consequences of Brexit; or the influence of the EU in the world. The EU is an integral part of its member states' structures of governance and it influences their domestic political, social and cultural life, as well as EU neighbouring countries. Understanding how the European Union works is important in many jobs at local, national or international levels in the public, private and third (community and voluntary) sectors. This module is recommended if you intend to progress to the 'European Studies with Brussels Internship’ module in Year 3.

INTERNATIONAL SECURITY

Code PPLI5056B

Credits 20

Why are wars fought? What is peace? What is security? International Security introduces you to these key issues in global politics. In the first part of the module, you will explore the continuing salience of violent conflict and the use of force in world politics. While some have argued that the advent of globalisation and spread of liberal democracy would make violent conflict less relevant in today’s world, war and the use of force remain an integral part of the international system. In exploring these issues, you will study a variety of perspectives on the causes of war and peace to examine the roots of violent conflict and security problems in the present day. In the second half of the module, we will turn to contemporary ‘critical’ debates around international security. These include constructivist and feminist perspectives on what security is, how it is achieved, and whether it is desirable. We will also investigate the host of seemingly new security challenges that have increasingly captured the attention of policymakers and academics. How useful is it to think of issues such as environmental degradation, gendered violence’s, and poverty as security issues? What do we gain and lose in broadening security studies beyond a narrow focus on warfare and military power?

POWER, WEALTH AND NATIONS: GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY

Code PPLI5161B

Credits 20

What if I told you that the West was no longer the power centre of the world’s economy? Could Pax Sinica provincialize the UK as political economic power settles over Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta? What would Adam Smith, Karl Marx and Friedrich List have to say about global transformations underway in the global political economy? And, as Susan Strange famously put it: cui bono: Who benefits from all these transformations? Multinational corporations, nation states, financial sector, exporting economies, citizens? You’ll investigate the accumulation of wealth, movement of capital, centres of power, flows of globalisation, patterns of trade, and the ubiquity of finance in a world being transformed by innovation where emerging powers challenge the status quo of North Atlantic powerhouses.

GENDER AND POWER

Code PPLM5002A

Credits 20

Providing a conceptual overview of feminist research approaches, this module examines contemporary gender and power relations. You will examine both the formal and informal power structures that shape the experience of gender. Bringing together the fields of media and sociology, politics and cultural studies, you will explore the relationship between feminist theory and activism.

POLITICAL VIOLENCE & CONFLICT: THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES

Code PPLM5002B

Credits 20

Political violence, individual or collective, is easily condemned as an irrational and barbaric phenomenon, with little relevance for understanding political developments and social change. A lot is down to LeBon’s famous nineteenth century accounts of the crowd as ‘a primitive being’ so destructive ‘that the interests of the individual, even the interest of self-preservation, will not dominate them’ (LeBon, 1995). The taboo of violence persists despite attempts of social and political theorists to engage with the issue and understand different forms and contexts, from riots, to religious violence and terrorism. The aim of the module is to break this generalized taboo by tracing the role (explicit or implicit) of political violence in political theory and its function in processes of socio-political transformations and change. Critical engagement with contemporary theoretical and empirical debates around the issue and the examination of mass and new media representations of political violence will enable students to develop a sophisticated understanding of the origins, logics, perceptions and outcomes of political violence and conflict.

MEDIA, GLOBALISATION AND CULTURE

Code PPLM5003B

Credits 20

What role do media and communication play in processes of globalisation? How is an ever more global media creating cultural change? In this module you will explore the cultural implications of global media and culture by investigating audience practices and media representations. It begins by introducing the main theoretical approaches to mediated globalisation, before examining how these work in practice. Indicative topics include the power of global branding, global celebrity culture, global publics and local audiences, transnational cultures, and representations of migration.

LIES, ALGORITHMS AND CONCERTOS: UNDERSTANDING MEDIA AND CULTURAL POLICY

Code PPLM5005B

Credits 20

How should we deal with the dissemination of 'fake news'? What role do algorithms play in the media we consume, and is it concerning? What kind of government intervention is there in media markets and in cultural life and how does this get decided? This module will enable students to understand the dynamics and issues of media and cultural policy and how various levels of governance are involved in regulating media cultural sectors. The module will start by introducing students to public policy and policy making processes, covering multi-level governance, multi-stakeholderism, and the policy cycle. It will then enhance students’ understanding though deep dives into current issues in media and cultural policy, such as audio-visual media policy, arts institutions, net neutrality, harmful content on platforms, sports and premium content rights, urban regeneration through culture, evolving models of (self/co-)regulation. The module will draw on examples from across the globe and at various level including local, regional, national and supra-national policy making, with special efforts made to integrate ones from non-Western contexts. Students will have the opportunity to work on real policy issues and practice professional skills in simulations and assessment activities. This module is for anyone interested in media and culture or in public policy in general. It covers topics that touch our daily lives so would be useful to anyone concerned about the shape of our society.

THE MEDIA AND IDENTITY

Code PPLM5042B

Credits 20

How do the media shape how we see ourselves? Or indeed how others see us? In a world of social media, self-branding and the increasing importance of mediated forms of identity, on this module you will explore critical ways of thinking about the relationship between culture, media and the self. Drawing on a range of theoretical approaches in the field of media and cultural studies, this module asks you to use research methods from autoethnography to content analysis to explore both their own identities and the way in which identities more broadly are formulated through contemporary media culture. Through discussing the representation of identity in media content, as well as issues of media production, regulation and consumption, you will critically reflect upon the relationship between media culture and social power and consider how social and technological changes impact on the ways in which identity is experienced in everyday life. On successful completion of this module, you should be able, at threshold level, to critically reflect upon the ways in which media texts construct social identity and should be able to discuss the relationship between media and identity with awareness for social, institutional and technological factors that shape both media production and consumption. Assessment is by group presentation and independent research project.

DIGITAL MEDIA AND SOCIETY

Code PPLM5053A

Credits 20

For better or worse, digital technologies are hyped at having revolutionised society. This module will provide you with an introduction to the ways in which the internet and other digital technologies are (and are not) affecting society from theoretical and empirical perspectives, and how society shapes technology. Topics covered include: the evolution of the internet; the network society ; regulating new media; the radical internet and terrorism; social networking, blogs and interactivity; culture and identity in the digital age; and how the internet affects politics and the media.

STATES, INSTITUTIONS AND CITIZENS

Code PPLX5162B

Credits 20

Political systems around the world are facing profound challenges and transformations. Established democracies in Europe and North America have seen the rise of populism, as marked by election of Donald Trump in the USA, the Brexit referendum in the UK or Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. Democracy has also been in retreat in many states which democratised or partly democratised after the cold war such as Russia and Poland. At the same time, autocratic regimes in the Middle East and North Africa have come under pressure, with movements such as the Arab Spring signalling aspirations amongst many people for a more democratic system of governance. This module provides you with a critical understanding of how political systems vary around the world and the pressures facing them. It begins by focusing on the drivers of democratisation. It then proceeds to consider how political institutions such as the executive, legislature and the degree of decentralisation vary - and the effects that this has. Finally, we consider new trends in citizen's voting behaviour at the ballot box and pressure groups campaigning for change. You'll gain a critical awareness of current debates in comparative politics and develop key skills including critical evaluation, analytical investigation, written presentation, and oral communication.

POLITICS IN THE USA

Code PPLX5164A

Credits 20

The election of Donald Trump as President in 2016 has radically changed US politics. Yet to fully understand the current times, contemporary American politics needs to be put into context. This module covers the historical themes that exist in US politics from the eighteenth century to the present day. The emphasis will be on modern political history and contemporary politics, but this will be underpinned by a knowledge of the political philosophy at the time of the formation of the United States, the governmental structures, and political developments over historical time.

