BA English Language and Literature

Title:

Poetry in English

Code:

EN1PE

Convenor:

PROF Steven Matthews

Summary:

This module provides students with training in skills of close reading that are foundational to the study of English Literature, as well as an overview of the history of poetry in English. Students will be introduced to major movements and ideas in key periods from the early Renaissance up to the present; and to a range of genres including love poetry, political poetry, pastoral, elegy, satire, the sonnet, the ode, and the dramatic monologue. Poems studied later in the course will be drawn from the wider English-speaking world, including Ireland, the Caribbean and North America, and will include a diversity of voices.

Assessment Method:

Exam 50%, Assignment 50%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Research and Criticism

Code:

EN1RC

Convenor:

DR Nicola Abram

Summary:

This module provides a secure foundation in both the practical skills and theoretical literacy needed for the degree-level study of literature. It combines advanced training in reading, research, and academic writing with an introduction to debates around the core concepts of ‘reader’, ‘author’, and ‘text’. The set texts – a selection of short stories and literary essays from across the world – invite students to reflect on the complexities of these critical terms and to become more independent and more questioning as readers. A series of online screencasts equip students with subject-specific skills such as writing a critical precis and plot summary as well as general academic good practice like referencing and incorporating quotations.

Assessment Method:

Assignment 100%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

English Language and Society

Code:

LS1ELS

Convenor:

DR Christiana Themistocleous

Summary:

The course aims to provide a broad introduction to English Language and Society, and a basis for further in-depth study of the field in parts two and three of the degree in English Language and Linguistics.

Assessment Method:

Exam 60%, Assignment 40%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Sounds, Grammar & Meaning

Code:

LS1SG

Convenor:

PROF Jane Setter

Summary:

This module aims to examine the nature of language as a communication system, and to introduce the individual components of the system which relate to sound production/perception, grammatical categorisation, and meaning.

Assessment Method:

Exam 67%, Assignment 33%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

What is Comparative Literature?

Code:

EN1COMP

Convenor:

DR John McKeane

Summary:

This module will introduce students to some of the major critical and theoretical issues in the study of Comparative Literature, as well as to important methodologies for studying literature in a comparative context. Approaching a cluster of texts from different cultural and historical traditions, students will be encouraged to reflect on the practices and consequences of reading transnationally.

Assessment Method:

Exam 50%, Assignment 50%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Introduction to Creative Writing

Code:

EN1CW

Convenor:

PROF Peter Robinson

Summary:

This module allows students to develop their skills in creative writing across a range of genres. They will be introduced to practical and theoretical issues involved in the activity, and will develop skills in the composition, criticism, revision, and polishing of creative work. Building on ideas from the lecture course, students will produce a portfolio of creative writing for discussion in seminars and contribute to the discussion of presented work. Students will also produce a critical essay derived from the subjects studied in the lecture course in consultation with seminar leaders.

Assessment Method:

Portfolio 100%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Genre and Context

Code:

EN1GC

Convenor:

DR Chloe Houston

Summary:

This module is designed to provide knowledge and understanding of two formative pairings of historical moment and genre: the Renaissance stage and the Victorian novel. In the first term, students will study four Renaissance plays, with an emphasis on drama as a distinct genre with its own particular conventions, and with attention to key aspects of the Renaissance stage, from playing spaces to the use of stage props. In the second term students will study three major Victorian novels, engaging with contextual issues of urbanisation, gender, sexuality and identity. In both cases, students will be encouraged to analyse literature in relation to genre and context and will gain an understanding of their intersections at particular historical moments.

Assessment Method:

Assignment 100%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Shelf Life

Code:

EN1SL

Convenor:

DR John Scholar

Summary:

This module is an introduction to English literature’s material dimension, and to the library as a symbol. For the most part literary study involves the interpretation of poems, novels or plays. This module complements this ordinary kind of reading by investigating books and other archival documents as physical objects. Its focus is on the preservation, use and dissemination of material texts in libraries and collections, and on how those sorts of places have been represented in literature.

One half of the teaching on the module is seminar-based. Students will use set texts to find out how writers have imagined libraries and archives in the past and present: as treasure-houses for a culture’s most valued stories; as labyrinths that hide mysterious and dangerous knowledge; as cemeteries for ideas; as “thought in cold storage”; or, conversely, as bastions for the active defence of free thought. They will consider how literary representations of libraries and archives map onto their actual operation. The other half of the module is practice-based. Students go behind the scenes at the University of Reading’s Special Collections department. They explore its world-class holdings and learn how its archives are safeguarded and made accessible to scholars. Reading’s Special Collections contain priceless stores of rare books and manuscripts, including the Overstone Library, the MERL library, the National Publisher’s Archive, and the Samuel Beckett Collection.

Assessment Method:

Exam 50%, Portfolio 50%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Thinking Translation: History and Theory

Code:

EN1TRANS

Convenor:

DR Claire Ross

Summary:

This module introduces students to the main theoretical approaches to translation. The lectures will adopt a historical perspective and address how translation practice has evolved over time. Together, we shall also look at how and whether theory has had any influence on translation practice in the market-place.

Assessment Method:

Assignment 100%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Globalization and Language

Code:

LS1GL

Convenor:

DR Tony Capstick

Summary:

In this module students will explore the role of language in globalization. They will examine the reasons for the spread of languages around the globe historically and in the future (especially in the context of political developments such as Brexit, and the increasing importance of World languages such as English). They will also explore debates about linguistic imperialism and the political dimensions of language use and language policies. Finally, they will explore the effects of technology and migration on the linguistic situation in Latin America, New Zealand and the Middle East, including how urban centers are becoming increasingly multilingual and ‘superdiverse’, and the political and social consequences of this. Teaching is drawn from across the School of Literature and Language.

