English and Business BA (Hons): XJTLU 2+2 programme

The aim of this module is to provide students with basic financial concepts in the areas of projected financial statements, time value of money and risk-return, and offer preliminary knowledge on market efficiency along with some elementary theoretical and empirical components related to these topics. Furthermore, the module covers fundamental discussions on internal and external financing policies, capital structure, dividend policy, mergers and acquisitions, etc.

​This module aims to provide students with knowledge and understanding of what is expected of a manager and what is meant by managerial “effectiveness”. To do this, you need to be able to identify the role of a manager and those factors which influence a manager’s effectiveness – and these lie not only within yourself but also in your working environment.​

This is a cross-disciplinary module focusing on the challenges of identifying, exploring, and implementing entrepreneurial opportunities that create and capture value. The module’s broad spectrum provides students with a foundation in entrepreneurial thinking, allowing them to develop the skills and attributes needed whether to build their own start up from the ground up or add value within existing companies through entrepreneurial and innovation applications. Students will develop an entrepreneurial mindset through experiential learning and embeddedness in the entrepreneurship ecosystem through start-ups and industries engagement as well as the Brett Centre for Entrepreneurship Venture Creation Programme, in which every part of the business journey is covered from ideation to pitching to a panel of industry experts.

This module deals with business ethics and the social responsibility of business organizations. It is designed to inform decision-making about ethical challenges arising in business. It will help students identify and manage difficult ethical dilemmas they are likely to encounter in their future career. It is not intended to convert sinners into saints, to preach ethical truths, or to convey the wisdom of moral philosophers. However, it will develop students’ analytical skills in ethical reasoning and provide them with a substantive framework to deal with ethical challenges. The module is taught by lecture (2 x 1 hour lectures per week, or a set of recorded mini-lectures available online if necessary) and workshops (2 during the semester, 2 hours each, which may occur online if necessary). Assessment is via case study analysis (40%) and an open book examination (60%). There will also be formative tests during the term. This module is identical to PHIL271, except that it runs in Semester 2.

Learn how to read an image, images from advertising (commercial and public service), company logotypes, Asterix and satirical political cartoons (Charlie Hebdo)

This course examines the interactive relationship between language and society. It explores language variation and the influence of social factors, such as social class, social networks and gender on the way we speak. Within the prism of interactional sociolinguistics, it examines speakers’ construction of social identities and the importance of context in identity construction. The module also aims to address sociolinguistic phenomena, such as diglossia, bilingualism and language shift that emerge from language contact. Relevant theories will be applied to naturally occurring data and methodological issues of data collection and analysis will be examined. The module is taught via synchronous or asynchronous whole cohort sessions, synchronous small group sessions, independent study and your own small scale sociolinguistic study in an area of language in society.

This module explores questions concerning the relationship of language to consciousness. This entails addressing questions concerning the nature of language in its evolutionary, acquisitional, developmental and degenerative stages. Through examining a range of communication systems, such as those used by computers, apes, and other animals, students will achieve an understanding of the unique nature of language in its relation to the human mind.

In this module, students will learn about the processes, mechanisms, events and ideologies that have contributed to the change of the English language across time. Students will experience different types of teaching environments, including general group sessions and practical small-group teaching sessions. The general-group sessions will be used to survey general themes, approaches or methodologies to historical linguistic analysis. The small-group sessions will be based around different types of exercises (eg discussion of research articles, text-analysis) and provide group discussion of relevant language issues and their implications in a wider context.

This module explores the works of the Roman poet Ovid which span a wide range of genres and themes. We will focus on a core set text (or set texts) within its sociocultural contexts, wider literary traditions, and the rest of the Ovidian corpus.

The Trojan War is one of the ‘great stories’ of Western culture. The Iliad most famously replays a crucial episode: the anger of Achilles following insult from the Achaean (Greek) leader Agamemnon and its deadly consequences. But alongside other contemporary epic poems, events from the ten-year struggle between the Achaeans and Trojans have been rewritten, restaged, and represented in literature and art across antiquity and down the centuries into modern times. This module examines some of these various attempts to ‘rebuild Troy’, tracing the myth through a range of source material, including epic poetry, Greek sculpture and painted pottery, Athenian tragedy, Hellenistic inscriptions, Roman poetry, nineteenth-century European art and film. By putting each ‘reception’ of the myth into its social, political and historical contexts, the module traces the fluidity and malleability of Troy in the cultural imagination, and asks what Trojan stories reveal about the societies that tell them, ancient and modern.

The module aims to prepare students for a smooth transition into a work placement year and, more broadly, to develop lifelong skills, attitudes and behaviours and support students in their continuing professional development. This will help students lead flexible, fulfilling careers working as a professional in their field, and enable them to contribute meaningfully to society.

