Studying English at LJMU

www.ljmuenglish.com

@JMUEnglish

Introduction

One of the most important questions you will have as you look at different English literature degree programmes is ‘what exactly will I be studying in my time at university?’ In this booklet, we’ve provided outlines and indicative (likely) reading for the modules that are running on LJMU English’s newly redesigned BA Honours programmes, from 2018-19 onwards. As you will see, this is a degree that focuses upon the study of English literature and cultural history. We do not offer any English language modules, though we’re happy to accept students with A-level English Language who would like to study with us. All academic staff at LJMU English pride themselves on being both teachers and active researchers in their specialisms, and you will see our variety of expertise reflected across the programme. Please note that we have included this selection of option modules as examples only. Although many of them run every year, due to staffing and timetabling considerations we cannot guarantee that they all will. Individual indicative texts are also subject to change. To find out more about the events, trips, work experience, and research events that surround and inform our teaching, please have a look at our website at www.ljmuenglish.com Thank you, and welcome to English at LJMU!

Level 4 (First Year) Modules

In your first year with us, the programme is focused upon equipping you for successful university study in a variety of ways. We’ll introduce you to some of the most important approaches to literary analysis, and to key concepts like genre, the canon, historical context, and intertextuality. You’ll gain experience in working with a diversity of periods, genres, national literatures, and textual forms (including literature in English before 1800). We’ll provide you with a foundation in the modes of individual and collaborative research appropriate to digital humanities work in a subject like English, and begin to identify and hone both the subject-specific and generic skills that are valued by graduate employers. Your personal tutor, who will teach you on at least one module this year, will be there to offer you any support that you need as you take this exciting step into Higher Education. All modules at level 4 are ‘core’ (compulsory), so single honours students take them all. Joint honours students take Reading English, Literary and Cultural Theory, and Literature in Context.

Reading English

Reading English is a core module for all students doing either single or joint honours English. On this module, you will read a wide variety of works from different periods exemplifying three major literary genres: poetry, fiction, and drama. Unusually for English modules at LJMU, it also covers a long timescale, from the Renaissance to contemporary literature. One of the purposes of this is to introduce you to a variety of texts, styles, and reading strategies so that you can learn about your own particular strengths and interests, and make more considered choices when you do more specialised option modules later on in your degree. The module also introduces you to different ways of reading at university level, such as reading books more quickly than on A-level or Access courses, but without sacrificing depth of analysis. It also incorporates sessions including advice on study skills, essay writing, doing research, and the use of electronic resources. The final piece of assessment for this module is a research project that you develop in consultation with your tutor. Indicative texts William Shakespeare, Sonnets (1609) (selection) Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights (1847) Virginia Woolf, ‘Street Haunting’ (1927) Tony Harrison, V. (1985)

Literary and Cultural Theory

Literary and Cultural Theory is a core module for all single and joint-honours English students. The module introduces you to the main areas of current literary and cultural theory, in order to make you aware of how these approaches and methodologies will underpin your study of literary and other texts. By studying psychoanalytic, feminist, Marxist, and postcolonial literary theories, you will extend your critical vocabulary and become confident in applying these theoretical perspectives in your academic work across modules and levels of study. We will focus on only one literary text (Henry James's The Turn of the Screw), but also work with a variety of extracts from fiction, poetry, drama, and film. This means you’ll be able to test out and practise some of the most fundamental theoretical approaches to reading and interpretation. Through seminar discussion and presentations, the module aims to give you the confidence to understand and participate in theoretical debates.

American Classics American Classics is an introduction to American literature and its wider significance in American culture. It is compulsory for single honours students only. We have selected a range of texts (novels and poetry) that are considered ‘classics’, and will be discussing what this means over the course of the semester. The kinds of question the module asks are:

What are the reasons why some texts become classics? How has the canon of classic literature changed over time? How is the idea of classic literature reinforced in different social and cultural

spheres: in education, publishing, or the entertainment industry? What is the relationship between the classic and national identity?

The module’s approach combines three elements: text, context and critical history. First, we examine the chosen text itself, concentrating on its distinctive literary qualities and the way it generates meaning. Secondly, we look at the way the text relates to the context in which it first appeared – how historical conditions impact on the work and how it may have meant certain things to its first readers. Finally, we consider the reception the work has had in subsequent generations, and the way it has been read differently over time. It is this long history of reading – and not its ‘greatness’ or supposedly timeless qualities – that helps to establish a work of literature as a classic. Indicative texts Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave (1853) Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth (1905) Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955) Frank O’Hara, Lunch Poems (1964)

World, Time and Text

World, Time and Text is a core module for students doing English as a single honours programme. You will read texts from different periods and of different styles and genres. A primary concern of the module is intertextuality, and you will be encouraged to make connections between quite different texts, to trace themes and concerns across time and space, and to discover and express intertextual relationships through scholarly analysis.

The module will introduce some important fields within literary studies, such as postcolonial writing, children’s fiction, and feminist literature, and particular areas of enquiry such as ethics and identity. This will provide an initial engagement with a number of literary themes and ideas that you will have the opportunity to develop in greater depth at levels 5 and 6.

