English and Journalism | BA (Hons) | University of Lincoln

An Introduction to Your Modules

† Some courses may offer optional modules. The availability of optional modules may vary from year to year and will be subject to minimum student numbers being achieved. This means that the availability of specific optional modules cannot be guaranteed. Optional module selection may also be affected by staff availability.

Essential Journalism 1 2022-23JOU1091MLevel 42022-23This module will be a blend of practice and theory and aims to create a progression through the key journalistic skills needed to tell stories on the most appropriate platform using traditional, digital and mobile media. This module aims to develop a rounded awareness of the media and to give students the skills and insight that equip them to develop further in levels two and three. The focus is on newsgathering and storytelling skills. The way design influences different media is also analysed.CoreEssential Law 2022-23JOU1092MLevel 42022-23Journalism students are required to abide by the law, in terms of newsgathering and research methods, data collection and retention, use of communication networks, publishing and broadcasting material to audiences. This module aims to introduce students to the legal system, to the operation of the courts, and examines the impact of legislation and codes of practice on the work of journalists.CoreIntroduction to Journalism Studies 2022-23JOU1090MLevel 42022-23Journalism is a key activity not simply in the communication of news and current affairs, but as a primary definer of social, political and psychological contexts in which we live and work as citizens in the twenty-first century. This module introduces students to key cultural, commercial and technological developments that have shaped the modern media, exploring those developments in terms of their history as well as the social impacts of modern mass communications.CoreTexts in Time: Medieval to Romantic 2022-23ENL1070MLevel 42022-23Texts in Time: Medieval to Romantic introduces students to a variety of materials from a range of cultural and historical contexts from the 12th century to 1830, and to methods of reading historically. Students will thus build a foundation on writers and historical periods which they can choose to pursue in greater detail at levels 2 and 3. Students will examine literature in English in a range of forms, such as poetry, drama, fiction, and essays, and the conditions under which these materials were created. There will be a particular emphasis throughout the module on questions concerning the self in society and the cultural tensions that arise when different understandings or definitions of identity clash. The chosen texts will demonstrate and explore understandings of the self in relation to matters such as sex, gender, race, nationality, class, religion, and age.CoreTexts in Time: Victorian to Contemporary 2022-23ENL1071MLevel 42022-23Texts in Time: Victorian to Contemporary introduces students to a variety of materials from a range of cultural and historical contexts from 1830 to the present, and to methods of reading historically. Students will thus build a foundation on writers and historical periods which they can choose to pursue in greater detail at levels 2 and 3. Students will examine literature in English in a range of forms, such as poetry, drama, fiction, and essays, and the conditions under which these materials were created. There will be a particular emphasis throughout the module on questions concerning the self in society and the cultural tensions that arise when different understandings or definitions of identity clash. The chosen texts will demonstrate and explore understandings of the self in relation to matters such as sex, gender, race, nationality, class, religion, and age.CoreDis-Locations: the Literature of Late Capitalism 2023-24ENL2023MLevel 52023-24Fragmentation, uncertainty and conflict characterise a world in aftermath of war, at end of empire, and at the beginning of a period of radical social and cultural change. This module aims to chart the emergence of the contemporary world from these fractured beginnings through an introduction to British literature of the period 19502000. From the post-war Windrush migration to the rise of the historical novel at the turn of the millennium, the Angry Young Men to new feminist perspectives and postcolonialism, this module explores relevant theoretical perspectives on the late 20th Century and encourages an appreciation of the relationship between texts and their social, political and cultural contexts.CoreResearch methods 2023-24JOU2289MLevel 52023-24This module is designed to equip students with the understanding of research design and methods for undertaking research. The module gives students the opportunity to develop their observational, analytical and writing skills. It has vocational relevance in enabling students to select a relevant research topic for in-depth analysis and evaluation in their final year.CoreTheory Wars 2023-24ENL2017MLevel 52023-24This module considers the range of theories that we can use when we read and think about literature. Students will have the opportunity to study psychoanalysis, feminism, Marxism and postmodernism, among