Situated between the end of World War One and the Nazi takeover of power, the Weimar Republic witnessed a ‘crisis of classical modernity’; the period retains a reputation for modernity and decadence. Against a background of political and economic experimentation and uncertainty, it saw a growth in advertising, shopping, urban life and transport, fashion and film. Taught in a mixture of lectures and seminars, this module focuses on cultural representations of the period, through the study of two films: Berlin: Sinfonie der Großstadt (Berlin: Symphony of the Metropolis, 1927) and Marlene Dietrich’s first major feature, Der Blaue Engel (The Blue Angel, 1931); and two literary texts: Erich Kästner, Emil und die Detektive (Emil and the Detectives, 1928), and Irmgard Keun, Das kunstseidene Mädchen (The Artificial Silk Girl, 1932). Through close reading and thematic analysis, we will consider how they depict and define the modern metropolis; changing ideas about class and gender; and new forms of working life, entertainment and leisure.

This module deals with one of the most fascinating subfields of (psycho)linguistics: child language acquisition. It is intended to serve as an introduction to the field, including a discussion of the major theoretical and methodological issues. Taking into account a bi/multilingual perspective throughout, the module covers lexical, morphological, syntactic and pragmatic development. Based on the critical discussion of research articles in class, students will conduct their own small-scale analysis as part of their assessment. Furthermore, there will be 4 screenings of documentaries throughout the semester in order to allow for a critical discussion of the representation of scientific research in the popular media (a mini-essay on one of the screened films is also part of the assessment).

This module provides an introduction to sociolinguistic and ethnographic approaches to the study of multilingualism. We will look at what language is, what multilingualism is, how individuals use multiple languages in everyday interaction, and how multiple languages are managed in society.

Pragmatics is the study of meaning in context, of how the situation surrounding a sentence/utterance, (who said it, where, when and why?) influences how we understand its meaning. This 30 credit Level 2 module examines several relevant theories and looks at some of the ways that these theories are being applied to other areas of study (e.g. to how children learn language). It is delivered through weekly teaching sessions, and assessed by an assignment and a take-home paper.

The module addresses both the intrinsic and explicitly theorised moral frameworks of Greco-Roman antiquity, by looking at select sources ranging from the Homeric epic to Hellenistic and Roman philosophy. The issues examined during the module include: reciprocity as ethical model (revenge, justice, solidarity), the goods of the self vs the "external" goods, happiness and morality, valuing other people as part of one’s own moral well-being.

This module will introduce students to a range of literary and cultural forms which give prominence to women’s roles in cultural and social change. Students will engage with a number of key texts and gender related concepts and will consider the ways in which representations of women, whether produced by women or, indeed, by men, have both influenced and been influenced by important social and cultural movements in Spain, Portugal and Latin America from the early modern to the modern eras.

The aims of the British Writing since 1945 are broadly to introduce students to a range of post-war British writing, and to promote the study of literary expression in contemporary British literature in its political and social contexts. The module aims to consider the literature of this period in a broad cultural and political context, and ask how forms of modern and contemporary identity are represented and contested within the literature and culture of the period, as well as exploring the relations between literary genres, particularly fiction and drama.

​This module covers a range of Renaissance drama, the contemporaries to Shakespeare, focussing on the relationship between page and stage and considering how an understanding of original performance conditions can influence our readings of the plays. 

This module will look at the history, context and content of some of the late 19th and early 20th century’s most important ‘little magazines’. Using the library Special Collections and Brown University’s Modernist Journals Project this module seeks to understand the role that literary magazines play within a culture and the historical background to their production. It will examine their material and print cultures, history and content in order to gain understanding of the role magazines played in their exploration of, or engagement with, various literary and historical movements. Topics covered will include sexuality, censorship, Modernism, the manifesto, State interference, and literary content, amongst others. Some of the magazines examined may include: The Savoy, To-Day, Blast, The Criterion, Ireland To-Day and Weird Tales. This module will suit students interested in journalism, magazine material and print cultures, censorship, and historical contexts. The module aims to engage students with primary historical research through classes in special collections and through digital resources.

The module looks at literature from the late seventeenth to the late eighteenth centuries. This is the period when the novel-form emerged; when poetry was sometimes epic (or mock-epic) and also began to cultivate a focus on the self and subjectivity; when drama turned theatrical conventions inside-out; when fantasies in the satiric mode sought to vex the world and when female authors entered the marketplace. Students taking this module will gain in-depth knowledge of some of the ‘classics’ of world literature (such as Gulliver’s Travels, Robinson Crusoe, and Paradise Lost). They will also study the ways in which the literature of the period reflects and imagines such issues as: freedom and slavery; authorship and the culture of print; politics; religion and reason; realism and romance; urban expansion; the body, mind and spirit; sexual, racial and cultural identity; science, technology and new forms of knowledge.