Indicative texts: John Milton’s Paradise Lost; William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience; Christina Rossetti’s ‘Goblin Market’; Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights; children’s stories and poetry from the seventeenth to the twentieth century.

Literature in Context: Britain in the 1950s Literature in Context is core for all students studying English with us. It is designed to get you thinking about the way literary works both reflect and change the social and cultural contexts that surround them. We’ll be working with a wide range of texts written in Britain during the 1950s, and exploring themes such as the post-war fracturing of class boundaries, changing social attitudes to the roles of men and women, immigration and the origins of Britain’s multicultural society, and the rise of youth culture. Seminar discussions can cover topics as diverse as the possibility of an authentic working-class voice in literature, and the definition of madness and its cultural importance. Indicative texts

• Shelagh Delaney, A Taste of Honey (1958) • Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners (1956) • Alan Sillitoe, ‘The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner’ (1959) • Colin MacInnes, Absolute Beginners (1959) • A selection of poetry and song lyrics from the period

Digital Victorians Investigating the Victorians in the 21st Century

This module runs in the second semester of your first year, and is core for single honours students. We will be exploring Victorian literature and culture through 21st century digital technology and a combination of critical and creative approaches. Through ‘hands-on’ activities such as blogging, twitter, Pinterest, Vimeo, and Wordle, the module will introduce you to a range of digital and social media tools that you will be able to use across your degree to study society and culture in the present and in the past.

The Victorians were fascinated by invention: one way we will explore that fascination is through Sydney Padua’s inventive graphic novel The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer (2015). If you want a taste of the module by reading over the summer, this is the best place to start. It’s a ripping yarn that creates an alternative reality in which Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron and mathematician, gambler, and proto-programmer, and Charles Babbage, eccentric inventor, build the Difference Engine to solve the great scientific questions of the age and fight crime.

We will also read Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (one of the most inventive writers of the Victorian period) in weekly parts, so we can experience how the novel’s first readers encountered the story in serial form. You don’t have to read the novel before you start the module, because we will be analysing week-by-week how the novel creates suspense to draw in its readers. You will keep an online journal of your reading and spend a week tweeting in character as one of the novel’s protagonists.

English Modules

Level 5

Level 5 (Second Year) Modules

Modules at level 5 are a mixture of core and option modules for single honours (joint honours depend on the programme).

Semester 1 Core

Body, Mind and Soul Seventeenth-Century Literature and Culture

This core module is designed to introduce you to a range of early modern texts from the 1580s to the 1700s. The focus of the module is to gain an understanding of how literature of this period encounters, and attempts to understand, the key themes of body, mind and soul within an historical and cultural context.

We will open up a magnificent series of texts, pairing the canonical with the non-canonical, to allow you to engage critically with this period from within its cultural moment. Highlights of this early modern journey will include an opportunity to discover the epic poetry of Edmund Spenser; to enjoy great drama from playwrights including William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and John Webster; and to experience more unfamiliar kinds of literary forms, such as the metaphysical poetry of John Donne and Henry Vaughan, the prose works of Thomas Browne, the autobiographical writings of Dionys Fitzherbert, the letters of Margaret Cavendish, and the ‘Fake News’ of English Civil War ballads and broadsheets. You will be introduced to the wonders of the Court Masque, the curiosities of the New World, and even take a literary voyage to the moon! We hope to arrange a theatre trip so you can experience the excitements of live theatre from this period and you will be offered an insight into today’s world of publishing through a workshop on editing an early modern text. By the end of this module, you will have a keen grasp of how during the early modern period encounters with new peoples, places and ideas, were reflected in, mediated by and sometimes created in literature.

Indicative Reading Aphra Behn, The Emperor of the Moon Thomas Browne, Religio Medici Margaret Cavendish, Sociable Letters Dionys Fitzherbert, Autobiographical Writings John Fletcher, The Island Princess Francis Godwin, The Man in the Moone William Harvey, On the Motion of the Heart and Blood Christopher Marlowe, Dr Faustus William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene John Webster, The White Devil Fake News: Civil war writings, ballads and broadsheets Metaphysical Poets: John Donne, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, Henry Vaughan The Court Masque: Inigo Jones, Ben Jonson, William Davenant and John Milton NB: some of these texts will be provided in a Module Reader Assessment: Editing exercise; essay.

