(MA) English Literature

This module investigates how integrating interdisciplinary research methods and digital Humanities have challenged, changed and stretched English Studies. It explores the critical and methodological approaches at the core of contemporary literary studies by engaging with developing, recent, and up-and-coming theories and research methods that shape current research and those that are emerging and will shape future trends and open new possibilities to further knowledge.

Critiquing and Theorising Literature aims to keep students’ scholarship and interaction with the discipline current debates through contemporary scholarly inquiries, theories, and proposals. It advances and consolidates their awareness of the models of research and theoretical frameworks and their role as researchers in terms of ethics and integrity. It will engage students with a range of theoretical approaches and critical frameworks to reflect on research methodology and scholarship

This module focuses on scholarly models based upon periodization, historical context and concepts of the literary ‘moment’. It is part of a suite of four fifteen-credit modules complementing the literary critical approaches and methodologies outlined in the core third-credit module, ELI70921.

Literature in Time investigates how period-based approaches reflect upon literature’s relationship to the past and explores how subjects and texts are produced in and respond to an historical ‘moment’ such as an event, year, decade, or period. Through an engagement with a selection of texts and historical materials, students will be required to consider the interactions of literary and other cultural discourses. The module will reflect on modes of understanding and conceptualising the past, and it will evaluate the validity of period-based approaches to literature.

This module focuses on the concept of literary genre and explores how literary texts and subjects have come to be understood in terms of shared literary forms and traditions. It is part of a suite of four fifteen-credits modules complementing the literary critical approaches and methodologies outlined in the core thirty-credit module, ELI70921.

Framing Genre will study a single genre across a variety of literary texts by different authors, published in different periods to examine the importance of characteristic genre features in relation to thematic content and literary technique. The module also promotes an awareness of patterns of stylistic experiment and revision in the development of genre studies. It further develops students’ ability to recognise and define characteristic literary
features, subjects and styles. Furthermore, it offers the opportunity to reflect on the development of literary genres, their theorisation, and their reception.

This module investigates the complexities of the poetics and politics of representing identity in English Studies through current and up-and-coming theories and critical perspectives that expand literary studies. It explores relationships between identity formation and the aesthetic and semantic qualities of narrative, poetry, and dramaturgy. Identity studies offers an interdisciplinary framework to re-examine sex, gender, sexual orientation, race and ethnicity, culture and nation with an emphasis upon issues of equality, diversity and inclusion.

Poetics and Politics of Identity furthers and deepens students’ knowledge of models of research strategies and literary scholarship, which are introduced during the core module ELI70921 Critiquing and Theorising Literature, and their interactions with and applications of evolving theories, inquiries, and proposals and methods relevant to rethinking being human and reshaping the poetics and politics of identity in English. It promotes an active critical engagement with recent challenges and evolving areas of exploration in this field of studies and consolidate students’ ability to synthesise and interrogate a range of sources.

This module reflects upon the theoretical and methodological issues arising from an author-centred approach to literature. It is part of a suite of four fifteen-credits modules complementing the literary critical approaches and methodologies outlined in the core thirty-credit module, ELI70921.

The Author in Focus focuses upon scholarly models defined through authorship. It studies the oeuvre of a single author, reflecting upon the ideas and literary techniques that inform their work through multiple approaches. It widens and deepens students’ understanding of a writer’s career development, reception, and literary legacy. their
connections to their contemporary communities and networks whilst also considering their impact upon present-day scholarship. It engages with the scholarly pursuit of new findings and possibilities, exploring patterns of revision and reformulation through, for example, archival and/or exploratory research.

The production of an academic poster is designed to broaden students’ research skills and foster a creative and adaptable approach to academic presentation and communication that shows awareness of knowledge exchange and the importance of communicating effectively to specialist and non-specialist audiences.

This module focuses on literary models based upon a thematic critical approach by exploring how diverse literary texts, authors, genres, and periods might be connected through thematic threads. It is part of a suite of four fifteen-credits modules complementing the literary critical approaches and methodologies outlined in the core thirty-credit module, ELI70921.

Thematic Threads investigates literary models based upon a thematic approach to literature. It explores how literary texts, authors, genres, and periods can be connected and critically evaluated in relation to a
specific theme. By delineating a single thread, the module examines how thematic concerns are treated in different ways across a range of literary genres and periods, and consider connections and intersections between literature and other cultural and artistic disciplines.

This module represents the culmination of the MA degree programme. Drawing on the scholarly frameworks, theories and practices established in previous modules, the MA Dissertation gives students the opportunity to undertake an extensive piece of independent research based upon a topic of their own choosing. It builds on the
knowledge and skills acquired throughout the programme and challenges students to demonstrate their capacities for sustained research, scholarly evaluation, critical positioning, high level academic production and research ethics and integrity.

After initial group sessions covering the scholarly, research, and communication skills that are necessary to the realisation of an independent, extended written project, the students’ dissertations will be supervised by an individual supervisor, chosen according to the topic of their individual projects. The group sessions will highlight the importance of transferable skills such as an advanced level of competence in formulating, planning and executing an extended written project.

Students will reflect on potential challenges and provide guidance on motivation, adaptability, problem-solving, autonomy and resilience. They will also gain a refreshed understanding of the support, resources, and institutional facilities available to support them. After the submission of a research proposal outline, students will work independently on their approved topic, under the guidance of a supervisor, to produce a dissertation.