The aim of the Victorian Literature module is to expose students to a wide variety of texts written and published between 1837 and 1901, an extremely diverse period of literary history. The module will also provide opportunities for close analysis, application of literary theory and consideration of contextual issues in relation to the texts studied as a means of helping students to develop skills that will be useful in other literature modules.

This module seeks to consider the history of literary censorship from France of the 1850s to postwar Britain and Ireland. It will examine issues such as ‘bad language’, decency, morality and ‘cancel culture’ in writers ranging from Gustave Flaubert to Edna O’Brien.

This module introduces students to a variety of theoretical and practical contexts for thinking about creativity and the writing process. Students are given practical writing exercises and are encouraged to reflect upon their own practice. Students will also be encouraged to find innovative platforms and means of presenting their own creative work, and may choose to engage fully with the potential for creative thinking in the context of digital technologies and the new media.

This is a level 2 module, designed to introduce students to a range of medieval literature in the original Middle English language. No previous experience of Middle English is required. Authors considered include Geoffrey Chaucer, Sir Thomas Malory, Marie de France, and the Gawain-Poet.

This module introduces you to aspects of life in Britain and Europe between about 1740 and 1815. This period is often seen as the beginning of the modern world, when the ideas about human nature and society that still shape our own lives came into circulation and when the global entanglements generated by trade and colonisation began to have a lasting impact on everyday life in Europe. The module is taught by tutors from French, German and English Studies, and History, as well as staff from the National Museums Liverpool. It gives you an insight into the range of materials and methods that are used in research in eighteenth-century studies. Interactive lectures, seminars and fieldwork encourage a hands-on approach to learning. You start by inventing an 18th-century character and you follow that character through various experiences typical of the period: shopping, reading, travelling, thinking about political issues of the day. Images, artefacts and contemporary texts in English and other languages are made available to support your research. The aim is for you to develop your capacity for asking questions (curiosity) as well as for answering them (research skills).

In the period 1900–45 writers challenged all assumptions about what narrative does, about how we read, and how we represent and interpret the world. This module entails detailed study of some of the most radical modernist writers, such as T.S. Eliot, Mina Loy and Virginia Woolf. It also explores the contexts that shaped them and their innovations, from the city and visual art to empire and psychoanalysis. Together we’ll think about new understandings of time and the mind, new ideas about human relationships, and new dynamics between the silent and the stated, private and public, men and women, local and global, art and life.

Romanticism is a cultural movement dominant in Europe from the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries. The poetic focus of this course is the Romantic lyric. As a genre, it is autobiographical, emotional, confessional; it says: to know your self, narrate your self. It is often painful: that self may have been tried in the fires of political revolution, domestic violence, warfare, disinheritance, alienation, slavery, poverty, and incarceration of the ‘mad’: these are the stories of the writers on the module, the poetry of Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Charlotte Smith, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Felicia Hemans, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, and John Clare; and also the autobiographical and fictional narratives of Olaudah Equiano, Jane Austen, and Mary Prince. Yet the self here is never the sum of its suffering: these writers reach for truths that exceed any human legislation, not least in the awe-inspiring mystery, power, and delicacy of the natural world. They testify to a human psyche that is cosmic in its comprehension, and which can not only reach to the infinite, but can bring that insight to fellow humans through the experience of literature itself.

This module examines Shakespeare’s plays in relation to the early modern socio-cultural contexts in which they were written and first performed. It will introduce you to a range of comedies, histories and tragedies and encourage you to analyse and discuss how they engage with key issues of sixteenth and seventeenth century English life. By the end of the module you should be able to demonstrate in-depth knowledge of a number of Shakespeare’s works and an informed sense of the plays’ relationship to their historical contexts. Topics covered will typically include, Sex & Gender; Power & Performance; Belief & Superstition; Race & Culture; Travel & Trade. Workshops will give critical context provide models of interpretation and encourage reading the plays alongside other early modern texts, while the tutorials provide space for more detailed student-led discussion of the plays.

This module explores the diversity of theatre and performance forms across the world, considering how they can be understood in dialogue with each other and their particular social and political contexts. The module will encourage you to think about theatre and performance as a global set of artistic practices. The work we explore will challenge Western and European conceptions of history and culture, as well as conventional understandings of the nature and purpose of theatre. You will discuss writers and theatre makers from a range of global majority communities and, where possible, consider them in performance. The course will encourage you to explore specific productions, both contemporary and historical, in their political and cultural settings. By the end of the module you will have developed the tools required to critically analyse and understand the performance cultures of different countries.

All decisions involving uncertainty run the risk of failure. This module examines why people and organizations sometimes make unwise decisions and how to make better decisions.