Assessment Method:

Set exercise 10%, Project 90%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Techniques and Skills for Applied Linguistics

Code:

LS1TAL

Convenor:

DR Natalia Kampakli

Summary:

Techniques and Skills for Applied Linguistics runs over 2 terms. This module addresses issues of transition from school to university and familiarises students with the key skills and techniques needed in an academic context and in Applied Linguistics/English Language as an area of study. Students benefit from tutorial support.

Assessment Method:

Assignment 100%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Revolutions in Human Behaviour: 4 Million Years BC to the Present

Code:

AR1REV

Convenor:

PROF Steve Mithen

Summary:

This module investigates the development of human society from a long-term and global perspective. It traces the human journey from our earliest ancestors of c. 4 million years ago to the present day. The module considers the key revolutions and transitions that have affected human thought, behaviour and society, focussing on the evidence from material culture. Key themes include: human evolution, the development of complex societies, the inventions of metallurgy and writing, the industrial and agricultural revolutions, and globalisation. The module is taught by  a combination of online lectures, face-to-face seminars and lectures, practical classes and a field trip.

Assessment Method:

Assignment 100%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Revolutions in Human Behaviour: 4 Million Years BC to the Present [10 credits]

Code:

AR1REV10

Convenor:

PROF Steve Mithen

Summary:

This module investigates the development of human society from a long-term and global perspective. It traces the human journey from our earliest ancestors of c. 6 million years ago to the present day. The module considers the key revolutions and transitions that have affected human thought, behaviour and society, focussing on the evidence from material culture. Key themes include: human evolution, the development of complex societies, the inventions of metallurgy and writing, the industrial and agricultural revolutions, and globalisation. The module is taught by a combination of online lectures and face-to-face seminars and lectures.

Assessment Method:

Assignment 100%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Greek History: war, society, and change in the Archaic Age

Code:

CL1GH

Convenor:

PROF Amy Smith

Summary:

This module will introduce students to a period of Greek history too often neglected in first-year study, one which established the foundations of the Classical World and saw the emergence of political and social forms still influential today. Starting in the eighth century BC and ending with the Persian invasions of Greece in the early fifth, the module tracks the upheavals, innovations and conflicts of the age, across Greece and beyond.

Assessment Method:

Assignment 40%, Class test 60%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Ancient Song

Code:

CL1SO

Convenor:

PROF Ian Rutherford

Summary:

This module introduces students to the lyric poetry of ancient Greece and Rome, studying authors from both civilisations and considering a range of thematic approaches to the surviving corpus of poetry. It is intended to be suitable for beginners and for those who have studied some ancient literature before; there is no language requirement, but there will be an opportunity for students who do have relevant skills to employ them in their coursework and exams.

Assessment Method:

Exam 50%, Assignment 50%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

The Economics of Climate Change

Code:

EC110

Convenor:

DR Stefania Lovo

Summary:

The module will offer an economic perspective on the causes and consequences of climate change. It will provide an introduction to key theoretical concepts, such as externalities and public goods, and to the policy tools available to devise adequate responses to climate change, such as command and control measures, taxation and subsidies. The module will also introduce national and international policy approaches in dealing with climate change and provide an overview of their implications for economic development.

Assessment Method:

Assignment 60%, Class test 40%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Modernisms & Mythologies

Code:

FA1MM

Convenor:

DR Jenny Chamarette

Summary:

This module will provide a broad, introductory survey of key developments in the history, theory and criticism of art during the modern period. Its starting point will be theories of the development of modernity and its social, political and economic components, and the ways in which modern art functions in and on its historical contexts. It will continue to look at the retrospective modernist critical and theoretical accounts of modern art's development.

Assessment Method:

Assignment 100%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Comedy on Stage and Screen

Code:

FT1CSS

Convenor:

DR Simone Knox

Summary:

This module gives you the opportunity to study comedy on stage and screen, encompassing film, television, theatre and stand-up comedy. You will engage with the relevant critical vocabulary and contextual knowledge to explore how humour is created, consumed and debated, across a range of genres and practices. Case studies may include classic and contemporary film comedies (e.g. screwball comedy, black comedy); musical comedies (e.g. The Book of Mormon); stand-up comedy (e.g. Ali Wong, Hannah Gadsby); sitcoms (e.g. Friends); or the work of specific creative practitioners (e.g. Joe Orton). 

Assessment Method:

Assignment 60%, Set exercise 40%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Intercultural Competence and Communication

Code:

IL1GICC

Convenor:

MS Joan McCormack

Summary:

In this module students develop skills and understanding needed for working in the multi-cultural global workplace. In the Autumn term it will consider intercultural competence and communication from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including psychology, education, inclusivity, business, language and discourse. In the Spring term students will apply their knowledge to define and explain a defined a real-world issue.

The module will be delivered at the University of Reading Whiteknights campus

Assessment Method:

Oral 10%, Portfolio 30%, Project 60%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Greats of European Cinema

Code:

ML1GEC

Convenor:

PROF Julia Waters

Summary:

The aim of this module is to provide students with an understanding of the ways in which European Cinema – and the various national cinemas that comprise it – reflects the changing political, social and cultural climate of the twentieth century. The course is designed to introduce students to key features of film analysis and to develop their ability to apply these to the films studied.

Assessment Method:

Exam 55%, Set exercise 45%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Introduction to Linguistics

Code:

ML1IL

Convenor:

MR Federico Faloppa

Summary:

This module aims to familiarise students with principles in general linguistics, and to give students an overall picture of what a language is, how it works, and what its main structures are, with a particular focus on French, German, Italian and Spanish. It will also provide useful meta-linguistic competence which can be applied to the study of any other language.

