Undergraduate Modules - Level 6 / Year 3
Advanced Poetry (40 credits)
This module will enable you to build upon your current reading and writing of poetry, and to develop your range, technique and sophistication as a contemporary poet and thinker on poetry. As well as cultivating your ability to read poetry sympathetically and critically, you will learn how to nurture the poetic imagination and what Ted Hughes called its ‘psychic disciplines’, with a view to strengthening and emboldening the intuition and sensitivity upon which poetic technique depends. You also will acquire practical knowledge of publishing and performing your own work. In composing, designing and producing a volume of your own poetry, you will initiate, manage and complete an independent creative project, and in writing an author statement to accompany it, you will describe and justify your own ideas concerning poetry, and the relationship between your work and the intellectual and poetic traditions in which it participates.
Applied Sociolinguistics (40 credits)
This module will introduce you to the field of Applied Sociolinguistics and how sociolinguistic research can contribute to improving human well-being. You will learn to critically evaluate the role of sociolinguistics in addressing linguistic and social inequalities and how language shapes all aspects of social life. You will work with an external partner and investigate the application of sociolinguistic research to the solution of practical, educational and social problems of all types. You will learn how evidence-led sociolinguistic research can be applied in a variety of settings, including healthcare, law, tourism, the workplace, and other non-academic contexts. The module will develop your skills in leveraging sociolinguistic research to produce demonstrable changes in practice and teach you to how to engage a variety of external stakeholders and end-users in your research.
Film (20 credits)
This module allows you to apply your knowledge of existing formal, narratological and historical concepts to the medium of film, and to develop further conceptual frameworks derived from or unique to it. The module will be concerned with a number of structural and cultural features which can be seen to determine readings of film narrative. Generally, though not exclusively, the module will find its location in the area of popular film. It will take as a starting point the model derived from what David Bordwell calls ‘The Classical Hollywood Cinema’. This will enable you to begin to theorise issues such as Genre and Auteurism as well as the semiotics of film, so that the general formations can be analysed with reference to their subversion by counter-cultural formations. Particular reference will be made to three generic sets: Film Noir, 50s Melodrama and Horror. By referring to these case-studies, you will be encouraged to develop critical/theoretical analyses of films of your choice.
Forensic Linguistics (20 credits)
This module will provide you with the knowledge and skills to critically analyse linguistic data and apply the results of the analysis to legal settings, focusing mainly on legal discourse, courtroom discourse, police interviewing, authorship analysis, and plagiarism detection. You will study a wide range of topics which will provide you with a broad understanding of different sub-disciplines of forensic linguistics and language and the law, each with its own methodological approach. You will develop skills necessary for interdisciplinary research at the intersection of linguistics, forensic sciences, legal studies and psychology. You will focus on how to ensure your data is representative, to develop robust methodological approach, and to present your results in a logical way meeting the requirements set by relevant bodies in a range of legal contexts.
Language and Gender (20 credits)
This module will introduce you to the main critical debates, concepts, and research approaches in the field of language and gender. You will discuss a variety of key theoretical areas, supported by relevant scholarly research, and you will learn to critically evaluate the role that language plays in gender relations and gender stereotypes. You will carry out independent fieldwork on a topic of your own choice related to language and gender, and you will develop your skills in data collection, analysis, and evaluation. The module makes use of a variety of data sources, including electronic corpora, written, visual and spoken media, questionnaires, and you will learn to apply your knowledge of language and linguistics to investigate and analyse such data.
Over the course of the module, you will also acquire a range of skills which will support your long-term personal and professional development, including self-direction in problem solving, communication skills (written and verbal), independent critical thought, and effective time management.
Literature, Art and Philosophy (20 credits)
This module is concerned with philosophical aesthetics, that is the branch of philosophy that deals with questions about the nature of art and beauty. We will take a historical view of aesthetic theory, beginning with Plato and Aristotle and moving through to twentieth-century thinkers such as Collingwood via Kant and the Romantics. Major forms of aesthetic theory – from the mimetic to the mystical – will be considered with reference to individual works of art. The bias is towards literature, but we will also study painting, sculpture and other visual arts. The first part of the module covers a broad history of ideas (indicated above); the second part focuses on notably ‘philosophical’ works of literature by Shakespeare and Shelley. The idea is to study some works of literature in depth to understand how the various theories might be applied to individual works, and also to think about the limitations of this process.