Semester 1 Option

Short Cuts: Writing in Brief

Short Cuts will analyse a wide variety of short writing, both Anglophone and translated works, from the post-Second World War era to the present day. The short-form writing it will explore will range from short stories to essays, from aphorisms to prose poems. It aims to introduce students to a wide variety of intellectually exciting, playful and inventive work done in a short space, and to hone students’ skills of close and creative reading. The key texts studied will vary but may include: the New Yorker short story (e.g. John Updike, John Cheever); Raymond Carver, Short Cuts [and the Robert Altman film]; ‘Dirty realism’ (Bobbie Ann Mason, Jayne Anne Phillips); the ‘lyric essay’ (Wayne Koestenbaum, Annie Dillard, John D’Agata, Eula Biss, Maggie Nelson); short writing from Britain and the Commonwealth (Janet Frame, J.G. Ballard, John Berger, Julian Barnes); fragmentary cultural theory by, for example, Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, Maurice Blanchot; short works in translation by Tove Jansson, Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortazar, and Haruki Murakami. Indicative Reading Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities (1974) Raymond Carver, Short Cuts (1994) Tove Jansson, The Listener (2014) Maggie Nelson, Bluets (2009) Assessment Critical analysis (25%) Essay (75%)

Semester 1 Option

Romanticism Revolution, Reaction, and Representation

This module examines an idea that was central to early nineteenth-century culture, but which has always been contested and controversial: Romanticism. We explore how Romanticism emerged out of a ferment of political, social, cultural and intellectual revolutions at the turn of the nineteenth century, through the representations and reactions these revolutions provoked.

We will examine key concepts such as the rights of man (and woman), the sublime, sensibility, the imagination, progressive and pessimistic visions of society and human nature, and the beginnings of mass culture. We look at the representation of the changing landscapes of country and city, Romantic writers in a global context, and the role that Romanticism plays in modern psychology, politics and poetics.

Indicative reading

The reading on this course is often short but intense. There will be a selection of poetry, prose and fiction.

— Revolutionary pamphlets, including early feminist writing by Mary Wollstonecraft.

— Wordsworth and Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads (1798), ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, ‘Kubla Khan’.

— a novel by Jane Austen.

— Poetry by Charlotte Smith, Anna Barbauld, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron.

— Gothic fiction: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818).

— Romantic prose by Lamb, Hazlitt and De Quincey.

Semester 1 Option

Prison Voices Crime, Conviction and Confession, c. 1700-1900

Prison Voices examines a range of writings and documents on crime and punishment in the 18th and 19th centuries. This period saw profound changes in ideas about ‘the offender’ and the means of punishment and rehabilitation. We investigate how the treatment of crime and punishment related to other forms of social discipline and self-regulation and explore why narratives of criminality and confinement, confession and detection have proved so compelling to readers and writers of novels, popular literature, and sensational journalism. By introducing you to ways of reading a wide range of sources (memoirs, confessions, novels, verse, newspapers, reports, criminal records, tattoos) the module enhances your skills in research and interpretation. You can explore the module website at: http://www.prisonvoices.org/ Indicative texts and resources: Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders (1722) Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist (1838) Sarah Waters, Affinity (1999) The Old Bailey Online, http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/index.jsp Assessment: Individual blog, 1500 word research blog post for the module website.

Semester 1 Option

Modernism and Modernity

This module focuses on the activities of a modernist movement emerging in Europe and America at the beginning of the 20th century and lasting until the decades after the close of the Second World War. It seeks to understand how a period of tumultuous social, economic and political change was represented in the culture of the time, but also how cultural producers such as artists, writers, musicians, public organizers and thinkers tried to find new forms of representation that would actively change the world around them. Topics include:

• Geographies of modernism: American, British, European and global contexts, and the exchanges between them

• Spaces: the modern city and the modern country • Social change: mass culture and consumerism, migration, radical politics • Cultural forms: literary, musical and visual

Please note: the module may focus on a particular location from year to year, e.g. Britain, Ireland, or the United States, according to the expertise (and current research obsession) of the teaching staff. Indicative texts William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying (1929) Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (1914) James Joyce, Dubliners (1914) Alain Locke, The New Negro (1925) Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust (1939) Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (1927) Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity (1982)

Semester 1 Options

Work-Based/-Related Learning At LJMU English we are committed to ensuring that you graduate with a wealth of skills that employers will recognise and value, whatever career you decide to pursue. All of our modules are designed to support your development in this way, but we do have some options that are particularly focussed upon work-related learning and/or work experience.

Please note that you can only choose ONE of the three modules detailed below.

Working in the USA ‘Working in the USA’ provides you with the opportunity to gain valuable skills, experience and cultural capital through working in the United States. In order to complete this module, you are usually required spend at least a month during the summer vacation after your second year in employment in the USA.

You may undertake either paid or unpaid work in America. Your module tutors and other university staff will offer guidance about finding work, as will the company you choose to sponsor your visa. However, it will be your responsibility to secure the work and ensure that you have made all the other arrangements necessary to live and work in America. To undertake paid employment in the U.S., you will need to register with a

company that is authorized to sponsor your J1 visa. These companies include: the Council on International Educational Exchange, BUNAC, Camp America, CCUSA, and the Liverpool-based company, Camp Leaders. The sponsoring organisation will provide the documentation necessary to secure the J-1 visa as well as insurance, pre-departure materials and post-arrival orientation. Work students have previously undertaken on the module includes: writing for a jazz magazine in New Orleans; recycling in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans; working in a shelter for homeless people in New York; an internship with American Vogue magazine; an internship at the New York Observer; an internship in an Off-Broadway theatre; writing plays for children to perform in the Bronx; producing a film in New York; archiving poetry readings in New York from the 1960s to the present day; working in television studios, museums, libraries, architects’ and real estate agents’ offices, and the leisure industry; soccer coaching; conservation work on the Appalachian Trail and the Nevada Wilderness; working for Disney; and being camp counsellors at summer camp.

