BA (Hons) ENGLISH LITERATURE

In this module theories of literature and experiments in writing will intersect. In weekly lectures and seminar discussions, and through the reading of a carefully curated dossier of essays, you’ll explore important questions about writing and literature. What is the difference between writing and speaking? What is a literary text and how does it differ from non-literary texts? What is the relationship between the act of reading and the act of writing? How is a literary text influenced by other texts? You’ll also become confident in carrying out your own textual experiments and trying out a range of creative rewriting exercises on existing texts. In this you might explore modes of adaptation and translation, try out different ways of writing to constraint, play literary-generative games such as cut-up technique, as well as undertake a variety of textual interventions and experiments. You’ll be encouraged to hack existing literary texts and rewrite them to your own purpose. You’ll take texts apart and put them back together differently. Through specially-designed writing exercises you will gain new insights into a variety of approaches to writing and literature. Your encounters with literary-theoretical texts will likewise cast new light on the writing process and the ways in which the text produced relates to textual theories. By the end of the module you’ll have gained a keen understanding of how texts work. This will make you a better reader and writer. You’ll also become confident in stepping back and thinking about your own writing critically.

On this module you will learn the central currents of American Literature, from after the American Civil War, through the turn of the century and into modernism and the early 20th century, finishing at the close of World War II. You will follow the – often fiercely contested – development of a national literature, tracing the way this multitude of voices differs from place to place, from decade to decade, and from writer to writer. Writers studied on this module in past years have included: Henry James, Mark Twain, Nella Larsen, Langston Hughes, Kate Chopin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, T.S. Eliot and William Faulkner. You will be introduced to these vibrant voices through reading and discussing short stories, novels, poetry, non-fiction and critical work. You will attend lectures, and take part in follow-up discussion-based seminars. Each week you will consider the context of the texts you read, as well as working to analyse and explain how they work on the reader and in society at large. You will encounter debates about the meaning of freedom in life and in art, what it might mean to be modern (or to refuse that modernity), about the responsibilities of citizenship to other people and to the environment, and about what it might mean to write and be read in the modern United States of America. By the end of this module you will be familiar with a wide range of late 19th century and early 20th century American texts and writers. You will learn the major movements in American literature from the fin de siècle through to the Second World War, and will be able to talk about the issues surrounding the development of a national and literary culture. Through doing this, you will improve your ability to read and analyse literary texts, to describe how language works in history and on the reader, and to identify and present new and exciting patterns in what you read.

You will examine the history of early modern Europe through the history of witchcraft, witch-beliefs, and especially witchcraft prosecutions after 1500. Through learned demonology and folk traditions, you will explore the development of the idea of the witch, and see how during the turbulent era of the Reformation this thinking translated into legal trials and, occasionally some savage witch-panics. You will look in detail at subjects such as gender, fear and anxiety, state building, and scepticism, ranging across early modern Britain, continental Europe and colonial America.

Bonjour, comment ça va? Do you want to understand what this means and how to say it? This module will help you to master basics of French language and communication. This module is perfect for you if you have never studied French before (or have very little experience of it). Throughout the semester, you’ll develop reading, listening, speaking and writing skills at the A1 level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). This means that you will learn to communicate about yourself and your immediate environment in a set of concrete, everyday situations. You’ll be taught in a very interactive and friendly environment, and will often work in pairs or small groups. Your two-hour seminar will focus on listening, reading and writing skills, while the oral hour will help you to develop your confidence in speaking. We’ll tackle some grammatical notions in class, but always as a means for you to improve your communication skills. You’ll also have opportunities to explore aspects of the cultures where French is spoken, thanks to the various documents we will use to develop your linguistic skills (songs, podcasts, leaflets…). You’ll be assessed by two course tests: the first will cover listening, reading, and writing skills and the second will cover your speaking skills. On successful completion of this module, you’ll be able to understand and use familiar everyday expressions aimed at both the satisfaction of concrete needs, or those used to describe areas of most immediate relevance. You’ll be able to introduce yourself and others, ask and answer questions about personal details, and interact in a simple way provided the other person talks slowly and clearly.

Do you want to learn a new language? Do you want to access the Spanish-speaking world? Are you about to travel through Spain or any Spanish-speaking country in Latin America? Then, it´s the right time to enrol to Beginners´ Spanish I. This module will improve your academic education and will provide you with the confidence to advance towards intermediate and advanced levels. It sounds good, doesn't it? You will develop your reading, writing, listening and speaking skills and you will have the opportunity to receive personal feedback on all your efforts. You will take part in classroom-based activities, working in pairs and/or small groups supporting each other in the process of learning the Spanish and engaging with a range of tasks. You will also be able to focus on real life situations as well as the ability to communicate effectively in those situations. There will also be opportunities to explore aspects of the cultures where Spanish is currently the main language. By the end of this module, you will have the linguistic competence necessary to understand and use common everyday language and simple sentences, to communicate both in writing and verbally. If you have a recent Spanish GCSE grade C or below, or an international equivalent, then this module is appropriate for you.

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 a 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, 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.

Do you want to explore Japanese culture or travel to Japan? Would you like to enhance your career opportunities? This is a beginners' course in Japanese assuming little or no prior experience or knowledge of the language. In this module, you'll learn reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills. You'll gain the linguistic understanding of a number of real life situations, as well as the ability to communicate effectively in those situations. There will also be opportunities to explore aspects of the cultures where Japanese is spoken. Particular emphasis will be placed on your acquisition of a sound knowledge of grammar. Please note that if you are found to have a level of knowledge in a language that exceeds the level for which you have enrolled, you may be asked to withdraw from the module at the tutor's discretion. This is a subsidiary language module, and very occasionally, may need to be cancelled if there are low levels of enrolment.

This is a most lively, accessible and carefully-paced Arabic course, aimed at beginners with little or no previous knowledge of the language, who want to understand, speak and read Arabic confidently. The course is based on the best selling book series Mastering Arabic 1 series: - teaches Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), the universal language of the Arab world - covers a functional variety of situations you will encounter in the Arab world - offers a gradual introduction to the language, script and structures through the development of essential speaking, listening, reading and writing skills - some aspects of the Arab world and culture(s) are covered.

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.

Trump’s Tweets, Macron on TikTok, government sponsored troll farms 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.

The module will offer an introduction to the developments in Western thought that shaped the emergence of modernity in the 17th century. The background will be the scientific revolution, begun with the new astronomy of Kepler and Galileo, culminating in the lawful model of the universe offered by Newton. In response to these developments, philosophy itself underwent a revolution in all its fields, from metaphysics, in the shape of materialism, to political philosophy, especially in the development of the concept of free speech and freedom of thought. Each week we will look at a different thinker, including Descartes, Hobbes, Cavendish, Spinoza, and Leibniz. We shall also look at some the developments in poetry throughout the century, including Milton, Donne, and Vaughan.

Most works of art – whether objects, buildings, or performances – are designed to serve a set of purposes. How their forms and functions relate may be straightforward and practical, or complex and elusive. Through a range of case studies, presented in lectures by our staff in Art History and World Art Studies, you will examine the connections between the uses, meanings, and appearances of art, culture, space, and landscape. You will also consider how these connections may change over time, especially in the context of cross-cultural contact. The opportunity to analyze texts on your own and in discussion groups will help you understand different points of view and construct an argument supported by evidence.

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 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.

This is a module 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.

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 of Europe.

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 travel, exploration and the beginning of the later nineteenth-century British empire. 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. 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 will 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 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.

In this module you will explore how words open out onto worlds in eighteenth-century literature. We begin by reading Samuel Johnson's Preface from his monumental Dictionary of the English Language in relation to a selection from David Dabydeen's novel Johnson's Dictionary. In the opening week, we'll see how paying close attention to language can help us think about the enrtwinement of eighteenth-century literature with exploration, empire, and enslavement. The first half of the module focuses on texts about people, real or imagined, who travel across geographical and cultural boundaries. The writers in the first half will include authors such as Jonathan Swift, who wrote the fictional travelogue Gulliver's Travels, Oliver Goldsmith, who impersonated a Chinese visitor to London in his series of essays The Citizen of the World, and Samson Occom, the first Native American writer to publish an autobiography. While the first half of the module focuses on the wider world, the second half of the module focuses on the inner world of the mind. We will read texts like the Gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe's A Siclian Romance alongside the poetry of Anne Finch, Alexander Pope, and Phillis Wheatley, the first African American writer to publish a volume of poetry. In this part of the module, we will see how writers investigate the workings of the mind using the resources of literary form and trace the connections between the mind and the wide world. We conclude with the writings of the Black British writer Ignatius Sancho, whose letters are full of observations on eighteenth-century literature, and who will help us reflect on how we might read the literature of the eighteenth century today. By taking this module, you’ll be reading a range of exciting texts that will expand your sense of what literature can do. You’ll also gain sharpened analytical and research skills that will help you see significant textual patterns in texts and trace connections between literary texts and the larger world in which they move. You'll also read texts that will help you understand the history of women's writing and you'll be introduced to the beginnings of Native American and Black writing in English. The module fulfils the pre-1789 requirement.

In this module, you’ll discover a huge variety of writing from one of Britain's most exciting and turbulent periods of cultural, political and intellectual transformation: the seventeenth century. We begin by exploring how English literature was formed out of its encounters with classical texts and how women established a place for their writing within English literary culture for the first time. In the centre of the module, we discover how seventeenth-century people wrote about their encounters with other cultures, whether as travellers to the Ottoman Empire (which stretched across the Middle East), or as colonists meeting Native Americans in Massachusetts. In the module's latter section, we ask how literature was transformed by the tumultuous upheavals of the English civil war and the execution of the monarch, events which have sent shockwaves through the centuries which still resonate today. The modules’ themes come together in the study of Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko, one of the first novels and a pioneering work of women’s writing, which tells the terrible story of an African prince who was enslaved in Surinam. Authors we study include famous figures such as Ben Jonson 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, or the astonishing Turkish travel writer, Evliya Çelebi. 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.

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.