The module introduces students to core theories and current issues and developments concerning knowledge management with the aim of fostering innovation. Students will learn how to analyse and critically evaluate the subject matter and apply it to diverse organisational environments.   

The module will provide an overview of the subject from the perspective of principles and practice. The first part of the module is about strategic analysis and covers strategic objectives, and the analysis of businesses’ external and internal environments. The second part demonstrates how business, corporate, and global levels strategies are created and implemented.

This module gives students an up-to-date coverage of global strategy and hands-on experience putting theory into practice. It sets new approaches such as institutional analysis alongside more traditional approaches based in economics and management. It also gives considerable attention to competition in and from emerging economies. At the end of the module, students are able to critically analyse the challenges and opportunities that a multinational enterprise (MNE) faces and the context in which these organizations make decisions. Assessment is through an individual report submitted at the end of the module.

The module provides an analysis of the charity sector in the United Kingdom focusing on fundraising skills including bid writing; event organisation, volunteer management; corporate giving; strategic planning; community fundraising; and donor management. Contexts such as personal giving, social media and taxation are also considered. Visiting speakers from the sector relate the theory to their charities. Assessment is through an assignment and also a time constrained exam.

The purpose of this module is to provide students with an in-depth understanding of the theory and practice of management in a critical context. The module draws on a broad range of critical social science theory that questions received wisdom on management and the view that management is a purely ‘neutral’ technical-rational practice. The module challenges this view by looking at issues of performativity, and the ideology and politics of work organization and management practice from a range of critical perspectives. It traces the history and development of management as power, control and domination in organizations from its origins through industrialization to its current post-industrial/ postmodern setting.

The aim of this module is to develop and enhance students’ critical understanding of the key issues surrounding the contemporary football sector. Students will develop a critical understanding of how economics, finance, marketing and other business and management disciplines can be used to analyse features of the football business sector. Furthermore, various concepts and theories from the aforementioned disciplines will be used to analyse critically decision-making within the sector. Where appropriate alternative outcomes will be considered that might improve efficiency and effectiveness within the sector.

The module intends to familiarise students with central themes of aesthetics and art theory, especially questions about aesthetic judgement, aesthetic experience and aesthetic value. They will be able to strengthen their understanding of the history of philosophy, as well as the connection between theory and artistic practice. The module is taught by lecture (1 hour per week) and seminar (1 hour per week). Assessment is via a 3,000 word essay (85% of the module mark) and one 10-15 minute presentation (delivered during seminars, or recorded if on-line only teaching) that provides the remaining 15% of the module mark.

This module gives you the option to write a 10,000-word dissertation. You will be expected to formulate a dissertation proposal in advance, and if this is accepted, you will be allocated an academic supervisor. This module gives you a chance to focus on a specific topic or area that interests you within the study of either English language or literature, and allows you to demonstrate your capacity in undertaking a piece of serious, independent research.

This module places language among other meaning-making systems or “codes”, such as gestures, colours and sound. All these are examined by the discipline called Semiotics – that is “the science of signs” which asks the question of how meanings are organised and how reality is conceptualised. This course discusses the scope of Semiotics, its core concepts, main figures and methodological tools. The theoretical approaches presented range from structuralist theories to post-structuralism/social semiotics/multimodality. The module also offers an analysis of a variety of cultural products/processes through the application of semiotic concepts and methods, drawing examples from e.g. storytelling, comics, marketing/advertising, art/design, the media, the body, fashion, food and music, thus reflecting the broad interdisciplinary nature of the discipline. Emphasis will be placed on language as one of the meaning-making modes available to humans, capturing the interplay between verbal and non-verbal semiotic resources. There are no pre-requisites for this module, but some knowledge of pragmatics, (critical) discourse analysis, gender studies and sociolinguistics can be advantageous.

This module provides an opportunity to think in a systematic way about how language and communication are embedded in, and also contribute to, the current globalization process. We will discuss different understandings of globalization, and examine the effects global mobilities and increasing diversity have on language form, language use, and their functionality. We will look at cases from some of the driving forces of globalization, including the tourism industry, educational migration, transitional communities, and others.

This module is concerned with some of the ways in which different frameworks for linguistic analysis can be applied to the study of literary texts. A variety of different linguistic methods will be introduced, and a range of literary texts will be explored in relation, for instance, to foregrounding, point of view, thought and speech presentation and literary inference. Issues discussed will include how narrators communicate with readers, how characters within fictional texts communicate with each other, and what determines the nature of ‘literary’ texts. In the assessment, students are encouraged to explore further linguistic frameworks which are of particular interest to them and to apply these to the analysis of one or more literary texts of their own choosing in an imaginative and original way.