Cost Summer camp starts at £500, including flights and accommodation. This does not include a J1 visa (£125). Paid work and internships start at around £600 for the services of a legal sponsor company. This does not include a visa, flights or accommodation. Though LJMU will contribute to some of these costs, you would need to budget for about £1,500 to £2,000, depending on the length of your stay and which area of the States you will be living in. If you choose this module, you must attend preparatory sessions which will include topics such as: how to find and apply for work in the USA; budgeting for your trip; intercultural learning and skills; legal requirements pertaining to employment, visas and insurance; and orientation to living and working in America. Assessment on the module includes a resume, action plan, and budget, and a series of blog posts reflecting upon your experience.

or English Work Experience

This module requires you to undertake work-based learning or a work-related learning project. You may find your own work placement or work experience (paid or voluntary), or take one of the designated options that a member of the English department will lead. Assessment includes a CV, letter of application, and pieces reflecting on your experience. The options will include: Teaching

This strand of the module focuses on preparing you for the experience of working in a school, through a series of workshops on aspects of teaching and education. You will also receive guidance on preparing your personal statement for an application for a place on a post-graduate certificate of education course (PGCE). You will be expected to arrange your own placement at a school.

Prescot Projects: Community Arts, Culture and Heritage This strand builds on the work and vision embodied in Shakespeare North, an ongoing project to bring Shakespeare to the North West, based in the town of Prescot near Liverpool. Current Prescot projects aim to foster social, urban and rural regeneration in the region, helping the citizens of Prescot to build stronger communities and create new life opportunities. The projects are dedicated to realizing these aims through developments relating to Shakespeare North, and the Townscape Heritage Initiative. Possibilities for work experience on the Prescot Projects include: recording oral histories; shaping and managing projects relating to Prescot heritage; grant and fund raising; Elizabethan fair organization and participation; researching the cultural history of the town and borough; community engagement; a schools project; memory work with community groups and places; digitized historical re-enactments; contributing to shows projected on buildings; and street drama. You can learn more about Shakespeare North at: http://www.shakespearenorth.org

Social Media Skills

The aims of this strand of English Work Experience is to enable you to present yourself, your skills, experience, and work in a professional, coherent, and engaging manner in the digital world. To learn how to do so, you will be taught the technical skills and confidence required for the effective creation, management, and maintenance of professional online content and profiles via social media. You will have hands-on workshops in which you learn how to use the different platforms.

To see the blogs and Twitter accounts previous students have created, visit the strand’s dedicated website at www.social-media-skills.org. This module is suited to all ability levels, so it does not matter whether you’re a daily user of social media or whether the sight of a computer fills you with fear and resentment. You can work at your own pace, and help will be at hand at all times. As part of this strand of the module, you will be required to: 1. Set up, publish and manage your own blog via Wordpress (www.wordpress.com). 2. Set up and manage your own Twitter account (www.twitter.com). 3. Set up and manage your own LinkedIn profile (www.linkedin.com).

Independent Placement On this strand of the module, you will choose and secure your own work placement in accordance with your personal aims, whether they are exploring a particular career or work environment, enhancing your CV, or pursuing your personal development, aspirations or ideals. In recent years, students on the module have undertaken work experience such as: placements at the Liverpool Echo, Pearson Publishing, Oxford, and BBC’s ‘Planet Dinosaur’ exhibition at the Liverpool World Museum; shadowing communications officers in the R.A.F.; contributing to United Utilities’ in-house magazine; teaching children poetry and creative writing for the Windows and Writers’ Ink projects; marketing; on-line journalism and events management. Other students have worked for charity organizations such as MENCAP, Barnardo’s, Christian Aid and Crisis. The assessment for this strand includes a learning journal and a report on the placement.

or International Experience

This module is designed to allow students who have the opportunity to make a substantial trip abroad during the summer of their second year to gain credit for identifying and reflecting upon the intercultural learning skills required to live and/or work in another country. You will attend preparatory sessions with the module tutor and (as appropriate) other LJMU or partner staff involved in facilitating the

proposed trip, in order to make sure you have met the legal requirements for the proposed travel experience (for example, with regard to visa applications), and received any necessary cultural orientation and health and safety guidance for all proposed activities. You will also receive intellectual and methodological preparation for undertaking the observation of another culture, and the analysis of your period of work or of study. The assessment on the module comprises a portfolio of preparation, and a reflective report (which is likely to take the form of a blog).

