WORK PLACEMENT MODULES

EGH6025 Language and Literature in the Work Place—Convened by Dr Amber Regis 15 credits (Spring Semester)

This module will give you the opportunity to work with an external organisation, applying your research and communication skills to a specific project. You will undertake 100 hours of work with an external partner on an agreed project. At the end of the project you complete a log and record of your activities, and write a reflective essay.

NB: You will be allocated to your placement early in Semester 1 (Autumn), but your placement will be worked and assessed in Semester 2 (Spring).

The module will be of interest to students who plan to continue to a PhD as you will develop skills of direct relevance to your doctoral research (e.g. working with archives, museums, oral histories, with social media). It will also give you experience of engaging members of the public with academic research. It may also be of interest to students who do not plan to continue to a PhD as it will enable you to undertake valuable work experience and develop your CV.

Recent projects have included:

 Research and web content provider for the Sheffield Arts and Well-Being Network.  Social media researcher for Sheffield Archives.  Crowd-funding and publishing Route 57.  Project assistant at Grimm & Co. a local Children’s literary charity.  Project assistant on ‘Gothic Tourism’ with Haddon Hall and Whitby Museum.  Charity event organisation with the Women’s Institute.  Cataloguing the Keith Dewhurst Collection in the University Library’s Special Collections.  Working on the ‘Sheffield Musical Map’ project with Sensoria Festival.  Researching and writing columns for the Sheffield Star newspaper commemorating WWI and life in Sheffield in 1914.

This year (2015-16) it is anticipated that placements will be available with Renishaw Hall, the University Library’s Special Collections, Grimm & Co., and Sheffield Archives amongst others. For queries and further details of this year's placements, please contact Dr Amber Regis: [email protected]

1 EGH623 Work Placement with Research Essay—Convened by Dr Amber Regis 30 credits (Spring Semester)

This module runs in parallel with EGH6025 Language and Literature in the Work Place (see above). As on that module you will undertake a work placement with an external organisation, and complete a log, record, and reflective essay. But in addition, you will undertake a 3000-word research essay related to your work placement. For example: if you undertake a project cataloguing a collection or archive you might write your essay by researching and interpreting part of that collection. In order to undertake the 3000-word essay you will be matched with an appropriate supervisor, meeting with them at regular intervals.

NB: You will be allocated to your placement early in Semester 1 (Autumn), but your placement will be worked and assessed in Semester 2 (Spring).

As with EGH6025, this module will be of interest to students who plan to continue to a PhD as you will develop skills of direct relevance to your doctoral research (e.g. working with archives, museums, oral histories, with social media). It will also give you experience of engaging members of the public with academic research. It may also be of interest to students who do not plan to continue to a PhD as it will enable you to undertake valuable work experience and develop your CV. In addition, EGH623 gives you the opportunity to undertake research connected to the subject matter of your placement, which may lead directly into your dissertation or other future research.

See the module description for EGH6025 for a list of some recent work placements. For queries and details of this year's placements, please contact Dr Amber Regis: [email protected]

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Research Training Programme (non-credit-bearing)

This programme consists of a series of workshops across both semesters designed to help you develop your research skills. Topics covered include: getting the most out of research seminars; designing a research project; researching and writing a dissertation; oral presentation skills. There will also be an additional careers workshop on offer this year. These workshops are taught by a cross-section of academic staff who teach within the School of English.

Descriptions of all Literature modules follow overleaf

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AUTUMN MODULES

LIT6330, The Analysis of Film (30 credits), taught by Dr David Forrest, ([email protected]) This module has two basic premises. First, it is designed to be used as a refresher course for students experienced in film study, introducing unfamiliar films whose form and content ramify outwards to others in (or using) similar modes. Thus, a viewing of 'Tales of Hoffman', for instance, would introduce an exploration of music and the operatic in other films. Second, for students unused to film analysis, it will provide some training in detailed interpretation, and introduce film as reportage. The course aims to give some training in preparing programme notes and in writing considered criticism of newly issued films. Video extracts are frequently used in seminars, and students are expected to bring video extracts for discussion, both to illustrate personal commentary and to fulfil the weekly requirement to submit one self-chosen extract to illustrate a point in film history. * Available on MA in English Literature (and pathways) and MA in Creative Writing; compulsory for Film pathway