This is a module in forensic linguistics which explores the ways in which the study of language can help us understand legal cases and the legal process. The last twenty years have witnessed a marked growth in work in forensic linguistics, evidenced by numerous academic publications, the advent of new scholarly associations, and the rise of many high profile international trials in which linguists have featured as expert witnesses. The published work of these academics often details the ‘hands on’ experience of the professional linguist working in the legal context, and such publications makes for insightful, compelling and often disturbing reading . The remit of Forensic Linguistics is wide, with linguists being tasked to report on all areas where language intersects with the legal process. Thus, as the techniques of linguistics analysis and discourse analysis have developed, so has the variety of the roles that linguists have played in the legal process. This module offers a solid grounding in these techniques of analysis and is informed by a broad range of legal case studies from around the world.

The Single Author/Special Topic module allows students to undertake detailed study of an author or theme connected closely to the research specialism of an academic staff member. Students will take part in a series of research seminars throughout the semester. Seminars in the early part of the module will introduce key ideas, contexts and critical debates in relation to the relevant author or theme. In the later weeks of the module, seminars will become increasingly student-led, giving students the opportunity to present their own research into the topic. At the end of the module, students will use their research to develop a public engagement project designed to explain the significance of their topic to an audience beyond the university. The module is intended both for students who want to undertake research in a collaborative, seminar-based environment and for students who want to develop skills of engagement with wider public audiences.

This module aims to introduce students to the new trends in contemporary Italian cinema and to the main relevant theoretical and critical approaches in the field.

The module will typically provide an introduction to the history of slavery in the Francophone and Hispanic Worlds, situating the phenomenon of modern slavery within an understanding of historical slavery. Students will then study a range of representations of slavery that have arisen in response to historical slavery. These will typically range from first person slave accounts from the early modern period which provide an individual perspective on the history of slavery; literary and filmic representations of slavery and cultural responses to slavery, particularly in the heritage industries through the practice of Dark Tourism. The module will typically include a visit to the International Slavery Museum in the Albert Dock, Liverpool.

This module will introduce students to approaches to memory and to a body of textual, visual, material representation of terror that has become a key focus for critical analysis in recent cultural studies. It will provide a context in which students can engage in systematic comparisons between European, Latin American and East Asian experiences and representations of social and political trauma. It will also encourage students to reflect systematically on the political and ethical implications of literary, material, digital and cinematic representations of traumatic histories. You will have the opportunity to study in depth and compare examples of representation through different media and across different national and linguistic boundaries. Lectures provide background both to the main theoretical approaches, and to specific representations. In weekly seminars, you will work on the case studies covered in class, and on related materials. Assessment is on the basis of a poster and an essay.

This module develops research and critical skills when examining digital cultures with a particular focus on the Americas. It takes examples that encompass North, Central, and South America as well as the Caribbean. Building confidence in handling theoretical tools in the analysis of digital cultures it examines a range of professional and amateur content creators from social, institutional and personal perspectives and considers issues of curatorship, archival approaches, the ethics of (re)appropriation and remediation, and the relationship between the self and the public and private spheres.

This module will equip students with a knowledge of how discourse works at linguistic, metalinguistic, and paralinguistic levels. You will be exposed to a wide range of discourse types and will learn methodologies (and their theoretical bases) available for analysing them, especially with a view to exposing meanings which would otherwise remain hidden.

This module gives you the option to write a 10,000-word dissertation. You will be expected to formulate a dissertation proposal in advance, and if this is accepted, you will be allocated an academic supervisor. This module gives you a chance to focus on a specific topic or area that interests you within the study of either English language or literature, and allows you to demonstrate your capacity in undertaking a piece of serious, independent research.

The module aims to provide students with an introduction to the principles and practice of teaching English to speakers of other languages, and to help prepare students with little or no teaching experience to teach English to speakers of other languages in the private or voluntary sectors or while travelling abroad.

The relationship between language and gender has been broadly studied within a range of disciplines, including linguistics, anthropology and sociology. Issues relating to the differences between men’s and women’s linguistic behaviour have been addressed since early 20th century and are still a recurrent topic in contemporary societies. This module examines the role of language in constructing gender and reviews past and recent theoretical approaches to language and gender, particularly relating to the fields of sociolinguistics, (critical) discourse analysis and conversation analysis. Focusing on empirical work, relevant theories are applied to a range of data including conversational talk and written texts. In particular, we will explore gender ideologies in society, how gender identities intersect with other social identities, and the importance of context in gender identity construction. The relationship of language and gender will be addressed in a variety of contexts such as media discourse, conversational talk, politics and the workplace, educational settings and (children’s) fiction. Students are expected to conduct an empirical study in an area of language and gender which will require the collection and analysis of original data.