LJMU work closely with our colleagues Smaller Earth (who are just down the road from us) in supporting students gaining all different kinds of work, travel and study experience abroad, and their website will give you some great ideas for potential trips: http://www.smallerearth.com/uk/

Semester 2 Core

Poetry Matters

‘Poetry is supreme because it makes less mess.’ (Alan Bennett)

This is a core module for single honours students (and optional for those taking joint honours) which focuses on how to read, understand, and enjoy poetry. The reading covers different periods from the beginnings of poetry in English to the present day. The module encourages students to develop close reading skills as well as the ability to understand and explain the peculiar power of poetry over our thoughts and feelings. This is a module that will focus on formal qualities of writing, in particular: you will learn the ins and outs of couplets, sonnets, odes, elegies, and ballads, and the mechanics that make them work to the ear – meter, rhyme, and sound effects – and to the heart and mind – imagery, metaphor, and other tools of the imagination. Indicative texts Poets discussed could include (for example): the Beowulf poet, via Seamus Heaney; the Gawain poet, via Simon Armitage; poets from the early modern period to the twentieth century, where not covered by other modules; Gerard Manley Hopkins, Yeats, W. H. Auden, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, Ted Hughes, Philip Larkin; a range of contemporary poetry including Carol Ann Duffy, Kathleen Jamie, Liz Berry, Kei Miller, or Daljit Nagra; and perhaps the most prolific lyricist of all, ‘Anonymous’. Most of the reading is done in class; a module anthology will be provided for you.

Assessment: 1,500 word anthology introduction exercise; 2 hour examination.

Semester 2 Option

The Literature of Extinction American Writing and the Environment

‘Few animals evoke the wild like wolves: Majestic, rangy and highly social, they’re crucial in driving evolution and balancing ecosystems. Wolves once roamed freely throughout North America, in numbers estimated at some 2 million. But federal extermination programs and conflicts with human settlements have reduced their numbers to the breaking point’ (Centre for Biological Diversity). Scientists recently designated the contemporary era as the sixth age of mass extinction, and the first in which humanity has played the primary role. This module explores how extinction on various scales, from the local and national to the planetary is conceptualized and represented in important American environmental and ecocritical texts. By studying a range of genres, including fiction, poetry, film, art, autobiographical writing, ecological writing, nature writing, and ecocritical theories, we will consider the imaginative and ideological strategies that allow individuals and communities to form attachments to different American environments. The set texts explore threats to species, ecosystems, traditional lifeways and people through everyday actions and spectacular events. Environmental distress is felt everywhere, from Middle America to spaces designated marginal, frontier and extreme. The set texts demand a rethink of how we relate to different environments by calling on, for example, the critical powers of the American idea of the wilderness, the figure of the ‘ecological Indian’, and the genre of environmental literature. Indicative texts James Cameron, Avatar (2009; film). Henry David Thoreau, Walden; or Life in the Woods (1854; extracts to be provided) Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild (1996; biography) Contemporary Native American Poetry (selection of poems to be provided) Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (1962; extracts to be provided) Kim Stanley Robinson, Antarctica (1997; novel) Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones (2011; novel) Assessment • Timed critical analysis (1500 word essay completed over 5 working days) 40% • Research essay (2500 words) 60%

Semester 2 Option

Life Stories

Telling Tales and Keeping Secrets in Auto/biographical Writing

This option module will introduce you to a broad and eclectic range of auto/ biographical forms that may include memoirs, oral history, a psychoanalytical case-study, a graphic novel, a biographical film, cultural theory, and a novel-in-verse. The course will begin by providing you with the critical vocabulary and analytical tools to explore and analyse how writers have represented their own lives – and the lives of others – with a particular emphasis placed on the analysis of narrative structure and literary form. The course will lead you to a greater understanding of key critical topics in auto/biographical writing, including the relations of subjectivity and form; the intersections of gender, class and embodiment in life stories; issues of identity and performativity; how life stories may be as much about secrecy as disclosure; and questions about narrative agency, exchanges and pacts.

Indicative texts

Henry Mayhew, selections from London Labour and the London Poor Sigmund Freud, Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria Virginia Woolf, selections from Moments of Being Carolyn Steedman, selections from Landscape for a Good Woman Lynn Barber, ‘An Education’ Blake Morrison, Things My Mother Never Told Me Lucy Grealy, Autobiography of a Face Jackie Kay, Red Dust Road Alison Bechdel, Fun Home Alan Johnson, This Boy Asif Kapadia, Amy (documentary film) Assessment Critical reflection (1500 words) 30% Research essay (3000 words) 70%

Semester 2 Option

Migrants to the Screen

This module focuses on recent works of fiction about migration that have been adapted for the screen. The first part of the module will introduce you to key concepts and concerns in the field of adaptation studies as well as to debates about representations of migrants and migration. Subsequent weeks will focus on particular works of contemporary fiction about migrants that have been adapted for the screen; in each case, both the adapted literary text and the screen adaptation will be studied. Primary texts might include the following:

• Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (novel 2007, film 2012) • Yann Martel’s Life of Pi (novel 2001, film 2012) • Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient (novel 1992, film 1996) • Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (novel 2003, film 2007) • Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner (novel 2003, film 2007) • Andrea Levy’s Small Island (novel 2004, TV film 2009)

Tools and concepts from the fields of adaptation studies and postcolonial studies will be used to critically examine the literary texts and their screen adaptations, and these texts will be used to explore intersections between these fields of enquiry. In particular, we will explore the ways in which adaptations might themselves be considered ‘migrants’ from page to screen.