LIT6340: British Poetry in the Long Eighteenth Century: Union, Divergence and Death. (30 credits), taught by Dr Hamish Mathison, ([email protected]) This module examines 'British' poetry written during the long eighteenth century. Following the Union of Parliaments in 1707, national verse was subject to a number of pressures: patriotic, economic, political, cultural and linguistic. The module examines how poets of this period, for example Pope, Dryden, Thompson, Goldsmith, Gray, Ramsay, Macpherson, Fergusson, Burns, Little and others, responded to those pressures. The module will read the creation of verse alongside the emergence of a vibrant print culture in and Scotland. The emphasis is upon understanding the material conditions amidst and by which poetry is created, marketed and received. * Available on the MAs in English Literature , Eighteenth-Century and Nineteenth-Century Studies.

LIT6041 Creative Writing: Fiction 1(30 credits), team-taught The modules will entail a practical writing workshop where students will read, discuss, analyze and critique their own and other students’ writing, as well as learning the fundamentals of close reading, technical analysis and critical judgment of contemporary writers from a practitioner’s point of view. The workshopping will be structured according to a programme of topics, exercises and commissions which will encourage and train students in the basics of fiction writing techniques in the main genres and sub-genres, as well as aid them in the development of their own creative writing to an acceptable and potentially publishable standard. Students will study fiction through appropriate and writer-centred theoretical frameworks – such as story development, issues of class, race, gender in writing, genre conventions, narrative theory – whilst also being encouraged to critique each others’ work, to workshop writing creatively and constructively, and to work with tutors to help prepare work in progress for the main dissertation project later in the year. Students will produce a portfolio of writing based on the workshop commissions as well as a critical essay reflecting on the creative processes involved in their submission. * Only available on Creative Writing pathway

LIT6043 Creative Writing: Poetry 1 (30 credits), team-taught; convenor, Prof Simon Armitage ([email protected]) The modules will entail a practical writing workshop where students will read, discuss, analyze and critique their own and other students’ poetry, as well as learning the fundamentals of close reading, technical analysis and critical judgment of contemporary poets from a practitioner’s point of view. The workshopping will be structured according to a programme of topics, exercises and commissions which will encourage and train students in the basics of poetry techniques in the main genres and sub-genres, as well as aid them in the development of their own creative writing to an acceptable and potentially publishable standard. Students will study poetry through appropriate and writer-centred theoretical frameworks – such as form and convention, issues of class, race, language, gender in poetry, narrative, lyric, dramatic poetry– whilst also being encouraged to critique each others’ work, to workshop writing creatively and constructively, and to work with tutors to help prepare work in progress for the main dissertation project later in the year. Students will produce a portfolio of poems based on the workshop commissions as well as a critical essay reflecting on the creative processes involved in their submission * Only available on Creative Writing pathway

4 LIT638, Directed Reading: Topics in Early Modern Literature (15 credits), co-ordinated by Dr Emma Rhatigan ([email protected]) Designed to prepare students for dissertations on early modern topics, this module offers the opportunity to gain more in-depth knowledge about the literature and culture of one of three broadly-defined areas: ‘medieval into Renaissance’; ‘sixteenth century’; ‘seventeenth century’. * Available on the Early Modern pathway

LIT6027: Early Modern Books (15 credits ‘Whatever they may do, authors do not write books. Books are not written at all. They are manufactured by scribes and other artisans, by mechanics and engineers, and by printing presses and other machines’ (Roger E. Stodhard). This module examines the processes which created the works that early modern audiences experienced, in manuscript and print, or as performance. Topics covered on the module include the production, licensing, dissemination, reception, and censorship of literary works. Knowledge of these processes, and the practical constraints and contingencies attendant on them, enriches our appreciation of how early moderns perceived the books they read/owned and the performances they witnessed, and gives insight into the often collaborative and contested nature of ‘authorship’. The module will also consider the role of the modern scholarly editor.