PSI SEMESTER ABROAD MODULE

Code PPLX5166B

Credits 60

Students often say that spending a semester abroad expands their horizons and improves their career prospects. You will be able to judge this claim for yourself by completing this module. You’ll experience a different educational culture and develop new perspectives on learning. Assessed formatively and summatively by the host university and on successful completion of the semester abroad, you’ll have developed the knowledge and skills to study in a foreign academic environment with more confidence. Assessment will be in the foreign institution and you might be assessed via different methods depending on the institution you attend. To check eligibility criteria it is important that you liaise with our Study Abroad Team.

Optional B Modules

(0-40 credits)

POLITICAL THEATRE

Code LDCD5025B

Credits 20

How can theatre change the world? You'll attempt to find out by examining the use of theatre and performance by theatre artists and activists to challenge power and create the possibility of change. You’ll look at political theatre in the USA, South America, South Africa, and Europe in the 20th century and beyond; week by week you will encounter plays, writers, performers, and theorists and build up your own toolkit of political theatre. You’ll also create short plays and performance works, and take part in forum theatre, dance, stagings, and events which will enhance your political and theatrical understanding. You will be assessed through writing a short play, a sustained comparative essay, and an original performance work. Themes studied might include feminism, LGBTQ theatre, anti-racism, and Marxism. You will debate, create, and study and emerge having found your own voice as a political theatre-maker.

CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE

Code LDCL5031A

Credits 20

This is a module which you will find helpful throughout your degree, informing and perhaps changing the way you read and analyse literature, film and other cultural forms. Across the twelve weeks, you’ll not only engage with the rich, complex and provocative work of literary critics and theorists – including deconstructive, feminist, post-colonial and queer theorists – but also of some of the thinkers and writers who have influenced them: such as Marx, Freud and Saussure. You will therefore encounter some of the most important and exciting thinkers of the modern period, acquiring an understanding of developments in linguistics, economics, psychoanalysis and philosophy, and tracing the ways in which these overlap with, and inform, literary and cultural study.

EUROPEAN LITERATURE

Code LDCL5033B

Credits 20

In this module, you’ll examine examples of twentieth-century European writing (all read in translation). Rather than (merely) place writers in their national contexts, you’ll deal with topics, issues and formal experiments that complicate, sometimes transcend, national boundaries. In fact you’ll interrogate what 'European' might mean in relation to literature - where are the borders? Are continental Europeans fundamentally 'other'? And if so, how does this otherness manifest itself aesthetically, thematically, tonally and formally? You'll look at how writers from different countries frequently challenge the conventions of genre and the conventions of reading and interpreting. Among a range of important innovations (or continuities), you may explore varieties of 'European' modernism, postmodernism, the absurd, fantasy, noir, and other genres. You’ll also ask how European writers have responded to the challenges, upheavals and catastrophes of the twentieth century and how they deal with the ethnic, religious and cultural diversity within Europe. You’ll engage with these topics in weekly lectures, and you’ll be assessed by means of an individually chosen project (supported by a formative proposal followed by individual and group tutorials).

ROMANTICISM 1780-1840

Code LDCL5034B

Credits 20

1780-1840 was the Age of Revolution and Romanticism, often regarded as a revolutionary style of writing. It was the age of the American and French Revolution and the Wars they entailed, the age of slavery and rebellion, of empire and conquest. You may think of Romantic writing as mainly nature poetry, primarily work by Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, and Byron. But the signs of a ‘Romantic’ sensibility can also be found in a much broader constituency of writing: the novel, letter writing, the essay, political and aesthetic theory, and social commentary. In this module you’ll be introduced to some of the most exciting Romantic period writing, including poetry, fiction and non-fictional prose from the Age of Revolution. You’ll also explore key period artistic and literary concepts such as the sublime, beautiful, picturesque, the Hellenic, and pastoral, and you’ll analyse the many ways in which the writers of the period exploited concepts of landscape. You’ll look at issues such as the Supernatural and Dreaming. Your understanding of Romantic writing will be enhanced by an analysis of aesthetics, politics, and of the work of women writers. During the course you’ll explore poetry by Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, as well as Jane Austen’s novel Mansfield Park (1816) and Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein (1818; 1831). You may also consider writings by less familiar poets, such as John Clare, Charlotte Smith, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Mary Robinson, as well as prose works by Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft and others. You’ll look at how writing is gendered in the period and the implications of this for both male and female writers. You’ll be taught through a mixture of one-hour weekly lectures and two-hour weekly seminars, as well as self-directed study. You’ll gain experience in communicating your ideas in tutorials, as well as through written work and presentations. You’ll be assessed through two formative pieces (a close reading and a project bibliography) and one summative piece on a project chosen by yourself in discussion with your seminar tutors.

AUSTEN AND THE BRONTES: READING THE ROMANCE

Code LDCL5035B

Credits 20

This module considers texts by Austen and the Brontes in relation to a wide variety of literary and historical contexts: feminisms, colonialism, impact of war, the social status of the woman writer, representations of governesses, madness, mad women and mad men, rakes, foreigners and strangers. We investigate the forms of communication which seem to be offered by and in the romance novel and the ways in which the lives of these authors have been told and read as romances. Opportunities will be available to work on film versions and students will also have, as part of the assessment, the opportunity to produce their own piece of creative writing in response to the primary texts.

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY WRITING (pre-1789)

Code LDCL5041A

Credits 20

The eighteenth century was a time of great literary experimentation in which many new genres emerged, including the periodical essay, the mock-epic, the ballad opera, and the novel. These genres took shape within a commercial revolution that transformed both what it meant to be an author and what it meant to be a reader. In this module you will see how writers such as Joseph Addison, Alexander Pope and John Gay created works that both participated in and criticized the culture of commerce. You will explore the fictions created by writers such as Daniel Defoe, Horace Walpole, and Elizabeth Inchbald, who developed very different versions of the novel. You will also examine how writers such as Samuel Johnson, Frances Burney, and Olaudah Equiano navigated the new possibilities for authorship that were opening up in the period. Ultimately you are invited to become an “eighteenth-centuryist” and to make imaginative connections between the exciting range of genres that emerged in this century and the culture that produced them.

SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY WRITING: RENAISSANCE AND REVOLUTION (pre-1789)

Code LDCL5042A

Credits 20

This module introduces you to a huge variety of kinds of writing from one of Britain's most exciting and turbulent periods of cultural, political and intellectual transformation: the seventeenth century. The module works through lectures, which establish larger questions we might ask of the week's material, and seminars, in which we read passages of texts together closely. We begin in the early seventeenth century by exploring the ways English writing was transformed by its encounters with classical texts (giving you the opportunity to read classical authors such as Horace and Martial in translation), before turning to explore women writers’ complicated relationship to early-modern literary culture. We examine the emergence of new forms of life-writing, especially those written by women, and explore the ways in which seventeenth-century travellers wrote about their encounters with the Middle East. In the module's latter section, we ask how literary forms were transformed by the extraordinary upheavals of the English civil war and the execution of the monarch. Authors we study include famous figures such as Ben Jonson, Andrew Marvell, and John Milton (including a look at his masterpiece, Paradise Lost), as well as many lesser-known writers, including women such as Lucy Hutchinson and Hester Pulter. To better understand the ways early-modern texts’ circumstances of publication shape their meaning, we offer the opportunity to sign up for an (entirely optional) visit to the Norfolk Heritage Centre (in the centre of Norwich) to handle their remarkable collection of seventeenth-century books.