others, to think about why and how we structure meaning and interpretation in certain ways. We consider questions such as what is an author?, what is gender? and why do certain things frighten us? through theorists such as Roland Barthes, Judith Butler and Sigmund Freud.CoreAfter The End: Reading the Apocalypse 2023-24ENL2027MLevel 52023-24This module explores apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic texts using a range of novels, short stories, poems and films. Lectures will establish cultural and historical contexts and address issues such as form and genre. The module will explore a range of significant periods from early Judeo-Christian fears regarding the purging moral apocalypse, through Romantic preoccupations with nature and industrialisation, postmodernism and more contemporary concerns about viral or cybernetic apocalypse. We will draw from a range of disciplines including literary theory, psychoanalysis, cultural theory, philosophy and trauma theory.OptionalAmerican Literature I 2023-24ENL2024MLevel 52023-24This module explores the nineteenth-century literature of the USA, chiefly focusing on fiction and poetry. Authors covered include Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Walt Whitman and Willa Cather, among others.OptionalAmerican Literature II 2023-24ENL2025MLevel 52023-24This module covers a broad range of twentieth-century American fiction and poetry. Beginning with Fitzgerald, other authors studied include Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, Toni Morrison, Thomas Pynchon and David Foster Wallace.OptionalArthur and His Court 2023-24ENL2043MLevel 52023-24This module examines Arthurian narratives, myths, and traditions within a variety of contexts and media, and traces a variety of themes associated with Arthur and his court, including history and national identity; violence; kingship and rule; loyalty and betrayal; and love, sex, and gender roles. Students will be expected to assess the importance of a myth that spans more than a millennium and address how medieval texts made meaning within their specific socio-cultural situations, as well as how later periods make meaning through their deployment of the medieval in new contexts.OptionalBritish Medieval Literature 2023-24ENL2044MLevel 52023-24This module examines key British medieval texts, primarily in Middle English, from the High and Late Middle Ages (that is, from approximately the twelfth century to fifteenth century). It explores the breadth of literary activity in the period through a variety of genres--such as debate poetry, ethnographies, beast fables, romance, dream visions, satire, devotional and mystical writings, and mystery plays--and the evolution of a new form of English (the precursor of modern English), revealing that the medieval period is, in truth, a far cry from the misnomer by which it is often identified, the dark ages.OptionalClass, Power and Performance on Stage and Screen 2023-24ENL2029MLevel 52023-24OptionalClassic and Contemporary Fantasy 2023-24ENL2064MLevel 52023-24This module examines one of the most varied literary genres extant, one that, at times, is often relegated to the margins because of its slippery nature. Students will examine early examples of fantasy and trace the genres development across a number of key historical epochs, from the classical and medieval periods to the twenty-first century. They will consider especially Tolkien as a pivotal force in the growth of fantasy literature and theory, as well as The Inklings, a group whose works had a profound influence on the evolution of the genre in the twentieth century. A range of subgenres of the fantastic will be explored, which may include high and low fantasy, ironic fantasy, historical fantasy, or magic realism, and, alongside primary texts, they will read selections from modern theoretical and critical texts that articulate different interpretations and approaches to the fantastic.OptionalEthics and International Human Rights for Journalists 2023-24JOU2006MLevel 52023-24This module aims to highlight the importance of human rights issues to the practice of journalism and aims to develop students awareness of the range of ethical issues facing journalists.OptionalExperimental Writing 2023-24ENL2066MLevel 52023-24This module, conceptually, textually, formally, and intellectually challenging, is designed to introduce students to a range of innovative literatures, in a variety of forms, in order both to interrogate the idea of experimental writing, and its own often aggressive interrogation of the expressive potential of literature.OptionalHistories of Journalism 2023-24JOU2290MLevel 52023-24This module extends the study of the history of journalism into the twentieth century. It provides students with the opportunity to critically consider the historical background to some of the issues which feature in contemporary news agendas for example students may have the opportunity to discuss the reporting of war; changes in the National Health Service; critique of care in the community relating to mental health, the export of American culture and Globalisation; the impact of ethnicity on politics and culture particularly in terms of EU debates; etc. Appropriate emphasis will be placed upon the role of the press in