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EL55C7: INFINITE SCOTLANDS: SCOTLAND AND THE LITERARY IMAGINATION (2023-2024)

Last modified: 05 Oct 2023 08:46


Course Overview

This course explores the ways in which place is negotiated in a range of Scottish texts. Looking at a selection of texts about rural, urban, and diasporic experience across the centuries, and including both canonical and lesser-known works, this course will acquaint students with key debates in the study of regional and national fiction. Place in these texts is something to be praised and scorned, embraced and abandoned, but always remains central in any discussion of individual and communal identities. Major themes and issues to be discussed include: the idea of ‘home’; the role of nostalgia and longing in Scottish fiction; the nature of community; the significance of emigration and displacement.

Course Details

Study Type Postgraduate Level 5
Term Second Term Credit Points 30 credits (15 ECTS credits)
Campus Aberdeen Sustained Study No
Co-ordinators
  • Dr Helena Ifill

What courses & programmes must have been taken before this course?

  • One of Any Postgraduate Programme or Master of Letters in English Literary Studies or Master Of Letters In English Language And Literature or Master Of Letters In Literatures, Environments And Places or M Litt in Creative Writing

What other courses must be taken with this course?

None.

What courses cannot be taken with this course?

  • EL50C7 Infinite Scotlands: Scotland and the Literary Imagination (Studied)

Are there a limited number of places available?

No

Course Description

In a late poem Hugh MacDiarmid asks if Scotland is small and replies by saying that in spite of its land mass Scotland is, on the contrary, ‘multiform’ and ‘infinite’, incorporating within itself a diversity of ways of thinking about place and what this might mean. Looking at a selection of texts about rural, urban, and diasporic experience across the centuries, and including both canonical and lesser-known works, this course will acquaint students with key debates in the study of regional and national fiction. Place in these texts is something to be praised and scorned, embraced and abandoned, but always remains central in any discussion of individual and communal identities. Major themes and issues to be discussed include: the idea of ‘home’; the role of nostalgia and longing in Scottish fiction; the nature of community; the significance of emigration and displacement. The course will also examine the linguistic diversity that underpins so much of Scottish experience and which forms the basis for experimentation in its literature. There will be a particular focus on the North-east, the region in which the University of Aberdeen is located, and the course will also consider the ways in which literary heritage contributes to a complex understanding of nation and region in Scotland today. Authors to be discussed may include William Dunbar, Walter Scott, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Willa Muir, Nan Shepherd, George Mackay Brown and Leila Aboulela.


Contact Teaching Time

Information on contact teaching time is available from the course guide.

Teaching Breakdown

More Information about Week Numbers


Details, including assessments, may be subject to change until 30 August 2024 for 1st term courses and 20 December 2024 for 2nd term courses.

Summative Assessments

Discussion Board Contribution

Assessment Type Summative Weighting 10
Assessment Weeks Feedback Weeks

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Feedback

Written feedback will be provided within three weeks of submission and oral feedback upon request.

Learning Outcomes
Knowledge LevelThinking SkillOutcome
ConceptualAnalyseTo identify and analyse the ways in which literary texts engage with questions of national and local identity.
ConceptualApplyTo understand a range of theoretical approaches concerning the relationship of literature and place and be able to apply them.
ConceptualEvaluateTo understand how literature from different periods and across different genres engages with questions of place in varying ways and evaluate the effects produced.

Essay

Assessment Type Summative Weighting 60
Assessment Weeks Feedback Weeks

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Feedback

Written feedback will be provided within three weeks of submission and oral feedback upon request.

Word Count 3500
Learning Outcomes
Knowledge LevelThinking SkillOutcome
ConceptualAnalyseTo identify and analyse the ways in which literary texts engage with questions of national and local identity.
ConceptualApplyTo understand a range of theoretical approaches concerning the relationship of literature and place and be able to apply them.
ConceptualEvaluateTo understand how literature from different periods and across different genres engages with questions of place in varying ways and evaluate the effects produced.
ProceduralCreateTo write correctly and argue fluently and to produce pieces of literary analysis at postgraduate level.

Close Reading Exercise

Assessment Type Summative Weighting 30
Assessment Weeks Feedback Weeks

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Feedback

Written feedback will be provided within three weeks of submission and oral feedback upon request.

Learning Outcomes
Knowledge LevelThinking SkillOutcome
ConceptualAnalyseTo identify and analyse the ways in which literary texts engage with questions of national and local identity.
ConceptualEvaluateTo understand how literature from different periods and across different genres engages with questions of place in varying ways and evaluate the effects produced.
ProceduralCreateTo write correctly and argue fluently and to produce pieces of literary analysis at postgraduate level.

Formative Assessment

There are no assessments for this course.

Resit Assessments

Essay

Assessment Type Summative Weighting 100
Assessment Weeks Feedback Weeks

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Feedback Word Count 4000
Learning Outcomes
Knowledge LevelThinking SkillOutcome
Sorry, we don't have this information available just now. Please check the course guide on MyAberdeen or with the Course Coordinator

Course Learning Outcomes

Knowledge LevelThinking SkillOutcome
ProceduralCreateTo write correctly and argue fluently and to produce pieces of literary analysis at postgraduate level.
ConceptualApplyTo understand a range of theoretical approaches concerning the relationship of literature and place and be able to apply them.
ConceptualEvaluateTo understand how literature from different periods and across different genres engages with questions of place in varying ways and evaluate the effects produced.
ConceptualAnalyseTo identify and analyse the ways in which literary texts engage with questions of national and local identity.

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