To read medieval writing is to encounter otherness, to engage with a culture (really a variety of cultures) that at times seems familiar, recognizable, yet which repeatedly reminds us of its difference and distance from us. When a huge and intimidating green knight enters King Arthur’s court at Camelot and issues his challenge, he is disturbing not because he is entirely alien, but because he is alike enough to unsettle the court’s sense of identity. The fourteenth-century poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, one of the most complex and challenging works of literature ever written, might serve as a metaphor for our experience of medieval writing, and of the language in which it is written: Middle English. It is strangely familiar. Yet through the experience of otherness we find our multiple identities, and in studying Medieval Writing you will (re)discover the genres and modes that have shaped our literary histories: lyric, comedy, tragedy, romance, allegory, satire, historiography, autobiography and fantasy, to name but a few. The module is configured along the themes of ‘pilgrimage, travellers and exiles’, which allows us to understand the diverse forms of interaction — real and imagined — between European and non-European cultures: military, religious, and mercantile exchanges, for example. You will discover a culture of dazzling intellectual richness and variety that will dispel any lazily pejorative modern clichés about the term ‘medieval’. And you will be given the tools to make those discoveries – in addition to learning how to read Middle English, you will learn about the materiality of medieval texts (e.g. how to understand manuscripts), and of the historical coordinates of those texts: the Black Death, the Peasants’ Revolt, religious persecution, the feudal system and its decline. Whether it’s the cosmopolitan intellectual brilliance of Chaucer, the fantastic realities of Arthurian romance, the autobiography of Margery Kempe, the travel writing of Sir John Mandeville, or the ethical dilemmas posed by the Gawain-poet, Medieval Writing has something for you.

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, public controversy).

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, Zadie Smith, Deborah Levy and Kamila Shamsie. 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.

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.

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.

A semester spent at a university abroad with the approval of the School. Students interested in European universities should see the Erasmus exchange modules. In all instances you must consult with Study Abroad Office.

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 Careers 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.

Have you ever wondered what it means to write creatively? Or how you might articulate what Zadie Smith calls ‘your way of being in the world’? Together we’ll address these questions. You’ll explore the work of some of the finest writers in the world, while also receiving clear guidance on how you might bring shape to the promptings of your imagination. This module will get you writing prose fiction and/or poetry. While there is no single, authorised way to write, there are things worth knowing about. You’ll discover some of these things in class; others you’ll pick up through being alert to what you have read and the way in which it functions. The most important thing, however, is to discover your own way of doing things. What drives you to capture a certain moment, or tell a certain story in a certain way? That’s what we'll be aiming for. Along the way you’ll develop an understanding of the craft of writing – the technical nuts & bolts – while acquiring the disciplines necessary to being a writer - observation, drafting, and submitting to deadlines. You'll be guided through a series of themes and concepts that go to the heart of creative writing, from voice and structure, to imagery and form. You'll generate material throughout the course, both through guided exercises and private study. Very often you'll be asked to write about ‘what you know’, drawing on notebooks, memory, family stories, your sensory impressions. In prose you will go on to look at such things as character, dialogue, point-of-view, ‘showing’ versus ‘telling’, plotting, etc. In poetry, there will be an exploration of the possibilities of pattern and form, sound, voice, imagery, and rhythm. By the end of the course you’ll have developed a body of work to call your own and a sense of what it means and what it takes to write seriously.

Have you ever wondered what it means to write creatively? Or how you might articulate what Zadie Smith calls ‘your way of being in the world’? Together we’ll address these questions. You’ll explore the work of some of the finest writers in the world, while also receiving clear guidance on how you might bring shape to the promptings of your imagination. This module will get you writing prose fiction and/or poetry. While there is no single, authorised way to write, there are things worth knowing about. You’ll discover some of these things in class; others you’ll pick up through being alert to what you have read and the way in which it functions. The most important thing, however, is to discover your own way of doing things. What drives you to capture a certain moment, or tell a certain story in a certain way? That’s what we'll be aiming for. Along the way you’ll develop an understanding of the craft of writing – the technical nuts & bolts – while acquiring the disciplines necessary to being a writer - observation, drafting, and submitting to deadlines. You'll be guided through a series of themes and concepts that go to the heart of creative writing, from voice and structure, to imagery and form. You'll generate material throughout the course, both through guided exercises and private study. Very often you'll be asked to write about ‘what you know’, drawing on notebooks, memory, family stories, your sensory impressions. In prose you will go on to look at such things as character, dialogue, point-of-view, ‘showing’ versus ‘telling’, plotting, etc. In poetry, there will be an exploration of the possibilities of pattern and form, sound, voice, imagery, and rhythm. By the end of the course you’ll have developed a body of work to call your own and a sense of what it means and what it takes to write seriously.

What kinds of writing skills produce great journalism? This question is essential to creating powerful journalism and it’s a central concern of this module. The Writing of Journalism enables you to develop a critical awareness of the skills and structures involved in creating effective journalism. You’ll consider a range of journalistic forms and find out how best to nurture and develop your own writing. You'll have the opportunity to explore the ways in which journalistic writing works – its contexts, its demands, and its inventiveness. This will enable us to approach journalism as a discourse with its own conventions, practices, and ideologies. This module is concerned with journalism as a practice, and a genre. As such, it involves discussion, peer-workshops, and practical experience of reading and writing news and feature articles. In addition to writing your own journalism, you will examine journalistic writing and critical work concerning the craft, in order to probe and challenge your own ideas and assumptions about the practice and production of this writing form. Rather than see the practice of journalism and the critical study of journalism as distinct activities, this module aims to engage you as critical readers and writers whose work is informed by both contexts. In so doing, you’ll gain a greater understanding of the demands and conventions of journalistic writing, develop and sharpen your own work, and gain the discursive flexibility which will allow you to navigate the writing of journalism today.

How do we convey the experience of one language and culture in the words of another? What is at stake intellectually, artistically and politically in translation? This module will provide you with a descriptive vocabulary for the analysis of literary translation and an introduction to key theoretical explanations of what happens when we translate. You’ll study translations from a range of historical periods, genres and languages. In the past, we have worked on authors such as Marina Tsvetaeva, Pablo Neruda, Adonis, Clarice Lispector, Thomas Mann and Knut Hamsun. Theories have included the classic controversies of St. Jerome and Vladimir Nabokov as well as debates about cultural equivalence and political issues such as the representation of the foreign. The module is taught by seminar where we engage with translation in a variety of ways, for example comparing different translations of a single text, translating the Bible from multiple languages into English, rewriting existing translations and studying draft manuscript translations of a novel by Georges Perec. Assessment is by summative coursework for which you can either produce a comparative analysis of existing translations or an original translation with commentary. On successful completion of this module you’ll be able to describe the linguistic and stylistic features of a variety of texts as well as critically assess and apply different theories of translation. A thorough reading knowledge of another language besides English is advisable but not essential.

In this module we will study some of the most important poetry and prose of the English Renaissance, including masterpieces by Christopher Marlowe, Sir Philip Sidney, and Edmund Spenser, as well as Shakespeare's early narrative poetry (not covered on the Shakespeare module). We will be studying these writers in a unique way. Behind this great outpouring of Elizabethan writing lay a vibrant literary culture which valued rhetoric, argument, elaborate and often playful self-presentation, and which insisted that good reading helped you to develop an individual style as a writer. In response to your reading of Renaissance literature, you will put the tenets of this culture into practice, building up over the course of the module a collection of short pieces of writing in prose (or sometimes, if you wish, poetry). When reading Sidney's ground breaking 'Defence of Poetry', for instance, you might draw on his rhetorical and argumentative techniques to write your own defence of any modern art form of your choice. Or when looking at the way Thomas Nashe plays with the form of his printed books you might have the opportunity to experiment with innovative ways of presenting your own writing to its readers. Revised versions of these short pieces of writing, built up across the module, constitute your summative assessment. This module allows you to think critically in genres other than conventional academic essays, and in doing so aims to foster connections between critical and creative writing. You will have the chance to develop more confidence and self-awareness as a writer and critic through studying some of the greatest English literature.

Have you ever wondered how books are chosen for publication, or do you want to set up a literary magazine? This module address conceptual as well as practical aspects of the publishing of texts, including discussions around readership the meaning of editorship and what constitutes an editorial policy. You will be taught how to set up, run and market your own publication (such as a magazine, a book, a fanzine), to consider the principles of good design, and will learn the rudiments of finance, scheduling and copyright law. You'll begin with an introduction to the concepts behind cover and page design, and an opportunity to put your new knowledge into practice by designing and writing copy for a book jacket. You go on to present and develop an idea for a short publication and, via discussion, class exercises and private research, learn to write or select, then edit, material for it. You will engage with the processes involved in its hypothetical production and learn to identify and address its readership. You'll also benefit from taught sessions on Adobe Indesign software in our Media Suite to enable you to design your publication at a simple, basic level. As you study you'll gain experience in communicating your ideas to a class and in tutorial, as well as through word and image in your formative work and portfolio.

Using the reading and study of poetry from the post-war context up to the present day, you'll consider some of the concerns of poetry, including voice, form/structure and the 'poetry of witness'. You'll also look at contemporary visual art to consider correspondences between the arts. The poets studied will be drawn principally from an Anglo-American tradition and may include such writers as Frank O'Hara, Adrienne Rich, Yusef Komunyakaa, Carol Ann Duffy, Carolyn Forché, Patience Agbabi and Hannah Silva among others. Formative work includes creating a mini-anthology of contemporary poetry and there will be the chance to discuss poems you've written or read. You'll be able to write creatively and/or critically for assessment.

What is a short story? What do short story writers have to say? What about short story critics and theorists? Is the short story a narrative in miniature? Or is there more to a short story than simply being 'short'? And why are critics so concerned with whether the short story is alive or dead? These are the kind of questions this module will investigate by asking you to think as a short story reader, theorist, critic and writer. Reading will be drawn from short story writers - and writing about the short story - roughly spanning the 19th century to the present, and from a range of cultural contexts. Our interest will not be to establish a history of the short story, but instead to explore the range of thematic preoccupations, changing definitions, and critical debates surrounding the form, including its political and ideological perspectives. You will have the opportunity to respond to these questions in critical and/or creative forms of assessment. Writers studied might include Edgar Allan Poe, Katherine Mansfield, Julio Cortazar, Anton Chekov, Ali Smith and Ryunosuke Aqutagawa. This list is suggestive only.

