English Literature MA

MA English Literature explores the interrelations between literature and the environments in which it is produced and received. It employs a broad understanding of the word ‘environment’ to include wilderness, wasteland, urban, suburban and domestic spaces. It seeks to understand the role of literature in collective human and more-than-human adaptation and resistance to environmental change.

Modules

• Utopian & Dystopian Writing: Identity, Education & Ecology - 30 credits

  This module introduces you to the key theoretical concepts and texts relating to literary utopia and dystopia. You will learn to critically assess utopian and dystopian components in fiction and philosophy. You will examine how utopian and dystopian ideas intersect with concepts such as gender, violence, or technophobia and technophilia, and how they influence contexts such as architecture, the environment, communities or bureaucracy. Theoretical sessions will contextualise and historicise the evolution of utopian and dystopian literature, and will include close readings of utopian and dystopian literary texts.

  Compulsory

• Shakespearean Spaces - 15 credits

  Shakespearean Spaces will introduce students to Shakespeare as a writer of place and space. It considers the ways in which his works engage with diverse environments – from the rural wilderness to the early modern urban centre, from the great oceans of the world to the imaginary landscape. In addition to considering Shakespeare’s representation of space, students will explore how the places in which Shakespeare’s works are performed affect how they are understood. In their analysis of the relationship between literature and environment, students will draw upon several contemporary methodologies; these will include ecocriticism, geocriticism, spatial theory and urban studies.

  Compulsory

• Romantic Environments and Emotions - 15 credits

  This module examines the ways in which Romantic-period emotions shaped and were shaped by Romantic era environments. Students will study a range of environments and a range of emotions. Environments studied might include the country estate, the city, forests, the Lake District, carriage journeys, and journeys aboard warships. Emotions studied might include romantic love, loneliness, empathy, grief, and hate. The module will also interrogate how environments defined as wasteland influenced Romantic experiences of space and emotion, as well as how synthetic materials altered domestic spaces and the lives of the people who inhabited them.

  Compulsory

• Environment and the American West - 15 credits

  This module introduces students to a diverse body of American Western writing that engages with the environmental transformation of Western spaces from the early 20th century to the present. The module is particularly interested in critically examining and interrogating the relationship between shifting and contested human and non-human Western spaces and identity formation. The module will draw upon a theoretical framework that incorporates race critical theories, ecocriticism, and critical regionalism.

  Compulsory

• Gothic Nature - 15 credits

  Gothic Nature explores the literature, theory and reception of the gothic, horror, the weird and the eerie and their relationship to human and more-than-human environments. While reading nineteenth-century short stories to present day novels, students will also consider the roots of these contested terms in earlier forms such as myth, fairy and folk tales. It will primarily feature British, European, North American and Australian literature, but will also consider film, radio, computer games and other media. Students will be encouraged to identify and critique the frequent entanglements of the gothic, horror, the weird and the eerie with other genres and modes, including fantasy and science fiction, and to combine ecocritical theory with intersecting disciplines including queer theory, ecofeminism, and critical race studies. A major focus of the module will be the adoption of weird and eerie texts by ecocritical scholars, deep ecologists, and those working in the Environmental Humanities more broadly.

  Compulsory

• Postcoloniality and Environment - 15 credits

  This module will explore global colonial and postcolonial literatures and discourses in conversation with the intersecting disciplines of climate justice, waste studies and uneven development. Students will examine literary texts in light of imperialism, neo-imperialism, ecofeminism, environmental racism and extractive capitalism and investigate ongoing environmental catastrophes and conflicts such as those in Bhopal, the Niger Delta or Ecuador.

  Compulsory

• Research Methods - 15 credits

  This module will introduce students to a range of research tools and methodologies applicable to the study of literature. As well as covering traditional research approaches and tools, such as research library archives and digital archives, theoretical and methodological approaches, this module will also prepare students to source and synthesise scientific data relevant to the course.

  Compulsory

• Dissertation - 50 credits

  The dissertation gives students an opportunity to conceive and carry out an individual programme of research and writing, under the supervision of a member of staff with teaching and / or research interests in the area to be studied, leading to the ultimate submission of a final dissertation. Students may write about any area of English Literature that staff in the School can supervise.

  Compulsory

• Transnational Professional Development - 10 credits

  Compulsory