recording these social and political developments.OptionalJournalism and Society 2023-24JOU2285MLevel 52023-24The role of the media as a 'mirror' of society means that journalists encounter cross-cultural issues in their newsgathering and news processing functions. This module aims to prepare students to write stories with cultural sensitivity, care and compassion.OptionalJournalism Production 2: Project 2023-24JOU2292MLevel 52023-24This module gives the students the opportunity to specialise in a medium of their choice. In consultation with tutors, students will be able to produce radio or television bulletins, features and magazine programmes, a web site with multimedia content or print magazines and newspapers. More advanced skills appropriate to each medium will be taught and workshops will be tutor led and supervised as required. Materials produced will be outward facing where appropriate.OptionalLaw, Ethics and Regulation 2023-24JOU2287MLevel 52023-24This module aims to build on legal and administrative knowledge gleaned in Essential Law at Level One. It examines how criminal and civil legislation affecting print, online and broadcast journalists has developed; identifies areas of conflict and uncertainty; and requires students to apply knowledge of legislation and case law to given scenarios, including responses to actions in the civil courts.OptionalLiterature of the Fin de Sicle 2023-24ENL2065MLevel 52023-24This module examines some of the preoccupations of the fin de sicle through a series of texts and authors who helped to shape the cultural climate of the 1880s-1900s. These decades gave rise to a pervasive feeling of vital urgency and exhilaration in Britain, as well as a conflicted sense that society was teetering on a cliff edge of irredeemable degeneration. Texts will be read alongside and in light of social and political developments, such as anxieties about Britains empire and position on the global stage, evolution and degeneration, sexual identity, womens rights, the rise of occultism and spiritualism, Decadence, and radical politics. The study of fin de sicle writing will be set against the backdrop of the infamous Oscar Wilde trial, and the sensationalised Jack the Ripper murders, contemporary anxieties about criminality, the empire, and eugenics.OptionalMaking It New: An Introduction to Literary Modernism 2023-24ENL2016MLevel 52023-24In this module students will have the opportunity to explore the early twentieth century, one of the most creative periods in English literature, when writers like James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf and D.H. Lawrence were challenging conventional ways of writing and reading, and rewriting how we experience and understand the world and ourselves. Required reading will include some of the most powerful works from the modern movement between 1910 and 1940 including James Joyces Ulysses and T.S. Eliots The Waste Land.OptionalModern Drama (Level 2) 2023-24ENL2011MLevel 52023-24OptionalPostcolonialism 2023-24ENL2022MLevel 52023-24This module examines literary representations of the world that emerge from the history of European exploration and expansion, and considers literary responses from groups that were marginalized through imperialism. Students will be encouraged to look at the treatment by white writers of issues of race and empire in the early twentieth century. They will also have the opportunity to explore ways in which postcolonial literatures develop strategies of 'writing back' to the imperial centre and re-thinking identity in terms of race, gender and nation. The final section offers a study of postcolonial Britain and some global implications of postcolonial writing.OptionalRenaissance Literature 2023-24ENL2018MLevel 52023-24Students studying Renaissance Literature have the opportunity to look in detail at a range of texts from the late Elizabethan period to the mid-1630s, including work by Shakespeare, John Donne, Ben Jonson and Mary Wroth. They also have the chance to explore the historical and cultural contexts in which these texts were produced, and the effects that they had on the politics and culture of the British Isles in the period. Lectures aim to examine post-Reformation England and late humanism, patronage, gender relations, early modern literary theory, education and philosophy.OptionalRestoration Literature 2023-24ENL2021MLevel 52023-24Students taking Restoration Literature, the companion module to Renaissance Literature, can study in detail a range of texts written between the era of the English Civil War and the first decade of the eighteenth Century, including work by John Milton; Andrew Marvell; Aphra Behn; and John Wilmot, the 2nd Earl of Rochester. Students have the opportunity to also study the historical and cultural contexts in which these texts were produced. Lectures aim to examine the origins and effects of the civil war, the ethics of rebellion and reform, the Restoration theatre, religious controversies, gender relations, developing philosophical thought and Restoration manners.OptionalRomanticism: Literature 1780-1830 2022-23ENL2063MLevel 52022-23Students will study English literature of the Romantic period (1780-1830), including poetry, fiction, autobiography, and political polemic. The module will