What makes a good history essay? What makes a good literary critical essay? How are they different? How do the disciplines of History and English Literature approach argument and evidence, narration and description? What are the generic, formal and stylistic expectations that govern academic writing in each of these disciplines? Some version of these questions will have occurred to any student attempting to meet the assessment criteria in a university degree. They are perhaps particularly pressing for students studying both literature and history, where somewhat different approaches are required by each discipline. This module brings historians, literary critics and creative writers into a multi-disciplinary conversation designed to explore the tensions as well as the continuities between history and literary studies. By asking faculty members from the two schools to investigate similar territory from contrasting perspectives, you will explore how very similar subjects and sources can be treated differently by different disciplines (and by different methodological orientations within those disciplines). Historians, literary critics and creative writers will give guest lectures that describe and analyse their research process and writing practice. There will also be some more theoretically driven weeks where the work of key philosophers and theorists of history and literature will be read and discussed. You are encouraged to reflect on your own approach to the writing of history and literary criticism and will have the opportunity to learn reflexive writing. The summative assessment asks you to analyse a source text using the resources of both disciplines, and then to write a reflexive essay positioning your own approach in relation to other historians and critics studied on the module.

What do you identify with and what are you identified by? How are you embodied, how you inhabit space and communicate? Which groups and communities are you as an individual connected to, or perhaps assigned to by others? The ways in which we as individuals and groups are read in the world shape our experiences. These experiences in turn, shape our ways of knowing and understanding ourselves, our world, and each other. This module will encourage students to think in fresh ways about themselves, their university work and the world around them, through critical reading and experimental writing. It will give students tools, skills and ideas which they may apply to their studies and further research more broadly. This module replaces the modules I Am and He Said, She Said: Gender and Perspective in Contemporary Fiction

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.

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.

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.

What was the feminist theatre movement and what does it mean for you now as a writer, theatre maker and/or scholar? Feminist Theatre allows you to explore key feminist theatre makers from the Suffrage movement to the present, focusing on radical companies and writers of the 1970s and 1980s. Combining seminars and practical workshops, you will investigate what feminist historiography is and how you can engage creatively with archives. The module invites you to draw on a lineage of feminist ideas and methods to consider and challenge the continued under representation of women in theatre (and beyond). Assessment will be part analytical and part creative or creative-critical work, with an option to create a performance. All welcome! No need to identify as a woman or feminist to take part.

The module will explore the relationship between words and images in contemporary literature. It will cover what is meant by reading images, examine the varying but related stories that words and pictures tell, and analyse the narrative techniques employed in illustrated texts. As well as developing a critical vocabulary with which to discuss how these two media can be combined, the module will survey shifts in the generic conventions of such literature over the last few decades so that students will develop an awareness of the various narrative techniques utilised by the medium. Rather than assuming comics, graphic novels, and picture books are simplistic, debased or ‘low-brow’, the module aims to address the medium as a site of exciting and innovative literary and artistic experimentation. Students will also have the chance to carry out their own creative work in the genre.

This module will offer 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.

En avant ! Do you want to become more proficient in French? Do you want to develop independent language-learning skills? This module will allow you to push the boundaries of your French further and develop listening, reading, speaking, and writing skills at A2+/B1 level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). In this module you’ll learn to express and justify opinions, debate, negotiate and be able to solve problems in unexpected situations in French. You’ll be taught in a very interactive and friendly environment and will often work in pairs or small groups. Your two-hour seminar will focus on listening, reading, and writing skills, while the oral hour will help you develop your confidence in speaking. We’ll tackle grammatical concepts in class, as a means for you to improve your communication skills. You’ll also have opportunities to explore aspects of Francophone culture, thanks to the variety of material we use (songs, podcasts, leaflets…) to develop your linguistic skills. During the semester, you’ll explore topics such as the press, cinema, leisure, and tourism.

Would you like to take your German to a higher level and start to become a more independent user? Wouldn’t it be tempting to take part in a job interview or pitch a start-up idea in German? How about describing your favourite student recipe? Maybe you simply love discussing your views in person and on digital platforms. This follow-on course is perfect if you have completed the Intermediate module or have basic A-level experience in German but not if you are already working at a higher level than this. You will become more independent in conversation with others as you continue to explore essential grammar and vocabulary at a higher level. You will learn how to talk about experiences, hopes and ambitions in a more complex way and how to master the skill of persuasion. During this module you will develop a deeper understanding of the German way of thinking through looking at current affairs and some iconic German language films and series. In a relaxed environment you will participate in interactive, collaborative activities, working in groups to try out and be creative with new words and grammar structures. The fun of language learning will never be far away and promises to give you the confidence to hold your own in discussions and presentations. As well as speaking and listening to each other you will apply strategies to help you produce and understand longer texts. A sound intermediate course in German will enable you to add a vital and highly valued 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. The module is not suitable for students already working at B2 or a higher level of German. Pre-requisite is a language level assessment test with the tutor.

Do you want to be able to communicate effectively with 538 million people worldwide and develop your intercultural awareness? Are you looking for a vital skill to add to your CV and becoming more employable? Wouldn’t it be nice to do so in a friendly and amusing environment? Take your Spanish skills to a higher level! Whatever your specialism or area of interest, this follow-on module is perfect for you, if you have already successfully completed the Intermediate level or have GCSE/pre-A level experience (or equivalent) of Spanish and wish to develop this to a standard comparable to A level/ Baccalaureat / B1 in the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). You will become more independent in conversation with others as you continue to explore essential grammar and vocabulary at a higher level. In a relaxed environment you will participate in interactive, collaborative activities, working in groups to try out and be creative with new words and grammar structures. Through Spanish, you’ll learn to present information and engage in discussions. Using popular cultural forms such as film and media, you’ll develop your reading, writing, listening and speaking skills. Upon successful completion of this module, you will have achieved an upper-intermediate level of Spanish. Not enrolled yet?

This module will explore the diversity and histories of literatures emerging from transatlantic crossings and exchange. Taught through a lecture circus format, it will draw on the research expertise of colleagues in both AMA and LDC, in order to demonstrate the breadth of the Transatlantic as both a geography and an imaginary. Materials will include literary responses to the Middle Passage of the Atlantic slave trade, writing from the Caribbean, the work of writers whose careers took them from America to Paris—or from London to New York—and transatlantic literary networks. Each lecture will be given by a different academic, based on their own areas of research, and include Q&A's on how they conceive of the Transatlantic as a critical concept and constellation, and as a crucial site for understanding decolonisation.

What makes a good history essay? What makes a good literary critical essay? How are they different? How do the disciplines of History and English Literature approach argument and evidence, narration and description? What are the generic, formal and stylistic expectations that govern academic writing in each of these disciplines? Some version of these questions will have occurred to any student attempting to meet the assessment criteria in a university degree. They are perhaps particularly pressing for students studying both literature and history, where somewhat different approaches are required by each discipline. This module brings historians, literary critics and creative writers into a multi-disciplinary conversation designed to explore the tensions as well as the continuities between history and literary studies. By asking faculty members from the two schools to investigate similar territory from contrasting perspectives, you will explore how very similar subjects and sources can be treated differently by different disciplines (and by different methodological orientations within those disciplines). Historians, literary critics and creative writers will give guest lectures that describe and analyse their research process and writing practice. There will also be some more theoretically driven weeks where the work of key philosophers and theorists of history and literature will be read and discussed. You are encouraged to reflect on your own approach to the writing of history and literary criticism and will have the opportunity to learn reflexive writing. The summative assessment asks you to analyse a source text using the resources of both disciplines, and then to write a reflexive essay positioning your own approach in relation to other historians and critics studied on the module.

In the Literature Dissertation, you get to conduct independent research on a literary topic of your choosing, with supervision from an academic with relevant expertise. In addition to guidance from your supervisor, you will have group workshops helping you to define and delimit your topic, to plan your research and writing, to structure your argument, and to contextualise your work within broader critical debates. By the end of the semester you will have completed an extended essay of 8000 words. The topic of your dissertation is largely up to you, though does depend on the availability of a supervisor who can work with you on it. You do not need to have a specific topic already decided before enrolling on the dissertation: you can develop the topic in conversation with your supervisor. All you need in the first instance is a preferred subject area for the dissertation, so that supervisory arrangements can be put in place.

In the Literature Dissertation, you get to conduct independent research on a literary topic of your choosing, with supervision from an academic with relevant expertise. In addition to guidance from your supervisor, you will have group workshops helping you to define and delimit your topic, to plan your research and writing, to structure your argument, and to contextualise your work within broader critical debates. By the end of the semester you will have completed an extended essay of 8000 words (6000 words for 20 credit). The topic of your dissertation is largely up to you, though does depend on the availability of a supervisor who can work with you on it. You do not need to have a specific topic already decided before enrolling on the dissertation: you can develop the topic in conversation with your supervisor. All you need in the first instance is a preferred subject area for the dissertation, so that supervisory arrangements can be put in place.

In the Literature Dissertation, you get to conduct independent research on a literary topic of your choosing, with supervision from an academic with relevant expertise. In addition to guidance from your supervisor, you will have group workshops helping you to define and delimit your topic, to plan your research and writing, to structure your argument, and to contextualise your work within broader critical debates. By the end of the semester you will have completed an extended essay of 8000 words (6000 words for 20 credit). The topic of your dissertation is largely up to you, though does depend on the availability of a supervisor who can work with you on it. You do not need to have a specific topic already decided before enrolling on the dissertation: you can develop the topic in conversation with your supervisor. All you need in the first instance is a preferred subject area for the dissertation, so that supervisory arrangements can be put in place.

In the Literature Dissertation, you get to conduct independent research on a literary topic of your choosing, with supervision from an academic with relevant expertise. In addition to guidance from your supervisor, you will have group workshops helping you to define and delimit your topic, to plan your research and writing, to structure your argument, and to contextualise your work within broader critical debates. By the end of the semester you will have completed an extended essay of 8000 words (6000 words for 20 credit). The topic of your dissertation is largely up to you, though does depend on the availability of a supervisor who can work with you on it. You do not need to have a specific topic already decided before enrolling on the dissertation: you can develop the topic in conversation with your supervisor. All you need in the first instance is a preferred subject area for the dissertation, so that supervisory arrangements can be put in place.

