LITERATURE IN A WORLD CONTEXT

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr J Stewart

Pre-requisites

None.

Notes

When forming part of a graduating curriculum in Literature in a World Context, it is recommended that this course is taken together with LW 1502 Creative Practices: Literature in a World Context II.

Overview

This introductory course explores literature as a global phenomenon, placing national literatures in international context. It shows how literature makes sense of historical and cultural events in a period of globalization and examines the way literature relates to other ways of making sense of the world (including the arts, philosophy, politics, and the new media). Among other examples, it will use responses to September 11, 2001 to illustrate how literature takes a vital place in efforts to come to grips with events and social developments of world-wide importance. All literary texts will be read in translation.

Structure

1 two-hour lecture / seminar and 1 one-hour tutorial per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 two-hour written examination (50%); continuous assessment (50%) - one 1,250 word essay (40%) and tutorial assessment mark (10%).

Resit: 1 two-hour written examination (100%).

Formative Assessment

One 350 word review; short written responses.

Feedback

Feedback on reviews and essays will be in the form of written comments on work. Feedback on examination will be provided in line with university / College guidance. Additionally students will be invited to make appointments to discuss their work with their tutor. Feedback on presentations will be given in oral form during tutorial hours.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr J A Biggane

Pre-requisites

None.

Notes

When forming part of a graduating curriculum in Literature in a World Context, it is recommended that this course is taken together with LW 1003 Encountering Global Change: Literature in a World Context I.

Overview

This course examines the way in which creative practices (particularly literature, film, music) seek to make sense of, and come to terms with events and processes of world-wide importance, which may include colonialism, slavery, postcoloniality, transnational movement and globalization. It explores the ways in which creative work, in its representation of subjective, lived experience, can link large-scale historical and contemporary transnational and global economic and political processes to the most intimate forms of everyday existence, to examine how the lives of individuals, families and communities are affected by, and affect, political, cultural and economic forces operating across and beyond national borders. It forms a vital part of trying to understand the meaning and consequences of important social and historical movements and events, from sixteenth-century colonization to contemporary forms of globalization.

Structure

1 two-hour lecture/seminar and 1 one-hour tutorial per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: Continuous assessment (100%): 1 end of semester written assignment: 50%; 1 project: 20%; 2 brief written assignments (20%); tutorial assessment mark (10%).

Resit: 2 written assignments (100%).

Formative Assessment

Student presentations in tutorials.

Feedback

Feedback on reviews and essays will be in the form of written comments on work. Feedback on examination will be provided in line with university / College guidance. Additionally students will be invited to make appointments to discuss their work with their tutor. Feedback on presentations will be given in oral form during tutorial hours.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr J Stewart

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 2 or above, or by permission of the Head of School.

Notes

This course can either be taken separately or in combination with LW 2501 Modes of Reading.

Overview

How does modern literature respond to world-historical events and shape our understanding of them? What role does literature play in modern intellectual and political history? This innovative introduction to modern literary thought explores these questions by focussing on the constellation of events, ideas and writings on six key dates: 1848, 1917, 1936, 1945, 1968 and 9/11/2001. Besides works of literature and film, the course studies various kinds of theoretical and polemical writing.

Structure

1 one-hour lecture and 1 one-hour tutorial per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 two-hour written examination (50%); continuous assessment (50%) - one 1,250 word essay (40%) and tutorial assessment mark (10%).

Resit: 1 two-hour written examination (100%).

Formative Assessment

Micro and macro student presentations.

Feedback

Feedback on reviews and essays will be in the form of written comments on work. Feedback on examination will be provided in line with university / College guidance. Additionally students will be invited to make appointments to discuss their work with their tutor. Feedback on presentations will be given in oral form during tutorial hours.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr S Ward

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 2 or above, or by permission of the Head of School.

Notes

This course can be taken separately or in combination with LN 2001 Literature, History and Thought: 1848 to 9/11.

Overview

Poets are banned from Plato's Republic, Dante damns lovers of literature to hell. Like modern counterparts, from Sigmund Freud to Helene Cixous, they acknowledge the dangerous pleasures elicited by reading and affirm literature's ability to form self and world. Examining how literary works engage readers --to train moral imagination, cultivate sympathy, uncover subconscious fears, or solicit transgressive desires -- this course studies texts by fundamental literary thinkers alongside works of world-renown. The course considers the nature of literary representations, introducing concepts such as mimesis, poesis and catharsis, realism, performance and fictionality, thereby preparing students for more advanced courses in literary thought.

Structure

1 one-hour lecture and 1 one-hour tutorial per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: Continuous assessment (100%): two 2,000 word written assignments (45% each); tutorial assessment (10%).

1 two-hour written examination (100%).

Formative Assessment

Micro / macro presentations in tutorials.

Feedback

Feedback on reviews and essays will be in the form of written comments on work. Feedback on examination will be provided in line with university / College guidance. Additionally students will be invited to make appointments to discuss their work with their tutor. Feedback on presentations will be given in oral form during tutorial hours.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr A Janus

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Level 3 or Level 4 Literature in a World Context or at the discretion of the Head of School.

Overview

If literature was accorded a privileged position in the Gutenberg galaxy, what constitutes its status when confronted with new developments in media and information technologies? Drawing on the work of Haraway, Kittler, McCluhan, Ronnel, Sloterdijk and others, this course examines how literature has engaged in the past, and continues to engage today, with technological change, from the telephone, gramophone and radio to the modem, mp3 and digital media. The course will also explore the power of social media (both old and new) to effect social change. It will examine, for example, the role of wireless technology in war and revolution from the 20th century to the present day (for example, the use of radio in World War I and II and the use of digital social networking in the Arab Spring).