Assessment Method:

Assignment 40%, Oral 20%, Set exercise 40%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Inequality

Code:

PO1INE

Convenor:

DR Jonathan Golub

Summary:

Inequality is everywhere around us: different individuals earn different salaries, people of different genders and backgrounds have access to different economic opportunities, and those at the top of the income distribution have radically distinct life chances than those at the bottom. What explains rising inequality, is it fair and what are the consequences? Should anything be done to reduce inequality, and if so, what? This course aims to answer these questions by providing students with the analytical tools and knowledge to understand and explain the evolution of earnings, racial and gender inequality over time and its variation across developed countries. It also considers the economic, normative and political implications of different forms of inequality, in particular gender and racial inequality. Is inequality at the top of the income distribution (i.e. the 1% v. the rest of us) the inevitable outcome of a well-functioning market system or does it suggest problems in the way democracy works? Does inequality undermine democracy for instance by affecting political participation or increasing the appeal of non-liberal populist parties? Take the course and you will find out more about these fascinating questions and more!

Assessment Method:

Assignment 40%, Oral 10%, Project 50%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Introduction to Political Ideas

Code:

PO1IPI

Convenor:

DR Andrew Reid

Summary:

An introduction to political theory, covering central topics like the state and its authority, democracy, rights and liberty, equality and social justice, and war and intervention, as well as some of the basic methods for understanding them all. 

Assessment Method:

Exam 50%, Assignment 50%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Reason and Argument

Code:

PP1RA

Convenor:

DR Jumbly Grindrod

Summary:

This module enhances students’ ability to understand and construct complex arguments through the study of logic and the psychology of human reasoning. Reading: A module guide will be available. Recommended: Jamie Carlin Watson and Robert Arp, Critical Thinking: An Introduction to Reasoning Well, 2nd edition, Bloomsbury, 2015.

Assessment Method:

Assignment 90%, Class test 10%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Radical Philosophy

Code:

PP1RP

Convenor:

PROF Maximilian De Gaynesford

Summary:

From Plato and Marx to contemporaries like Judith Butler, Slavoj Zizek, and Catharine MacKinnon, there is a long tradition of radicalism in philosophy. This course is about how radical philosophy can usefully question our deepest assumptions and challenge our deepest beliefs. Poets should be outlawed from our society! We can secure knowledge by doubting everything! Capitalism will be destroyed by the very forces it creates! Gender is a social performance! Pornography silences women! Torture is permissible in extreme circumstances, e.g. post 9/11! These are some of the claims this course investigates philosophically.

Assessment Method:

Assignment 90%, Class test 10%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Introduction to Psychology

Code:

PY1IPY

Convenor:

DR Katie Barfoot

Summary:

This module is delivered at the University of Reading, for students who are interested in but not studying Psychology.  

Assessment Method:

Exam 60%, Report 40%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Printing and printmaking

Code:

TY1PRI

Convenor:

DR Rob Banham

Summary:

The invention of printing, and the resulting spread of knowledge, played a crucial part in the development of modern society. This module will provide students with a broad overview of advances in printing and printmaking over the past 500 years. We will study how technological advances and the changing needs of readers affected the production, distribution, and reception of printed documents of all kinds. Students will also gain practical experience of printing, including letterpress, copper-engraving, and stone lithography, and will have opportunities to handle books, prints, and artefacts produced by some of the great printers and printmakers of the past.

Assessment Method:

Assignment 50%, Set exercise 10%, Portfolio 40%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

What the font? Making and using typefaces

Code:

TY1WTF

Convenor:

DR Rob Banham

Summary:

You are surrounded by fonts. Social media, text messages, email, branding, advertising, websites, books, magazines … Human (and machine) communication relies extensively on fonts, but what do you really know about them? How and why are new fonts created? And is it ever OK to use comic sans?! This module will introduce you to the world of typeface design, exploring the history, theory, and practice of making and using fonts and giving you the opportunity to design a typeface of your own. No background in design is required.

Assessment Method:

Set exercise 50%, Project 50%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

English Grammar

Code:

LS2EG

Convenor:

DR Natalia Kampakli

Summary:

This module aims to build on the Grammar and Meaning lectures at Part 1 in LS1SG by further exposition of the morphological and syntactic systems within the larger system of the English language; and to provide a basis for applied work in the areas of discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, forensic studies and corpus-based approaches to language analysis.

Assessment Method:

Class test 100%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

English Phonology

Code:

LS2EP

Convenor:

PROF Jane Setter

Summary:

The module looks at the phonetic and phonological patterning of speech sounds and suprasegmentals in English (near RP accent).

Assessment Method:

Practical 30%, Class test 70%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Sociolinguistics

Code:

LS2SLG

Convenor:

DR Christiana Themistocleous

Summary:

This module is intended for a generation of students which is preparing to confront a host of ‘wicked problems’ involving globalisation and mobility, inequality and discrimination, hybridity and the blurring of boundaries. Luckily, sociolinguistics in the past two decades has been developing tools to address precisely these kinds of wicked problems.  In this course students will understand how the field has evolved from one concerned primarily with notions of ‘languages’ and ‘varieties’ and their distribution within society, to a more critical, constructivist enterprise in which language is seen as a social practice, with speakers drawing on all kinds of linguistic resources for different communicative purposes. 

Assessment Method:

Assignment 60%, Set exercise 10%, Project 30%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

The Business of Books

Code:

EN2BB

Convenor:

DR Nicola Wilson

Summary:

This module will enhance students’ knowledge and understanding of the book as a technology and provide the critical skills with which to consider the history and future of the book as a form. Through a combination of theoretical, methodological and hands-on teaching sessions and workshops, we will study the role and function of books in a select number of different places, historical periods, and institutional contexts, including for instance in the library, in the book shop, the publishing house, and in the board room.