‘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.

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.

From Welsh folklore to Monty Python, the tales of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table have excited and intrigued generations. We explore the development of the legend from its twelfth-century Celtic roots through heroic alliterative verse to medieval romances, and some select later adaptations. How the legend has been translated across form, genre but also cultures and ages will be studied through creative and critical exercises. The intent of this approach is to illuminate deep historical structures – mental, linguistic, social, cultural, aesthetic, religious, political, sexual – that underlie readings of the Arthurian literature in history.

Did medieval people really believe in monsters? Giants, dragons and half-human hybrids are just some of the fantastical creatures that populate Middle English literature. Too readily dismissed by modern readers as mere whimsy, or else the product of credulous minds, instead this module takes monsters seriously as revealing facets of a sophisticated myth-making society. You will consider monsters in a range of genres such as romance, saints' legends, travel writing and visual imagery, as well as their reception by medieval and modern readers and critics. You will interrogate the various discourses of monstrosity and consider what makes a monster through consideration of topics such as: the horror and allure of the monstrous body; monstrous appetites; sexuality and sexual deviance; geography and racial alterity. You will also explore the literary and cultural construction of 'human monsters' (women, pagans, Jews) rendered 'other' due to their perceived divergence from societal and religious norms. You will be able to apply your developing understanding of the discourse of monstrosity in a range of practical contexts such as field trips. Previous experience of Middle English literature will be an advantage but is not required. By the end of the module you should have a more nuanced understanding of the place of monstrosity in medieval literature and have an increased awareness of the ways in which language is used to both shape and respond to perceived differences.

'Who would have imagined fifteen years ago that writings of the outcast Chilean Roberto Bolaño who washed ashore in Barcelona via Mexico, would exercise so wide an influence on writers in Spain, Latin America and across the world?' (Granta, Issue 113) And yet, Bolaño's literary output is unthinkable without Borges, just as the Colombian Juan Gabriel Vásquez's Secret History of Costaguana is inconceivable without Conrad’s Nostromo. Throughout this module you’ll discover the ways in which literatures travel across national boundaries. You’ll explore the web of literary influences woven into some of these Latin American narratives, as well as trace the itinerary of these influential threads as they travelled from the South of the American continent to other literatures. You’ll explore the core of storytelling that underpins Latin American literature and which surfaces in various forms of writing, from the short story to the prose poem and the novel, as well as the 'rewriting' exercise/critical appraisal, such as Alejandra Pizarnik's The Bloody Countess. You’ll read works by Borges, Cortazar, Bolaño, Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Clarice Lispector, Alejandra Pizarnik, Valeria Luiselli, amongst others. You’ll be encouraged to close read texts and share your ideas in seminars and one-to-one tutorials, as well as through written work.

The right to free expression is seriously threatened in many places in the world; it has also never been so passionately defended. You will focus on the history of banned books from the early 20th century to contemporary literature. Novels, poems and plays have often been banned on the grounds of political sedition, obscenity, and blasphemy. You will consider the changing nature of literary censorship, the legalistic and philosophical arguments for and against censorship, the nature of arguments in defence of free expression, why literary writers have so frequently pushed the boundaries of the acceptable and the impact of technology on the history of censorship and free speech. You will trace a series of shifting arguments about why free speech matters: from the drive to explore sexuality in literature, to the politicisation of free speech during the cold war, to current debates about blasphemy and free speech, as well as the idea that free speech is a so-called key Western value. Some of the texts studied on the course will be set because they are, in themselves, explorations of the boundary of prohibition and free expression. Of importance too will be the impact of global communication networks on free speech debates: in the context of the internet, does the nation state control the dissemination of literary texts? If not, what are the implications of the absence of legal control? You will consider both English language texts and texts in translation. Authors considered will probably include James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Radclyffe Hall, Boris Pasternak, Salman Rushdie, Elif Shafak and Margaret Atwood, but the authors studied on the course are likely to change to include unfolding censorship events and issues.

Who hath not loiter'd in a green church-yard, And let his spirit, like a demon-mole, Work through the clayey soil and gravel hard, To see scull, coffin'd bones, and funeral stole; Pitying each form that hungry Death hath marr'd, And filling it once more with human soul? (John Keats, 'Isabella; or, the Pot of Basil (1817) 'Dark Romanticism' is a literary subgenre of 'Romanticism', reflecting a fascination with the irrational, the demonic and the grotesque. Intimately related to Gothicism, it has haunted the Romantic movement ever since its beginnings in the eighteenth century. Romanticism's celebration of unity, creativity, and sublimity has always been menaced by a dark and contrary fascination; with melancholia, insanity, nightmare, criminality and death; with ghosts, monsters and vampires; and with the grotesque and the irrational. The term 'Dark Romanticism' was coined by Mario Praz in his classic study, The Romantic Agony (1933) to discuss European Romanticism's obsessive concern with duality, desire, agony, suicide, morbidity and decadence in the decades following the French Revolution. Numerous recent scholars have since discussed Romantic writing's preoccupation with the psychologically unusual and aberrant from a variety of perspectives including the literary, historical, philosophical and, more recently, a medical point of view. In this module, we will explore this compelling but dangerous interrelation between Romanticism and the Gothic at work in a range of 'agonies' preoccupying our writers: addiction, depression, insanity, cannibalism, monstrosity, homosexuality, the femme fatale, the double, the demonic lover, the vampire, and the Romantic pre-occupation with Lucifer himself. Our module will focus on writers such as J. W. Goethe, S. T. Coleridge, Lord Byron, John Keats, Thomas De Quincey, James Hogg, and Percy and Mary Shelley, as well as Matthew Lewis, Charlotte Dacre and Dr John William Polidori, author of that most influential story 'The Vampyre' (1819). We will read key Romantic period texts including Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, Byron's Don Juan, Keats's 'Isabella or the Pot of Basil', Coleridge's 'Christabel', James Hogg's Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner; Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater, and Percy Shelley's drama, The Cenci, as well as lesser known but influential works. You will be encouraged to deliver group presentations on these key texts and subjects, developing your own interests and ideas and working towards the longer research essay by which the module will be assessed.

How did the legacy of its empire affect and shape British society during the period of increasing immigration from its former colonies following the Second World War and even now? How did the writing of those immigrants represent the social conflicts and tensions of that period, especially experience of racism and the resistance to it? How have contemporary minority ethnic writers responded to the challenges of the contemporary period, in which racism has taken new forms, such as Islamophobia and anti-refugee movements? You’ll focus on the ways in which postcolonial ideas can help us to understand and reflect upon the aftermath of empire in Britain. You’ll use selected writings by Black and Asian British writers to explore questions of race and racism, culture and ethnicity, religion, multiculturalism, gender and sexuality, identity, and belonging that have been stimulated by post-war migration to Britain by residents of its former colonies. These issues will be set in the context of past and contemporary debates about British identity, and how these debates have been shaped and reshaped in response to the successive arrivals of migrants from other parts of the world, and by the creative, intellectual and everyday interventions of those migrants themselves. The main topics of study will be The literature of arrival – post-war Britain and ‘first generation’ migrants; The cultural politics of race, racism and anti-racism; Multiculturalism, belonging, hybridity and negotiation – the re-shaping of British identities; The new politics of exclusion – asylum seekers and Islamophobia.

What is style? It is the most essential and yet most elusive property of writing. How can we possibly describe something so intangible? and how can we discover and develop our own distinctive styles as writers, of fiction and non-fiction? These questions were raised with new urgency, precision, and ambition by modernist writers, who urged both that an attention to style was the first aim of good criticism, and that any good writer must develop by trying their hand at imitating and parodying the styles of previous writers, in the way that painters once were taught by imitating previous painters. This creative-critical module approaches these questions and explores these techniques through a particular focus on one of the central strands in modernist fiction, the representation of consciousness. We will focus on novelists and writers including Henry and William James, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Dorothy Richardson, Virginia Woolf, Dostoevsky, Ralph Ellison, Vladimir Nabokov, Samuel Beckett, and Eimearr McBride, subjecting to close analysis each writer’s style: among many other topics this will include the way they break up the linearity of the sentence to do justice to the non-linear nature of the mind; how they explore self and other through the figure of the double and the full range of characters across a novel; and how they render the story-telling property of consciousness through experiments in plot. We will consider such subjects as desire, anxiety, memory, sexuality, gender, and race.

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, this module examines 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 as they can be located in two of the most popular forms of the period (the sonnet and the epic), 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, and Shakespeare responded to Italian models. It also illustrates the important and vocal interventions made by Italian women poets such as Gaspara Stampa and Veronica Franco. 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. (Pre-1789)