MODERNISM

Code LDCL5045A

Credits 20

The modernist movement transformed literature and the arts worldwide in the early part of the 20th century, peaking in the period between 1918 and 1939. Although the term modernism was rarely used by authors in this period, in the period after World War II it became the usual term to describe a group of writers, responding to one another, whose work is characterised by radical experiments with language and form, which aimed to do justice to a range of many subjects such as the mysteries of consciousness and the unconscious, gender, sexuality, and desire, violence and democracy, the primitive and the mechanical. We will be reading a range of authors, including such long-canonised figures as James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, HD, Gertrude Stein, and Virginia Woolf, but expanding the modernist canon in the light of recent scholarship to other more recently revived authors such as Djuna Barnes, Mina Loy, Dorothy Richardson, and Jean Rhys. We will trace some of the origins of modernism in earlier literary movements such as Symbolism, Imagism, Aestheticism, and Impressionism, and explore its kinship with foreign literary movements such as Dada and Surrealism. Modernism invented modern methods of criticism and we will be placing a particular emphasis on the close reading of poetry and poetic prose. A study of modernism is essential for understanding all 20th century literature and this module is highly recommended for any students wishing to take any modules in 20th-century literature.

FROM PUSHKIN TO CHEKHOV: NINETEENTH-CENTURY RUSSIAN FICTION

Code LDCL5048A

Credits 20

‘Russia is old; her literature is new. Russian history goes back to the ninth century; Russian literature, so far as it interests the world, begins in the nineteenth…. Russian literature is the voice of a giant, waking from a long sleep, and becoming articulate. … And what he has said has been well worth the thousand years of waiting.’ What has nineteenth century Russian literature said that the world has waited so long to hear? This is a question you will begin to answer as you read some of the age’s great authors, such as Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Chekhov. You’ll gain insight into what makes this writing distinctive and an awareness of the political, social and cultural conditions that created it. You’ll discover why it was so important to other European writers and learn about the intriguing literary relationship between Russia and the West. You’ll start by familiarising yourself with some of the historical background, concentrating on the ‘westernisation’ of Russia, a process begun by Peter the Great and made visible in the construction of the city of St Petersburg. At the beginning of the module you’ll be given some key themes and questions to think about; these will help you to focus your reading during the coming weeks. You’ll learn through seminars and independent study and research. You’ll be assessed on one essay, which can be developed from a class presentation. By the end of the module you’ll have read some of the great nineteenth century Russian writers and gained an understanding of the political, historical and social background of their work. You’ll have discovered why these novels had such a profound impact in Western Europe and how they were instrumental in the development of the Modernist movement in Britain. You’ll have gained a wider literary perspective and reading in translation will have made you think in new ways about your own language too.

MEDIEVAL WRITING (pre-1789)

Code LDCL5063A

Credits 20

This module provides an introduction to the study of medieval literature. You will explore Chaucer’s poetry (through works such as 'The Clerk’s Tale', 'The Merchant's Tale', 'The Nun’s Priest’s Tale'), the wonderful Morall Fabillis of Robert Henryson, the work of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, and a number of important Middle English Romances, including the superb 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'. You will work in three inter-related ways: by exploring a range of important medieval literary genres (the lyric, allegorical narrative, romance, ‘mystical writing’, ‘life writing’, moral fable, dream vision); by considering important aspects of the medieval world (social, political, religious) and their textual representation; and by addressing the material circumstances in and by which medieval texts were written and read, published and circulated (in manuscripts and in the very earliest printed books). The aim, then, is really two-fold: to introduce you to the remarkable riches of medieval literature (one of the pay-offs of the relative linguistic difficulty of Middle English is that it forces us to attend slowly and carefully to the textual details of our material in a way I suspect we don’t always find ourselves able to and in a way that the texts we will be reading wonderfully reward), and, at the same time, to allow you to try your hand as medievalists, exploring the distinctive possibilities and practices that come with working with this material.

VICTORIAN WRITING

Code LDCL5067B

Credits 20

This module aims to equip you with a knowledge of writing from across the Victorian period, in a variety of modes (fiction, poetry, science, journalism, criticism, nonsense). We will examine authors such as George Eliot, Tennyson, Dickens, Darwin, Charlotte Bronte, and the Brownings. You will thus develop an awareness of how different kinds of writing in the period draw on, influence, and contest with each other. Likewise, you will acquire a sense for the cultural, political and socio-economic contexts of 19th-century writing, and some of the material contexts in which that writing took place (serial publication, popular readership, periodical writing and public controversy).

CONTEMPORARY FICTION

Code LDCL5069B

Credits 20

What is the state of the art of the novel at present? And what are some of the distinguishing preoccupations and characteristics of the contemporary novel? This module seeks to consider these questions with a view to developing an understanding of the condition of the novel today. The module focuses on fiction published in the UK and Ireland in the last ten years, with a particular focus on more inventive writing. We’ll read a small set of contemporary novels, the content and form of each of which will exemplify some of the possibilities for fiction in the present day. We’ll consider the relation between the contemporary novel and the contemporary moment – for example, our concerns regarding the environment, identity, nationhood, and history – and think also about what it might mean to be or to call oneself contemporary: to be together with one’s own time. The list of authors chosen for the module changes regularly, as you would expect. Recently, it has included the likes of Ali Smith, Anne Enright, Zadie Smith and Mohsin Hamid. You’ll consider a range of ways of conceiving and interpreting the contemporary novel, and discuss these ways with your peers. There is no consensus about what does or should constitute a canon of contemporary fiction, although there is a growing critical literature on the subject, some of which we’ll read. It will be our job, in lectures and in seminars, to think carefully about what novels published in the last ten years offer the best argument for the continued viability of the novel itself as a contemporary art form.

SHAKESPEARE (pre-1789)

Code LDCL5070B

Credits 20

The aim of this lecture-seminar module is to help you become a better reader of Shakespearean drama. Shakespeare is now so universally known and read that it is easy to forget that he wrote at a specific historical moment for specific audiences, actors and theatrical spaces. What happens to our understanding of Shakespeare's plays when we read them within the context of theatrical performance? This is what our module enables you to do -- and in doing so, it aims to give you fresh, new ways to interpret Shakespearean language and theatricality. Lectures equip you with methods and contexts for reading Shakespeare's plays; seminars give you the chance to put these into practice through close, attentive readings of his plays. Each week we study a different play in detail. The summative assessment asks you to put what you've been learning into practice by writing a critical analysis of more than one play using some of the module's methods.

LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY

Code LDCL5072A

Credits 20

This module offers a series of different approaches to the question of how Literature and Philosophy can speak to each other as academic disciplines, demonstrating the breadth and diversity of the two fields, as well as acquainting students with the research in literary criticism and philosophy currently being pursued at UEA. As well as examining the ways in which literature can illuminate and trouble philosophical argument, it will explore literature and 'the literary' as a topic for philosophical analysis, and the kinds of thinking such a topic would demand. Setting literature and philosophy into dialogue in this way will engender a more capacious understanding of the particular philosophical issues, and literary techniques, under discussion. The course will allow students to develop an awareness of the limits and advantages of various modes of literary and philosophical expression, and to foster more sophisticated skills in both literary and philosophical criticism. The module will be made up of a lecture circus, with two weeks given to each lecturer on a particular topic related to their current research (there will be five in all, including a lecture from the module convener, plus two from Philosophy and two from Literature, Drama and Creative Writing). The seminars will discuss issues arising from these lectures, working with texts set by the lecturer.

EMPIRE AND AFTER: GLOBALIZING ENGLISH

Code LDCL5079A

Credits 20

Today, literature in English is produced in many countries across the world and English increasingly enjoys a status as a ‘global’ language. In this module you will explore how this situation came about by placing the development of English literary traditions both in the British Isles and elsewhere into the long historical context of the rise and fall of the British Empire. Beginning with canonical works by British writers from the eighteenth century through the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries, you will then consider literary and political responses to the experience of empire and colonization by writers from areas such as South Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Australasia, and the Americas. You will explore how ‘English Literature’ has been shaped on a global scale by global historical forces, and how different the history of the English literary tradition looks when placed alongside and in counterpoint to these ‘other’ writings in English. You will then discuss the writings of authors such as Daniel Defoe, Joseph Conrad, Chinua Achebe, Jean Rhys, Amitav Ghosh, Kate Grenville and J.M Coetzee amongst others. The module will introduce you to the theoretical and conceptual apparatus of postcolonial literary studies and to some of the key frameworks for understanding the formation of the modern world, such as race and racism, nations and nationalism, colonial discourse and postcolonial theory, and how gender and sexuality were pivotal in the formation of colonial and post-colonial identities.