Assessment Method:

Assignment 70%, Oral 30%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Contemporary Fiction

Code:

EN2CF

Convenor:

PROF Bryan Cheyette

Summary:

This module will provide the opportunity to study a selection of fiction in English from the 1980s to the present day. It will highlight the formal, thematic and cultural diversity of Anglophone fiction produced in this period. Students will encounter a range of authors, including but not limited to African-American, Irish-American, Anglo-Indian, Anglo-Japanese, Canadian-Trinidadian, black British and Nigerian – though the use of such identity categories will be subject to critical scrutiny.Texts will be studied in and against a number of social, political and historical contexts, including multiculturalism, feminism and globalisation. The module will also engage with many of the key critical/theoretical paradigms of the past four decades, such as post-colonialism, post-modernism, transnationalism and intersectionality.

Assessment Method:

Exam 67%, Assignment 33%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Chaucer and Medieval Narrative

Code:

EN2CMN

Convenor:

DR Aisling Byrne

Summary:

Sometimes called the 'father of English literature', Geoffrey Chaucer (d. 1400) is one of the great innovators in English literary history. In this module we will explore his most famous work, The Canterbury Tales. This is a story collection of enormous variety, featuring everything from vulgar comedies to moral fables and from biting satires to narratives of tragic love. Each week we will explore a different text from The Canterbury Tales and delve into some of Chaucer's key themes, such as love, religion, gender, class, chivalry and magic. The module will also introduce some of the major literary and intellectual influences upon Chaucer's work and set his narratives alongside comparable texts from the period.

Assessment Method:

Exam 50%, Assignment 50%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Critical Issues

Code:

EN2CRI

Convenor:

DR Stephen Thomson

Summary:

Building on ideas and issues already broached in EN1RC Research & Criticism, this module offers the opportunity to explore critical theory in greater depth. The study of a variety of theoretical texts dealing with topics such as language, ideology, power, gender, and race, will offer not only ‘tools’ for dealing with these issues but also a space in which to reflect on, and gain a deeper understanding of, the ways in which these issues have commonly been thought. This is a challenging module, demanding patient engagement with arguments that may not immediately fit into our common-sense ways of thinking and that may, indeed, require us to question some of the grounding assumptions on which our everyday thinkings rests. But it is also a deeply rewarding module, and highly recommended for anyone considering a dissertation touching on any of the topics mentioned above.

Assessment Method:

Portfolio 100%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Creative Writing: Non-fiction and Long-Form Journalism

Code:

EN2CWJ

Convenor:

MS Shelley Harris

Summary:

Creative non-fiction is a wide, exciting, and ever-evolving contemporary genre. It includes memoirs, essays, blog posts, long-form journalism, biography and auto-fiction, and the increasing number of books and articles which fall between these genres. This module will explore this genre, and help you to write your own pieces or pieces of creative non-fiction. Learning takes place in seminar groups, where analytical reading and practical writing interconnect, and in smaller peer groups, where students support each other’s editing with constructive feedback.

Assessment Method:

Assignment 30%, Portfolio 70%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Creative Writing: Poetry

Code:

EN2CWP

Convenor:

PROF Peter Robinson

Summary:

Creative writing is always an interplay between the act of reading and that of writing, each informing the other. In this module, we will critically engage with a range of poems, consider some of the key debates about the form, and write our own poetry in response, experimenting with the possibilities of the genre. Learning takes place in seminar groups, where analytical reading and practical writing interconnect, and in smaller peer groups, where students support each other’s editing with constructive feedback.

Assessment Method:

Assignment 30%, Portfolio 70%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Creative Writing: The Short Story

Code:

EN2CWS

Convenor:

MS Shelley Harris

Summary:

Writers are readers too, and all authors are engaged in a creative cycle: reading literature, writing it, and taking that experience back into their reading. This module invites student writers to explore that process, critically engaging with a range of short stories, encountering some of the key debates about the form, and writing their own short fiction in response. Learning takes place in seminar groups, where analytical reading and practical writing interconnect, and in smaller peer groups, where students support each other’s editing with constructive feedback. This module is delivered at the University of Reading.

Assessment Method:

Assignment 30%, Portfolio 70%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Modernism in Poetry and Fiction

Code:

EN2MOD

Convenor:

DR Mark Nixon

Summary:

This module examines the concepts of modernity and modernism, and relates them to the history of early twentieth-century poetry and fiction. Experimentation and innovation in poetic and narrative form are explored as responses to wider social upheaval and cultural movements.

Assessment Method:

Exam 67%, Assignment 33%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Introduction to Old English Literature

Code:

EN2OEL

Convenor:

DR Eleni Ponirakis

Summary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl0T_Gz-KWI&t=8s

This module introduces students to the period of English literature that is often the most unfamiliar: the Old English or Anglo-Saxon period (c.7th-11th century). Old English literature is richly rewarding, not just because it has been an important influence on many twentieth-century writers (most famousl, J.R.R. Tolkien), but because its literary techniques and themes (female heroes, battles with Vikings, dragons, voyages of exile) are different to much later English literature. This module allows students to explore the literature of a time when England was part of the culture of the North.

Assessment Method:

Exam 50%, Assignment 50%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

The Romantic Period

Code:

EN2RP

Convenor:

DR Matthew Scott

Summary:

The module will provide a broad introduction to the varied literary culture of the Romantic period in Britain by examining a diverse group of texts written between 1750 and 1850.

Assessment Method:

Exam 67%, Assignment 33%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Renaissance Texts and Cultures

Code:

EN2RTC

Convenor:

PROF Michelle O'Callaghan

Summary:

Renaissance Texts and Cultures is a module in which students explore the ways that English literature was shaped by, and helped to re-shape, English culture in the years between the Reformation and the Civil Wars. It provides students with a training in historicist literary criticism, that is, the critical approach that stresses the interconnectedness between literary texts and the cultural and political processes current at the time when the texts were first written and made public.

Assessment Method:

Exam 50%, Assignment 50%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Shakespeare

Code:

EN2SH

Convenor:

PROF Lucinda Becker

Summary:

The module is organised chronologically in order to focus attention on Shakespeare’s development as a dramatist. Close study of plays, including A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Richard II, Measure for Measure, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and The Tempest, will encourage students to explore aspects of tradition and innovation in Shakespeare’s use of theatrical modes. The module will allow students to integrate a knowledge of the intellectual, cultural and stage history of the period into their study of the texts.