Major Project: Dissertation (40 credits)
The purpose of the module is to enable the student to undertake a sustained, in-depth and theoretically informed research project exploring an area of personal interest. The research outcome is individually negotiated with the supervisor and will take the form of a written piece. The area of study must be relevant to the programme and students are actively encouraged to choose a topic relevant to their future academic or professional development.
The focus of the module is independent learning, with one to one sessions from a supervisor who is familiar with the selected topic. (In addition, the student will be supported by group seminars, workshops and online materials relevant to the discipline.)
Major Project: Drama Workshop (40 credits)
This module will provide you with the skills to undertake a sustained, in-depth and research-informed practical project as part of a group. You will work collaboratively to identify, stage and perform a play, extracts of more than one play, or alternative type of dramatic text. This task will enable you to explore an area of theatre production or performance that is of personal interest. You will be offered guidance on your choice of text(s) on the basis of the composition and interests of the group, and logistical and technical considerations including performance space. By keeping a production log throughout the rehearsal process, you will record and self-evaluate your developing practice in relation to relevant research. This will enable you to reflect critically on your work, and contextualise it within Drama and English studies.
Major Project: Undergraduate Conference (40 credits)
This module will provide you with the knowledge and skills to undertake a sustained, in-depth and theoretically informed independent research project while working collaboratively with other students to stage an undergraduate conference. As a group you will be given a broad theme (for example, ‘Contemporary Identities’, ‘Making History’ or ‘Modern Myths’) decided by your module tutor in advance. You will interpret that theme to produce a focused, 10 minute, oral research paper in one of the following areas: language, literature, drama or creative writing.
You will examine different ways of interpreting the brief based on subject discipline and practice the skills necessary to work collaboratively with others in the running of an academic conference. You will be able to identify a relevant topic and develop it to produce an evaluative and theoretically or creatively-informed response to the initial brief. The conference itself will be supported by a micro-site and twitter feed. Here you will have to create a professional online presence and participate in the marketing and effective communication of the conference proceedings and publicity.
Major Project: Writing the Novel (40 credits)
This module will provide you with the skills to undertake a sustained, in-depth and research-informed creative project. You will work individually to initiate, develop and shape a substantial piece of fiction, exploring a subject, style and narrative approach that is of personal interest. You will also work in groups with other students to inform and develop work-in-progress and to produce short presentations on elements of writing craft in relation to your practice. You will be offered guidance on content, structure and style. The outcome will take the form of a substantial extract from a novel, along with a fully-developed synopsis and a reflective, critical commentary. You will work independently, but you will also receive one-to-one supervision along with small- and whole-group support. Your learning will typically be supported by workshops, Moodle activities, seminars and advice from established writers.
Making Theatre: Practitioners and Performance (40 credits)
This module will equip you with the critical skills to understand and analyse the work of theatre practitioners. You will study a culturally and aesthetically diverse range of experimental theatre-makers, including directors and performers, who have been influential in shaping theatre and theories of performance from the late nineteenth to the twenty-first century. You will focus on practical and ideological elements of theatre-making, exploring approaches to rehearsal, acting, design, playwriting, and the role of the audience.
Milton's Epic (20 credits)
This module will provide you with the knowledge and skills to critically evaluate one of the most important works in English literature: Milton’s major epic poem, Paradise Lost. This module focuses extensively on this poem and its various contexts. You will read the entire epic thoroughly in order to enable you to analyse the themes, characters, settings and language of the work. You will develop an understanding of Milton’s political, religious and literary ambitions in relation to his key works. You will also read and discuss some of his non-epic works.
Your secondary reading will acquaint you with key critical responses to Milton’s work from the seventeenth century to the present day, on topics such as his poetic style and his key characters. Through wider reading, you will consider Milton’s place in the English literary canon, as well as the legacy that he has left. You will also consider the growing field of international reception.