LIT6028, The Eighteenth Century: Research Approaches (30 credits), team-taught; convened by Dr Hamish Mathison, ([email protected]) This module introduces you to the methodological issues raised by the interdisciplinary study of the eighteenth century. Taught by experts from English, History and Modern Languages, it provides an introduction to the latest academic debates and research methods in the field. In the context of wider thematic discussions, you will work with a range of sources, ranging from novels and poetry, through newspapers and letters, to paintings and artefacts. You will be offered excursions to eighteenth-century locations within Yorkshire, most notably Shandy Hall, home of the eighteenth-century author Lawrence Sterne, Nostell Priory and the ’s Library will offer you a tour of its eighteenth-century holdings in Special Collections. Throughout, you will consider a range of interpretative issues, and will be encouraged to locate your readings of the eighteenth century within appropriate literary, historiographical or methodological debates. The module will conclude with a mini conference, where you will be encouraged to discuss your interests in preparation for the summative assessment of 6000 words (due in January). * Compulsory for MA in Eighteenth-Century Studies, available on the MA in English Literature as well.

LIT6045, Humans, Animals, Monsters and Machines: From Gulliver’s Travels to King Kong (30 credits), taught by Dr John Miller (English) ([email protected]) This module examines imaginings of the ‘human’ in relation to machines and animals (and those monsters that are neither one thing nor the other) from the eighteenth century to the twentieth. We will focus mainly on fiction, its cultural contexts and on readings from the period’s key thinkers of human being, alongside more recent theories of humans, posthumans and animals. The aim is to encourage critical engagement with this key issue and to facilitate a deeper appreciation of the period’s literature, culture and politics, including the relationship of discourses of technology and species to discourses of class, gender and race. *Available on the MAs in English Literature, Eighteenth-Century Studies, and Nineteenth-Century Studies.

LIT6390, Interdisciplinary Approaches to Nineteenth-Century Studies (30 credits), team-taught; convenor Dr Andy Smith ([email protected]) 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness'. Dickens was ruefully appreciative of his age's superlative contradictions, and this course aims to develop an understanding of such vibrant variety by drawing on a range of interdisciplinary research techniques to consider four revolutions of '': French, industrial, intellectual and gender. The course may also involve sessions at the City Archives and the Ruskin Gallery; authors studied will include Gaskell, Dickens, Tennyson, Ruskin, Kipling, and other literary and visual artists in England and Europe; topics discussed will include political satire, Darwinism, prophecy and progress, imperialism, and men dressing up as women. This course is designed to widen and deepen your knowledge and understanding of the Nineteenth Century, and to introduce you to the kinds of academic enquiry that are directed it from a range of disciplines. You will learn about, and learn to negotiate, the differences and the links between a range of approaches to this eventful and complex century. The course will develop your research skills; you will be expected to use electronic and library research resources on a regular basis, and to learn about and put into practice a wide range of research methods pertaining to the various disciplines. Most importantly, the course is designed to introduce you to a wide range of possible subject

5 areas, and a wide range of possible methodological approaches to help you develop your own independent lines of enquiry and research. * Compulsory for MA in Nineteenth-Century Studies, also available upon the MA in English Literature

LIT6014, Texts, Politics and Performance (30 credits), taught by Professor Steve Nicholson ([email protected]) This module will examine attempts to use theatre and performance to reflect and influence society (primarily in Britain and Europe) during the 20th and 21st centuries. It will explore theatres, texts and performance forms within their historical, cultural, philosophical and aesthetic contexts, drawing on material rooted in contrasting political and aesthetic agendas. Possible areas for study include: post-revolutionary theatre in the Soviet Union; the Workers’ Theatre Movement and Unity Theatre; theatre censorship; Documentary and Verbatim Drama; post-colonial liberation theatres; practitioners such as Boal, Brecht and Littlewood; companies such as Theatre Workshop, Gay Sweatshop and Red Ladder; playwrights such as Sarah Daniels, Tanika Gupta, Kay Adshead and Mark Ravenhill; experimental, avant-garde and Live Art forms. * Available on the MA in English Literature, including Creative Writing, Film, Modern and Contemporary pathway; compulsory for students on the MA in Theatre and Performance