Assessment:

1. 1,500 word close analysis of a specific scene from/aspect of an adapted text and its adaptation for the screen (35%)

2. 3,000 word essay (65%)

Semester 2 Option

The Victorians

Realism, Science, and Sensation

This module encourages students to examine the changing, intertwined worlds of science and literature in the Victorian period. The module covers poetry, the novel and short fiction as well as many different genres and styles of writing including elegy, realism, the industrial novel, sensation fiction, scientific romance and naturalism. It will help to encourage scientific literacy, and a deep understanding of the ways in which increased levels of education and literacy helped to shape the development of literature. Some issues covered on the module will be Darwinian theories of evolution, vivisection, geology, sexual health, industrialization,

psychology and thermodynamics. All of these ideas burst into popular culture propelled by scientifically minded authors and literary scientists. We will study the role of literature in the phenomenon of popularization and the birth of the science writer, as well as the role of periodicals and serialized fiction within these trends. Indicative texts Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam Charles Dickens, Hard Times George Eliot, The Lifted Veil Ellen Wood, East Lynne Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of Four Sarah Grand, Our Manifold Nature H. G. Wells, The Island of Dr Moreau

Assessment

Short Analysis Essay (1,500 words, 40%); Research Essay (2,500 words, 60%)

The module will feature a gallery visit and a research workshop.

Semester 2 Option

Postcolonial Writing: Power, Art and Protest

This module introduces students to the field of postcolonial studies through a selection of literary and critical works. It explores crucial authors, texts and concepts in postcolonial literature from a wide range of contexts from Asia, Europe, the Caribbean, Africa and the Middle East, alongside the debates on the relationship between art, politics and culture at the heart of postcolonial literary criticism, the history of imperialism and decolonisation and the themes of native and settler identities, decolonisation, partition, globalisation, empire, subalternity, orientalism and cultural representation. Indicative texts: include Salman Rushdie, Assia Djebar, Frantz Fanon, Mahmoud Darwish, Karen Blixen, and Nadine Gordimer.

English Modules

Level 6

Level 6 (Third Year) Modules

Modules at level 6 are all options with the exception of the dissertation, which is core for single honours.

Dissertation

The dissertation module gives students the opportunity to investigate, research, and write about a literary topic independently and at greater length, supervised by a staff member in English. It is a core module for single honours students and an option module for joint honours. Before the end of the second year, the module leader will circulate a list of available supervisors and their areas of expertise, and you will be asked to choose a general area of interest. You should be aware that not all topics can be accommodated, and each member of staff can only take on a limited number of supervisees. Once the academic year begins in September, you will attend a range of timetabled sessions to help you research and write your dissertation. At this point you will work towards a more formal proposal and plan for your topic, although the final scope and title of your dissertation will continue to evolve in consultation and regular meetings with your supervisor. Your interest may lie with the examination of a particular historical event or movement, a series of literary or visual texts, the work of a particular author, or an element of popular culture. While imaginative, original projects are encouraged, proposals should fall within the broad inter-disciplinary range of interests and critical approaches used in English studies. You will be given guidance by a supervisor through the different stages of researching and writing your dissertation, but above all you will be expected to work independently in the formulation of ideas, the selection of key texts, and production of the final piece. Assessment Semester 1: Proposal (1000 words) – 10% Semester 2: Dissertation (maximum 8000 words) – 90% You will also be required to submit a draft chapter.

Semester 1 Option

Transitions: Identities in the Interwar Years

This module looks at writing from a short but fascinating period in which the self, the social, and relationships between them were questioned and reconceptualised. In the years between the two World Wars the ways in which people saw themselves in terms of class, gender, sexuality and nationhood altered dramatically. Forms of literary expression and ideas of cultural value also changed. This module focuses on literary responses to the changes brought about by the War, by women gaining the Vote and by political agitation around socialism and nationalism. We will think about the reimagining of femininity and masculinity, challenges to dominant models of sexuality, a new interest in the ordinary and the questioning of class-based identities amidst changing ideas of place. As this is a time of transitions in literary form, we will explore the shifting dynamics of experimental writing, middlebrow fiction, poetry and popular fiction, thinking about the domestic romance, the lesbian novel, comic writing, detective fiction, and the literary memoir. Indicative Reading Rebecca West, The Return of the Soldier (1918) Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness (1928) Christopher Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin (1939) George Orwell, Coming Up for Air (1939) Evelyn Waugh, Decline and Fall (1928) Assessment

Research and reflection task: 40% Essay: 60% NB the Research Task demands seminar attendance and group work.

Semester 1 Option

Tales of the Market: Capitalism and Critique

Tales of the Market focuses on the ways in which texts represent, narrate, aestheticize and critique capitalism. The fears and desires of the market will be explored through compelling American literature and film, and a range theoretical writing from the past sixty years. These texts will form the spine of the module. The module will begin with some foundational principles of capitalism from key philosophers and promoters of its compelling virtues, Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman and some its key critiques, including Marx and a range of Marxist-informed writing.