If anyone were to look down on the world from the sky, the whole hugeness of its mountains and deepness of its valleys would appear less than the finger of one who, travelling, held a staff in hand. Honorius of Autun’s statement, written in the first half of the twelfth century, moves dizzyingly between two perspectives of the world: the all-encompassing, cartographic birds’ (or God’s) eye view and the overwhelmingly vast view of the world as a human traveler experiences it. It is this flickering of perspective between the imagined and the experienced, the spiritual and the practical, the eternal and the present, that underpins many medieval accounts of travel and place. Because, according to Augustine, the world is a book, its legibility granting access to spiritual meaning, travel becomes an act of reading. Travel writing, in turn, relays the world’s legibility to others, and by reading these narratives we can not only gain insight into the ways that those in the Middle Ages moved through the world in a practical sense, but they also grant us access to medieval imaginations more broadly. In recent years, there has been a global turn in medieval studies, and greater emphasis on considering the ways that people, goods, and texts moved across boundaries and formed networks of trade, travel, pilgrimage, and migration. This research-led Level 6 module will allow students to explore the dynamism of the medieval world by examining travel narratives, pilgrimage texts, missionary and mercantile itineraries, as well as accounts of exploration, conquest, colonization, and wandering. These accounts of medieval mobilities will not be from a solely Christian, English tradition; the module will also highlight texts and maps by Muslim and Jewish writers and cartographers, as well as other non-English Christian texts. By comparing these sources, engaging in close reading, and inserting these texts into their historical, material, and literary contexts, we can understand the ways that texts influenced each other across space and culture and how generic conventions shaped medieval understandings of the world. By gaining an understanding of the multilingual, polyvocal, and intercultural material Middle Ages, students will not only become more sophisticated and nuanced readers of medieval literature, but they will also be able to place English literature within a broader network of textual traditions that will deepen their understanding of literature from all periods. The first half of the module will be devoted to understanding the purpose of travel and travel writing in different traditions; the way that conventions are deployed and subverted; questions of authorship and translation, witnessing and subjectivity; ideas of wonder and exoticism; the texts’ relationships with audiences; how travel affects identity and how cultural encounters are navigated. Informed by critics and cultural theorists such as Michel de Certeau, Yi-Fu Tuan and Homi Bhabha, as well as Classical and medieval philosophers and theologians (Augustine, Hugh of St Victor), students will develop the tools to read these accounts as literary as well as historical documents. Bringing postcolonial theory into dialogue with premodern texts, we will also consider questions of colonialism and examine the dynamics of ‘otherness’ and alienation at play in these works. The second half of the module will zoom in on key locations in the medieval world (Jerusalem, Constantinople, Rome, Karakorum) to examine how places carried meaning. This will not only allow us to engage in in-depth comparative work by approaching the same locations from several traditions, but also examine how medieval travelers –and readers of travel narratives– read the world around them. As a pre-1798 module, Middle English will be read in the original language and the assessment will require that students engage with at least one Middle English text. Non-English texts will be read in translation. This would build on work currently explored in the Level 5 ‘Medieval Writing’ module and some of the texts would be revisited (The Book of Margery Kempe, Mandeville’s Travels, both of which are read in extracts in ‘Medieval Writing’), but these would be reframed and recontextualised by placing them within a larger body of travel narratives and theories of geography and movement. Allowing students to engage in more cross-cultural comparative work would bring into relief the way that texts and literary traditions cross cultural borders, which would nuance their understanding of texts that may be familiar. This module would also feed into the MA in Medieval and Early Modern Textual Cultures by giving students an in-depth understanding of medieval cosmologies, building their confidence in working with Middle English, and by providing them with an understanding of how texts cross borders. This will help students to understand the way that twelfth century European philosophers and historians encountered Arabic texts, for instance, or how Chaucer incorporates non-English textual traditions into his works, both of which will lay important foundations for the MA module in Medieval and Renaissance Humanisms. It would also feed into the East Anglian literatures module by providing students with an understanding of how cultural encounters affect local understandings of place. Indicative reading list: The Travels of Marco Polo; The Book of Margery Kempe; Middle English Liber Celestis of St Bridgit of Sweden; The Book of John Mandeville; The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela; Journals of Christopher Columbus; Ibn Battuta, The Travels (extracts); Sidi Ali Reis, Mirror of Countries; Ibn Fadlan, Risala (extracts); William Wey, Itineraries; William of Rubruck, Itinerarium; Navigatio Sancti Brendani; ‘Adventures of Bulukiya’ and ‘City of Brass’ from One Thousand and One Nights; Chaucer, ‘Squire’s Tale’, ‘Shipman’s Tale’, ‘Man of Law’s Tale’; Stacions of Rome; Bokenham, Mappula A

By the end of the seventeenth century, Aphra Behn (1640-1689) had emerged as the first woman in England who could be called a ‘professional writer’. This module asks a simple question: where did this momentous turning point in the emergence of female authorship come from? Our exploration of that question would begin locally and in the Middle Ages with Julian of Norwich, often described (including in our own LDC marketing) as ‘the first woman to publish a book in English’ (but what did that really mean in that era?). We then sweep through the tumultuous sixteenth century, looking at examples of the all-important intersection of the English Reformation and women’s writing, including the extraordinarily formally inventive Mary Sidney (1561-1621), whose psalm translations paved the way for much seventeenth-century lyric poetry. These opening weeks would help to set the intellectual backdrop to the module. When we come to the seventeenth century, an era when imaginative writing by women was still frowned upon, a huge quantity of writing by women begins to survive, often in an extraordinary array of non-literary genres and material forms. We will explore the love letters of Dorothy Osborne (famously displayed after her death by her husband in his cabinet of curiosities) and the diaries of women such as Anne Clifford (1590-1676). How did such personal forms of women’s writing emerge from the vibrant and complex world of the early-modern household? We then turn to consider the impact of the civil war on the history of female authorship, studying the writings of Katherine Philips (1631/2-1664), who became a celebrated poet in her own day, and is now often seen as a pre-eminent figure in writing about lesbian experience. Philips’ poetry was mostly circulated in manuscript, and the students will be invited to explore how they can integrate an awareness of the materiality of women’s writing into their work. But at the end of her life she did publish her work in print -- and this was not unprecedented. We explore this question of women writers’ relationship to print, first by situating England in a wider European context, in a week which would draw on the expertise of Will Rossiter, with the students’ understanding of this issue enriched by team-teaching and the expertise of other medieval and early-modern colleagues. We then turn to the figure of Aemelia Lanyer (1569-1645), a complex and in many ways difficult figure, whose extraordinary Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611) constitutes one of the most remarkable early volumes of poetry printed by a woman. We then depart from England and travel to colonial Massachusetts to examine another woman who printed her poems (and who reflected on that process in some of her most important verse): Puritan poet, Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672). The module would conclude with an exploration of Aphra Behn (1640-1689), including the chance to read some of her writing for the public theatre. The module would then culminate in a conference in which the students would present their plans for their summative assessments, enhancing their all-important skills in giving presentations. Three key questions would run throughout the module. How did women find ways to conceptualise their work as writers and authors in the era before women’s writing was generally welcomed? How did the material forms in which women wrote or in which their writing was circulated shape the kinds of texts they wrote? And how did women writers graft their work into traditions that were more usually the preserve of men? As such, the module would introduce students not only to early-modern writing by women, but to a host of contemporary methodologies for the study of the early-modern period, especially the importance of archives and the history of the book. That the material conditions under which women wrote were essentially often different to those in which men wrote in the early-modern period is just one of the many reasons why it makes sense to consider the emergence of women’s authorship as a distinct and individual question in this era (although doubtlessly the women writers on this module will need to be contextualized with reference to writing by men). The module will be deliberately eclectic and non-canonical in its sense of what might fall under the purview of literary analysis, covering poetry and drama, but also non-literary forms such as the diary or the letter. We propose the module would be assessed by two pieces of summative work (which might be best submitted together as a portfolio or individually as separate assignments). The longest piece would be a 3500-word essay on a topic of the students’ choice, which brought together two or three writers from the module. The shorter piece would invite the students to present some of their findings to a defined non-academic audience, for instance via the curation of an exhibition. This would enhance the employability dimension of the module, enabling the students to think how their writing skills acquired at university might be adapted to work in the heritage industry, for instance. Sample Module Structure (note -- plenty of other permutations would be possible depending on colleague availability etc.) Week 1: The Medieval Prelude: Julian of Norwich (1343-after 1416) Week 2: Women’s Writing in the Reformation: Katherine Parr (1512-1548) and Mary Sidney (1561-1621) Week 3: Women’s Writing in the Home: The Diaries of Lady Margaret Hoby (1571-1633) and Lady Anne Clifford (1590-1676) Week 4: Women’s Correspondence: The Letters of Dorothy Osborne (1627-1695) Week 5: Manuscript Poetry in the Civil War: Katherine Philips (1631/2-1664) Week 6: Reading Week: Students would be asked to write a formative essay Week 7: Women’s Writing in Print (i) : Continental European precedents Week 8: Women’s Writing in Print (ii): Aemelia Lanyer (1569-1645) Week 9: Women’s Writing in Colonial New England:

What kinds of mechanisms, processes, and negotiations turn a writer’s work into a marketable commodity? How do the social and economic conditions of writing (who, when, what for) affect the kinds of work writers produce? And what kind of impact might printed works, and print technologies, have on the activity of reading, and on how subjects conceive of their relationship to the wider world? On this module, you’ll discover how a new and commercial booktrade contributed to broader kinds of literary, cultural, and social change: you’ll see how books as a market driven business challenged traditional notions of authorship; gave rise to modern concepts of copyright and intellectual property; and forged new kinds of correspondence between books and an emergent reading public. You’ll investigate the workings of the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century booktrade under three interconnected headings: bookselling (key publishers, such as Bernard Lintott, Jacob Tonson, and Edmund Curll, alongside ‘trade’ publishers such as Morphew and Roberts); writers and writing (a variety of authors, such as Elizabeth Rowe, Mary Wortley Montague, John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, and more obscure ‘hack’ writers); and reading (kinds of circulation, from the manuscript, to subscription publication, to the lending library). This module will sharpen your sense of writing as an activity that is shaped by economic factors, and it will deepen your understanding of what it means, historically, to be an author. There are no prerequisites for this module, although it will be of interest to those who have studied Eighteenth-Century Writing in the second year. THIS MODULE FULFILS THE PRE-1789 REQUIREMENT.