The Single Author/Special Topic module allows students to undertake detailed study of an author or theme connected closely to the research specialism of an academic staff member. Students will take part in a series of research seminars throughout the semester. Seminars in the early part of the module will introduce key ideas, contexts and critical debates in relation to the relevant author or theme. In the later weeks of the module, seminars will become increasingly student-led, giving students the opportunity to present their own research into the topic. At the end of the module, students will use their research to develop a public engagement project designed to explain the significance of their topic to an audience beyond the university. The module is intended both for students who want to undertake research in a collaborative, seminar-based environment and for students who want to develop skills of engagement with wider public audiences.

This module focuses specifically on varieties of English spoken in Northern England and aims to address the perception and conceptualisation of these varieties relative to Modern Standard English, Received Pronunciation, and other non-standard varieties of English. The module will address what it means to be Northern, to speak a Northern dialect, to represent that dialect in writing. Students will discuss the phonetic, phonological, morphological and syntactic features of several different Northern varieties. The relationship between geographical background and identity is also addressed as well as linguistic changes currently in progress in UK Englishes. Students are expected to conduct their own research project where they collect and analyse their own original data, present their findings, and address the implications of their work as part of the assessment.

This module explores the relationship between comics, memory and history. Some of the most engaging comics of our times represent marginalised histories of individuals and communities, and whole genres of comics today are committed to drawing attention and striving against historical and contemporary systems of oppression. Over the last decades, comics have started documenting forgotten histories, conveying testimonies and enabling forms of self representation and transcultural belonging. Yet this medium has a long and complex history of depicting race and ethnicity, reinforcing discrimination and marginalisation and popularising colonial stereotypes. This module engages with such history, and with authors who are redrawing it.
This module develops a language-sensitive approach to comics and graphic novels beyond the Anglosphere; the syllabus introduces the students to a series of linguistic and cultural contexts in which comics have been developed and translated since the 20th century.

A large proportion of films are based on written texts and this module will introduce you to a range of cinematic adaptations of literary works from across Modern Languages. Using adaptation theory to inform your analysis, you will have the opportunity to study excerpts from texts and consider the issues that arise from their adaptation as films. How does cinema convey a sense of the past or modify literary works from a different time period? How does it represent the gender roles which can be a central preoccupation of literature? How does film transcend language boundaries to bring modern-language texts to new audiences? On this module you will have the opportunity to explore these areas whilst also developing skills in film analysis, journalistic writing and academic writing.

Fiction is a place where unreal things can happen…

This module looks at the genre of the fantastic, the cross-over between real and unreal, and marvellous in some of the best known works of German-language literature: the Grimms’ fairytales; ‘Blond Eckbert’, a ‘fairytale’ invented by Ludwig Tieck; and ETA Hoffmann’s Der Sandmann (The Sandman), a text dealing with madness and magic. We will also look at some modern versions of classic fairytales.

Close reading of the set texts will be paired with a range of critical analysis including contemporary approaches including disability studies and queer readings, as well as established frameworks by theorists such as Propp, Bettelheim, Bottigheimer and feminist critics (Warner, Tatar). The module will also introduce key theories with a particular emphasis on Todorov’s theory of the fantastic and Freud’s theory of Das Unheimliche (‘the Uncanny’).

This module examines different periods of Asian cinema from the early 20th century to the latest trends in Asian blockbusters. The course looks at directors, genres and trends as well as different stages of innovation in filmmaking in Asia. We will pay close attention to how the production and consumption of filmic texts in Asia has developed across differing time periods. We will look at a variety of genres, ranging from Chinese martial arts films to popular Japanese anime and the Korean new wave. By conducting close readings of these films from East Asia in conjunction with English-language scholarly articles, students will gain competency in methodological approaches for the study of Asian cinema as well as an understanding of topics such as auteurism, gender and sexuality, nationalism, transnationalism postcolonialism and censorship.

This is an interdisciplinary module which aims to get students to think critically about imaginative literature and philosophical approaches to literature. It familiarises students with some of the main issues, theories and arguments relating to the ontology, value and structure of literature, as well as concept critical theory.
The module discusses key themes at the intersection of philosophy and literature; there is usually a focus on the genre of tragedy. The module is taught by lecture 1 hour per week and seminar 1 hour per week. Assessment is via class presentation (10%) and two 3,000 word coursework essays (40%, 50%).

The module explores how popular culture can be political by examining a range of popular cultural commodities discursively. The module surveys a range of views on how to examine popular culture in order to contextualise discourse analysis. This is examined and then used to critically consider the political potential of popular culture. Successful students will be able to critically analyse a range of popular cultural commodities such as film, television programmes, digital popular culture, popular music and the tabloid press. The module is delivered in the forms of lectures and more hands-on analysis during seminars. Students are assessed by an essay, which is an analysis of a popular culture commodity.