address revolutions in politics and literary form and ideas of nature, the sublime, sensibility and feeling, abolition and slavery, Enlightenment feminism, the Gothic, Orientalism, and childhood. Students will have the opportunity to study works by writers including William Wordsworth, William Blake, Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, and Olaudah Equiano, placing them in their cultural context.OptionalStudy Period Abroad - English and Journalism 2023-24ENL2031MLevel 52023-24This module provides an opportunity for English and Journalism joint honours students to spend a semester at second level studying at one of the Universitys partner institutions, developing academically and personally. During the semester abroad students undertake a course load at the partner institution of equivalent standard to that of one semester of the programme at Lincoln. Participation in study abroad also offers unique opportunities for personal student development in the wider sense, taking in cultural, sporting and social opportunities. In order to participate, students are usually expected to obtain a 2:1 or higher at Level 1, have a good record of attendance and participation, and must complete an application process. A limited number of places will be available each year, and participation is at the discretion of the Study Abroad Co-ordinators and the Programme Leaders.OptionalSpecialist Journalism 2024-25JOU3142MLevel 62024-25Students have the opportunity to examine and analyse their chosen specialism across a wide range of publications, from general readership websites, magazines, and newspapers to specialist and niche publications aimed at the 'expert'. Students can study the particular attributes needed for specialist journalism including: authority, expertise, ability to access specialist information and format requirements. Throughout this module, students will select one particular strand to focus on in order to develop their specialism in the following indicative areas: sport, music, fashion, science, arts or business.CoreA Dream Deferred: Class in American Literature 2024-25ENL3072MLevel 62024-25OptionalAmerican Detective Fiction and Film: 1930 to the Present Day 2024-25ENL3081MLevel 62024-25Why have detective narratives proved so enduringly popular? This module will interrogate the iconic figure of the private eye in American popular culture, through the fiction and film of the twentieth and twenty-first century.OptionalComparative Media History 2024-25JOU3006MLevel 62024-25This module aims to enable students to appreciate trends and changes within the main media industries (press, radio, TV, cinema, music and the internet) on a comparative basis between countries and between platforms. The module offers an opportunity to understand how the media has reached the state it is now in, and what trends are likely to continue in the future.OptionalContemporary Drama 2024-25ENL3004MLevel 62024-25OptionalGenre and Popular Culture 2024-25AME3015MLevel 62024-25OptionalGothic in Literature and Film 2024-25ENL3006MLevel 62024-25Monsters and attics, desolate landscapes, imprisonment and pursuit: the gothic genre emerged in the late eighteenth century to depict our darkest fears and desires. Termed 'the literature of nightmare', gothic departs from a realistic mode of representation and employs a powerful means of symbolic expression. Students are given the opportunity to investigate ways in which the genre has explored psychological and political anxieties, and themes of sexual and social transgression. We consider literary texts from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries, including literature and film, and we give attention to sub-genres such as female gothic, imperial gothic and childrens gothic.OptionalGrowing Up and Growing Old: Youth and Age across the Nineteenth Century 2024-25ENL3080MLevel 62024-25This module explores what it meant to grow up and to grow old in the nineteenth century, through often contradictory accounts of experiencing age categories from childhood to old age. Students will have the opportunity to examine various constructions of ageing, to reflect on age as a crucial facet of identity. This module considers age as a lens to explore the nineteenth century as a transitional period of growth and expansion as well as decay and decline, through a range of Romantic and Victorian texts.OptionalIndependent Study: English 2024-25ENL3043MLevel 62024-25In this module students have the opportunity to research in depth an author or topic of their choosing. Students are expected to commence research over the summer between Levels 2 and 3 and, on their return, have regular, one-to-one meetings with a tutor who is a research specialist in that field. The supervisor offers advice and direction, but primarily this module encourages independent research leading to the production of a 10,000 word dissertation.OptionalInternational Media Policies 2024-25JOU3131MLevel 62024-25This module examines broadcasting structures in the UK and in other countries. It aims to develop students critical understanding of models of national broadcasting and the implications for media policy and mass media's role in society. The module aims to introduce students to the fundamental contexts of national, cultural