Optional C Modules

(0-20 credits)

VISUALISING RACE IN THE USA

Code AMAH5057B

Credits 20

Using still photographs, this module will explore how representations of race are produced and circulate in the USA. The main focus will be on Indigenous Americans and African Americans, along with other racialized groups. The module aims to introduce students to strategies and techniques for exploring and analysing photographs and, more specifically, using the visual record to study and illuminate the racial history of the USA. Viewed here as sites of historical evidence, photographic portraits, family albums, monuments, anthropological illustrations, lynching postcards, advertisements, food packaging, fashion photos, are just some of the images that we will read and evaluate. We will explore how visual texts can contribute to our understanding of race (often inseparable from nationhood, class, sexuality, identity) in the USA. The invention of photography changed ways of looking and seeing, from the nineteenth century up to the present day. Opening sessions will focus on ways of reading visual texts. Students will gain skills and techniques to enable them to recruit photographs as evidence, for work in this and future modules. Most of the semester will be devoted to analysing how photographic images both reflect and contribute to constructions of race in the USA. [No previous experience of working with images is necessary. A grounding in American history would be beneficial.

LIVING ON THE HYPHEN: Multi-ethnic American Literatures

Code AMAL5077A

Credits 20

America has long been interpreted as the location of social possibility founded upon a desire to assimilate and negate ethnic 'others'. In this module, you’ll trace and explore the literary responses of distinct 'American' cultures: including Native American; African American; Asian American; and Latin American. Through studying each distinct group of texts, you’ll engage with the specific historical, cultural and political relationships between the US and each author's country of origin or national/cultural history, across the 20th and 21st centuries. You’ll also make connections between these distinct groups of writers, to consider topics such as race and racism, exile, return, family, belonging, identity, language and memory, colonisation, imperialism, slavery, segregation, immigration, and illegality/invisibility, with an emphasis upon contemporary experiences. Via important multi-ethnic writers and texts, you’ll explore what constitutes American literature aesthetically, temporally, geographically, and culturally, evaluate the value of the term ‘multi-ethnic’ and its place within American literary studies, and engage critically with questions of American literature as ‘World literature’. Through seminar based discussions, you’ll develop your ability to evaluate literary texts as contributions to historical revisions and debates, and also as representations of identity, belonging, the nation state, politics, and culture. You will be assessed through coursework, while gaining experience of communicating your ideas via seminar discussion and group presentation, and you’ll have the opportunity to engage in peer to peer assessment practices. On successful completion of the module, you’ll have the knowledge and skills to consider the diversity of American literature and the complexities of American cultural and national identity.

CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN FICTION

Code AMAL5079B

Credits 20

Writers who want to address the contemporary scene confront a dilemma: as soon as you try to capture it on the page, you’ve already fallen behind the present moment. You’ll explore how contemporary American writers nonetheless respond to this challenge. You’ll consider the issues they identify as pressing in American culture, as well as the literary strategies used to explore those issues. As you progress in the module, you’ll acquire understanding of a number of important concepts associated with contemporary American fiction, such as postmodernism, metafiction, identity, globalisation, and memory. When you’ve completed the module, you’ll be familiar with a number of literary and cultural debates relating to contemporary American culture, and have detailed knowledge of some of the most exciting writers working today. You’ll be able to explain why it is difficult to define, and write about, the ‘contemporary.’ And in the course of your assessed work and seminar discussions, you will develop your communication, writing, and research skills.

CHILDREN'S TELEVISION

Code AMAM5002B

Credits 20

Children’s television is dynamic, diverse and often controversial. In this module, we examine how television has constructed childhood and how children have, in their turn, shaped television. One of the particular challenges with children’s television is that it is usually made by adults for children. As society has shifted over time, therefore, children’s television programming becomes caught up in debates about who and what children are; about how (much) they should watch; and, about what they should (not) be allowed to see. Because childhood is a highly debated cultural and social category, there is a large and growing body of scholarship on the topic of children’s television. We use these theoretical and methodological maps to investigate the past and present of children’s television, including things like: cultural studies, media ethnography, genre studies, gender studies and production studies. We look at a range of topics that may include: Saturday Morning Television, children’s variety shows, animation, children’s broadcasting, children’s satellite channels, censorship, consumerism, pressure groups and gender.

DOCUMENTARY

Code AMAM5045A

Credits 20

This module will introduce you to key issues in documentary history, theory and practice. You will engage with definitional and generic debates; historical forms and founders; different modes of documentary; ethical issues; and social and political uses. We will draw upon a range of national and media contexts and give you the opportunity to engage with a range of theories, archival materials, documentary styles and ethical debates within your written and practical work. At the end of module you will produce a documentary shaped by the traditions and theories you have studied, employing a range of archive film and television footage sourced from the East Anglian Film Archive.

AMERICAN MUSIC

Code AMAS5023A

Credits 20

The first book published in the New World was a hymn book. Music, sacred and profane, has been at the centre of American lives ever since. Distinctive American musical styles still dominate the globe, as they have done for decades. But how did American music develop into the genres that we recognise today? How did uniquely American sounds catch the ear of listeners all over the world? You will gain a thorough understanding of the development of American music. You will focus on a number of distinctive musical traditions - from minstrelsy to blues, jazz, and country; from rock and roll to hip hop - and consider the way that they have shaped popular music today. Throughout the course, you will encounter a rich variety of music and an extraordinary range of characters, from the most famous entertainers in modern culture, to the obscure, the forgotten and the neglected. Whilst exploring the development of American music, you will also examine the ways in which its growth tells a larger story about the history of America and its people. In particular, it will give you a different perspective on the issue of race in American life. Through seminar discussion, written coursework, and group presentations, you will develop your analytical and critical abilities - whether that means your ability to think about the significance of a song and its meaning for a particular historical moment, or the way that the shifting meaning of a genre of music can tell us many things about its wider social and cultural context.

OF MICE AND KRAZY KATS: HISTORY AND ART OF AMERICAN COMICS

Code AMAS5050A

Credits 20

Are comics art? The answer is yes, and this module will show you why through an in-depth examination of American comics from early newspaper strips to contemporary graphic novels. You’ll read a wide range of different comics, including the birth of superheroes, World War II propaganda comics, controversial horror comics, underground comics from the San Francisco counterculture, recent alternative comics, and the current boom in reality-based graphic novels. You’ll learn about the complex history of American comics, including the specific contexts for the form’s development as a mass medium and its frequent marginalisation in the cultural sphere, such as the great comic-book scare of the 1950s. In the process, you’ll learn to pay special attention to form as well as content when reading comics, and will develop a critical vocabulary for evaluating the aesthetics of the form. In addition to a broad selection from the history of American comics, you’ll also examine comics through different thematic perspectives, such as race, gender, and sexuality, and you’ll read critical material that’ll further inform your understanding of the form. You’ll learn through seminars as well as through independent library study of the periods and themes that resonate the most with you, and you’ll be assessed through coursework. At the end of the module, you’ll have gained a deep understanding of the many historical and cultural issues that inform any appreciation of comics, and you’ll have learned to consider the form as a unique and mature form of American art.

AMERICAN CULTURE, 1919-1946

Code AMAS5051B

Credits 20

The period between World War I and the Cold War was a period of dramatic change in the United States: from the seemingly endless prosperity of the twenties to the depression of the thirties; from isolationism to World War II; and from a population that lived in predominantly rural or small-town communities to one increasingly located in large urban centres or their suburban satellites. You will explore the changing economic, political and cultural history of this period, particularly through an examination of the cultural debates over the modernity of the twenties, the New Deal of the thirties and America’s changing place in the world during this time. In order to explore these issues, you will engage with a wide range of sources that include political documents, literary texts and films.