Assessment Method:

Exam 50%, Assignment 50%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Victorian Literature

Code:

EN2VIC

Convenor:

DR Lucy Bending

Summary:

The Victorian era is one of great diversity and tension. It is a period when authors began to think about man's place in a world without God; about the workings of the mind; and the role of class and gender in the construction of identity. This module will engage with these, nd other ideas, looking at some of the greatest works of Victorian literature. The module will include novels (Charlotte Bronte's Villette, and Hardy's Return of the Native), poetry (Tennyson's In Memoriam, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese) journalism (Thackeray's 'Going to See a Man Hanged'), short stories (Daughters of Decadence edited by Elaine Showalter) and plays (Wilde's A Woman of No Importance).  The module offers a broad and exciting sweep of different modes of writing, drawing on some well-known and canonical texts, and some texts that are less frequently studied in an attempt to understand what mattered to the Victorians.

Assessment Method:

Exam 67%, Assignment 33%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Writing America

Code:

EN2WA

Convenor:

DR Sue Walsh

Summary:

The module is concerned with literary constructions of American identity in American literature, focusing on some of the ways in which imaginative writers have perceived and defined the New World in relation to the Old and helped to shape or contest the nation's sense of cultural distinctiveness. The module will examine both the diversity of American voices and the emergence of common preoccupations, including myths of the frontier, Manifest Destiny, personal and political liberty, and the the construction of race, gender and sexuality.

Assessment Method:

Exam 67%, Assignment 33%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Writing, Gender, Identity

Code:

EN2WGI

Convenor:

DR Cato Marks

Summary:

This module introduces students to a range of texts and critical approaches which address the relationship between writing and identity. Set texts cover a broad chronological sweep and include letters, novels, short stories and autobiographical works. We explore questions around the constructions of gender, sexuality, race and class in the set texts and more broadly. We discuss and debate assumptions embedded in the texts and our own assumptions as readers of these texts. We explore the power dynamics at play in a text and consider the implications. Lectures provide a contextual framing for the set texts and begin to open out critical questions around writing and identity; seminars are focussed on detailed analysis of the set texts and the recommended secondary reading.

Assessment Method:

Exam 50%, Assignment 50%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Writing in the Public Sphere

Code:

EN2WPS

Convenor:

DR Mary Morrissey

Summary:

On this module, we study the literature written in order to prompt social and political change. We examine speeches, pamphlets, tracts, and political posters from the early modern period to the present, and we consider how they continue to shape debates about class, race, religion, nationality, and women’s rights across the four nations of Britain and Ireland. We study ideas of a ‘public sphere’ in which political and cultural debate are conducted, and we analyse the techniques used in political literature. We use our study of these texts to identify the rhetorical strategies necessary for successful political campaigning today.

Assessment Method:

Exam 50%, Assignment 50%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Analysing Speech

Code:

LS2ANS

Convenor:

PROF Jane Setter

Summary:

This is preparation for doing all kind of fieldwork which involves pronunciation. It would be useful for those interested in the pronunciation of children, in how accents differ, in analysing foreign accents, in forensic speaker comparison, and in sociolinguistic research involving speech patterns of a particular subgroup or change of pronunciation over time.The course begins with an examination of the uses of phonetic transcription and what sorts of detail can be captured using impressionistic phonetics. Next it examines instrumental techniques for examining speech, including recording and editing. The relationship between articulation and the speech waveform are examined. Computer lab sessions will comprise a large part of this component.At the end of the course, the student should feel confident to collect spoken language data and analyse it using several different techniques.

Assessment Method:

Practical 30%, Set exercise 10%, Portfolio 10%, Report 50%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Discourse Analysis

Code:

LS2DAN

Convenor:

DR Diana Ben-Aaron

Summary:

This module aims to introduce and apply the key methodological frameworks for the description and analysis of discourse, including spoken and written language in use. We will consider a range of analytical approaches in the description of authentic language, relating features of text to the context in which the language is produced and understood. We will also consider the applicability of these approaches to study discourse in a variety of social and political contexts.

Assessment Method:

Assignment 60%, Practical 30%, Set exercise 10%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Language and Gender

Code:

LS2LAG

Convenor:

DR Christiana Themistocleous

Summary:

The module aims to provide students with an understanding of the sociolinguistic research on gendered language over the last 40 years.

Assessment Method:

Assignment 60%, Oral 30%, Set exercise 10%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Language and the Mind

Code:

LS2LAM

Convenor:

DR Fraibet Aveledo

Summary:

The study of how the mind acquires, stores and processes language (known as psycholinguistics) covers a wide range of topics and draws its ideas from disciplines such as psychology, linguistic analysis, speech science, and neuroscience. 

Assessment Method:

Project 65%, Class test 35%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Introduction to English Language Teaching

Code:

LS2LAT

Convenor:

MRS Suzanne Portch

Summary:

The course aims to provide an overview of key aspects of language teaching methodology and practice. 

Assessment Method:

Portfolio 100%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Literature, Language and Education

Code:

LS2LLE

Convenor:

MRS Suzanne Portch

Summary:

This module aims to provide students with an opportunity to apply their existing degree-based knowledge and learning and extend it within their chosen specialisation. 

Assessment Method:

Assignment 45%, Oral 10%, Report 45%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Language and New Media

Code:

LS2LNM

Convenor:

PROF Rodney Jones

Summary:

In this module, students will explore the ways digital media are changing the way people use language. Students will be introduced to a range of theories from sociolinguistics, media studies and discourse analysis and will learn to apply these theories to analysing authentic texts and interactions. Among the topics covered in the module are genres and registers of mediated communication, social networking and online identity, multimodal and multimedia communication, mobile communication and wearable computers, and online tracking and surveillance.