LIT6017, Theatre Practice I (30 credits), taught by Dr Frances Babbage ([email protected])

A core aim of this studio-based module is to allow participants to develop as reflexive practitioners and researchers, and to encounter a range of approaches to the making of performances today. To this end, you will participate in two practice-based projects led by staff and practitioners who have expertise and research interests in contrasting fields of contemporary performance. Projects are likely to involve public presentations by the group. Practice will be contextualised, documented, and subject to reflective analysis, and you will be expected to carry out appropriate research into relevant practitioners and their work and, where possible, to witness live or recorded performances. We also aim to develop critical vocabularies appropriate to different kinds of practice, and to explore how far practice itself can be used both as an effective research tool for generating new knowledge, and as a method of disseminating discoveries. Assessment is based on practical contributions to the projects undertaken, and on a reflexive portfolio.

* Compulsory for MA in Theatre and Performance; only available to suitably qualified students on other programmes by agreement with the convenor of the MA in Theatre and Performance

LIT 6066, Theory as Potentiality: The Experience of the Possible (30 credits), Dr Fabienne Collignon ([email protected])

In 'Bartleby, or on Contingency', Giorgio Agamben writes that 'philosophy is a firm assertion of potentiality, the construction of an experience of the possible as such.Not thought but the potential to think, not writing but the white sheet is what philosophy refuses at all costs to forget.' This course seeks to explore critical theory in relation to the concepts of aporia, potentiality, (im)possibility; it refers, as such, to the work of Jacques Derrida, Agamben, Benjamin, amongst others, but the main impetus of this module is a student-led engagement with 'the experience of the possible'. That is, rather than providing a syllabus to be followed, the structure of this course is as follows:

(i) each scholar proposes to investigate a potentiality, e.g. a way to conceive differently what already exists, has not yet existed, might never exist; a different way of being in the world (ii) we collectively respond, recommend avenues of exploration, to each other's proposals (iii) we theorise 'our' potentiality

The purpose of this course is to call into question actuality.Assessment: 6,000 word submission

Lit 6351, Topics in American Postmodernism: Postmodernism to Neoconservatism in American Culture (30 credits), convened by Dr Duco van Oostrum ([email protected])

This module is especially designed for postgraduate students exploring potential research areas in the School of English. It is highly recommended for students on the American Literature Pathway and for those thinking about pursuing a PhD in American Literature or a related field. We will cover different research topics each week, taught by potential supervisors for those topics.

After the culture wars in the American academy in the 1970s, in which students complained about American literature basically consisting a ‘five dead white men from New England,’ Donald Pease in 1990 formulated the concept of ‘New Americanists.’ Feminist, racial, theoretical, new historical, and class criticism apparently destroyed the consensus criticism of the ‘American

6 Renaissance’ (Matthiessen) and the ‘American Adam’ (Lewis, Smith, and others), opening up the canon and manner of critique. American literary criticism changed dramatically, reinventing itself time after time, and focusing on different terrains. This year, our very own ‘new Americanists’ will explore this research landscape via topics in: The African American Child and Postcolonial Film, Ecology, American Pornography, PostRacial African Americanism, Whiteness Studies, American Postmodern Stylistics, Post Classical Hollywood Film, Postmodern American Animals, and American Postmodern Detective Fiction.

EGH6015, Reconsidering the Renaissance (30credits), team-taught; convenor Dr Tom Rutter ([email protected])

This module explores two key influences on late medieval and early modern literature: the Bible and Ovidian writing. It traces how these were adapted and readapted by authors, working in and for different cultures and contexts. This module is core for all students on the early modern pathway. * Available on the MA in English Literature and Early Modern pathway (compulsory for Early Modern pathway)

EGH628: Literature and the Mind (30 Credits), Dr Sara Whiteley ([email protected]) Please note this module is taught on-line This module explores the relationship between literature and the human mind, drawing on a range of academic disciplines; from literary theory to cognitive psychology, from literary linguistics to philosophy. The module considers how recent advances in the study of human cognition can enhance our understanding of the reading experience. Students will be introduced to a range of concepts from cutting-edge cognitive research and will be encouraged to investigate the ways in which this body of knowledge can be used as a means of exploring literature. We will examine, for instance, the role of cultural and personal knowledge in the reading process, the conceptual structure of metaphor, how texts direct readerly attention and the readerly experience of literary worlds.

