English Literature

Module Descriptions 2020/21

Level C (i.e. First Year) Modules

Please be aware that all modules are subject to availability. If you have any questions about the modules, please contact calincomingexchangemodules@contacts.bham.ac.uk.

For many of these modules, some experience of studying English Literature may be required, and you should remember this when choosing your modules.

Please note that at the time this document has been prepared (February 2020) the following information is provisional, and there may be minor changes between now and the beginning of 2020/21 academic year.

FULL YEAR MODULES

Students are only permitted to take ONE of the following full year modules.

MODULE TITLE Discovering Digital Cultures A & B

MODULE CODE 33550/33551

CREDITS 10 + 10 (20 in total, cannot be taken separately)

ASSESSMENT METHOD 2 x 2,000 word essay (50% each)

TEACHING TBC

SEMESTER 1&2 (Full year only)

DESCRIPTION

This module considers the implications that digitisation has for traditional Humanities work, including the emergence of the Digital Humanities and Digital Cultures, and explore new kinds of books, films, videogames, and other artworks, as well as the broader cultural effects that they play a part in and reflect. Classes may include: using VR devices, looking at the effects of social media and memes, reading interactive digital texts, and exploring human enhancement with technology.

Led by staff from the Centre for Digital Cultures, this module introduces students to the study of digital technologies from a Humanities, and specifically English Studies, perspective. As digital technologies change our world through new kinds of art, economics, politics, and communication, we need to keep up-to-date and remain a part of shaping our future as well as reading and understanding the history of how and why we’ve arrived at this point.

MODULE TITLE Discovering Medieval Literature A & B

MODULE CODE 33548/33549

CREDITS 10 + 10 (20 in total, cannot be taken separately)

ASSESSMENT METHOD See below

TEACHING TBC

SEMESTER 1&2 (Full year only)

DESCRIPTION

Students will be introduced to some of the earliest writings in English, get hands-on experience of medieval manuscripts, art, and buildings, and discover alternative views and interpretations of the world and the self.

Semester One: The World In semester one, students investigate how medieval writers and artists respond to, represent, and interpret the world. Our starting-point is a visit to the famous mappamundi (map of the world) at Hereford Cathedral. The map introduces us to the themes of this semester: how medieval people imagined their location in the world and the universe; and how they imagined other peoples, locations, animals and the natural world. We will follow up these themes through a wide variety of literary texts, including travel narratives, bestiaries, riddles, and stories of adventure by land and sea. Later in the term we will supplement our literary studies with an external visit, e.g. to the new Staffordshire Hoard Gallery at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery to see the mysterious gold objects decorated with images of animals, birds, fish, snakes etc.

Semester Two: The Self In semester two students investigate how medieval writers and artists respond to, represent, and interpret the self. Our starting-point is an on-campus visit to engage with a cultural collection, e.g. the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, the University’s world-renowned art gallery and museum. Here, we will examine a range of books and objects that were the prized personal possessions of medieval people, for example a jewellery box, a mirror, and beautiful books of hours. These objects will introduce us to the themes of this semester: the inner lives of medieval people, how they constructed their identities and saw the stories of their lives from birth, through love and sex, to death. We will follow up these themes through a wide variety of literary texts, including dreams and visions, love poems, romances of love lost and found, and stories of heroes and heroines. Later in the semester students will be divided into groups for student-led visits to medieval buildings to see how buildings and their artistic and literary collections also tell us about the medieval self (for example, the Guildhall, Coventry; Lichfield Cathedral; Great Malvern Priory).

Assessment: Group/ Individual Anthology - Working in a group, students will contribute to the production of an anthology of essays on one of the themes in a range of texts studied. Each student will contribute a 1,500 word critical essay on one literary text. (45%)

Each student will also contribute to the planning of the anthology, the drafting of the 1,000 word introduction, and the production of the finished anthology (e.g. sourcing illustrations, providing captions, drafting the table of contents). The anthology will receive a group mark. (5%)

1 x 2,000 word essay (50%)

MODULE TITLE Discovering North American Literature A & B

MODULE CODE 33552/33553

CREDITS 10 + 10 (20 in total, cannot be taken separately)

ASSESSMENT METHOD 2 x 2,000 word essay (50% each)

TEACHING TBC

SEMESTER 1&2 (Full year only)

DESCRIPTION

The course focuses on a chronological survey of American texts from the eighteenth century to present day. In Autumn Term, students will concentrate on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Themes may include: the Puritan origins of American literature, American Enlightenment, westward expansion and conquest, transcendentalism, gender, race and slave narratives, the American Gothic, and literary realism and naturalism.

In Spring, students will survey North American texts written during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: themes may include the spread of consumer culture and the emergence of a new kind of American city culture; individual and collective identities; vernacular, folk culture; protest writing; representations of domesticity, relationships, and gender; race; post-war conformity; the counterculture; the Vietnam war; indigenous writing; the changing ethics and politics of a pre- and post-millennium nation.