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Life at UEA

Important Information

Students must ensure they select an even balance of modules across both semesters. The Course Director can support up to 30 credits off profile over the course of your degree.

Assessment for Year 3

Compulsory Modules

Optional A Modules

(30-90 credits)

SHIFTING POWERS AFRICA IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Code PPLI6039A

Credits 30

What do you know about Africa? Is it still the Dark Continent, lost outside of time, or do you see it as the next exciting ‘happening’ place to follow fashion, use FinTech, and do business? Did you know that Timbuktu was one of the world’s greatest centres of learning? That West Africa’s gold underpinned the global economy? How about if I told you that an explosion of megacities is taking place in the Global South, principally in Africa as the continent’s population doubles to 2bn? You will look at Africa’s place and importance within the international system and more, including exploring China’s One Belt Initiative in East Africa, the African Union and security, and the African Development Bank’s ‘High five’ development plan.

TERRORISM AND COUNTER-TERRORISM

Code PPLI6040B

Credits 30

Although the term terrorism goes back to the French revolution, it was rarely employed until the 1970’s. Contrast this with today when terrorism, it seems, is everywhere we look: in foreign policy decisions, military interventions, homeland security measures, legal frameworks, newspaper headlines, speeches and sermons, films and video games, and, of course, in university modules such as this. In this module, we engage in a critical exploration of terrorism, counter-terrorism, and the academic field of terrorism research. You will explore the history of terrorism, and engage in debates around the definition and character of terrorist violence. Is it possible, necessary, or even desirable to separate terrorism from other forms of violence, for instance? The module will introduce different perspectives on the causes, types, and threat of non-state terrorism. You will examine a range of strategies for countering terrorism, and their political and normative implications. The module also explores the emergence and contribution of critical terrorism studies, examining issues including state terrorism, gender and terrorism, cultural representations of terrorism, and the production and influence of terrorism ‘experts.’

POLITICS AND FOREIGN POLICY OF THE ASIA-PACIFIC

Code PPLI6069A

Credits 30

This module will introduce you to important themes in international relations within the Asia Pacific, at a time when the region has assumed great importance. There will be a particular focus on the important historical periods in the relations between the USA, China and Japan. An understanding of elements of the trajectory of these relationships will be provided by taking a selection of historical subjects for analysis. While you will address the knowledge of history, and of long-term themes, in the latter part of the module you will consider contemporary political issues. This will require you to develop an understanding of the interaction of the United States with Asia, particularly China and Japan.

INTERNSHIP ABROAD FOR POLITICS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS STUDENTS

Code PPLI6093B

Credits 30

STUDENTS TAKING THE DEGREE COURSE 'INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND MODERN LANGUAGE' HAVE A PLACE ON THE MODULE. OTHER FINAL YEAR PPL STUDENTS STUDYING POLITICS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS DEGREE COURSES OR MODULES MAY APPLY AND INTERVIEWS FOR THESE STUDENTS WILL BE BY COMPETITIVE INTERVIEW, WHICH ARE EXPECTED TO TAKE PLACE SHORTLY AFTER THE START OF THE AUTUMN SEMESTER. The module aims to open horizons as to the employment opportunities and skills required for working at the international level and to help you to secure and prepare for an optional non credit bearing traineeship abroad following completion of the module. Teaching takes place during the Spring Semester and assessment will be by a single 100 per cent summative project report on a topic jointly agreed with the module organiser and potential internship host in order to become familiar with the work of the host's organisation and to strengthen your research, analytical, organisational and writing skills. There will be substantial and continuously available formative support and feedback for each student to develop the summative report. Traineeships will take place at a time mutually agreed during the calendar year following completion of the Spring Semester teaching. We usually have places in Brussels and students taking this module may apply for one of these. We also have places elsewhere and are seeking to develop more, which you may apply for, and we will also support and advise you if you wish to create your own internship abroad. The host organisations we have good links with are community and non governmental organisations and these internships are not paid. The focus of the work experience with these organisations is on training and development and financial support towards travel and accommodation may be available via the UEA Study Abroad Office if applied for prior to graduation, and other forms of financial assistance from UEA may also be available.

POLITICS AND POPULAR CULTURE

Code PPLM6037A

Credits 30

Popular culture links to politics in a variety of ways, some obvious, some less obvious. There are the politicians who seek the endorsement of film stars; there are the politicians who were film stars; and there are the rock performers who pretend that they are politicians. And then there are the states that censor popular culture, or those that sponsor it and use it as propaganda. We will explore the many ways in which popular culture and politics are linked. You will: • Be introduced to competing theories of the politics of popular culture - those that see popular culture as political manipulation and those that see it as political resistance. • Analyse examples of popular culture for the political ideas and values they represent. • Look at how popular culture is used in political communication. • Track developments in the political economy of popular culture, especially in relation to globalisation, digital media and power within the cultural industries. • Debate the censorship of popular culture and use of state subsidies to promote it. • Reflect on the effects of popular culture, and about its role in personal and collective identity.

TOPICS IN PUBLIC OPINION

Code PPLM6045B

Credits 30

The role of public opinion is paramount in any democracy, as the public is often asked at election times and in-between elections to confer legitimacy to politicians and to their decisions. Yet what determines the public’s opinion? How much does the public know about politics? How does political communication influence the public’s positions? And last, but not least, how do we measure public opinion? You’ll discuss old and new directions in answering these questions, drawing on political psychology and communication theories. The module is well anchored in current politics, and will provide you with the tools to understand current public opinion trends in the UK and other democracies.

ACTIVIST CAMPAIGNING

Code PPLM6076B

Credits 30

How do grassroots and third sector organisations campaign for social and political change? Rather than pose this as an abstract question, you will partner with existing organisations to conduct campaigns on specific issues such as climate change, tax avoidance or gender inequality. You will receive a brief from a partner organisation and be supported in planning, devising, and carrying out activities that will achieve the aims of the brief. Taught content will include strategies for both online and offline activism, analysing power relations at different scales, and ways of assessing the effectiveness of your campaigns, but the bulk of the module will be the experience of a “live” campaign. You will combine applied research skills with professional practice in the form of a “reverse internship.” As the partner organisations are embedded in the module, you will build valuable skills for employability as well as an opportunity for being supported in the exercise of engaged citizenship. You will be assessed by presentation and critical reflection. In the year 2017-2018 the partner organisation was Greenpeace, but partners may change each year.

DIGITAL POLITICS

Code PPLM6077A

Credits 30

Today's political world is more than ever influenced by digital technologies, from innovative social movements to 'fake news' and digital election campaigns. We will explore how the technologies influence political processes and how political processes in turn influence technology. We will examine the impact of digital media on electoral politics, examining key election campaigns (including recent UK and US elections) and the impact of social media, big data, and targeted advertising on their results. We will investigate how social movements (from Black Lives Matter to the Alt-Right) have been transformed through their use of digital networks. We will navigate the world of online politics, with a particular focus on the new culture wars being fought out in online environments. Finally we will explore the politics of the everyday and the political effects of the technology platforms on which we live our online lives.

PARLIAMENTARY AND PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH PLACEMENT

Code PPLX6026Y

Credits 30

This module provides students the opportunity to write a research report for client such as a parliamentarian, governmental organisation or pressure group. You will be closely supervised by an academic tutor in collaboration with your host. Previous placements have been with government ministers, shadow ministers, London Assembly members, peers in the House of Lords, local government councillors and human rights groups, but vary each year.