Descriptions of Spring modules follow overleaf

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SPRING MODULES

LIT 6900 Australian Cinema: Dr Jonathan Rayner ([email protected]) This case study module is intended to offer an overview of the products of mainstream Australian film production since the revival of the national film industry in the 1970s. It will chart the development of a distinctive Australian cinema, drawing on examples from the last three decades. Films chosen for special attention will highlight the evolution of indigenous genres and the aspirations of individual filmmakers, and will exemplify feature film production from its renaissance in the 1970s to the popular successes of the 1990s.

LIT634 The Country House and English Literary Imagination: Literature, Culture, Politics (30 credits); convenor: Dr Emma Rhatigan ([email protected]) The country seats of the landed gentry and aristocracy are a lens through which we can examine many of the pressing social, cultural and political issues of early modern England and beyond. Topics examined include: the relationship between social groups; gender and space; religion; scandal and domestic disharmony; houses and gardens as sites of literary production, consumption and philosophical reflection; estates and their content as sources of identity and self- fashioning; migration between the metropolis and country; the influence of travel and the architectural design of houses as a changing barometer of taste. This is team-taught module and will incorporate at least one visit to one of the many culturally significant country houses in the vicinity. The module will be assessed according to the research interest of the student to the equivalent of a 6000-word assignment. This might comprise a research essay on a particular aspect of country-house culture, possibly within the regional collections. It might also incorporate another form of public dissemination, such as a modest exhibition or website presentation, depending on the nature of the research enquiry. Since we aim to encourage students to pursue and develop their own research interests, we would be willing to adapt the assessment to suit students working on chronologically later periods. * Available on the Early Modern pathway, MA in Eighteenth Century Studies

LIT6042 Creative Writing: Fiction 2 (30 credits), team-taught; convenor Prof Adam Piette, ([email protected]) This module will entail a practical writing workshop where students will read, discuss, analyze and critique their own and other students’ writing, as well as learning the fundamentals of close reading, technical analysis and critical judgment of contemporary writers from a practitioner’s point of view. The workshopping will be structured according to a programme of topics, exercises and commissions which will encourage and train students in the basics of fiction writing techniques in the main genres and sub-genres, as well as aid them in the development of their own creative writing to an acceptable and potentially publishable standard. Students will study fiction through appropriate and writer-centred theoretical frameworks – such as story development, issues of class, race, gender in writing, genre conventions, narrative theory – whilst also being encouraged to critique each others’ work, to workshop writing creatively and constructively, and to work with tutors to help prepare work in progress for the main dissertation project later in the year. Students will produce a portfolio of writing based on the workshop commissions as well as a critical essay reflecting on the creative processes involved in their submission. * Only available on Creative Writing pathway

LIT6044 Creative Writing: Poetry 2 (30 credits), team-taught; convenor Dr Agnes Lehoczky ([email protected]) The modules will entail a practical writing workshop where students will read, discuss, analyze and critique their own and other students’ poetry, as well as learning the fundamentals of close reading, technical analysis and critical judgment of contemporary poets from a practitioner’s point of view. The workshopping will be structured according to a programme of topics, exercises and commissions which will encourage and train students in the basics of poetry techniques in the main genres and sub-genres, as well as aid them in the development of their own creative writing to an acceptable and potentially publishable standard. Students will study poetry through appropriate and writer-centred theoretical frameworks – such as form and convention, issues of class, race, language, gender in poetry, narrative, lyric, dramatic poetry– whilst also being encouraged to critique each others’ work, to workshop writing creatively and constructively, and to work with tutors to help prepare work in progress for the main dissertation project later in the year. Students will produce a portfolio of poems based on the workshop commissions as well as a critical essay reflecting on the creative processes involved in their submission * Only available on Creative Writing pathway