Modernism and its Legacies (40 credits)
This module will provide you with the knowledge and skills to analyse and interpret poetry and prose from the start of the twentieth century until the present. This period covers the rise of modernism and its successor post-modernism. You will analyse modernist and postmodern texts in their cultural and historical contexts, while also considering formal innovations and key thematic concerns such as modernity, identity, politics, gender, and form. We will explore continuing issues of naturalism and realism which serve as a foil for literary experimentation. Paintings, music and photography will illustrate the various techniques and artistic movements. While our focus will be mainly on British and American writing, we shall also consider some key European movements, such as Dada and Surrealism, in order to appreciate the variety of modernisms grouped under the term ‘modernism’.
Nature Writing (20 credits)
This module will provide you with the knowledge and skills to create focussed observational writing based on personal interaction with the natural world. You will develop the skills to compose poetry and creative non-fiction based on your own research and observations. You will learn how to make precise scientifically-informed and researched description, creating a balance between observation and evaluation and between the presence of the author-narrator as a character in the text and the otherness of what you are describing. Finding an appropriate language for describing the non-human is often a central concern of contemporary nature writing. At the end of this module, you will be able to situate your own practice as a writer of poetry and prose within contemporary nature writing.
Psychology in Victorian Literature (20 credits)
This module explores the relationship between literature and the development of psychological thought in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, before the advent of laboratory-based experimental work. It aims to introduce you to questions surrounding the historical emergence of psychology as a scientific discipline and to a post-Romantic conception of literature as concerned with the analysis and the portrayal of psychological peculiarity and aberration. The connections between nineteenth-century psychology and pseudo-scientific discourses such as phrenology and mesmerism, and the close relationship between psychology and Victorian medical discourse will be examined. You will learn to recognise the presence of psychological and medical discourse in nineteenth century texts, and to relate this psychological discourse to wider cultural and social issues raised by the advent of social and political modernity in the nineteenth century.
Shakespeare Studies (40 credits)
This module will consider a range of primary and critical texts relating to Shakespeare’s canon. In general, you will consider the reasons for Shakespeare’s prominent position in the English canon and in wider popular culture and society. You will focus some attention on Shakespeare’s social context, early modern theatrical settings and conventions, and the language of Shakespeare’s works. You will also consider how Shakespeare’s works operate in performance and film. To do the above, you will examine in detail a selection of Shakespeare’s comedies, tragedies, histories and poems, considering textual aspects meticulously, while relating the texts to wider issues of reception and impact. Emphasis will be placed on using a range of critical interpretative methods when approaching the plays, as well as on utilising digital literacy (such as online archives) in order to develop a knowledge of key research skills required by early modern literary scholars as well as basic archival skills.
Speculative Fiction (20 credits)
What if a book was discovered that revealed an advanced alien civilisation? What if humans could merge with machines? What if the world were slowly crystallising around us? What if humanity had all but destroyed itself? The ‘what if’ in these questions signals a moment of hesitation, a gap that opens up between what is and what could be. This is speculation. Speculation is something we all engage in. It allows us to reimagine the past, recontextualise the present and consider new futures. It can be a liberating but also a destabilising activity because it asks us to question the ways in which we make sense of who we are and the world around us. In this module you will consider how speculation intersects with literature. You will be able to identify the formal literary techniques and devices used to enable speculation and then apply them to a series of texts from the late twentieth century to consider how these can help us think about new pasts, new societies, new identities and new futures.
Teaching English as Foreign Language (40 credits)
The module is based on experimental and experiential techniques allowing you to encounter TEFL teaching methods, as well as improve your knowledge of phonetics and phonology, grammar and vocabulary, syntax and punctuation. The module will equip you with a solid understanding of TEFL approaches alongside a practical skill set for planning lessons and courses, assessing language proficiency, facilitating the learning process, and managing classroom dynamics. The module will help you utilise skills and linguistic knowledge gained during your first two years of study in the applied settings of teaching English as a second/foreign language.
You will also draw on literature, drama and creative writing strands of the programme due to the emphasis on the inherent value of cultural and literary experiences in the foreign language acquisition process. You will focus on developing engaging teaching materials for potential learners and practise completing tasks similar to those required as part of the interview selection process for TEFL jobs. Throughout the module, special emphasis will be placed on continuous professional development as well as identifying career options in the UK and abroad. You will be provided with several voluntary opportunities, including providing language support for international students, teaching English classes for international students within the Faculty, or observing commercial classes in Birmingham (e.g. Brasshouse Language Centre).
