English Modules

The English modules listed below will be offered in academic year 2012-2013. Please note that the modules listed may be subject to change and that final module selection will depend on academic approval of your module choice at both the point of application and the academic advising session before Matriculation.

Level 3

EN32009 - Contemporary Literature

30 credits, Semester 1
This module introduces a range of British Literature since 1950 and aims to develop a working knowledge of aesthetic and cultural paradigms relevant to the period, including postmodernism, late modernism, the absurd, neorealism and metafiction. The module will address topics and issues such as the politics of identity, the representation of history, the problematics of subjectivity, sexual and cultural difference, and ideas of centrality and marginality through a consideration of poetry, drama and fiction.

EN32020 - Film Art

30 credits, Semester 2
This module will look at various aspects of film studies such as the art film, the avant-garde and animation to examine the idea of cinema as an art form. It will consider notions of film as a narrative and industrial medium. It will also explore film's relation to older art forms - such as music and painting - and other facets of popular culture.

EN31013 - European Cinema Since 1960

30 credits, Semester 1
This course will provide an introduction to European cinema from the 1960s to the present day. It will examine key movements such as the Nouvelle Vague and the work of leading Directors - such as Fellini, Godard and Herzog - while also looking at notions of art cinema, national cinema and European cinema's relationship with Hollywood.

EN32003 - Mediaeval Literature

30 credits, Semester 1
This module introduces students to key texts from the mediaeval period. Students will become familiar with the main literary genres of the 14th and 15th centuries through a detailed study of a selection of mediaeval poetry, drama and prose, read in Modern English translation.

EN31006 - Other Americas

30 credits, Semester 1
The aims of the module are to explore issues of difference and community in contemporary American society and to examine ways in which oppositional voices are represented. Materials for discussion include film as well as literary texts.

EN31011 - Post-Colonial Texts

30 credits, Semester 1
How do writers bear witness to social, cultural and political changes in the aftermath of empire? What is at stake in the definition of cultural identity? Why choose to write in English? This module addresses the impact of colonialism on a small selection of literary and filmic texts from Africa, the Caribbean, Britain and Canada.

EN32005 - Modernism and Modernity

30 credits, Semester 1
This module studies poetry and fiction from 1890-1945. It explores the concept of Modernism, as a series of experimental styles, in relation to modernity, the social and political contexts Modernism responded to (such as technological change, urbanism, psychology, feminism, and the Great War).

EN31007 - Romantic and Gothic Literature

30 credits, Semester 1
This course studies the poetry, prose and fiction of the Romantic Period (1780-1830). Among the topics discussed are the literature of Sensibility, the Gothic Novel, the Sublime and the Beautiful, Oriental Fictions, women poets and Romanticism, landscape and the City. Writers featured on the course include Jane Austen, Anne Radcliffe, Mathew Lewis, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Thomas de Quincey.

EN32001 - American Literature

30 credits, Semester 2
This course confines itself to the 19th century before, during, and after the civil war. It examines the roots and nature of individualism, and the tensions created by such individualism within an emergent society. There are also two first-person slave narratives on the course, along with major prose and poetry by women.

EN32008 - Victorian Literature

30 credits, Semester 2
This module increases students' knowledge of writing in the Victorian period, particularly the novel and poetry, by considering Victorian writing in its literary and cultural context.

EN32006 - Vision in Film, Literature and Culture

30 credits, Semester 2
This module focuses on the meaning and nature of the visual, the representation of vision and the act of looking or watching. These issues are addressed through a diverse range of texts, including film, television drama, literature, art theory, cultural theory and theory of photography.

EN32021 - Introduction to Creative Writing Practice

30 credits, Semester 1
A practical fast-starting course based around four intensive four hour workshops designed to motivate students' writing practice and experiment across a range of genres and styles. Assessment is by submission of a folio of creative work and two essays.

EN32010 - Writing as Making: Poetics and Creativity

30 credits, Semester 2
What are the basic elements of writing, and how are these organised in prose and poetry? When writing succeeds, and when it fails, why is this? Are there kinds of literary awareness which writers need to have, regardless of what they write; and are these forms of literary sensibility transferable from one genre to another? Using a series of samples and extracts from canonical texts to explore what has made for good (and not so good) creative writing in the past, including important theoretical statements from a range of literary thinkers, this module will seek to learn practical lessons from such exemplars.

EN32011 - Shakespeare

30 credits, Semester 2
This module will explore Shakespeare's plays from several different perspectives, including genre, context, and adaptation. The first part of the module will look at Shakespeare's comedies, tragedies and the history plays, while the later part of the module will look at adaptations, both on stage and on screen. A selection of plays by Shakespeare, including Henry V, Richard II, King Lear, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest, as well as film versions of the plays.