Students will be required to engage with this cultural and critical theory, as well as

developing a critical vocabulary for exploring the literary and popular discourses of modern capitalism. Mark Fisher’s polemical essay Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? is a core text and will be used as a springboard into theoretically informed critical discussion

Indicative texts: Fiction Wilson, Sloan (1955) The Man in The Gray Flannel Suit Bukowski, Charles (1975) Factotum Mamet, David (1983) Glengarry Glen Ross DeLillo, Don (2003) Cosmopolis Pelecanos, George (2003) Soul Circus Shteyngart, Gary (2010) Super Sad True Love Story Film

Chandor, J.C. (2011) Margin Call Barker J (2011) Marx Reloaded Foley, J (1992) Glengarry Glen Ross Lee, S (1995) Clockers Assessment

1) Blog reflection (2,000 words: 3 entries) 2) Critical Essay (2,500 words)

Semester 1 Option

Post-Millennial British Fiction

On this module we examine a range of British texts published since 2000. Using these works as starting points, we consider relevant themes such as responses to 9/11 (including recurring tropes of trauma and terror), contemporary discourses of race and multiculturalism, gender, disability and sexuality, and questions of national identity, and examine the current fictional preoccupation with the past, and with related concerns such as aging and nostalgia. We also consider what it means to historicise and theorise the contemporary, and explore the difficulties – and the opportunities – to be encountered in critically analysing very recently published fiction. Indicative texts Ian McEwan, Saturday (2005) J. G. Ballard, Kingdom Come (2006) Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go (2005) Ali Smith, The Accidental (2005) Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending (2011)

Semester 1 Option

World Literature: Writing from the Periphery

‘The periphery is where the future reveals itself’ (JG Ballard). This module offers a selection of literary texts from “peripheral” regions of the world, in English and in translation. It proposes a comparative reading of texts from Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East in order to address important contemporary issues relating to the unfinished legacy of colonialism. Drawing on recent debates on the concept of “world literature,” the module focuses on the key debates that animate this field of research: the concept of a singular modernity and global capitalism, the problem of distant reading, the politics of translation, the ideology of globalisation, the legacy of imperialism, the position of the cosmopolitan writer, and the social role of literature and the arts in postcolonial countries beyond Europe and North America. The module will also feature a collaborative activity with Tate Liverpool. Indicative texts Saadat Hasan Manto, Bombay Stories I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala Ghassan Kanafani, Men in the Sun Mahasweta Devi, Imaginary Maps Ousmane Sembene, God's Bits of Wood Alex La Guma, A Walk in the Night Arundhati Roy, Capitalism: A Ghost Story Assessment Short Essay (50%) Student Portfolio (50%) (in collaboration with the Tate Exchange programme)

Semester 1 Option Terrorism and Modern Literature

This module will concentrate on literary explorations of the relationship between political violence and modernity. Concentrating on selected texts published from the 1880s to the present, and featuring literature written by supporters and critics of terrorism, it will address the ways in which collisions between radical politics and literary aesthetics have underlined innovations in fiction, particularly the novel. Students will have the opportunity to study the ways in which texts address the ideological conflicts between imperialism and nationalism, as well as socialist resistance to capitalism, in a range of literary works. Beginning with a contextual overview of the political phenomenon of terrorism, we will read these against a number of theoretical and critical perspectives. Related issues, including literature’s engagement with state violence and its interrogation of revolutionary politics, will also be explored. Beginning with modernist novels about anarchists and Fenians, and concluding with fiction about the September 11th attacks, we will explore how literary discourse has – historically and repeatedly – centred on the theme of political crisis. Indicative texts Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent (1907) G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) Graham Green, The Quiet American (1955) David Peace, GB84 (2004) Deborah Eisenberg, “Twilight of the Superheroes” (2006) Assessment Textual Analysis (1,500 words) (30%) Essay (3,000 words) (60%) Seminar Introduction (500 words) (10%)

Semester 1 Option Vamps and Villains: Exploring Gothic Fiction

This module seeks to understand the enduring popularity of the genre of Gothic fiction, as it has developed over the last two centuries. We will explore how the genre has been continuously remodelled by successive generations of writers who all lay claim to different kinds of audiences (highbrow, the popular, and teenage), and how it seems to offer a highly sensationalised engagement with the cultural, historical and intellectual contexts that shape the moment of its production.

In this module we will seek to understand how Gothic writers deploy supernatural figures such as the vampire in order to allow them to dramatise societal anxieties around ‘taboo’ subjects such as incest and rape, and whether these imagined entities might even function as a means for the reader to explore their own ‘unspeakable’ desires. In order to help us understand the continuing popularity of this literary form, we will critique the Gothic from a variety of theoretical perspectives in a way that will extend your understanding of issues that you will already have touched upon in the degree so far, such as the history of reading and print cultures, critical theory, and intertextuality.