and economic systems which inform the development of media policy debates.OptionalIrish Writing since 1900 2024-25ENL3071MLevel 62024-25This module is designed to examine how terms such as Ireland and Irishness have been constructed and questioned across the last century, a period of immense and often turbulent historical and social change. It aims to explore the representation of place, the nature of nationalism, the changing family unit, gender roles and Ireland's relationship to globalization in Irish poetry, drama and fiction.OptionalJournalism Independent Study 2024-25JOU3016MLevel 62024-25Students undertake a dissertation topic of their choice within their chosen field of study and are expected to apply theoretical concepts to their research. They will be allocated an individual tutor to support their work but students are expected to demonstrate a high degree of personal commitment and to work on their own initiative.OptionalJournalism Production 3: Minor Project 2024-25JOU3144MLevel 62024-25Working on an individual basis, students will have the opportunity to produce project work in either broadcast, news and magazine brands, online and sport. It is expected that the resulting work will be at industry-standard and suitable for public consumption. An advanced level of editorial and production skills will be expected, including story and idea origination, news and feature management and agenda setting, along with an awareness of the differing journalistic treatment demanded by each medium. Students will be expected to be work on their own initiative, making their own editorial decisions, with tutor supervision.OptionalJournalists on the Screen 2024-25JOU3015MLevel 62024-25The purpose of this module is to examine and critically compare the different representations of journalists to be found in film and assess the relation between these portrayals and continuing moral and political issues faced by the profession. The module expects students to study movies in which journalists are portrayed as leading characters.OptionalLife Writing 2024-25ENL3032MLevel 62024-25This module responds to the recent interest in the representation of lives within literary studies. It discusses a range of life representations (including biography, autobiography, letters, confessions, memoirs, and poems) from the Romantic period to the contemporary moment. Students may consider the origins of autobiography, address Modernist experiments with life representations, and discuss twentieth-century and contemporary innovations, including disability narratives and cross-cultural autobiographies. Themes such as the construction of selfhood, conceptions of memory, the relational self, and the ethics of life writing are addressed.OptionalLiterature and the Environment 2024-25ENL3050MLevel 62024-25The first principle of ecological thinking is that it is not only human beings that are meaningful, and that we are neither so separate from, nor so dominant over, the non-human as we tend to think. In this module students can explore what difference it makes to read literature from this perspective. We study literature as part of our complex interaction with our environment, and, perhaps sometimes, as a uniquely valuable one. Students can read texts from ancient Greek pastoral to contemporary dystopias, and from the poet John Clare to the woodland historian Oliver Rackham.OptionalLiterature and the Visual, 17701870 2024-25ENL3095MLevel 62024-25OptionalLiterature, Film and Gender 2024-25ENL3005MLevel 62024-25OptionalLost in the Funhouse: Experimental American Literary Fiction Since the Sixties 2024-25ENL3011MLevel 62024-25OptionalMadness, The Body, Literature 2024-25ENL3069MLevel 62024-25OptionalMonsters and Violence in Middle English Romance 2024-25ENL3077MLevel 62024-25This module explores the representation of East-West contact in Middle English romances, with a particular emphasis on the interlacement of racial and ethnic otherness and on different types of violence, from martial exploits and religious coercion to rape and cannibalism. Students will have the chance to experience the breadth of the romance genreits many thematic and topical branches, and its many sub-genres and their respective conventionsas well as insight to the actual act of crusading, and the cultural and social crises that arose from this act.OptionalMoving Home: Literatures of American Migration 2024-25ENL3070MLevel 62024-25OptionalPeace and Conflict Reporting 2024-25JOU3005MLevel 62024-25This module explores the history of war reporting and the ways in which journalists have represented conflicts. It also considers the reasons why some conflicts are marginalised, ignored altogether or given extensive coverage by the mainstream media. It studies theoretical aspects and practical implications of conflict-sensitive reporting.OptionalPolitical Journalism 2024-25JOU3146MLevel 62024-25This module is designed for students who have an interest in the theory and practice of political reporting, building on teaching at earlier levels of the programme relating to British and European political institutions. It focuses on two areas: political theory and the practice of political reporting. Increasingly, journalists need a critical understanding of the underlying concepts for