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LIT638, Directed Reading: Topics in Early Modern Literature (15 credits), co-ordinated by Dr Emma Rhatigan ([email protected]) Designed to prepare students for dissertations on early modern topics, this module offers the opportunity to gain more in-depth knowledge about the literature and culture of one of three broadly-defined areas: ‘medieval into Renaissance’; ‘sixteenth century’; ‘seventeenth century’. * Available on the MA in English Literature, Early Modern pathway

LIT6026, Early Modern Palaeography (15 credits), taught by Dr Graham Williams, ([email protected]) This module teaches students to read English handwriting, 1500-1700, an essential skill for research in the period. The course will look at the most common hands of the period (secretary, Jacobean court hand, italic), as well as some of the more specialist (such as Chancery hands). It will also cover conventions for transcription, brevigraphs (and other abbreviations), dating hands, and will include a historical introduction to writing equipment and materials, the production and circulation of manuscripts, and the co-existence of print and a flourishing manuscript culture. There will also be some consideration of editing manuscripts for modern editions. * Available on the Early Modern pathway

LIT6021, Exchanging Letters: Art and Correspondence in Twentieth-Century America (30 credits), taught by Dr Jonathan Ellis, ([email protected]) This module looks at the art and practice of letter writing in twentieth-century American literature. In particular, it considers the relationship between letter writing and other literary genres, investigating the use writers make of their own and other people’s correspondence in published novels, poems and stories. Students will read letters by some of the twentieth-century’s most controversial and innovative epistolary writers, including Elizabeth Bishop, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Robert Lowell, Marianne Moore, Flannery O'Connor and Sylvia Plath. One of the main aims of the module will be to consider the aesthetics of letter writing and the extent to which it might be seen as a literary genre in its own right. In addition to this, we will also be looking at the aftermath of singular letters or letter writers in different art forms. Students will be expected to show awareness of the different historical and social contexts in which these artists worked and to contextualise their readings of letters through reference to other biographical and literary sources. * Available on all MAs and pathways (except MA in Theatre and Performance)

LIT6011, Fiction and Reality (30 credits) team-taught, convenor Dr Anna Barton ([email protected]) This unit treats selected fictions by some of the greatest novelists of the ‘long’ nineteenth century, such as Austen, Dickens, Balzac, Flaubert, Tolstoy, James, Eliot, Hardy and Conrad. It considers the importance of the realist mode in these works, examining what realism in art meant to the writers, and the ways it influenced their representation of their world. It will discuss how attitudes to history, conceptions of truth, and views on the purposes of fiction are filtered through notions of realism and embodied in the period’s fiction. Discussion of the novels is supplemented by examination of contemporary debates about fiction and reality and more recent critical perspectives on the topic. The emphasis will be on the English realist tradition, informed by some comparative work on American novels and European novels read in translation. *Available on the MAs in English Literature (and all pathways), Nineteenth-Century Studies and Eighteenth-Century Studies.

EGH612: Introduction to Literary Linguistics (30 Credits), Dr Sara Whiteley ([email protected]) Please note this module is taught on-line This module will introduce students to some of the ways in which linguistic analysis can be used to explore the language of literary texts. Topics covered will include: nouns and verbs; sentence structure; vocabulary and register; narrative and point of view and reporting speech and thought. The emphasis will be upon a practical approach and texts studied will be predominantly drawn from contemporary literature. Students will also be introduced to some recent debates about the value of literary linguistics. Students who complete this module will have gained a good understanding of the language of literature.

LIT6036, Issues in Contemporary Performance (30 credits) team-taught

This seminar based module will allow students to explore and engage with current and ongoing debates in different fields of contemporary theatre practice, and in theatre historiography. They will be encouraged to consider the relationship between theatre and performance and the society/culture they inhabit. Students will attend and contribute

9 to a series of seminars, short lectures and other provocations, and may also be expected to attend performances, workshops or other external events. Video and sound recordings may also be used, and students will carry out a present research through focusing on the printed word, the internet and live or recorded performances and/or workshops.

*Compulsory for MA in Theatre and Performance Studies; available on the MA in English Literature, including Modern and Contemporary pathways and the Creative Writing MA.