Assessment Method:

Assignment 25%, Oral 25%, Portfolio 50%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Language in Professional Communication

Code:

LS3LPC

Convenor:

DR Sylvia Jaworska

Summary:

This module introduces students to the key aspects of professional communication and the role of language within. Drawing on a range of theoretical and analytical approaches such as conversation analysis, pragmatics, critical discourse analysis, critical metaphor analysis, genre analysis, communities of practices and multimodality, students will investigate language use across a variety of professional contexts including online and offline environments. These will include service encounters and various aspects of health and business communication. Students will evaluate professional communication in different genres and workplace contexts, and analyse critically the role of language in negotiating and maintaining identity, agency, and power in professions.  

Assessment Method:

Portfolio 100%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

American Graphic Novels

Code:

EN3AGN

Convenor:

PROF David Brauner

Summary:

Through detailed analysis of a range of graphic novels and related scholarship, students will develop their skills of close reading sequential art and their understanding of the particular discourses that characterise graphic novels and academic criticism of the medium. There will be a particular emphasis on graphic novels that interrogate and complicate the relationship between autobiography, biography and fiction and that explore constructions of gender and ethnicity in the context of broader historical and political developments in contemporary America. 

Assessment Method:

Exam 50%, Assignment 50%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Hitchcock

Code:

EN3AH

Convenor:

DR Neil Cocks

Summary:

Through studying of the films of Alfred Hitchcock, this module offers students the opportunity to engage critically with a new medium. Through a detailed analysis of a range of films, students will be introduced to a variety of critical frameworks, from structuralist accounts of film grammar, to recent interventions from Queer Theory and Psychoanalysis. They will be asked to adopt a reflexive approach towards such theory, thinking through the demands it makes upon their reading.

Assessment Method:

Exam 50%, Assignment 50%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Black British Fiction

Code:

EN3BBF

Convenor:

DR Cato Marks

Summary:

This module examines a range of British texts (poetry, drama, novels, short stories, films) by writers of black and Asian descent. Beginning with the 1950s and progressing to the present day, we discuss what might constitute the (black) British literary tradition. The module reads its set texts alongside theoretical and historical material examining issues of cultural capital, national identity and minority communities. Documentary footage, blogs, and contemporary reportage will also be examined in order to trace the pressures that the terms ‘black’ and ‘British’ have exerted on each other in a variety of historical, social, and cultural contexts.

Assessment Method:

Assignment 50%, Portfolio 50%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Children's Literature

Code:

EN3CL

Convenor:

PROF Karin Lesnik-Oberstein

Summary:

This module examines issues around children’s literature and children’s literature criticism and questions wide-spread popular assumptions about how to read and write about children’s literature. Students who do not wish actually to challenge and develop their own thinking, reading and writing about children and children’s books should not, therefore, take this module! Through in seminars closely analysing a range of children’s literature from the twentieth century and later, the module questions and analyses critical assumptions and formulations around authorship, memory, observation, readership, and identity. Some of the texts will be set by the module convenor whilst further texts may be chosen by the seminar group. 

Assessment Method:

Assignment 100%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Decadence and Degeneration: Literature of the 1880s and 1890s

Code:

EN3DD

Convenor:

DR Lucy Bending

Summary:

This module engages with some of the most iconic texts in English literature, including Stoker’s Dracula, Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde, and Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. In it we will explore what is meant by these terms ‘decadence’ and ‘degeneration’, calling, amongst many other things, on portrayals of 1890s’ foppishness, Darwinian models of evolution, the emergent New Woman phenomenon, the Wilde trial, and the portrayal of prostitution. This module is very interested in contextual material as a way of understanding literary texts, and we will be looking at a wealth of magazine articles and medical and scientific texts as a way of recognizing the depth and complexity of literary works.

Assessment Method:

Exam 50%, Assignment 50%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Dickens

Code:

EN3DIC

Convenor:

PROF Andrew Mangham

Summary:

An opportunity for the detailed and intensive study of the work of Charles Dickens, based on the close analysis of four works and exploring Dickens's innovations and developments of the novel form in his historical and cultural contexts.

Assessment Method:

Exam 50%, Assignment 50%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Dissertation

Code:

EN3DIS

Convenor:

DR Stephen Thomson

Summary:

The Dissertation is a substantial (8,000-word) work of literary-critical argument, based on sustained independent research under the guidance of a supervisor, and written and presented in a scholarly manner. Prior to completing the dissertation students who take this module submit a 2,000-word portfolio of supporting documents, including: a literary review or bibliographical exercise; a sample of dissertation-level work; and a reflective piece, discussing rationales and research questions for the project. The module offers students the opportunity to explore in depth topics of particular interest, and to develop skills accumulated during their first two years of study.

Assessment Method:

Dissertation 80%, Portfolio 20%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Holocaust Testimony: Memory, Trauma and Representation

Code:

EN3HT

Convenor:

PROF Bryan Cheyette

Summary:

The module introduces students to the most important works of Holocaust Testimony and, by reading these books critically, will develop an awareness of theoretical issues concerning the relationship between trauma, memory and narrative, and the connection, more generally, between literary and historical forms of narrative. The module will examine both the diversity of Holocaust Testimony and the emergence of common preoccupations among these writers, alongside the different narrative forms and socio-historical contexts in which they work.

Assessment Method:

Assignment 100%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Literature and Mental Health

Code:

EN3LMH

Convenor:

DR John Scholar

Summary:

This module looks at how literature engaged with mental health in the first half of the twentieth century, a crucial turning point in psychology. Authors may include E.M. Forster, Wilfred Owen, May Sinclair, D. H. Lawrence, and Katherine Mansfield. In the nineteenth century people were becoming increasingly aware of the challenges to mental health posed by city life across Europe. But such challenges were soon overwhelmed by the destruction of the First World War. In its wake two young disciplines, psychiatry and psychology, gained credibility and resources. These disciplines arguably helped to destigmatize mental illness, laying the foundations for how we approach mental health today. But so did the literature of this period which famously turned inwards to record as faithfully as possible the mind in all its complexity. We will look at literary engagement with trauma, anxiety, and obsession, among other things, but we will also look at how literature inspired readers, helping them to feel positive about their minds and bodies, and depicting seminal moments of psychic and sexual liberation.

