This module aims:

1. to introduce students to key aspects of contemporary writing in English through a wide range of forms, style, and linguistic registers in poetry, short fiction, drama, and film;

2. to introduce students to a range of current issues and debates in English Studies and contemporary writing;

3. to increase the reading range of students and encourage them to become reflective and responsive readers.

This module introduces a range of contemporary writing in English covering a wide variety of forms, styles, and linguistic registers: tales, short-fiction, poetry, drama, film-adaptations, elements of pulp fiction, modernist and post-modernist fiction. The set texts raise a number of critical issues concerning literary form and language, cultural positioning and social identity. They are arranged under four thematic headings: 'Class', 'Negotiating Identities', 'Sexualities' and 'Cultures in Contact'. This approach will enable students to engage with the sort of theoretical work they will encounter at a higher level in Part Two.

There will be two lectures each week. Each topic will be introduced in a general lecture, and each of the set texts will be examined in two lectures, one specifically on the text, the other on a wider range of issues raised by the text.

In the seminars, students can present and investigate their own ideas on the meaning and worth of the set texts. What has the text communicated to you personally, and how does your opinion relate to those of other students and critics?

_Set Texts

_Class:

• Tony Harrison, 'Selected Poems'
• A.S. Byatt, 'Elementals'

_Negotiating Identities:

• Charlotte Williams, 'Sugar and Slate'
Jeff Noon, 'Vurt'

_Sexualities:

• Jackie Kay, 'Trumpet'
• Jeanette Winterson, 'The Passion'

_Cultures in Contact:

• Zadie Smith, 'White Teeth'
• Alex Garland, 'The Beach'

(Subject to release of videos, we shall also consider the new film adaptations of both of these latter titles.)