political acting such as liberty, justice, rights, law, and how they are realised in our contemporary democracies. The module will discuss the crisis of our modern democracy and the concept of post-democracy. It will also reflect on the essential role the media hold within our democracies. The practical element will focus on the sourcing of political stories and on various models of political storytelling. It will further look at how digital journalism and the social media have changed political journalism.OptionalPostmodernism: Apocalypse and Genesis 1967-2000 2024-25ENL3031MLevel 62024-25This module will explore the nature of the contemporary through analysis of selected literary texts. The initial date, 1967, has been chosen as it marks a point of transition from a post-war world based upon a liberal consensus to a time of radical uncertainty, extreme and experimental forms of expression, the breakdown of notions of realism in all the arts, sciences and philosophy. Literature, alongside the radicalisation of all intellectual concepts, including reason and common-sense, has played a significant role in debating, illustrating, and disseminating these new ways of thinking both in terms of form and content.OptionalProfessional Placement 2024-25JOU3022MLevel 62024-25Work experience is seen as essential in today's competitive jobs market. This module aims to give students the opportunity to experience the industries that can be linked to their studies, gain vital skills which may prepare them for the job market and also establish and maintain links with industry professionals who may help them in their chosen career.OptionalScience Fiction 2024-25ENL3036MLevel 62024-25This module considers the genre of modern science fiction and its evolution into one of todays most popular narrative genres. Analysing a variety of forms novel, short story, drama, graphic novel and film students will have the opportunity to examine the socio-historical contexts of some of the most influential narratives of this period. This ranges from the emergence of scientific romance in the late nineteenth century, to late twentieth-century forms like cyberpunk and radical fantasy; from the problems of defining genre fictions and privileging science fiction over fantasy, to our enduring fascination with alternate histories, non-human agents (robots, animals, genetic hybrids, the environment), ecocatastrophe and post-apocalypse.OptionalSex, Texts and Politics: The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer 2024-25ENL3078MLevel 62024-25This module concentrates on the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, with a particular emphasis on The Canterbury Tales, perhaps Chaucers most famous work. Students will have the opportunity to examine the General Prologue and a variety of tales in relation to their historical context and literary antecedents, and, throughout, specific attention will be given to questions of genre (ranging from fable and epic to satire and romance), literary authority, narrative construction, and medieval aesthetics.OptionalShakespeare I 2024-25ENL3074MLevel 62024-25This module provides an opportunity for students to study the works of Shakespeare in detail. The dissemination, influence, and adaptation of Shakespeare is unrivalled, and without an understanding of the conventions that the works dissolved and those that they initiated, a full appreciation of the canon of English literature is inevitably lessened. This modules challenges Shakespeares status as an icon of tradition and elitism by reading the texts in the light of recent developments in critical theory, and by locating them in the culture of their age. Students will be invited to examine the ways in which different theoretical approaches might have a bearing upon the interpretation of Shakespeare, they will also be conversant with the religious climate of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the conditions of performance and play-going in Shakespeares theatre, and the significant cultural and historical events of the period.OptionalShakespeare II 2024-25ENL3075MLevel 62024-25This module allows students to study the works of the Bard in detail, and to read them in the light of critical theory and literary history. Shakespeares plays are a cornerstone of the canon of English literature, but in wider culture they are often treated as inflexible repositories of truth and human nature. This module will resist such approaches, and concentrate instead upon the ways in which the plays address the concerns of their day, as well as how they have been made to signify in other eras. Students can develop an understanding of how Shakespeares work dealt with early modern dramatic conventions, politics, and thought; how it addressed questions of history, religion, and race; and how it shaped the culture within which it was written. This module considers Shakespeares mature comedies, histories, and tragedies.OptionalSingle Author Study A 2024-25ENL3085MLevel 62024-25This module allows students to pursue an in-depth study of one authors literary or dramatic works. The author of choice varies from year to year according to academics current research interests, but potential authors may include writers of fiction and/or poetry such as Angela