Assessment Method:

Exam 50%, Assignment 50%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Margaret Atwood

Code:

EN3MAT

Convenor:

DR Madeleine Davies

Summary:

Margaret Atwood is Canada's most influential contemporary writer. Atwood consistently engages with issues of power ('who can do what to whom and get away with it') and her work connects with a range of contemporary debates including ecological, feminist, and ideological discourses. On this module we discuss dystopia, speculative fiction, the uncanny, ideology, postmodernity and questions of language and narration, engaging with the texts via close analysis and critical/theoretical readings of the texts. The novel explores Atwood's novels (The Edible Woman, The Handmaid's Tale, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin and The Testaments) but her poetry and critical essays are discussed as appropriate. Students will demonstrate their engagement with the module in a summative Portfolio assessment which will be submitted by or on the final day of the term in which the module is taught (see below for assessment details). There is no exam on this module.

Assessment Method:

Portfolio 100%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Modern and Contemporary British Poetry

Code:

EN3MCP

Convenor:

PROF Steven Matthews

Summary:

This module will provide the opportunity for students to study a broad range of poets and poetries, and thereby to encounter some of the key trends in that poetry’s engagement with changing circumstances in England, Wales, and Scotland across the twentieth century and beyond. We consider issues including the aftermaths of modernism; gender and poetry; British poetry and post-war retrenchment; the ‘poetry wars’ of the 1970s; the perpetuation of ‘Movement’ ideals down to the present.

Assessment Method:

Exam 50%, Assignment 50%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Medieval Otherworlds

Code:

EN3MO

Convenor:

DR Eleni Ponirakis

Summary:

Magic and the supernatural play an important role in medieval English literature. In this module we will explore literary accounts of a range of fantastical locations where the ‘other’ is encountered in a particularly dramatic fashion. We will discuss romances where questing knights arrive in uncanny fairy kingdoms or where King Arthur travels to Avalon. We will analyse travel accounts which populate the fringes of the world with marvels and strange beings. In some narratives, heroes test themselves in hellish landscapes or search for paradise on earth. In other texts, sleepers confront the surreal world of their own dreams. Although depictions of these places can be sensational or escapist, authors also use them to explore very serious themes such as desire, death, gender and political authority.

Assessment Method:

Exam 50%, Assignment 50%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Oscar Wilde and the World of Art

Code:

EN3OW

Convenor:

DR John Scholar

Summary:

Oscar Wilde, lover of beauty, sexual rebel, and socialist, was unique but he didn’t emerge from a vacuum. This module looks at how the Aesthetic Movement, the new celebration of art for art’s sake which swept across Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century, inspired Wilde. We will look in depth at Wilde’s fiction, drama and poetry, through the lens of the pioneering painters, designers and art critics who motivated him, asking why words and images combined and collided in this period in new and controversial ways. The module will take advantage of digital technology to confront the most vivid images of this period, such as the Gothic buildings of Venice, the medieval maidens of the Pre-Raphaelite painters, and the smoky sexualities of French symbolist painting. We will examine a wide range of visual arts including painting, photography, fashion, architecture, and interior design. The module will also pose fundamental questions, such as, does a knowledge of the visual arts help us understand literature? And how in this period did literature and the visual arts differently register cultural, technological and political changes?

Assessment Method:

Exam 50%, Assignment 50%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Publishing Cultures: Writers, Publics, Archives

Code:

EN3PC

Convenor:

DR Nicola Wilson

Summary:

How are texts made and literary reputations formed? What are the roles of collaboration, networks, and cross-media practices in making and distributing modern literature? This research-led module explores how print culture and the literary marketplace affects the way we read and understand texts. It is rooted in the first half of the twentieth century when debates about class, standards of reading and literary taste were hot topics, and new forms of literary cultures emerged. We will explore debates on modernism and the middlebrow, the role of publishers and editors, new book clubs and magazines, radio, celebrity, censorship, and advertising. Through a mixture of critical reading and practice-based workshops, you will be introduced to new ways of thinking about primary texts and can use digital archives and Reading’s unique Special Collections and publisher’s archives to produce your own research-based coursework.

Assessment Method:

Assignment 40%, Project 40%, Report 20%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Psychoanalysis and Text

Code:

EN3PSY

Convenor:

PROF Karin Lesnik-Oberstein

Summary:

This module introduces and explores relationships between psychoanalysis and literary criticism, concentrating not on psychoanalysis as ‘applied’ to literature, but, instead, on thinking through the implications of psychoanalysis for literary criticism and theory. On the basis of readings from Sigmund Freud the students are introduced to central concepts from and about psychoanalysis, primarily the psychoanalytic ‘unconscious’, and then continue by examining the implications of this for ideas about authorship and intentionality, readership and response, and text and interpretation. After the initial readings from Freud, each group selects both primary and secondary literature to analyse closely.

Assessment Method:

Assignment 100%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

From Romance to Fantasy

Code:

EN3RF

Convenor:

DR Mary Morrissey

Summary:

On this module, students will explore the role played by fantastical or wondrous elements in English literature from the middle ages to the present day. It will focus on a range of key narrative structures (such as the quest), persistent motifs such as magical objects, and influential modes, such as the gothic. It will present authors typically associated with fantasy, such as J.R.R. Tolkien, alongside authors less typically associated with this type of writing, such as Shakespeare and Jane Austen. It will also consider how romance narratives, like the stories of King Arthur, developed in the medieval period and were then revived and reworked in later centuries. It will explore the reinvention of the middle ages in subsequent centuries and consider what ‘medievalism’ tells us about the culture of later literary periods.