One of the major cultural concerns that arose from Japan’s decision to modernise, following its renunciation of isolationism post-1868, was the need to create a bespoke modern literary canon that would compete with those of other nations. In terms of fiction, this was not a straightforward task. The literary form that we call “the novel”, simply hadn’t existed hitherto in Japan; there was no prose fiction that sought to be “authentic” in its inscription of contemporary Japanese language, or self-consciously “literary”, or intellectually as rigorous. Japan has been successful not only in creating such a canon, but also in ensuring that it has become a global phenomenon through which the home country is now able to wield considerable soft power. Various acts of translation, both into and out of Japanese, were necessary to achieve this. What were these acts? Who carried them out? How did the texts they resulted in contribute to the creation of a modern Japanese canon, and what has been omitted from that canon? This module offers a broad introduction to those questions through the reading(in translation) of selected major Japanese texts. The module will start by giving an overview of the major genres that existed in Japan prior to the late 19th Century by studying The Tale of Genji. Through this foundational text we will examine how Japanese literature evolved over centuries through different forms of literature, drama and the visual arts. In particular, here we will focus on how any potential meanings of the text shifted as it took on new forms through translation and adaption by different generations. We will then compare correlating chapters of three or four different modern English translations of The Tale of Genji, including: the very first translation by an attaché to the Japanese Embassy in London, Kenchō Suematsu in 1882; Arthur Waley’s iconic version (1925-33); and the first post World War II translation by Edward Seidensticker (1976). In reading these chapters we will consider how the literary and cultural context of the translator informs the meanings which are generated through each. In approaching this material we will draw upon literary and translation theory, such as: Walter Benjamin’s ‘The Task of the Translator’; Laurence Venuti’s The Translator’s Invisibility and Roland Barthes’ introduction to S/Z. Next, we will turn to the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, when key academic figures from the US worked to select and translate the texts they felt would most appeal to a Western readership while writing literary critical accounts of them in order to establish Japanese Literature as a western academic subject. We will examine discussions by and between scholars and translators such as Donald Keene, Ivan Morris, Edward Seidensticker and Howard Hibbert on their means of selection and translation alongside reading key novels translated during this time. These may include: Kawabata Yasunari’s Snow Country and Tanizaki Jun’ichirō’s The Makioka Sisters and Mishima Yukio’s The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. After this, we will spend one week looking at the movement by female translators, from 1970s onwards, to introduce Japanese women writers (such as Enchi Fumiko, Ohba Minako, and Tsushima Yūko) to an anglophone audience through either three or four short stories, or one novel, and examine how such texts allow us to question the role that gender plays in determining canonicity, especially in the case of Japan. One week will be dedicated to considering the emergence of Murakami Haruki’s globally successful oeuvre and the role that (freelance) translation played in that success. This will include comparing across different translated versions of the same extract from a novel or short story. Finally, a week will focus on one contemporary novel (for instance: Kazuo Ishiguro’s A Pale View of the Hills, or Tawada Yōko’s Memoirs of a Polar Bear) and examine how it challenges our very conception of a national literary canon. No knowledge of Japanese is required as all texts studied in class will be in English; and there is no requirement for you to have studied Japanese literature or society. Final assessment will take the form of one 1500-word and one 3500-word critical essay

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,” you will consider 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. 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.

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.

In this module, students will investigate contemporary notions of identity and culture in the UK and around the world in relation to an increasingly globalized world. Contemporary Britain is perceived as progressively more multicultural; at the same time, there is an evolving awareness of the impact of global trends in society, politics, and culture, in particular from the Global South. These and other factors are challenging our extant notions of individual and collective identity and culture, as well as community. Culture and Performance introduces students to key theoretical perspectives on the function of performance for the negotiation and perpetuation of cultures and societies. The primary focus is on the culture and performances of indigenous societies in the exploration of representation and construction of social and political identities of race, gender, sexuality, class, and nation in performance. Students will become familiar with current debates on interculturalism and the different states of being in-between, multiculturalism, nationalism and trans-national identities, fluid cultures, the globalization and commodification of cultures, cultural imperialism, and the performance of Self, through a diverse range of historical and contemporary case studies. In weekly seminars, they will be encouraged to interrogate and debate their own creative and political relationships to performance cultures of various kinds. This module will equip students with the necessary theoretical tools to effectively position themselves as artists within global, postcolonial, multicultural, and/or intercultural communities.

‘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.

From Welsh folklore to Monty Python, the tales of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table have excited and intrigued generations. We explore the development of the legend from its twelfth-century Celtic roots through heroic alliterative verse to medieval romances, and some select later adaptations. How the legend has been translated across form, genre but also cultures and ages will be studied through creative and critical exercises. The intent of this approach is to illuminate deep historical structures – mental, linguistic, social, cultural, aesthetic, religious, political, sexual – that underlie readings of the Arthurian literature in history.

How did the legacy of its empire affect and shape British society during the period of increasing immigration from its former colonies following the Second World War and even now? How did the writing of those immigrants represent the social conflicts and tensions of that period, especially experience of racism and the resistance to it? How have contemporary minority ethnic writers responded to the challenges of the contemporary period, in which racism has taken new forms, such as Islamophobia and anti-refugee movements? You’ll focus on the ways in which postcolonial ideas can help us to understand and reflect upon the aftermath of empire in Britain. You’ll use selected writings by Black and Asian British writers to explore questions of race and racism, culture and ethnicity, religion, multiculturalism, gender and sexuality, identity, and belonging that have been stimulated by post-war migration to Britain by residents of its former colonies. These issues will be set in the context of past and contemporary debates about British identity, and how these debates have been shaped and reshaped in response to the successive arrivals of migrants from other parts of the world, and by the creative, intellectual and everyday interventions of those migrants themselves. The main topics of study will be The literature of arrival – post-war Britain and ‘first generation’ migrants; The cultural politics of race, racism and anti-racism; Multiculturalism, belonging, hybridity and negotiation – the re-shaping of British identities; The new politics of exclusion – asylum seekers and Islamophobia.

What is style? It is the most essential and yet most elusive property of writing. How can we possibly describe something so intangible? and how can we discover and develop our own distinctive styles as writers, of fiction and non-fiction? These questions were raised with new urgency, precision, and ambition by modernist writers, who urged both that an attention to style was the first aim of good criticism, and that any good writer must develop by trying their hand at imitating and parodying the styles of previous writers, in the way that painters once were taught by imitating previous painters. This creative-critical module approaches these questions and explores these techniques through a particular focus on one of the central strands in modernist fiction, the representation of consciousness. We will focus on novelists and writers including Henry and William James, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Dorothy Richardson, Virginia Woolf, Dostoevsky, Ralph Ellison, Vladimir Nabokov, Samuel Beckett, and Eimearr McBride, subjecting to close analysis each writer’s style: among many other topics this will include the way they break up the linearity of the sentence to do justice to the non-linear nature of the mind; how they explore self and other through the figure of the double and the full range of characters across a novel; and how they render the story-telling property of consciousness through experiments in plot. We will consider such subjects as desire, anxiety, memory, sexuality, gender, and race.

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, this module examines 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 as they can be located in two of the most popular forms of the period (the sonnet and the epic), 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, and Shakespeare responded to Italian models. It also illustrates the important and vocal interventions made by Italian women poets such as Gaspara Stampa and Veronica Franco. 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. (Pre-1789)

Description Students will See This module invites you to explore how novelists from Miguel de Cervantes to Machado de Assis have created new kinds of fiction by bringing fantasy and realism—often thought of as mutually exclusive categories—together. Our starting point is Part One of Cervantes’ novel Don Quixote (1605), which juxtaposes the fantastic delusions of the titular character and the mundane reality he mistakes for the magical world of romance. Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1759-67) will draw our attention to how fantasy is bound up with even our ordinary apprehensions of reality. Ann Radcliffe’s gothic novel The Romance of the Forest (1791) plays off against each other natural and supernatural explanations for the reports of ghostly happenings at the abbey at the centre of the novel. Finally, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis’s Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (1881) draws on Don Quixote and Tristram Shandy in order to create new kinds of fantastic realisms in the context of nineteenth-century Brazil. Far from telling a story of the triumph of realism over fantasy, this module instead draws attention to the persistence of fantasy and the self-reflexive impulse within the novel tradition. Through this module we shall address the overarching questions: “how does reality enter into fantasy?” and “how does fantasy enter into the representation of reality?” We will be reading novels over several weeks, which will give us the opportunity to investigate “fantastic realisms” from many different angles. Our critical readings will allow us to think about different thematic approaches each week including the uncanny, self-reflexivity, connections between literary and pictorial art, and fantasy as a means of engaging with social reality. The module, then, both traces out a significant tradition of “fantastic realisms” across three centuries and also introduces students to a series of thematic paradigms for understanding the novels. The summative work on the module will be split between one essay on a pre-1789 text and another essay in which you will have a choice to write on another pre-1789 text or a post-1789 text. Projected Week by Week Pattern of Reading Week 1: Don Quixote, chpts. 1-24 Week 2: Don Quixote, chpts. 25-52 (end of Part One) Week 3: Half Term Break Week 4: Tristram Shandy Books 1-4 Week 5: Tristram Shandy Books 5-9 Week 6: The Romance of the Forest, vol. 1 Week 7: The Romance of the Forest, vol. 2 Week 8: The Romance of the Forest, vol. 3 Week 9: Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas Chpts. 1-80 Week 10: Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas. Chpts. 81-160 Week 11: Summative Essay Workshop Week 12: Tutorials Summative Assessment Pattern: 1,500 words analysis of a particular passage, making it open out into a reading of the whole text. The critical readings for the first weeks give students models of close analysis of the novels by Auerbach, Shklovsky and others that they can draw on, develop, or resist as they see fit in order to develop their own critical voice. Students write either on Don Quixote or Tristram Shandy. 3,500 words essay. Open topic but students encouraged to use a concept we have already explored through the critical readings to create a focused essay on one of the readings that they have not already written on. Topic to be honed in consultation with the seminar leader.