Carter, Charlotte Bronte, Iain Banks, Thomas Pynchon, M.R.James, Jane Austen and Sylvia Plath; and dramatists such as Caryl Churchill, Thomas Middleton, Aphra Behn, Ben Johnson and debbie tucker green. Students will explore the writers oeuvre in terms of themes, style, and engagement with form and genre traditions, and with contemporary cultural debates. We also address practicalities of authorship such as the role of editors, publishing/performance formats, and different readerships/audiences. Students will also consider the writers legacies including the afterlife of their works in adaptation. As well as studying texts, students will engage with conceptual debates about the role of the author : is attention to the authors life an outmoded and over-deterministic approach to the study of a text? or a necessary part of contextualisation? As we scrutinise the figure of the author in biography, literary societies, literary tourism and popular culture, we ask : what purposes does the author as a cultural construction serve ? and does this have anything to do with reading?OptionalSingle Author Study B 2024-25ENL3086MLevel 62024-25This module allows students to pursue an in-depth study of one authors literary or dramatic works. The author of choice varies from year to year according to academics current research interests, but potential authors may include writers of fiction and/or poetry such as Angela Carter, Charlotte Bronte, Iain Banks, Thomas Pynchon, M.R.James, Jane Austen and Sylvia Plath; and dramatists such as Caryl Churchill, Thomas Middleton, Aphra Behn, Ben Johnson and debbie tucker green. Students will explore the writers oeuvre in terms of themes, style, and engagement with form and genre traditions, and with contemporary cultural debates. We also address practicalities of authorship such as the role of editors, publishing/performance formats, and different readerships/audiences. Students will also consider the writers legacies including the afterlife of their works in adaptation. As well as studying texts, students will engage with conceptual debates about the role of the author : is attention to the authors life an outmoded and over-deterministic approach to the study of a text? or a necessary part of contextualisation? As we scrutinise the figure of the author in biography, literary societies, literary tourism and popular culture, we ask : what purposes does the author as a cultural construction serve ? and does this have anything to do with reading?OptionalSouthern Accents 2024-25ENL3009MLevel 62024-25This optional module explores representations of the southern states of America in prose fiction, film, drama and music. In the first section southern stereotypes and resistant representations, produced by southerners and others, are examined in relation to social, political and historical contexts. This is followed by a section on African American representations of the south. Finally, a section on music and vernacular traditions explores the influence of the south on American popular music. Students are encouraged to adopt an interdisciplinary approach to examine questions of regional identity in a wide range of texts.OptionalThe Literature of Childhood 2024-25ENL3010MLevel 62024-25This module explores how childhood is constructed in a wide range of literary texts texts by adults for adults, by adults for children, and by children themselves. Underpinning the module is the notion of childhood as a cultural construct into which writers invest various, even contradictory, meanings. Students have the opportunity to explore texts by adults who idealise or demonise the child to suit their personal and philosophical agendas. Students may then analyse the mixture of didactic and therapeutic agendas in enduring genres of childrens literature such as the fairytale, adventure story and cautionary tale. Finally, we turn to children as authors in a study of juvenilia.OptionalTwenty-First Century British Fiction 2024-25ENL3079MLevel 62024-25This module aims to explore new thematic trends, stylistic innovations and cultural developments in post-millennial British fiction, including a focus on globalising processes, transnational migration and digital technology. The module also addresses the development (and rethinking of the concepts) of gender and class in literature of the period and account for the continuing importance of the literary form in an age of digital publishing.OptionalWomens Writing and Feminist Theory 2024-25ENL3002MLevel 62024-25Students can study a diverse range of prose, poetry, and drama written by women from the eighteenth century to the present is considered alongside key concepts in feminist theory and the history of the womens movement. Writers range from Mary Wollstonecraft to Zora Neale Hurston to Jeanette Winterson. Topics range from the feminine aesthetic and French feminism to feminist utopianism and cyberfeminism.Optional

Key Information

BA (Hons) English and Journalism

Key Information

Welcome to BA (Hons) English and Journalism

How You Study

What You Need to Know

An Introduction to Your Modules

How you are assessed

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Course-Specific Additional Costs

Entry Requirements 2022-23

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