BETTER WORLDS? UTOPIAS AND DYSTOPIAS

Code PPLX6041A

Credits 30

Would an ideal society have no more crime? Who would be wealthy? Would politics be outlawed? Do utopians wish to impose their views on the rest of us? This module explores questions such as these, which are central to political and social theory, through the prism of selected utopian and dystopian novels and other utopian texts ranging from Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) to the present. It focuses on themes such as property, social control, gender, work, the environment and politics. A major question which the module addresses is the political significance and effects of utopian ideas – often derided as frivolous or impractical in their own time - and the historical role of utopian ideas in political theory and social reform.

DISSERTATION MODULE

Code PPLX6042Y

Credits 30

The dissertation module gives you the opportunity to undertake research on a project of your own choosing under the supervision of a member of academic staff. The goal is to produce a dissertation of 8,000-9,000 words, which involves in-depth research on a specialist topic. An undergraduate dissertation represents a piece of independent research produced over an extended period and which demonstrates elements of originality in the selection of the topic, the use of sources and the analysis or argument contained within it. It is an opportunity to demonstrate the depth of your understanding of what you have learned across your degree course by applying concepts and theories from one or several modules to new contexts. A limited number of parliamentary internships are also available as part of this module. You will be expected to attend a series of lectures in the autumn semester which provide general advice on the process of conducting a dissertation, as well as meeting your supervisor on a regular basis over the course of the year.

MULTICULTURALISM

Code PPLX6072B

Credits 30

This module looks at the political implications of the rise of multicultural societies in Europe and North America since the end of World War II. (Canada is given consideration because of its importance to these debates both as a practical model as well as a source of influential theorists.) The aim is to introduce students to a range of contemporary theoretical perspectives on multiculturalism and facilitate critical assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of such approaches in the face of competing political discourses such as nationalism and alternative forms of liberalism. Theorists under examination may include; Parekh, Kymlicka, Levy, Taylor and Modood as well as major liberal alternative views; Barry, Rawls and Raz. Among the module themes the following will be addressed: group differentiated rights, institutional racism, Islamophobia, recognition vs toleration and cultural offence. The module will also look at divergent policies adopted within European states (e.g. France, Germany) and give attention to the attempts to operationalize multiculturalism in the UK in particular via the Parekh Report.

CAPITALISM AND ITS CRITICS

Code PPLX6081B

Credits 30

The nature of Capitalism and its possible futures is one of the preeminent issues of our time. You’ll consider the past, present and possible future development of capitalism as a socio-economic system. Drawing upon a wide range of classical and contemporary theorists of capitalism, you’ll deliberate capitalism in relation to a range of issues, such as: freedom, urbanisation, imperialism, technology, climate change, art and culture and go on to consider capitalism’s tendency towards recurrent crises, and what the alternatives to a capitalist system might be. The module will enable you to develop a critical understanding of capitalism as a political, economic and cultural system.

DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE

Code PPLX6097B

Credits 30

You’ll examine one of the fundamental and enduring questions of normative political theory and applied ethics: who should get what? You’ll focus on some of the leading contemporary theorists of distributive justice, including Rawls, Nozick, Dworkin, Elster, and Sen. As well as exploring macro questions of justice (e.g. what principles of justice for the basic institutions of society? Equality or sufficiency? Need or desert?) You’ll also spend time on a range of micro questions about just allocation (e.g. How household chores should be divided between men and women? On the basis of what criteria should scarce donor organs be distributed in hospitals?) In addition to this, you’ll also address, through the work of Beitz, Pogge, and Miller, questions of global distributive justice (Is global economic inequality unjust? If so, why? Do people have a right to an equal share in the value of the Earth’s natural resources?). The format of the module will be a two-hour workshop each week, comprising research-led teaching, seminar discussions, practical exercises, textual reading, balloon debate, and essay writing and research-skills mini-sessions. The assessment will be comprised exclusively of a series of short workshop briefing papers, with a heavy emphasis on formative feedback on drafts to be discussed during optional weekly one-to-one tutorials.

PARLIAMENTARY STUDIES

Code PPLX6099A

Credits 30

Want to know how the UK parliament really works? UEA is one of few universities to provide an official module in collaboration with the UK parliament. Taught in collaboration with Parliamentary staff— it offers advanced students first-hand knowledge of the way legislative and political institutions work. Along with providing a rigorous theoretical background, the module would provide students with an opportunity to discuss issues such as legislation, relations with the EU, political reforms, and parliamentary scrutiny with Members of Parliament and Parliamentary Staff, both in the classroom and in Parliament. The module would examine parliament from multiple perspectives: legal, institutional, and ideological, and places the British Parliament in the context of legislative institutions around the world.

Optional B Modules

(30-90 credits)

AFRICAN AMERICANS AND EMPIRE

Code AMAH6041A

Credits 30

Racism knows no borders. African Americans have long been attuned to the international character of white supremacy. As the black intellectual and activist W.E.B. Du Bois noted at the dawn of the 20th century, racism in the United States “is but a local phase of a world problem.” You will examine the global character of the black freedom struggle in the United States. Historically denied full citizenship rights in the United States, African Americans often looked abroad in their fight against racial prejudice – connecting the struggle against Jim Crow to calls for colonial independence around the world. Over the course of the semester, you will explore how and why black Americans forged transnational alliances that challenged racism on a local and a global level. Covering connections between African Americans and movements for racial justice in Europe, Africa, South Asia, the Caribbean and beyond, you will be asked to critically engage with the global political outlook of prominent black figures, including Marcus Garvey, Claudia Jones, Huey Newton and Barack Obama. On successful completion of your module, you will have a broad knowledge of the global forces that have shaped African American history. In addition to this, you will be able to identify and engage with theories relating to transnational, diaspora and black Atlantic history. Finally, you will be able to critically reflect on how people and cultures are connected throughout the world.

AMERICAN APOCALYPSE: TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY CLIMATE CHANGE FICTION

Code AMAL6012B

Credits 30

In the 21st century, the threat of global warming and climate change is quite literally ‘game-changing’. Engaging with Naomi Klein’s contention that “this changes everything”, this module considers how the apocalyptic dangers of climate change are being addressed by 21st-century American fiction. Climate change fiction, or ‘cli-fi’, has recently emerged as a distinct genre, directly responding to the dangers that global warming poses to human and non-human societies. In this module, you will consider how fiction offers us ways to assess, understand, and address the phenomenon of global warming, and the impact of humans on their environments. You will evaluate ongoing debates about the ‘facts’ of climate change and global warming, including the evidence being produced by scientists, and the emergence of ‘climate change denial’ as a feature both of popular culture and at the highest levels of government in the United States. Exploring American novels published since 2010, you will develop a broad understanding of how American climate change fiction represents the profound dangers of climate change, through its depiction of drought, flood, deforestation, species extinction, intelligent biotech, and the impact of global capitalism. Through seminar-based discussion, you will gain insights into the ways that writers are engaging with the fact of climate change to shape both popular awareness and popular debates, and consider how cli-fi is imagining possible futures for human and all other life on Earth. You will be assessed through coursework, reflective reports, and student-led workshops, and gain expertise in communicating your ideas via student-led group work and seminar discussion. On successful completion of the module, you will have the knowledge and skills to assess the complexities of climate change fiction as a new literary genre, discuss the emotive reach and influence of fiction in this context, and evaluate the strategies of contemporary cli-fi writers.

