English BA Welcome Pack

Modules and Reading Materials

The first year of your English degree is made up of the modules below. Each module is worth 20 credits. In your first year you must take a total of 120 credits, or 3 modules (60 credits) each semester. This must include LIT1049 as this is a core (compulsory) module. However, you can choose which semester to take this compulsory module in.

The modules you can pick from and the semesters they are running in are listed below:

Autumn Semester:

• LIT1049 Reading and Writing our World
• LIT1037 Identity Under Construction
• LIT1038 Contemporary Shakespeares
• LIT1048 American Dreams, American Nightmares: Race, Class and Gender

Spring Semester:

• LIT1049 Reading and Writing our World
• LIT1045 Digital Culture and Print Media
• LIT1046 Decolonising the Bookshelf
• LIT1047 Writing the Wild

You will be contacted by Student Records asking you to make your module selection.

To help you make a decision in relation to which module is best for you, please see below for a brief module description and brief core Reading Lists for each module – full reading lists for each module will be sent in advance of the start of the first semester.

Level 4 Module Reading Lists

Core Module: LIT1049 Reading and Writing our World is required for all students.  Please select to take this module either in the Autumn or Spring semester. You do not need to take it in both. 

LIT1049 Reading and Writing our World (Compulsory Module)

The purpose of this module is to introduce students to the dual roles involved in the construction of textual meaning: writing and reading. In exploring imaginative and critical reading and writing practices in a range of genres, students will engage in identifying the relevance of textual creativity to real-world applications.

Initial Core Texts

• Henry James, Daisy Miller – note:  there are two versions;  I recommend the 1908 version, which is not available online (please buy Oxford World Classics)
• A.S. Byatt.  Possession [1990] – Vintage
• Tom Stoppard.  Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead [1967] – Faber

Semester One Option Modules

LIT1037 Identity Under Construction

Module Description: This module introduces literatures with a primary focus on the constructions of identity, around issues such as race, class, gender and sexuality. Students also explore the concept of ‘identity’ to ask questions of form and genre, and thus consider key developments in the context of literary movements and social change.

The module will acquaint students with a range of writing including poetry, drama and the novel, which each have a focus on the concept of identity in some manner, as well as key critical and theoretical considerations, such as feminism, postmodernism and postcolonialism. The module will also equip students with a range of key and subject-specific skills relating to information retrieval, referencing, close reading and research.

Initial Core Texts:

You may use any edition of the below texts:

• Alan Moore and David Lloyd, V for Vendetta (please note, this is in comic form, eg is a graphic novel)
• Jeanette Winterson, Frankissstein
• Andrea Levy, Small Island
• Kae Tempest, Hold your Own

LIT1038 Contemporary Shakespeares

This module has two main aims:

1. To introduce you to Shakespeare as studied at degree level. This involves presenting Shakespeare as part of his historical, theatrical and literary worlds, familiarising you with a range of his plays across several genres – comedies, tragedies, and histories – and developing your skills in the close critical analysis of those texts.
2. To explore a) some contemporary critical approaches to Shakespeare, which might include presentism, cultural materialism eco-criticism, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, Marxism, film and performance criticism, among others, and b) cultural appropriations of his life and work. We will look particularly at film, graphic novels, and theatrical performance, but will also discuss the range of ways in which Shakespeare appears in contemporary culture, which might include looking briefly at popular music, art, advertising, heritage and tourism, and so on.

The module is grounded in the assumption that the meaning and significance of Shakespeare is continually re-invented in relation to cultural, historical and political pressures, and that it is always unsettled, manifold, and subject to debate: hence the plural form, ‘Shakespeares’. Whilst we will explore the richness of the plays’ literary language, and the depth and complexity of their themes and form, we are not attempting to demonstrate their (nor their author’s) ‘greatness’ or ‘universality’, but the many ways in which they can be made to mean, motivated by different social interests in the present day.

Hopefully the module will leave you with an enduring enthusiasm for these texts and their capacity for re-interpretation.

Set Text

• Please buy William Shakespeare, The Complete Works, Second Edition, edited by Stanley Wells and others. Oxford University Press, 2005. (Paperback)

This edition contains all the plays we will be studying (and includes many more which will be useful for context). In addition to being a highly regarded scholarly edition, it is the least expensive, and perhaps the lightest, Complete Works available. Please note that this is the second edition (2005) and is in paperback.

Do not bring any other edition: in seminars, we will all need to be on the same page. Furthermore, notes and supporting materials in this edition may sometimes be set as preparation.