MLT6015, Latin (15 credits) This module follows on from the Latin module offered in the first semester. Contact the Postgraduate Secretary Caroline Wordley ([email protected]) at the Modern Languages Teaching Centre for information about language modules.

EGH608, Literary Language (Narrative and Cognition) (30 credits), taught by Dr Joe Bray ([email protected]) and Dr Sara Whiteley (sara.whiteleyshef.ac.uk) This module examines the relationship between literary narrative and the human mind. It provides an opportunity for you to explore a variety of cognitive, narratological, and stylistic theories which consider how literary narrative is structured on the page and conceptualised in the mind. Topics covered include developing areas within cognitive poetics, such as text-worlds, transportation and empathy, as well as more traditional stylistic frameworks, such as deixis and focalisation. You will look at recent, cutting-edge research in cognitive psychology, and consider how it relates to, and can help to develop, some of the traditional frameworks. At every stage you are invited to consider how a combination of cognitive and narratological approaches can help to bring out previously hidden meanings of a text, and shed new light on the processes involved in reading. A wide range of literary narratives is discussed in seminars, and you are frequently encouraged to bring in your own examples. Narrative poems as well as prose texts are considered, alongside genres which cross the fiction/non-fiction boundary, such as autobiographical memoir. Examples from earlier periods, as well as contemporary texts, are examined. For the final essay you will have a chance to work on a text of your choice, coming up with a research question in consultation with the tutor. This gives you an opportunity to bring together the insights and frameworks from the different disciplines involved on the course and integrate them to generate an extended, theoretically sophisticated analysis. * Available on all MAs and pathways (except MA in Theatre and Performance); however, please note that some knowledge of, or willingness to engage with, literary linguistics is required and admission onto this module is by permission of the module convenor.

EGH610: Literary Language – Digital Media taught by Dr Jane Hodson ([email protected]) and Dr Richard Steadman-Jones ([email protected]) This module provides you with an opportunity to think about the relationship between language, literature and digital media from a number of different perspectives. The focus is on examining possible approaches to researching these relationships and the module has a strongly practical character. (Don’t worry if you don’t have any special computer skills: as long as you can use an internet browser and send a text from a mobile phone, you won’t have any problems.) We cover three major topics during the semester: (i) Online Environments as a Context for Critical Discussion: From Amazon reviews to literary forums, online environments provide endless opportunities to talk about books. Can the research techniques that anthropologists use to investigate off-line communities help us to explore this material? And how can we best characterise what participants are doing when they talk about literature online? (ii) Social Media and Language Change: Online environments provide a rich source of data for changes that currently taking place in English. But are social media particularly innovative spaces linguistically? Does digital technology drive language change? How are new styles and genres emerging on the web? And what tools are available to us for investigating these issues? (iii) Digital Literature: Lastly we think about digital technologies as media for literature itself – hypertext fiction, twitter stories, cell phone novels, text poems (and whatever other innovative forms you can find). Do digital technologies offer writers possibilities that print technology has not? And do we need some new approach to criticism when we engage with works of this kind? * Available on all MAs and pathways (except MA in Theatre and Performance)

LIT6360, Memory and Narrative in Contemporary Literature (30 credits), convened by Prof Sue Vice ([email protected]) This module examines a variety of texts about traumatic memory. The texts range widely both generically (testimony and fiction) and thematically (historical and personal trauma). Particular writers include W G Sebald, Georges Perec, Ian McEwan and Meg Rosoff. The texts will be studied in relation to classic and contemporary theories of trauma, particularly those of Sigmund Freud, Cathy Caruth, and Dominick LaCapra. Attention will be paid to the ways in

10 which narrative form is affected by traumatic content, and the recurrence of certain literary tropes and devices these include the descent to hell, fragmentary or childhood memory, and the photograph. * Available on the MA in English Literature, including American, Creative Writing, Film, Modern and Contemporary pathways

EGH 622 Murderers and Degenerates: Contextualising the fin de siècle Gothic (30 credits), Dr Andrew Smith ([email protected])

The module explores three related case histories which help to establish the ways in which the literary Gothic shaped particular fin de siècle anxieties. To that end the module examines accounts of Joseph Merrick (aka ), newspaper reports of the murders of 1888, and the trials of Oscar Wilde. It is by exploring how the Gothic infiltrated medical, criminological, and legal discourses that we can see how a narrative which centred on the pathologisation of masculinity was elaborated at the time. These case histories will be read alongside Jekyll and Hyde (1886) and Dracula (1897) as two of the key literary texts which also examine medicine, the law, and crucially the urban and gender contexts which in turn shape the three case histories.