This module is an opportunity for you to undertake a placement in a setting which matches your academic and possible career/industry interests, develop materials and/or undertake tasks within a practical or vocational context, apply academic knowledge from your degree, and develop your personal and employability skills within a working environment. SOTA300 is not open to students who have taken SOTA600.

This module will give students an opportunity to write a short story, and reflect critically on the writing and editing process in a workshop situation. Students should be prepared to write and read independently, to share their work in progress with their peers and to critically evaluate their own work and that of their peers.

​This module invites students to read a variety of medieval (and some pre-medieval) texts and consider how they reflect various types of encounter between human and other worlds, such as animal, monster, ghostly, spiritual, dream and other such non-human worlds. The module requires close reading of texts in original Middle English and includes a translation exercise.

We, as a society, confront narratives of migrant experience daily. The rhetoric of crisis, disaster and emergency often defines the stories of those who have fled or been forced out of their homelands as powerfully as it pervades related debates around conflict, climate change and the Coronavirus pandemic. In recent years, as the UK’s relationship with the rest of Europe and the rest of the world has been radically reconceived, our islands are imagined, by some, as places of refuge and, by others, as bastions vulnerable to invasion. But the complex ways in which migrants themselves experience, interpret and represent their settlement histories in Britain rarely feature within public accounts of the making of contemporary British society. This new interdisciplinary module takes a long view of the migrant experience in postwar Britain, guiding students through relevant aspects of social theory, moments in modern history, and literary texts. We will encounter the migrant experience through literature, film, performance, journalism, critical writing, and first-hand accounts. The module also features an alternative assessment: students will be guided by experts in creating oral history and verbatim theatre practitioners to generate new analyses and narratives of migration.

The module covers a series of strategies adopted by millennial writers to engage with the literary, cultural and international discourses of the late 20th and early 21st century. Topics covered will include the following: Generations X and Y and “Millennials”; irony and the cultural relationship between the 1960s/70s and the 1990s; digital/internet culture and the tech corporation (Apple/Google); developments in life-writing and journalism; the novel after theory; neoliberalism, austerity and debt; the globalised postcolonial city; discourses of waste, climate change and ecocriticism; terminologies of contemporary race relations; writing after/against postmodernism; 9/11, the war on terror and apocalyptic writing; the role of genre in contemporary writing.

This module examines the range of writing, film and art within the genre of Noir. In particular, it engages with the relationships between literary and non-literary, particularly visual, media as well as examining Noir’s social, political, intellectual and historical contexts.

​This module aims to introduce students to the field of postcolonial literature and theory through the close study of a range of fiction written by writers from British ex-colonies in South Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. The focus of analysis will be an exploration of this literature through the lenses of British colonisation, the process of decolonisation and independence as well as the complexities of the postcolonial condition. As part of this module, students will be required to read theoretical texts and engage with a range of theoretical concepts within the field of postcolonial studies. They will also be encouraged to apply these theories to the literature they read. Film and music may be used to enhance the learning experience. 

This module is about how Shakespeare is made, and re-made: on the page, stage, and screen. Focusing on six of Shakespeare’s plays, it examines how they’ve been transformed, through theatrical production and cinematic adaptation, by actors and directors who bring them to life in performance but also change and challenge, sometimes quite radically, their meaning and interpretation as encountered on the page. Debating where ‘Shakespeare’ really ‘lives’ – on the page, stage, or screen – you’ll be reading and interpreting his plays in relation to specific editorial and production issues, assessing how the texts appeared in Shakespeare’s own time (in Quarto and Folio), and reviewing how modern editors and directors treat them today, dealing with the problems and possibilities they continue to present. Encountering original printed texts, the sources that Shakespeare himself adapted to create his plays, and subsequent adaptations of them for stage and screen, this module offers a more advanced, dynamic, and complex understanding of Shakespearean drama as it is put to work: on the page, stage, and screen.

War Writing addresses the ways that wartime and peacetime are imagined by writers in the 20th and 21st centuries. We consider the topic by looking at a diverse range of texts that address war directly or indirectly. We ask our students to ask exactly what it is that war means and the ways in which writers have attempted to answer that question. We actively look to expand our definition of war writing and to include a wide spectrum of writers and writing.

This module engages with twentieth-century and contemporary feminisms and their relation to literature of the period. We consider key debates and concepts in feminist thought, and explore how they have been represented and reimagined in writing across a range of forms, including poetry, prose (fiction and non-fiction) and theatre. Students will examine feminist literary criticism, critical understandings of gender, and how feminisms relate to other questions of identity and justice, from sexuality and socialism to the postcolonial and the ecological. They will understand feminisms on their own terms, but also think closely about how literature takes up, questions – and perhaps even attempts to transform – the problem of sexism and intersecting inequalities.