If anyone were to look down on the world from the sky, the whole hugeness of its mountains and deepness of its valleys would appear less than the finger of one who, travelling, held a staff in hand. Honorius of Autun’s statement, written in the first half of the twelfth century, moves dizzyingly between two perspectives of the world: the all-encompassing, cartographic birds’ (or God’s) eye view and the overwhelmingly vast view of the world as a human traveler experiences it. It is this flickering of perspective between the imagined and the experienced, the spiritual and the practical, the eternal and the present, that underpins many medieval accounts of travel and place. Because, according to Augustine, the world is a book, its legibility granting access to spiritual meaning, travel becomes an act of reading. Travel writing, in turn, relays the world’s legibility to others, and by reading these narratives we can not only gain insight into the ways that those in the Middle Ages moved through the world in a practical sense, but they also grant us access to medieval imaginations more broadly. In recent years, there has been a global turn in medieval studies, and greater emphasis on considering the ways that people, goods, and texts moved across boundaries and formed networks of trade, travel, pilgrimage, and migration. This research-led Level 6 module will allow students to explore the dynamism of the medieval world by examining travel narratives, pilgrimage texts, missionary and mercantile itineraries, as well as accounts of exploration, conquest, colonization, and wandering. These accounts of medieval mobilities will not be from a solely Christian, English tradition; the module will also highlight texts and maps by Muslim and Jewish writers and cartographers, as well as other non-English Christian texts. By comparing these sources, engaging in close reading, and inserting these texts into their historical, material, and literary contexts, we can understand the ways that texts influenced each other across space and culture and how generic conventions shaped medieval understandings of the world. By gaining an understanding of the multilingual, polyvocal, and intercultural material Middle Ages, students will not only become more sophisticated and nuanced readers of medieval literature, but they will also be able to place English literature within a broader network of textual traditions that will deepen their understanding of literature from all periods. The first half of the module will be devoted to understanding the purpose of travel and travel writing in different traditions; the way that conventions are deployed and subverted; questions of authorship and translation, witnessing and subjectivity; ideas of wonder and exoticism; the texts’ relationships with audiences; how travel affects identity and how cultural encounters are navigated. Informed by critics and cultural theorists such as Michel de Certeau, Yi-Fu Tuan and Homi Bhabha, as well as Classical and medieval philosophers and theologians (Augustine, Hugh of St Victor), students will develop the tools to read these accounts as literary as well as historical documents. Bringing postcolonial theory into dialogue with premodern texts, we will also consider questions of colonialism and examine the dynamics of ‘otherness’ and alienation at play in these works. The second half of the module will zoom in on key locations in the medieval world (Jerusalem, Constantinople, Rome, Karakorum) to examine how places carried meaning. This will not only allow us to engage in in-depth comparative work by approaching the same locations from several traditions, but also examine how medieval travelers –and readers of travel narratives– read the world around them. As a pre-1798 module, Middle English will be read in the original language and the assessment will require that students engage with at least one Middle English text. Non-English texts will be read in translation. This would build on work currently explored in the Level 5 ‘Medieval Writing’ module and some of the texts would be revisited (The Book of Margery Kempe, Mandeville’s Travels, both of which are read in extracts in ‘Medieval Writing’), but these would be reframed and recontextualised by placing them within a larger body of travel narratives and theories of geography and movement. Allowing students to engage in more cross-cultural comparative work would bring into relief the way that texts and literary traditions cross cultural borders, which would nuance their understanding of texts that may be familiar. This module would also feed into the MA in Medieval and Early Modern Textual Cultures by giving students an in-depth understanding of medieval cosmologies, building their confidence in working with Middle English, and by providing them with an understanding of how texts cross borders. This will help students to understand the way that twelfth century European philosophers and historians encountered Arabic texts, for instance, or how Chaucer incorporates non-English textual traditions into his works, both of which will lay important foundations for the MA module in Medieval and Renaissance Humanisms. It would also feed into the East Anglian literatures module by providing students with an understanding of how cultural encounters affect local understandings of place. Indicative reading list: The Travels of Marco Polo; The Book of Margery Kempe; Middle English Liber Celestis of St Bridgit of Sweden; The Book of John Mandeville; The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela; Journals of Christopher Columbus; Ibn Battuta, The Travels (extracts); Sidi Ali Reis, Mirror of Countries; Ibn Fadlan, Risala (extracts); William Wey, Itineraries; William of Rubruck, Itinerarium; Navigatio Sancti Brendani; ‘Adventures of Bulukiya’ and ‘City of Brass’ from One Thousand and One Nights; Chaucer, ‘Squire’s Tale’, ‘Shipman’s Tale’, ‘Man of Law’s Tale’; Stacions of Rome; Bokenham, Mappula A

By the end of the seventeenth century, Aphra Behn (1640-1689) had emerged as the first woman in England who could be called a ‘professional writer’. This module asks a simple question: where did this momentous turning point in the emergence of female authorship come from? Our exploration of that question would begin locally and in the Middle Ages with Julian of Norwich, often described (including in our own LDC marketing) as ‘the first woman to publish a book in English’ (but what did that really mean in that era?). We then sweep through the tumultuous sixteenth century, looking at examples of the all-important intersection of the English Reformation and women’s writing, including the extraordinarily formally inventive Mary Sidney (1561-1621), whose psalm translations paved the way for much seventeenth-century lyric poetry. These opening weeks would help to set the intellectual backdrop to the module. When we come to the seventeenth century, an era when imaginative writing by women was still frowned upon, a huge quantity of writing by women begins to survive, often in an extraordinary array of non-literary genres and material forms. We will explore the love letters of Dorothy Osborne (famously displayed after her death by her husband in his cabinet of curiosities) and the diaries of women such as Anne Clifford (1590-1676). How did such personal forms of women’s writing emerge from the vibrant and complex world of the early-modern household? We then turn to consider the impact of the civil war on the history of female authorship, studying the writings of Katherine Philips (1631/2-1664), who became a celebrated poet in her own day, and is now often seen as a pre-eminent figure in writing about lesbian experience. Philips’ poetry was mostly circulated in manuscript, and the students will be invited to explore how they can integrate an awareness of the materiality of women’s writing into their work. But at the end of her life she did publish her work in print -- and this was not unprecedented. We explore this question of women writers’ relationship to print, first by situating England in a wider European context, in a week which would draw on the expertise of Will Rossiter, with the students’ understanding of this issue enriched by team-teaching and the expertise of other medieval and early-modern colleagues. We then turn to the figure of Aemelia Lanyer (1569-1645), a complex and in many ways difficult figure, whose extraordinary Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611) constitutes one of the most remarkable early volumes of poetry printed by a woman. We then depart from England and travel to colonial Massachusetts to examine another woman who printed her poems (and who reflected on that process in some of her most important verse): Puritan poet, Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672). The module would conclude with an exploration of Aphra Behn (1640-1689), including the chance to read some of her writing for the public theatre. The module would then culminate in a conference in which the students would present their plans for their summative assessments, enhancing their all-important skills in giving presentations. Three key questions would run throughout the module. How did women find ways to conceptualise their work as writers and authors in the era before women’s writing was generally welcomed? How did the material forms in which women wrote or in which their writing was circulated shape the kinds of texts they wrote? And how did women writers graft their work into traditions that were more usually the preserve of men? As such, the module would introduce students not only to early-modern writing by women, but to a host of contemporary methodologies for the study of the early-modern period, especially the importance of archives and the history of the book. That the material conditions under which women wrote were essentially often different to those in which men wrote in the early-modern period is just one of the many reasons why it makes sense to consider the emergence of women’s authorship as a distinct and individual question in this era (although doubtlessly the women writers on this module will need to be contextualized with reference to writing by men). The module will be deliberately eclectic and non-canonical in its sense of what might fall under the purview of literary analysis, covering poetry and drama, but also non-literary forms such as the diary or the letter. We propose the module would be assessed by two pieces of summative work (which might be best submitted together as a portfolio or individually as separate assignments). The longest piece would be a 3500-word essay on a topic of the students’ choice, which brought together two or three writers from the module. The shorter piece would invite the students to present some of their findings to a defined non-academic audience, for instance via the curation of an exhibition. This would enhance the employability dimension of the module, enabling the students to think how their writing skills acquired at university might be adapted to work in the heritage industry, for instance. Sample Module Structure (note -- plenty of other permutations would be possible depending on colleague availability etc.) Week 1: The Medieval Prelude: Julian of Norwich (1343-after 1416) Week 2: Women’s Writing in the Reformation: Katherine Parr (1512-1548) and Mary Sidney (1561-1621) Week 3: Women’s Writing in the Home: The Diaries of Lady Margaret Hoby (1571-1633) and Lady Anne Clifford (1590-1676) Week 4: Women’s Correspondence: The Letters of Dorothy Osborne (1627-1695) Week 5: Manuscript Poetry in the Civil War: Katherine Philips (1631/2-1664) Week 6: Reading Week: Students would be asked to write a formative essay Week 7: Women’s Writing in Print (i) : Continental European precedents Week 8: Women’s Writing in Print (ii): Aemelia Lanyer (1569-1645) Week 9: Women’s Writing in Colonial New England:

What kinds of mechanisms, processes, and negotiations turn a writer’s work into a marketable commodity? How do the social and economic conditions of writing (who, when, what for) affect the kinds of work writers produce? And what kind of impact might printed works, and print technologies, have on the activity of reading, and on how subjects conceive of their relationship to the wider world? On this module, you’ll discover how a new and commercial booktrade contributed to broader kinds of literary, cultural, and social change: you’ll see how books as a market driven business challenged traditional notions of authorship; gave rise to modern concepts of copyright and intellectual property; and forged new kinds of correspondence between books and an emergent reading public. You’ll investigate the workings of the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century booktrade under three interconnected headings: bookselling (key publishers, such as Bernard Lintott, Jacob Tonson, and Edmund Curll, alongside ‘trade’ publishers such as Morphew and Roberts); writers and writing (a variety of authors, such as Elizabeth Rowe, Mary Wortley Montague, John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, and more obscure ‘hack’ writers); and reading (kinds of circulation, from the manuscript, to subscription publication, to the lending library). This module will sharpen your sense of writing as an activity that is shaped by economic factors, and it will deepen your understanding of what it means, historically, to be an author. There are no prerequisites for this module, although it will be of interest to those who have studied Eighteenth-Century Writing in the second year. THIS MODULE FULFILS THE PRE-1789 REQUIREMENT.