MODULE TITLE Discovering Shakespeare A & B

MODULE CODE 33554/33555

CREDITS 10 + 10 (20 in total, cannot be taken separately)

ASSESSMENT METHOD 1 x group project (50%) 1 x 2000-word essay (50%)

TEACHING TBC

SEMESTER 1&2 (Full year only)

DESCRIPTION

This module introduces students to the legacy and role of Shakespeare in twentieth and twenty-first century culture. It is divided into four main study blocks, focused on Shakespeare in the theatre and Shakespeare in education, Shakespeare in society and Shakespeare in heritage culture. Students will explore a number of Shakespeare’s plays as they have been and are used and interpreted within these contexts.

SEMESTER 1 MODULES

MODULE TITLE Discovering North American Literature (to 1900)

MODULE CODE 29969

CREDITS 20

ASSESSMENT METHOD 2 x 2,000 word essay (50% each)

TEACHING TBC

SEMESTER 1 (Autumn term only)

Please note, students cannot take this module and 33552/33553 Discovering North American Literature A & B

DESCRIPTION

This module provides a chronological survey of North American literature from the 18th century to the end of the 19th century. Themes that may be considered include: the Puritan origins of American literature, American Enlightenment, westward expansion and conquest, transcendentalism, gender, race and slave narratives, the American Gothic, and literary realism and naturalism. Typical authors may include Benjamin Franklin, Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglass, Emily Dickinson, Harriet Jacobs, Herman Melville, and Edgar Allen Poe.

MODULE TITLE Introduction to American and Canadian Studies

MODULE CODE 29968

CREDITS 20

ASSESSMENT METHOD Group Research Project – 20-minute presentation (50%) 2,000 word essay (50%)

TEACHING TBC

SEMESTER 1 (Autumn term only)

DESCRIPTION

This module introduces students to the interdisciplinary field of American and Canadian Studies. In essence it asks students to consider what it means to be American or Canadian. Students will consider if there is such a thing as a national culture and identity in the United States and Canada and they will examine the often-fierce debate over who can and cannot be an American or a Canadian. The module will consider a diverse set of works from literature to history to cultural criticism to the visual arts. It will contemplate how Americans and Canadians from different backgrounds, living in different eras, have understood and argued over the meaning and significance of an American or Canadian national identity.

MODULE TITLE Prose

MODULE CODE 27933

CREDITS 20

ASSESSMENT METHOD 1,500 word essay (35%) 2 hour seen examination (65%)

TEACHING TBC

SEMESTER 1 (Autumn term only)

DESCRIPTION

This module introduces students to a range of styles and stylistic devices that constitute writing in prose. They will explore how a variety of authors across a wide historical and geographical spectrum think about prose as a literary medium distinct from, but interacting with, other forms of writing, such as poetry. Time will be spent analysing how prose works and the different grammatical and rhetorical devices it employs as well as thinking about the modes of writing with which it has become associated (e.g. the novel and short story, essay writing, confessional memoir and prose-poem). Students will be introduced to a diverse field of critical approaches and will practice writing clear and thoughtful sentences and paragraphs of their own in order to develop their academic prose style.

SEMESTER 2 MODULES

MODULE TITLE Discovering North American Literature (1900 onwards)

MODULE CODE 29971

CREDITS 20

ASSESSMENT METHOD 2 x 2,000 word essay (50% each)

TEACHING TBC

SEMESTER 2 (Spring term only)

Please note, students cannot take this module and 33552/33553 Discovering North American Literature A & B

DESCRIPTION

This module provides a chronological survey of North American texts written during the 20th and 21st centuries. Themes that may be considered include: the spread of consumer culture and the emergence of a new kind of American city culture; individual and collective identities; vernacular, folk culture; protest writing; representations of domesticity, relationships, and gender; race; post-war conformity; the counterculture; the Vietnam war; indigenous writing; the changing ethics and politics of a pre- and post-millennium nation.

MODULE TITLE Research Skills in American and Canadian Studies

MODULE CODE 29972

CREDITS 20

ASSESSMENT METHOD 1 x group project (50%) 1 x 2000-word essay (50%)

TEACHING TBC

SEMESTER 2 (Spring term only)

DESCRIPTION

This module will enable students to develop skills of independent research and constructive team working which they will use throughout their American and Canadian Studies degree (and beyond). The module will give students first-hand experience of the interdisciplinary character of ACS research. They will learn to identify and frame a valid, intellectually coherent research question; identify, find and consider the sources they will use and how they will use them; and engage with the diverse group of methods that defines ACS scholarship. Students will interact and work with staff from different academic and research backgrounds to consider different modes of analysis.