The Gothic (20 credits)
This module focuses on literature in the gothic tradition from its inception through to the present day. During the module, the development of the gothic form will be traced from its origins through to recent manifestations of the genre. Gothic literature often reflects social and cultural trends as well as providing a space to manifest cultural anxieties, expressing a society’s suppressed desires and fears in an acceptable literary form. Such texts can therefore be read not only as escapist, but as serious texts which seek to express often radical, socially unacceptable or psychologically-submerged ideas. The module will enable you to identify these undercurrents as well as to explore the major themes and aesthetics of the genre. You will be encouraged to interrogate texts with an eye to these issues, including those of gender, race and class, and to contextualise the texts in order to analyse and understand the changing concept of Gothic.
The Uncanny (20 credits)
This module will provide you with the knowledge and skills to critically engage with the legacies of Sigmund Freud’s speculative essay ‘Das Unheimliche’/ ‘The Uncanny’ moving from literary criticism through deconstruction and introducing students to contemporary phenomenology. Phenomenology is a branch of continental philosophy dealing with experiences of the self. It will provide the necessary introduction to read recent philosophical considerations of psychoanalysis, melancholia, anxiety and unease as found, for instance, in the work of Simon Critchley and Dylan Trigg.
We will engage with Critchley’s reading of Hamlet and Samuel Beckett together with Trigg’s reading of horror literature and film. As a foundation for reading phenomenology we will read Trigg’s The Memory of Place together with short excerpts from the philosophers he comments on such as Heidegger, Levinas, Bachelard and Merleau-Ponty. You will find Critchley’s A Very Short Introduction to Continental Philosophy and then Robert Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology helpful in reading Trigg. Finally we will consider the issues of otherness, difference and place negotiated in many of these philosophical readings. This module would develop theories encountered in The Gothic and complement other philosophy modules.
World Literature (20 credits)
World Literature explores global dimensions of literature and introduces key debates in Comparative and World Literature. You will widen and deepen your knowledge and understanding of literary movements you have studied on previous modules, especially modules focusing on the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. World Literature will provide new insights into how certain literary trends in Britain were pioneered, paralleled or developed overseas whilst also offering you the opportunity to join up major lines of development in global literary history. Exploring a variety of novels from different parts of the world, the module emphasises what is distinct about literatures from specific geographical areas.
You will look at how novels considered as part of ‘World Literature’ have developed in formal terms, from nineteenth-century realism to the contemporary cosmopolitan novel. You will develop a global outlook on literature by tracing how realism as a form has been challenged by and renewed in successive ‘moments’ or ‘turns’ of literary history. You will explore the major debates and theories of World Literature through international literary history, comparative literary analysis, looking at themes, and tracing the recurrence of images and motifs.
Writing Creative Nonfiction (40 credits)
This module introduces you to writing creative nonfiction. You will investigate the nature of creative nonfiction, exploring the distinctive issues it raises for writers in recent published works and in your own, such as the ethical considerations involved in drawing from real-life subjects as source material, the nature of truth, and the interplay between ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’. You will explore forms of creative nonfiction, including memoir, travel writing, observational writing, the personal essay, the nonfiction thriller, and literary journalism. Along with your exploration of form, you will bring your writing to life by using techniques traditionally associated with fiction, creating rounded characters, compelling, well-structured stories and vivid, immediate settings. You will also consider how to craft your work and polish your individual writing style.
Writing Short Films (40 credits)
This module will enable you to build upon your current reading and writing of short films, and to develop your range, technique and sophistication as a contemporary screenwriter, applying your knowledge to the writing of short film scripts of 5-10 minutes in length. You will study Syd Field’s guide to screenwriting and build on your practical application of screenplay formatting software. You will write two short scripts of 5 minutes in length and one ‘Academy’ short of 10 minutes, given as writing exercises on which you will receive detailed feedback, enabling you to rewrite towards your assessments. You will focus on visual storytelling, layout conventions, the issue of writing to scale (budget) and will be encouraged to analyse but also critique dramatic construction in terms of character function, motivation and genre.
Items in brackets indicate the subject areas these modules are suitable for, many combinations are possible.