WE’RE HERE, WE’RE QUEER: GLOBAL SEXUALITIES AND CONTEMPORARY QUEER CULTURES

Code HUM-6005A

Credits 30

The transnational movement of bodies, images, and capital has transformed modern conceptualisations of gender and sexuality. Sexual practices, identities, and subcultural formations have been altered through processes of migration and globalisation, as well as by the advent of new media technologies and the wide-reaching circulation of categories such as gay, lesbian, and transgender. In this context, this module aims to situate categories of gender and sexual difference within specific cultural and political contexts, and investigate non-normative gender and sexual formations in relation to emerging discourses on race and class and to anti-colonial theories of modernity and global capitalism. At the centre of the module sit questions such as: How have queer subjects been incorporated into nationalist projects and consumer culture? How has the liberal framework of human rights reshaped the struggles of queer movements outside the West? In what ways have transnational discourses on multiculturalism reshaped notions of queer community and belonging in global cities and in postcolonial metropolitan spaces? What role have media technologies and various forms of visual culture played in the reconstitution of gender and sexual identities and of representations of queer desire, affect, and kinship? Addressing these questions from an interdisciplinary perspective, and drawing on case studies from different geographical regions and from different disciplinary fields, the overall aim of the module is to explore the varied ways local histories and geographies interact with the forces of political, economic, and cultural globalisation, focusing especially on the experiences of sexual minorities in the Global South and of queer diasporas in the Global North.

DRAMA AND LITERATURE: THE QUESTION OF GENRE

Code LDCL6017B

Credits 30

You will explore the relationship between the study of literature and the study of dramatic performance both creatively and theoretically. Its practical aspect consists of an adaptation for the stage of a literary text, which you will freely chose and test by workshop performance, and its theoretical aspect consists of attempts to define the narrative modes of the epic, the lyric and the dramatic, with the dramatic further dividing into tragedy and comedy. These two aspects of the course converge in considerations of how you have drawn on these narrative modes in your own adaptations, and how great writers throughout the centuries have created works which stand on thresholds between them e.g. theatrical novelists or lyrical dramatists. One question which underlies all critical engagement with the subject of genre is whether generic awareness should be understood as an historical encumbrance which stands in the way of representing or expressing personal experience, or whether it is a necessary and enabling resource for increasing the receivers’ pleasure or extending their philosophical horizons. Critics have stood on either side of the debate.

WRITING LIFE: BIOGRAPHY AND CREATIVE NON-FICTION

Code LDCL6026B

Credits 30

‘Truth is stranger than fiction’ and it’s often more moving, powerful, inspiring and funnier too. You’ll have plenty of opportunity to discover some extraordinary ‘true’ stories on this module as well as the possibility to write one of your own. You’ll think about the ever-shifting boundaries between ‘truth’ and ‘fiction’ as well as the ethical questions that arise when you’re writing about real people and situations. This is a module that enables you to do something very different in your final semester at UEA. During this module you’ll consider if and how non-fiction writing differs from fictional literature. You’ll learn about research, how to read and interrogate personal documents and the challenges presented by memory and anecdote. How do you assemble facts so that the resulting story is as compelling as fiction? What clothes can the non-fiction writer steal from the novelist’s wardrobe? Throughout the module you’ll read different types of non-fiction and think about how individual authors weave their research material into narrative form. You will have the opportunity to write your own piece of non-fiction for your summative assessment if you wish. This is a 5,000 word creative or critical piece which everyone will workshop during the semester. There will also be tutorials in which you can discuss your summative work. By the end of the module you’ll have gained an understanding of the craft of non-fiction and you’ll have developed your ability to ask pertinent questions of any non-fiction you read, be it a newspaper story or a highly researched account of a life or situation. You’ll have honed your research abilities and perhaps your interview skills too if you decide to write something that involves interviews. You’ll also have thought about the ethical implications that may arise when writing about ‘real life’ - all qualities that are highly valued by employers.

QUEER LITERATURE AND THEORY

Code LDCL6033B

Credits 30

This module offers you the chance to learn about LGBTQ literature and its development in English-speaking countries, as well as approaches to queer theory, and the relationship of both literature and theory to culture and current events. This means analysing sexuality and gender and the representation of such identities in literature and society, and discussing topics such as intersectionality, the body, and heteronormativity. Authors studied may include James Baldwin, Alison Bechdel, Gore Vidal, and Sarah Waters, as well as children’s books and young adult novels by Nancy Garden, Ellen Wittlinger, and Marcus Ewert. Authors of theoretical texts looked at may include Nikki Sullivan, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Luce Irigaray, 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, so you will also discuss current events and their links to literature and theory. You will look at a variety of genres in order to see how these different text types work, how they queer genre, and how they approach similar themes in different ways.

CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

Code LDCL6038A

Credits 30

This module offers you the chance to learn about children’s literature and its development. It starts with the history of children’s literature, looking at its use as a pedagogical tool, moving through Aesop’s fables, fairy tales, Victorian and Edwardian literature, and examining authors that might include A.A Milne, Dr. Seuss, Sherman Alexie, and Melvin Burgess, amongst others. The course looks at issues of genre and content as well as at historical context. Theoretical readings on children’s literature are also closely engaged with. By studying the development of children’s literature, this module also analyses the development of the concept of childhood in Western society. This module is creative and critical and students have a chance to write for children in it.

NERVOUS NARRATIVES

Code LDCL6046A

Credits 30

‘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 - the discursive formation - 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, neurasthenia, 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 Siri Hustvedt’s analytical memoir, The Shaking Woman, Or, A History of My Nerves (2010). The module equips you to work within an interdisciplinary frame and across historical periods from the late 17th century to the present.

SHAKESPEARE: SHADOW AND SUBSTANCE (pre-1789)

Code LDCL6056B

Credits 30

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. We will consider Plato as a poetic philosopher and Shakespeare as a philosophical poet by asking what difference the ‘dramatic’ form of Plato's Socratic dialogues makes to their 'ideas', and, conversely, how in Shakespeare's plays, particularising plots unfold into generalising arguments. In both cases, the concern is with how dramatic form with its special mixture of what is seen, what is said, what is known and what is enacted, can clarify perennial philosophical questions. We'll also touch on several possible mediators between Plato and Shakespeare, including Castiglione, Erasmus and Sir Philip Sidney.

THE ART OF EMOTION: LITERATURE, WRITING AND FEELING

Code LDCL6118B

Credits 30

According to Roland Barthes, emotion is 'a disturbance, a bordering on collapse: something perverse, under respectable appearances; emotion is even, perhaps, the slyest of losses'. This module takes this 'perversity, under respectable appearance' as the starting point for asking how an attention to our emotions - our feeling, affects, and intimacies, as well as our aversions - can make us rethink what it means to be critical and creative readers and writers. Drawing on a range of theoretical and critical work from literary studies, cultural theory, art, philosophy, sociology, neuroscience, psychology, creativity and creative writing studies, cognitive science, history and anthropology, we will ask what it means to read, and write, 'with feeling'. What is the relationship between language and feeling? Between the body and emotion? How does literature touch and move us? Are our 'aesthetic' emotions real? How does technology - the digital, virtual, prosthetic and online - affect our ideas about emotion? Are emotions universal and timeless, or historically and culturally specific? Private and personal, or collective and public? How do emotions construct gender, class, race, nationality, and other kinds of identity? Why do some feelings attract more critical interest than others? How does an attention to emotion affect our work as readers and writers? We will begin by building a theoretical and critical literacy for thinking feeling, before focusing our inquiry around specific themes that might include: Animal Passions; Psyche, Pathology and Resistances to Psychoanalysis; Feeling Texts: Touch, Texture and Fictional Fabrications; Moving Fictions: Cinema, Virtuality, and E-motion; Zombies: Can Dead Subjects Feel?; Affective Economies; Queering Feeling; and Feeling Human: Robots, Artificial Intelligence and Clones. We will engage with a range of literary texts and other aesthetic forms (such as art, film, etc.) chosen to correspond with our critical concerns. Please note that this is an indicative description only, and the weekly themes and reading are revised each year to stay up to date with current work in the field. You will have the opportunity to engage both as critical and creative readers and writers, and there will be critical and creative assessment options. This module is open to all students. It will complement level 3 options such as 'Literature and Deconstruction', 'Nervous Narratives', 'Traumaturgies', ' Literature and Human Rights' and 'Queer Literature and Theory'.