Initial Core Texts

Please read the following plays carefully over the Summer, to get first impressions, and again before the seminar in which we discuss each one, to refresh your memory.

This is the probable order in which we will study them (although this could change):

• Hamlet
• Henry V
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream
• Othello

LIT1048 American Dreams, American Nightmares: Race, Class and Gender

Welcome to the introductory American literature module on the English programme.

This module will introduce you to a range of texts that illustrate the development of a national literature and culture in the US from the Colonial period up to the present day. Through the study of novels, poems and non-fiction forms, seminars will analyse how American writing has developed alongside the emerging republic and how it has responded to key social and historical developments.

The texts are arranged broadly chronologically but will be grouped around themes including race, gender, class, and counter-culture. The notion of founding a nation on the philosophical concepts contained in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will frame the question ‘What is an American?’ throughout the module, as will the ways in which critical perspectives can illuminate our readings of American texts.

The reading for each week is set out below. You must check the schedule in advance so that you can be prepared for every class. Many of these texts can be found on the NILE site but it is your responsibility to find, read and bring these to the relevant seminars.

The module is delivered through 2-hour seminars focusing on one major text over a week or shorter texts that will be discussed in a single seminar. There will also be a small number of online activities to engage with, these will help to supplement the work carried out in seminars. You MUST read the text prior to each respective seminar.

Initial Core Texts

• Nathaniel Hawthorne,. The Scarlet Letter (any edition)
• Frederick Douglass Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (any edition)
• Kate Chopin. The Awakening (any edition)
• Stephen Crane. Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (any edition)
• F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby (any edition)

Please note that a selection of other shorter required texts will be made available through NILE.

Semester Two Option Modules

Core Module: (must be taken either first or second semester – not both)

LIT1049 Reading and Writing our World (Compulsory Module)

You must take the Core Module this semester if you do not take it in the first semester – the reading list will be the same as for Semester One.

LIT1045 Digital Culture and Print Media

This module focuses on how the meaning of a text is affected by where and how it is published or otherwise shared with the world.  We’ll examine the differences between paperbacks, magazines, manuscripts and other media (including film, online texts and literature via social media).  There are only four novels (see below) but plenty of other short literary works so we can explore printed and published texts as well as the rise of digital culture.

Initial Core Texts (in order of study):

• H.G. Wells, War of the Worlds [1898] any edition (Penguin recommended)
• Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness [1899] any (Norton critical edition recommended)
• Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart [1958] any (Norton critical edition recommended)
• Jennifer Egan, Visit from the Goon Squad [2010] any edition

LIT1046 Decolonising the Bookshelf

This module sets out to answer the question: what does it mean to decolonise the literary canon? It explores literary representations of global ethnic majorities within a range of texts written in English and drawn from different historical periods.

The module engages a range of critical approaches including post-colonialism and critical race studies to reframe literary debates about diversity and inclusiveness. It examines a range of topics and themes such as colonial discourse, legacies of slavery, writing back to the centre, the relationship between race, gender and class, cultural belonging and unbelonging, and decolonising the canon. It enables students to encounter and discuss a range of representations of the racialised self and other in a constructive, creative and collaborative way.

Initial Core Texts

• Selvon, Sam. The Lonely Londoners (any edition)
• Prince, Mary. The History of Mary Prince. (any edition)
• Blackman, Malorie. Noughts and Crosses. (any edition)
• Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Purple Hibiscus (any edition)

LIT1047 Writing the Wild

Writing the Wild explores literary representations of the natural world and the diverse ways in which writers have responded to the wild. The module emphasises the significance of literary texts in contributing to contemporary debates regarding our relationships with the environment and other species, and how the rediscovery of our own wildness can help us to rethink and regenerate those relationships. We will study a range of literary non-fiction, fiction and poetry alongside reading in the fields of eco-criticism, wilderness theory and animal advocacy, drawing on texts from the nineteenth century onwards, and from both British and American writers. Seminar discussions will focus on important themes and concepts such as Wildness, Wilderness, Rewilding, Speciesism, Environmentalism, and the relationship between gender, race, social class and the experience of the natural world and other animals.

Initial Core Texts

• Emily Brontë. Wuthering Heights. Norton Critical Edition (2019).
• Thomas Hardy. The Woodlanders. Any Edition.
• Diane Setterfield. Once Upon a River. Penguin (2018).
• Richard Powers. The Overstory. Vintage (2019).