Structure

1 three-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: Continuous assessment (100%); two 3,000 word essays (50% each).

Resit: 1 two-hour written examination (100%).

Formative Assessment

Informal oral feedback on performance in class.

Feedback

Feedback on essays will be in the form of written comments on work, utilizing a standard feedback sheet. Additionally students will be invited to make appointments to discuss their work with their tutor. Informal feedback will be provided in oral form.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Professor C Fynsk

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Level 3 or Level 4 Literature in a World Context or at the discretion of the Head of School.

Overview

This course focuses on the relations between literature and the political, both nationally and internationally. It will explore, through a number of specific case studies, how literature has engaged in the past, and continues to engage today, with political circumstances, and political questions. Content will vary depending on research interests of staff teaching at any one time, but might include, for example: Rousseau's Social Contract; Harlem Renaissance writers; Pablo Neruda's poetry; Aimee Cesaire's 'Discourse on Colonialism'; W.B. Yeats and Irish nationalism; Jean Paul Sartre's reflections on 'engagement'; Yukio Mishima's 'Runaway Horses'.

Structure

1 three-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: Continuous assessment (100%); two 3,000 word essays (50% each).

Resit: 1 two-hour written examination (100%).

Formative Assessment

Informal oral feedback on performance in class.

Feedback

Feedback on essays will be in the form of written comments on work, utilizing a standard feedback sheet. Additionally students will be invited to make appointments to discuss their work with their tutor. Informal feedback will be provided in oral form.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Professor C Fynsk

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Level 3 or Level 4 Literature in a World Context or at the discretion of the Head of School.

Overview

This course approaches literary study in the context of intellectual history, including the history of science. It reads literary texts together with works from philosophy and other fields of intellectual endeavour (for example: psychology, anthropology, theory of art, and political theory) to explore how literature complements and sometimes challenges efforts to grasp human experience and the meaning of socio-historical movements. The course will therefore offer a broad intellectual perspective on forms of artistic representation and an advanced introduction to a vital dimension of literary study. While the focus will tend to fall on the modern period, topics will be drawn from a wide range of historical periods and forms of literature. All texts will be read in translation.

Structure

1 three-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: Continuous assessment; two 3,000 word essays (50% each).

Resit: 1 two-hour written examination (100%).

Formative Assessment

Informal oral feedback on performance in class.

Feedback

Feedback on essays will be in the form of written comments on work, utilizing a standard feedback sheet. Additionally students will be invited to make appointments to discuss their work with their tutor. Informal feedback will be provided in oral form.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr Adrienne Janus

Pre-requisites

Available to students in Programme Year 3 only.

Overview

This course examines a selection of the best and most exciting forms of literary modernism - from the novel, to poetry and drama, and from traditional, 'high-modernist' to experimental and avant-garde works. These literary works will be set against readings by representative thinkers of modernity, such as Darwin, Freud, Nietzsche and Theodor Adorno. The rich intellectual and cultural background of the period will also be discussed with reference to modernist movements in visual art and music. A further aim of the course is to convey a sense of the historical experience of modernity, a period characterised by rapid, often violent change, by war and revolution, and by scientific and technological progress.
Authors studied may include: Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann, TS Eliot, Tristan Tzara, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Eugene Ionesco, Samuel Beckett.

Structure

1 one-hour lecture and 1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: Continuous assessment (65%): one 1,500 word essay (25%); one 2,500 word essay (30%), seminar assessment mark (10%); 1 two-hour written exam, (35%).

Resit: 1 two-hour written examination (100%).

Formative Assessment

Informal oral feedback on performance in class.

Feedback

Feedback on essays will be in the form of written comments on work, utilizing a standard feedback sheet. Additionally students will be invited to make appointments to discuss their work with their tutor. Informal feedback will be provided in oral form.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Professor C Fynsk

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Level 4 Literature in a World Context or at the discretion of the Head of School.

Overview

This course will provide students with guidance on writing a dissertation on a topic approved by the programme co-ordinator for the Head of School.

Structure

3 one-hour tutorial; 1 two-hour dissertation workshop.

Assessment

1st attempt: One 8,000 word dissertation (100%).

Resit: For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new dissertation.

Formative Assessment

Feedback on draft material - in individual tutorials and in the workshop session.

Feedback

Feedback on essays will be in the form of written comments on work, utilizing a standard feedback sheet. Additionally students will be invited to make appointments to discuss their work with their tutor. Informal feedback will be provided in oral form.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Professor C Fynsk

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Level 4 Literature in a World Context, English, French, German and Hispanic Studies or at the discretion of the Head of School.

Overview

This course offers advanced students of Literature in a World Context the opportunity to further develop their knowledge and understanding of the field through the intensive study of a particular topic based on prescribed literary and theoretical sources. Precise details of the subjects available reflecting current research interests of staff will be made available to Honours students during the preceding session. Examples of topics that might be on offer include: the idea of 'community'; translation as a literary and philosophical endeavour; environmental aesthetics and eco-criticism.

Structure

1 three-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: Continuous assessment, two 4,000 word essays, weighted equally (100%).

Resit: For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Formative Assessment

Informal oral feedback on performance in class.

Feedback

Feedback on essays will be in the form of written comments on work, utilizing a standard feedback sheet. CAS marks will be used to indicate quality, corresponding to a set of written descriptors made available to students as part of the course guide. Additionally students will be invited to make appointments to discuss their work with their tutor. Informal feedback will be provided in oral form.