FEMINIST WRITING

Code LDCL6132B

Credits 30

We are witnessing an upsurge in feminist activism which some claim is forming the fourth wave of feminism. It is timely then to reconsider how feminist writing (literary texts, literary theory, and literary criticism) has helped to shape, influence, and articulate debates about gender, sexuality, and society in the past and how contemporary feminist writing is continuing to be part of that conversation now. You'll have the opportunity to read and analyse some of the most influential feminist literary texts and literary theory. Writers studied on the course may include Margaret Atwood, Henrik Ibsen, Angela Carter, Jean Rhys, Jeanette Winterson, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Ali Smith, Beyoncé, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. You'll study the ways in which feminist criticism and theory (including Kristeva, Cixous, bell hooks, Haraway, and Butler) has reshaped the canon, challenged the ways literature is taught as well as making us consider what literature can, might and ought to be. Feminism has also exacted different forms of writing and challenged dominant modes of representation. We will take a particularly close look at the relationship between feminism and the gothic, the short story, and experimental writing. Assessment will be by course work and project and you'll be assessed in both critical and creative modes. Students of all genders are equally welcome.

AFTER NATURE: LITERATURE AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS

Code LDCL6164B

Credits 30

Where do debates in environmentalism, cultural geography and literary criticism meet? What does contemporary literature have to tell us about our relationship with space, place, landscape, nature, rurality, ecology, and even a ‘sense of planet’? On this module you will encounter a range of post-war and contemporary forms, from poetry, short stories, the novel, and literary non-fiction to visual art, the radio essay and film. Each will offer fresh and surprising ways of thinking about a range of different contemporary environments and about our place in a changing world. We will consider in what ways literary genres and traditions have helped to create and produce our understanding of geography in the past and how recent literary works have reworked some of these genres and traditions to mark contemporary changes. We will consider, for example, how authors since the environmental crisis have engaged with/inherited/reworked early modern chorography, the Romantic travelogue, the naturalist’s journal, and the rural essay. To what new ends are these forms put in an uncertain and unstable modern world? Among others, the course will explore work by Alice Oswald, Rana Dasgupta, Tim Robinson, Kathleen Jamie, Patrick Keiller, J.G. Ballard, and Robert Macfarlane. It will also include trips to investigate the nature writing holdings at UEA’s British Archive for Contemporary Writing. Assessment will give you the opportunity to, initially, create your own critical or creative radio essay/podcast (formative) and, later, develop a deeper knowledge of one of the week’s themes, building your own critical (or creative non-fiction) project around it (5,000 word summative). While there are no pre-requisites, this module complements and develops themes explored on level 5 ‘Writing the Wild’ and level 6 ‘Urban Visions: The City in Literature and Visual Culture’.

THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE: TRANSLATING LOVE, DEATH AND ADVENTURE (pre-1789)

Code LDCL6188A

Credits 30

For something to be reborn it must first die. The Italian Renaissance ('rebirth') sought to disinter the past in order to reanimate the present, but in order to do so the present had to come to terms with its loss – as Petrarch asked, 'who can doubt that Rome would rise again instantly if she began to know herself?'. How can we best understand this process of loss and reanimation? How did Renaissance writers understand it, and how did they bridge the gulf between death and rebirth? And can we do the same? In order to answer these questions, you’ll examine the twin practices of imitation and translation in English responses to some of the most exciting and influential texts of the Italian Renaissance. It does so in two ways: through a sustained analysis of those practices in their diverse forms and genres (sonnets, epic, dialogue, drama), and by imitating the process of creative imitation ourselves. In other words, we step into the shoes of the Renaissance imitator. The module allows us to understand how Italian poets such as Dante, Petrarch and Ariosto responded to the classical past (and each other), and how English poets and playwrights such as Wyatt, Spenser, Shakespeare and Jonson responded to Italian models. By imitating the imitators – for example by writing sonnets – we gain a deeper understanding of how imitation is both a creative practice and a critical process, both a reading and a rewriting. Students are not expected or required to know any Italian in advance.

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Life at UEA

Important Information

Entry Requirements

A Levels

BBB or ABC including an English Literature related subject or BBC including an English Literature related subject with an A in the Extended Project.

BTEC

DDM alongside grade B in an English Literature related A-level (or equivalent qualification). Excludes BTEC Public Services, BTEC Uniformed Services and BTEC Business Administration.

Scottish highers

AABBB including an English Literature related subject.

Scottish highers advanced

CCC including an English Literature related subject.

Irish leaving certificate

2 subjects at H2, 4 subjects at H3 including an English Literature related subject.

Access course

Pass the Access to HE Diploma with Merit in 45 credits at Level 3 including an English Literature module. Humanities or Social Sciences pathway preferred.

European Baccalaureate

70%

International Baccalaureate

31 points including HL5 English

GCSE offer

GCSE Offer

You are required to have Mathematics and English Language at a minimum of Grade C or Grade 4 or above at GCSE.

Additional entry requirements

If you do not meet the academic requirements for direct entry, you may be interested in one of our Foundation Year programmes.

Alternative Qualifications

UEA recognises that some students take a mixture of International Baccalaureate IB or International Baccalaureate Career-related Programme IBCP study rather than the full diploma, taking Higher levels in addition to A levels and/or BTEC qualifications. At UEA we do consider a combination of qualifications for entry, provided a minimum of three qualifications are taken at a higher Level. In addition some degree programmes require specific subjects at a higher level.

Students for whom english is a foreign language

Applications from students whose first language is not English are welcome. We require evidence of proficiency in English (including writing, speaking, listening and reading):

IELTS: 6.5 overall (minimum 5.5 in any component)

We also accept a number of other English language tests. Please click here to see our full list.

If you do not yet meet the English language requirements for this course, INTO UEA offer a variety of English language programmes which are designed to help you develop the English skills necessary for successful undergraduate study:

Pre-sessional English at INTO UEA

English for University Study at INTO UEA

Interviews

Most applicants will not be called for an interview and a decision will be made via UCAS Track. However, for some applicants an interview will be requested. Where an interview is required the Admissions Service will contact you directly to arrange a time.

Gap year

We welcome applications from students who have already taken or intend to take a gap year. We believe that a year between school and university can be of substantial benefit. You are advised to indicate your reason for wishing to defer entry on your UCAS application.

Intakes

This course is open to UK, EU and International applicants. The annual intake for this course is in September each year.

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Course Reference Number: 666577

Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication Studies

BA CULTURE LITERATURE AND POLITICS

Key details

Year of Entry:

Attendance

Full Time

Award

Degree of Bachelor of Arts

UCAS course code

LQ23

Entry Requirements

BBB

Duration (years)

Important Information

Throughout history and into today’s world, literature has been censored, employed as government propaganda, and used for political protest. The same is true for culture more broadly – think of the way music, film, television and digital media have also been used to support campaigns or to exercise power. The links between culture, literature and politics do not end with these examples. Literature often reflects and incorporates world events; it comments on the way we live. In turn, cultural policy and other aspects of government activity create the conditions in which literature is written, published and read. This distinctive course allows you to bring together the different worlds of culture, literature and politics, and to study them separately and together. It enables you to learn about politics and about literature, but also to explore the connections between the two.

Apply

Eastminster: a global politics and policy blog from UEA

Expert analysis from the University of East Anglia.

LEARN MORE >

Counter-Terrorism

The Art of Persuasion

Why are political speeches so often boring, predictable and unconvincing?

UEA Award

Develop your skills, build a strong CV and focus your extra-curricular activities while studying with our employer-valued UEA award.

LEARN MORE >

ASK A STUDENT

This is your chance to ask UEA's students about UEA, university life, Norwich and anything else you would like an answer to.

JUST ASK >

BA CULTURE LITERATURE AND POLITICS