Indicative texts Sheridan Le Fanu, ‘Carmilla’ (1872) Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897) Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House (1959) Susan Hill, The Woman in Black (1983) Poppy Z. Brite, Lost Souls (1992) Niall Griffiths, Sheepshagger (2002)

Semester 2 Option

Our House

Representing Domestic Space in Contemporary Culture

The house – as both an idea and as an actual architectural object – is central to any account of the ways in which we as human experience the world. This module focuses on the representation of domestic space and the various ways in which such representations have figured in a variety of disciplinary, theoretical and artistic contexts. Topics on the module include the ‘Big House’ of English fiction, memory and nostalgia, spatial phobias, class and housing, ruins, dolls’ houses and miniaturization, adolescent spaces, and objects in the home. Students will be encouraged to reflect upon their own experiences of the house, to compare such experiences with a selection of textual representations from various media, and to consider the academic treatment of ‘ordinary space’. Indicative texts Emma Donoghue, Room (2010) Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows (1908) Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes (1913) Ian McEwan, The Cement Garden (1978) A selection of short stories will be provided in the course materials, including texts by Tove Jansson, Katherine Mansfield and John Cheever. Assessment Critical Commentary (1,500 words) Essay (3,000 words)

Semester 2 Option Race in America

July 9, 2016, Baton Rouge protests against police shooting of Alton Sterling.

This module explores racial formations and representations in modern American culture, before and after the ‘great transformation’ of civil rights in the mid-1960s. There is a focus on the polarities of blackness/whiteness in American race culture, or racial dualism. In addition to exploring practices of racism, this module analyses rhetorics of race and racism, the assumption of white privilege and the complexities of new racial identities and cultural politics. The module is text-based and includes the examination of speeches, autobiographical writing, fiction, film, poetry, music and recent race theory, for example, Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s Racial Formation in the United States (1994; 2014), Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow (2012) and Critical Race Theory (CRT). Indicative texts Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric (2014) John Howard Griffin, Black Like Me (1959) Chester Himes, If He Hollers, Let Him Go (1945) Martin Luther King and Malcolm X speeches James Baldwin documentary film, directed by Raoul Peck, I Am Not Your Negro (2016) Black Arts Movement poetry Hip hop lyrics Paul Beatty, The White Boy Shuffle (1996) Danzy Senna, From Caucasia, With Love (1998) Assessment 1000-1500 word timed critical analysis (40%), 2500-3000 word research essay (60%)

Semester 2 Option Shakespeare

Shakespeare is recognised as a global cultural icon; his texts have been translated and adapted into multiple languages and contexts all over the world. Yet Shakespeare’s rise to cultural prominence is a phenomenon that developed over time. The first Shakespeare adaptations were performed and printed in the 1660s to make the outdated plays ‘fit’ for a contemporary audience. The eighteenth century witnesses the first Shakespeare festivals, and the rise of organisations such as the Shakespeare Ladies Club who promoted Shakespeare as the timeless author of great works. Shakespeare is much quoted in novels and eighteenth and nineteenth century phrasebooks borrowed heavily from his writing. But many of the Shakespeare plays that were performed regularly in the eighteenth and nineteenth were adaptations – Nahum Tate’s 1681 adaptation of King Lear, where Cordelia marries Edward at the end of the play and together they rebuild the kingdom in the aftermath of civil war, was the ‘standard’ version of the play to be performed in the USA as late as 1875. This raises questions about Shakespeare’s cultural capital and how he is adapted to suit different cultural, political and historical periods as well as how Shakespeare is performed in different locales. We will consider the Shakespeare phenomenon and how Shakespeare has been used and understood since his own period. We will also study a range of the plays in depth, looking at formal aspects, including language, structure and Shakespearean dramaturgy, Shakespeare as author, Shakespeare in performance, and Shakespeare on film. Some of the thematic issues we will look at include love, politics and the social order, identity, sexuality, and the history of the self. Theoretical issues that will be examined include adaptation, cultural value, gender, and intertextuality. Assessment Critical Analysis (1,500 words) (25%); Essay (3,000 words) (75%).

Semester 2 Option Writing Lives

The Archive of Working-Class Writing

This module enables you to develop advanced skills in literary and cultural historical research. During the module you will ‘adopt’ an author from the Archive of Working Class-Writing Online and write a weekly research blog on their life and writing. Most of the memoirs are by working people born at the end of the nineteenth century or in the early twentieth century, and over the module we will examine what their writing tells us about working-class lives and culture, growing up, schooling, family, leisure, work, and self-representation. Workshops will be ‘hands-on’ and participants will be expected to share, discuss, and proofread each other’s posts. At the end of the module you will write a 2000 word research article on an aspect of your author’s life or writing. Research articles of a high standard will be published online. The module aims to provide practical experience for anyone intending to pursue employment in research, publishing, editing, journalism, librarianship, curatorship, etc., or who would like to continue researching at postgraduate level or for pleasure. Follow us on Twitter via @Writing__Lives and find our blog at www.writinglives.org. Assessment Research Collaboration (attendance, contributions to group research and a research diary) (30%); Author blog on module website (70%).