This module looks at dramatic texts from the ancient world (Greek and Latin). It aims to get you thinking about how these texts were performed, and how they are – or might be – performed now. Consequently, it will ask you to review a performance; to perform something yourself; and to use the tools of modern scholarship to write an essay about ancient tragedy and/or comedy. These texts are some of the most seminal of the ancient world: Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and Antigone, Aeschylus’ Oresteia, and Euripides’ Medea are some of the richest texts the ancient world has handed down to us; Aristophanes and Menander provide the basis for modern political comedy and domestic drama (including modern sitcom).

This module focuses on British poetry from c.1930s – the present. Attention will be given to individual poems as well as their social, historical and political contexts and modes of production. Students will develop skills in close reading, buttressed by an increased understanding of the literary, theoretical, aesthetic and historical contexts for poetry writing. The module pursues an enquiry informed by (and critical of) ideas of nation, theory and poetics into the developments of poetry in this period with a view to questions of race, class, language and gender.

This module explores Children’s Literature from its ‘Golden Age’ in the late C19th through to the present day, considering its development and innovations through this period, alongside the traditional and sustained features of the genre. Time is also spent at the beginning of the course giving the module texts an historical and literary context by looking at early educational texts and chapbooks, for example. Topics covered include: children’s literature and the pastoral; the moral tale; fairy tales; the role of illustrations; coming-of-age literature; metafiction in children’s lit; fantasy; adult authors, narrators and readers, and talking bears. Critical approaches to children’s literature are introduced and discussed during the course, and specific use is made of the Special Collections and Archives collection of children’s books.

This is a 15-credit Level 6 module. The module is designed to encourage students to write original poetry, using class workshops, the study of high-quality examples, and weekly assignments with written feedback. Assessment is delivered by means of a portfolio, which is composed of original work (50%) and a self-assessment (40%). There will also be a performance of the students’ own work (10%).

Games are ubiquitous today; even if you don’t think you play them, you do, via schemes like loyalty cards. This module examines the role of games in contemporary society, and the ways in which this has been reflected within contemporary literature. Throughout this module, we will consider the relationship between games and literature in relation to three key areas—“Ludic Literature”, “Gaming Cultures”, and “Games of the Future”—with each area involving the analysis of particular literary texts to consider what they reveal about contemporary society and its interests in games and gaming. Illustrative authors include: Raymond Queneau and members of the OuLiPo, Orson Scott Card, William Gibson, Daniel Suarez, and Ernest Cline.

This module examines the history of Gothic fiction from the 18th century to the present day and explores relationships between literature and film in the evolution of the genre. It considers both the influence of cinematic and pre-cinematic visual technologies on Gothic literature and aesthetics and the reciprocal influence of Gothic literature upon the emergence and development of cinema and television.

This module examines the life and work of Ireland’s greatest and most influential fiction writer, James Joyce, from his 1914 collection of short stories, Dubliners, through his first novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and onward to his later masterpieces, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.
Historical and biographical context will form a key part of our studies.

This is a course for anyone interested in the early novel, and focusses on prose fictions from the period 1740-1830, which is to say the development of the novel from its early appearances through into the Romantic period. If you have taken Victorian Literature, this is the story of how the novel developed prior to the appearance of writers such as Dickens and the Brontës. We look at the kinds of literature that fed into the early novel (such as journalism and travel writing), and the material conditions that were necessary to its development (print technologies and so on). We consider a wide range of related topics such as sensibility, the physiology of emotion, realism, and editing, and—in the context of the ongoing history of misogyny—we pay particular attention to the astonishingly courageous, radical, inventive, psychologically insightful, and funny writing of the women authors of the period. Writers on the course typically include Mary Davys, Samuel Richardson, Laurence Sterne, Horace Walpole, Henry Mackenzie, Mary Hays, Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane Austen, and James Hogg.

This module examines twentieth-century ‘offshoots’ that re-think and reinvent some of Shakespeare’s most famous plays, as well as his life and ‘character’ as an author. We’ll consider ‘offshoots’ across a variety of media, from drama and film, to short stories, novels, and graphic literature: texts that re-work and ‘answer’ plays such as Hamlet, The Tempest, The Merchant of Venice, King Lear, and Shakespeare’s Sonnets. The relationship between an offshoot and the original, and how that relationship illuminates our understanding of both, is what this module seeks to explore, by addressing questions of originality and intertextuality, adaptation and appropriation, gender and sexuality, power and authority.

This module gives you the option to write a 10,000-word dissertation. You will be expected to formulate a dissertation proposal in advance, and if this is accepted, you will be allocated an academic supervisor. This module gives you a chance to focus on a specific topic or area that interests you within the study of either English language or literature, and allows you to demonstrate your capacity in undertaking a piece of serious, independent research.