One of the major cultural concerns that arose from Japan’s decision to modernise, following its renunciation of isolationism post-1868, was the need to create a bespoke modern literary canon that would compete with those of other nations. In terms of fiction, this was not a straightforward task. The literary form that we call “the novel”, simply hadn’t existed hitherto in Japan; there was no prose fiction that sought to be “authentic” in its inscription of contemporary Japanese language, or self-consciously “literary”, or intellectually as rigorous. Japan has been successful not only in creating such a canon, but also in ensuring that it has become a global phenomenon through which the home country is now able to wield considerable soft power. Various acts of translation, both into and out of Japanese, were necessary to achieve this. What were these acts? Who carried them out? How did the texts they resulted in contribute to the creation of a modern Japanese canon, and what has been omitted from that canon? This module offers a broad introduction to those questions through the reading(in translation) of selected major Japanese texts. The module will start by giving an overview of the major genres that existed in Japan prior to the late 19th Century by studying The Tale of Genji. Through this foundational text we will examine how Japanese literature evolved over centuries through different forms of literature, drama and the visual arts. In particular, here we will focus on how any potential meanings of the text shifted as it took on new forms through translation and adaption by different generations. We will then compare correlating chapters of three or four different modern English translations of The Tale of Genji, including: the very first translation by an attaché to the Japanese Embassy in London, Kenchō Suematsu in 1882; Arthur Waley’s iconic version (1925-33); and the first post World War II translation by Edward Seidensticker (1976). In reading these chapters we will consider how the literary and cultural context of the translator informs the meanings which are generated through each. In approaching this material we will draw upon literary and translation theory, such as: Walter Benjamin’s ‘The Task of the Translator’; Laurence Venuti’s The Translator’s Invisibility and Roland Barthes’ introduction to S/Z. Next, we will turn to the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, when key academic figures from the US worked to select and translate the texts they felt would most appeal to a Western readership while writing literary critical accounts of them in order to establish Japanese Literature as a western academic subject. We will examine discussions by and between scholars and translators such as Donald Keene, Ivan Morris, Edward Seidensticker and Howard Hibbert on their means of selection and translation alongside reading key novels translated during this time. These may include: Kawabata Yasunari’s Snow Country and Tanizaki Jun’ichirō’s The Makioka Sisters and Mishima Yukio’s The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. After this, we will spend one week looking at the movement by female translators, from 1970s onwards, to introduce Japanese women writers (such as Enchi Fumiko, Ohba Minako, and Tsushima Yūko) to an anglophone audience through either three or four short stories, or one novel, and examine how such texts allow us to question the role that gender plays in determining canonicity, especially in the case of Japan. One week will be dedicated to considering the emergence of Murakami Haruki’s globally successful oeuvre and the role that (freelance) translation played in that success. This will include comparing across different translated versions of the same extract from a novel or short story. Finally, a week will focus on one contemporary novel (for instance: Kazuo Ishiguro’s A Pale View of the Hills, or Tawada Yōko’s Memoirs of a Polar Bear) and examine how it challenges our very conception of a national literary canon. No knowledge of Japanese is required as all texts studied in class will be in English; and there is no requirement for you to have studied Japanese literature or society. Final assessment will take the form of one 1500-word and one 3500-word critical essay

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.

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'.

Crime, like death, has always been with us, yet it was only in the 19th century that de Quincey proposed considering murder as one of the fine arts and Poe established many of the central tenets of crime fiction with his 'tales of ratiocination'. Currently, crime fiction is the most bought, and read, literary genre and one diverse enough to include 'whodunits'; Baker Street's most notable resident; the genteel amateur detectives of the 'Golden Age'; hard-boiled thrillers; noir; psychological fiction and even the post-modern iterations of anti-detective fiction. Narratives about crime and criminals, detection and sleuths (not forgetting the violence and victims) can be both conservatively formulaic and radically diverse. It can articulate dangerous and disturbing transgressions against society (the crime) while also revealing the ideological forces of law (what constitutes a crime) order (the various detective figures) and the systems of justice and ill-justice (courts and punishment, state and government) with which a society protects and proscribes itself. Crime fiction is also concerned with interpreting clues, discovering secrets and solving enigmas, much in the way that critical theory investigates and analyses literary texts. In this module you will explore key texts and writers in the development of crime fiction as well as examining critical and theoretical responses to such texts. It will allow you to respond both creatively and critically to the concerns of, and thinking about this diverse genre.

In the words of Sara Ahmed “Feminism is bringing people into the room”. We are witnessing an upsurge in activism that some are describing as the fourth ‘wave’ of feminism. It is timely then to reconsider how feminist writing - the essay, memoir, the novel, poetry, and literary criticism and theory - has helped to shape, influence and articulate important past debates about gender, sexuality, race, class and society, and how it continues to be part of that conversation in the present. The Feminist Writing module is taught via a combination of lectures and seminars. On Feminist Writing, we are committed to offering an inclusive learning environment to all students of any gender identity and to teaching diverse world views and ways of knowing. Feminist Writing is an intersectional and antiracist module that includes a transhistorical and transnational range of creative and critical texts. The module considers: Feminist Positionality, Early Feminist Arguments and Texts, The Feminist Essay and Memoir forms, Queer Feminist Love Poetry, Trans Queer Families and Motherhood, and Speculative Eco-Feminist Futures. The module is assessed via two assignments – the first is a response to a passage from one of the module texts, and the second is an independent project. Either assignment can be critical, creative-critical, creative, or a personal essay.

This interdisciplinary module explores how 'the city' has been thought about and represented through a selection of writings (fiction, poetry, theory), visual material (painting, photography, film, street art) and occasionally other sensory material (sound, smell), spanning around 1850 to the present day and focused on two particular cities and great capitals of modernity, Paris and London. In this period the growth of the great European cities has created a new and diverse set of environments and possibilities. Utopias, dystopias, sites of ruin and construction of all kinds; what different, contradictory or coherent versions of urban experience do these texts and images offer? We'll investigate what kinds of writing, art, discourses and attitudes cities seem to generate. Was modernism, for example, as Malcolm Bradbury asserts, an ‘art of cities'? How do textual and pictorial techniques intersect, for example, in the case of nineteenth-century Impressionist art and writing, twentieth-century Surrealism, Situationist provocations, or contemporary street art and photography? What is ‘psychogeography’? In the company of the flâneur/flâneuse, the detective and other urban wanderers, we'll consider aspects such as space, place, urban being and time, love and eroticism, hauntings, crime, memory and the presence of the past, the individual and the crowd, consumption, nature and the natural, urban Gothic, and the pressures, preoccupations and thrills peculiar to urban living and imagining. The main mode is seminar discussion, supported by short lectures, virtual gallery visits and film viewings. Assessment is by means of an individually designed project which is supported by individual tutorials and formative work of various kinds, including the opportunity to practise reading images and spaces, as well as literary texts. There is scope to produce creative-critical (including visual) work as part of your assessment.

Is all creative writing really a form of re-writing? And can creative writing itself be a form of literary criticism? From Virgil's imperialist taming of Homer, to Helen Fielding's homage to Jane Austen by way of Bridget Jones, writers have always engaged their literary predecessors in ways that claim new imaginative and critical space. In this creative-critical module you will explore the many modes in which homage, parody, borrowing, repositioning, intervention and creative (mis)reading may be practised and developed. You will examine exciting examples, and write some of your own. You will discover what literary adaptations, adoptions and updatings reveal about important moments and movements in literary history. You will explore how re-writing may also be a rogue and subversive form of reading; one that functions both as critique of canonical literature, and a means of generating fresh directions in your own creative writing. NB this is not a technical course in film/screen adaptation.

From Defoe’s True Relation of Mrs Veal’s posthumous visit to her friend Mrs Bargrave through the classic English ghost stories of MR James to the ghosts in the machine of modern media, the ghost, shade, revenant or spectre continues to haunt human imagination. Subtle shadings of the spectre materialise at different times, in different contexts – materialised reminder of unquiet remains; manifestation of memory or the unconscious; physiological disturbance; psychical stain. These undecidable and ambivalent presences, or uncanny sensations of hauntedness, will be explored in this module. Writers studied on the module might include Daniel Defoe, M.R. James, Henry James, Margaret Oliphant, May Sinclair and Susan Hill. The module will draw on studies mapping the development of the belief in ghosts (Sasha Handley’s Visions of an Unseen World) and exploring the cultural history (Andrew Smith’s The Ghost Story 1840 – 1920). It will also consider critical engagements, such as Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx and Jodey Castricano’s Cryptomimesis.

New Narrative began as a late 20th century creative rebellion. From its origins in 1970s punk, second-wave feminism and the gay rights movement, New Narrative writers explored and exploited the relationship between the personal and the political, gossip and literature, high and low art. It is the place where the tell-all memoir meets critical theory, and the place from which writers talked about their own desires and their own experiences in order to challenge the status quo. It is also a writing of friendship and coterie, a place to collaborate and to be influenced: many texts from the New Narrative movement were worked on in workshops that took place in the back rooms of bookshops or in each others’ apartments in San Francisco. Over the last 40 years, New Narrative has spawned generations of radical, experimental, genre-defying writers, from Kathy Acker to Chris Kraus to Maggie Nelson. You'll explore the major themes of New Narrative through reading key texts from the movement. You'll also explore the theoretical and cultural influences surrounding the movement. You will think carefully about the role of the writer in relation to the text, particularly the phenomenon of the ‘cult’ writer; you'll be encouraged to focus your critical studies on one particular New Narrative author in order to explore their life and legacy alongside their body of work. Finally, there will be opportunities to produce your own ‘freak’ and genre-defying texts.

‘It’s the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine)’ —R.E.M. (1987) ‘The etymological root of the word apocalypse is the Greek apokalypsis, meaning “unveiling” or “uncovering”.’ —Rosen (2008) This module will explore the origins and development of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction by British writers from the nineteenth century to the present day, with a particular emphasis on late twentieth and twenty-first century writing. In this module you will consider how in apocalyptic fiction the moment of catastrophe is also a moment of truth-bearing revelation, an unveiling which brings with it the opportunity to make a fresh beginning. You will also examine the biblical narratives and other ancient stories that frequently underpin such fictions; reflect on what apocalypse means to us culturally; consider the way such fictions reflect the anxieties of the cultural moment in which they were written; and explore some of the major trends of apocalyptic fiction, such as eco-catastrophe, nuclear holocaust, pandemics, survivalism, apocalyptic visions, and technology gone wrong. You will also attend to the way such narratives frequently participate in the genres of dystopian and speculative fiction. The module will conclude by interrogating what apocalypse means to us today through the study of recent works of apocalyptic fiction. You will be encouraged to explore and discuss a range of associated literary criticism and theory. You will, in the second of the summative assessments, have the opportunity to write your own apocalyptic fiction with an accompanying critical reflection.

This module offers students 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 such as A.A. Milne, Dr. Seuss, Shaun Tan, and Sally Nicholls, 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. In addition, we also discuss writing, translating, editing, marketing, reviewing, mediating, and teaching children’s literature.