LIT6039, Poetry and History (30 Credits) team-taught; convenor Dr Maddy Callaghan ([email protected]) This module looks at poems from the ‘long nineteenth century’ (1719-1874) which have been inspired by public events. Such poems challenge received ideas about poetry in the period as being preoccupied with private or domestic emotion. Examples might include: the French Revolution in Wordsworth and Coleridge; Shelley's Prometheus Unbound and Keats's Fall of Hyperion; Anna Barbauld, ‘Epistle to William Wilberforce, Esq., on the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade’; Byron's Don Juan; Aurora Leigh by Barrett Browning; Tennyson and the end of empire, amongst others. The module will combines close reading of selected lyric or narrative or autobiographical poems with study of contemporary sources and documents. * Available on MAs in English Literature, Eighteenth-Century Studies, Nineteenth-Century Studies

Lit 631 Post-War British Theatre, Film and Television (30 credits) team-taught; convenor Dr David Forrest ([email protected]) This module provides the opportunity for parallel study of the British drama, cinema and television of the post-war period. This era saw the emergence of influential styles, prominent figures and landmark texts in all three artistic forms: e.g. the plays of John Osbourne (Look Back in Anger), television drama (Cathy Come Home) and key British films, such as Ealing comedies (The Man in the White Suit), retrospective war films (The Cruel Sea) and social problem films (Sapphire). The module will explore the evolving post-war cultural landscape to contextualise and critically appraise examples from these interrelated literary, performative and representational media. *Available on the MA in English Literature, including Film, Modern and Contemporary and Creative Writing Pathways

LIT6007, The Rise of The Gothic (30 credits), taught by Professor Angela Wright, ([email protected]) The Rise of the Gothic will examine the transmutations of the Gothic genre in Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the late eighteenth century the Gothic emerged as a powerful discourse well-suited to the tempestuous politics of the time, in such diverse and ‘non-literary fields’ as aesthetics, political theory and polemic, and science. We will chart the rise of the Gothic in Britain through considering these ‘non-literary’ areas beside the ‘literary’ Gothic. We will trace the genre’s influence through its early use of terror, to its changing emphasis upon scientific experimentation and vampire fiction in the nineteenth century. You will emerge from the course with an understanding of the Gothic genre in relation to contemporary and often conflicting discourses of the time. This year, there will also be an optional excursion during the Autumn Semester to the British Library’s exhibition upon ‘Gothic’ in . * Available on the MA in English Literature (and all pathways), Eighteenth-Century Studies, Nineteenth-Century Studies, and Creative Writing; please note that if this popular module is over-subscribed, preference may be given to students on the MAs in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Studies.

LIT6015, Theatre Practice II (30 credits), taught by Professor Steven Nicholson ([email protected])

This studio-based module centres on theatre practice. Students on the module participate in the preparation and presentation of two performance projects. The first is staff-led but involves a high degree of creative input from all participants. Examples might include: devising an original documentary drama; juxtaposing conflicting texts on stage; testing theories through creation of a particular theatrical product. The second project is student-initiated, and will involve creating a performance or practical process which may choose to build on or interrogate ideas explored in the first project or in Theatre Practice 1, or may pursue a new creative direction agreed with the tutor. In both cases,

11 students are assessed on their contribution to and understanding of the work created. The first project is normally a whole group piece. The second project may be another whole group piece, if appropriate, but students are also encouraged to initiate separate or small group projects in pursuit of areas of individual interest.

* Compulsory for MA in Theatre and Performance; only available to suitably qualified students on other programmes by agreement with the programme convenor

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