 | Use this page to view syllabus information, learning objectives, required materials, and technical requirements for the module.
As a result of College adapting your modules to combine face-to-face on campus and online teaching and learning support, the breakdown of notional learning hours set out under the heading “Technical Requirements” below may not necessarily reflect how each module will be delivered this year. Further details relating to this will be made available by your department and will be updated as part of the student timetable. |
| EN 1105 - Literature and Crisis |
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Associated Term:
2024/25 Academic Session
Learning Objectives:
This course will encourage students to think about the role of literature in the world across different historical periods and geographies. It is organised around specific political or planetary crises or flashpoints, all of which have very broad implications. The course will introduce students to a wide range of literature and contexts, challenging students to reflect on the complex relationship between literature, history and politics. It asks students to think about the agency or shaping force of literature in political and historical experience, to consider the role of aesthetics in the communication and analysis of world events as well as the ways in which our political and social environment impacts on literature. The shaping of personal experience by public crisis and the role of the individual voice in political and historical change will also be considered. The exposure to the range of literatures and ideas facilitated by the course will aid future course choices.
The curriculum will be organised chronologically, with four/five week blocks allotted to broad periods of literary history. In each week the lecture and seminars will focus on a set literary work alongside parallel historical textual materials. Such weekly topics may include accounts of the Flood in Genesis A and early English accounts of climate disaster, reading accounts of Reformation era political strife alongside Macbeth, the Peterloo Massacre with Shelley, Dickens and industrialisation, through to literatures of the Holocaust and of climate change.
In addition to standard assessment modes of a summer term examination, and a take-home critical commentary paper, students will learn to craft their own skills as writers for non-specialist audiences across the academic year through the writing and peer-reviewing of short writing exercises designed as literary blog posts. Students will write four short pieces a term which will be peer-marked and discussed in seminars. Students will select the best three of these assignments for a final portfolio, submitted at the end of the Spring term. A workshop on writing beyond the academy and literary journalism will be convened in the course of the year to raise students’ aspirations in this regard and to provoke reflections on writing and employability.
Learning Outcomes:
1. Demonstrate a knowledge of a wide variety of literature from a range of periods and genres;
2. Gain an understanding of a range of major historical events and currents and their impact on literature and culture;
3. Reflect in a considered and informed way on the relationship between literature and history;
4. Engage in sophisticated analysis of the role of literature in politics and the reciprocal force of politics in literature;
5. Reflect on the relationship of personal experience to public discourse;
6. Develop an understanding of the place of the aesthetic in shaping political, historical and personal narratives.
Required Materials: Click here for the reading list system Technical Requirements: The total number of notional learning hours associated with course are 300. These will normally be broken down as follows: 22 hour(s) of Lectures across 22 week(s) 22 hour(s) of Seminars across 22 week(s) 0.6 hour(s) of Tutorials across 2 week(s) 1 hour of Workshops across 1 week 254.4 hour(s) of Guided Independent Study Formative Assessment: 4x short exercises imagined as blog posts (1 to be selected as submission for assessments) - 4 x 500 words Formative critical commentary - 1000 words Summative Assessment: Essay 30% 1500 words Reflection Exercise 30% 1500 words Take home exam 40% 2000 words |
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