Your Second and Third Year (Part 2)
Second Year
In Year Two, the English and World Literatures scheme consists of a 'core' taken by all students, comprising the following modules:
Postcolonial Literatures: Perspective and Paradigms. This module expands students’ understanding of the range of world literatures in English by focusing on postcolonial environments, cultures and literatures. A range of key narratives from Africa, the Indian subcontinent, Australasia and the Caribbean are considered via a set of critical issues, including diaspora and cultural identity, rewriting the nation, and the notion of ‘writing back’. The module covers novels, memoirs, poems, plays and critical interventions by postcolonial authors from India, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, New Zealand, Australia and the Caribbean.
Reading Theory / Reading Text 1. This module allows students to develop the skills and methods necessary for literary analysis, and to engage with important issues in literary theory. What is it we’re doing when we analyse texts? How has this process of interpretation and analysis changed over the centuries? How do our individual interests and prejudices affect our literary judgement? How does the analysis of literature interact with other disciplines, such as history or politics?
As well as the core element outlined above, EWL students must take two of the following historical survey courses:
- Medieval and Renaissance Writing
- Nineteenth-century Literature
- Restoration and Eighteenth-century Literature
- Twentieth-Century Literature
These modules do not try to teach you absolutely everything about the writing of the periods concerned, but they do allow you to encounter representative texts that illuminate many of the crucial concerns and debates of those periods. These modules are designed to open doors into various thematic, generic, political and social issues that might be pursued in other modules in more detail.
English and World Literatures students must also take two 20-credits English and World Literatures option modules from the departmental list.
Third (Final) Year
The final year of the English and World Literatures scheme comprises the following core modules:
Reading Theory / Reading Text 2: World Literatures. This semester 1 module addresses the issue of how we go about theorising World Literatures in the age of globalisation, providing students with the opportunity to apply a range of relevant theoretical approaches to the study of World Literatures in a number of genres. Building on the dialogue between text and literary theory introduced by the second-year core module, Reading Theory, Reading Text 1, this module develops students’ understanding of the relationship between theory and text through the application of a variety of theoretical readings to four literary texts, drawn from a range of national, cultural and regional literatures.
The Dissertation. This final module allows students the opportunity to produce a substantial study of a subject of their own choosing, relevant to the discipline of World Literatures – a topic that may have developed out of their work for other World Literatures modules. The module provides students with advanced research and bibliographical skills, as well as workshops on planning, shaping and structuring a significant piece of writing. Seen as the culmination of the English and World Literatures degree, the Dissertation gives students the space to conduct their most detailed and advanced research and writing; importantly, it will equip them with the skills necessary to progress to postgraduate study, if they so desire.
Year 3 Options
EWL students will also choose two 30-credits English and World Literatures option modules from the departmental list.