Assessment Method:

Assignment 100%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Shakespeare on Film

Code:

EN3SHF

Convenor:

PROF Lucinda Becker

Summary:

Filmic adaptation of Shakespeare is a major component of the ‘Shakespeare Industry’. This module explores how the medium of film has treated Shakespeare, with a focus on how the written text can be used in depictions, interpretations and adaptations, and how film making techniques affect our perception of Shakespeare’s works. Alongside consideration of how plays have been interpreted on screen we will also consider key actors and directors, tracing changes and developments in both cinema and the ways early modern drama has been interpreted and appropriated by filmmakers in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. Throughout we will work with an awareness of Shakespeare as a cultural icon.

Assessment Method:

Assignment 80%, Oral 20%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

The Bloody Stage: Revenge and Death in Renaissance Drama

Code:

EN3TBS

Convenor:

DR Chloe Houston

Summary:

This module explores the representation of revenge and death across a range of revenge tragedies performed on the Renaissance stage. The Renaissance is a period when bodies were mutilated and put on public display by the state. We will explore what spectacles of punishment can tell us about wider cultures of retribution and violence, including the tensions between private revenge and state justice. Since bodies in death are surprisingly articulate, this module will consider how to analyse the staging of death scenes and whether there are differences in the ways that men and women die on stage. These highly stylised revenge tragedies are deliberately provocative and raise important questions about the aesthetics and ethics of violence.

Assessment Method:

Assignment 100%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Utopia and Dystopia in English and American Literature

Code:

EN3UTD

Convenor:

DR Chloe Houston

Summary:

Utopia is our way of thinking about the nature and possibility of an ideal society. The word ‘utopia’, coined by Thomas More in 1516, suggests both ‘good place’ (from the Greek, ‘eu-topos’) and ‘no place’ (‘ou-topos’): a place which is both ideal and non-existent. This module will introduce the idea of utopia from its earliest manifestations in western literature up to the present day. Reading a range of texts from different genres and periods of history, we will explore the development of utopian literature from its philosophical, satirical origins in the sixteenth century to the ecological utopias of the late twentieth century and beyond. Along the way, we will encounter the notion of dystopia, a literary tradition which has a shorter but equally rich history, and will question the ways in which utopias and dystopias are inter-related.

Assessment Method:

Assignment 80%, Oral 20%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Virginia Woolf and Bloomsbury

Code:

EN3VW

Convenor:

DR Madeleine Davies

Summary:

Virginia Woolf is a crucial reference point for women’s writing and feminist criticism.  This module provides students with knowledge and understanding of selected novels and essays by Virginia Woolf, and explores key issues including her challenges to concepts of boundaries, hierarchies, sex, sexuality and difference, and her attention to debates concerning the social, political, cultural and economic marginalisation of women in the early years of the Twentieth Century. The module emphasises Woolf’s novels, but seminars are also devoted to her critical essays and ‘political’ writing. Discussion of ‘Bloomsbury’ ethics and art weaves throughout the module. The debates included in the module connect with pacifism, the writing of the city, psychoanalysis, the challenge to heteronormativity, the body, and the tension between female creativity and procreativity.

Assessment Method:

Portfolio 100%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Writing Women: Nineteenth Century Poetry

Code:

EN3WWP

Convenor:

DR Lucy Bending

Summary:

This module will explore writing primarily by (but also about) women in the nineteenth century. We will read some well-known and influential poems –Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh, for example – as well as some by less well-known names, discussing the ways in which women responded to poetic tradition. We will ask how women found a voice in a predominantly patriarchal society; what subjects were deemed suitable for female poets, and how such poets overcame the limitations of expectation; how different verse forms could be used to different ends. Above all, the aim is to enjoy a wide-range of poems with women at their centre.

Assessment Method:

Exam 50%, Assignment 50%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Corpus-based approaches to language description

Code:

LS3CBL

Convenor:

DR Diana Ben-Aaron

Summary:

An introduction to the theories and techniques of language description using corpus resources and methods.

Assessment Method:

Assignment 60%, Portfolio 40%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Child Language Development

Code:

LS3DCL

Convenor:

DR Fraibet Aveledo

Summary:

This module provides students with a theoretical and practical understanding of how language develops over lifespan in typical healthy children. We will look at how biology, cognition and language developments go at hand.  We will discuss language development in school years, in bilingual circumstances, and in special populations. Students will have the opportunity to experience how to encode and analyse child language data through the use of computer resources in a lab.

Assessment Method:

Project 65%, Class test 35%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Dissertation

Code:

LS3DI

Convenor:

DR Christiana Themistocleous

Summary:

This module aims to build on the achievements Part 2, and to provide students with an understanding of how to engage in an extended piece of original research, with an opportunity to explore further an area of their own interest, and a broader appreciation of the procedures involved in the development of knowledge.

Assessment Method:

Dissertation 100%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Intercultural Communications

Code:

LS3IC

Convenor:

DR Erhan Aslan

Summary:

In this module, students will explore how people of different discourse systems or groups communicate with one another in various face-to-face and digitally-mediated contexts. Specifically, students will gain an understanding of how assumptions and values that have been constructed or adopted within a specific culture group influence the ways in which people successfully communicate with each other as well as experience miscommunication. Students will become familiar with a variety of topics in intercultural communication as they engage in hands-on analyses of intercultural encounters.

Assessment Method:

Assignment 50%, Set exercise 10%, Project 40%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Language and Migration

Code:

LS3LMG

Convenor:

DR Tony Capstick

Summary:

In this module students will explore the role of language in migration by focusing on the multiple and complex ways that migration has been sustained and constrained through language use for centuries.

Students will be introduced to a range of theories from sociolinguistics, sociology and education studies and learn to apply these theories to different contexts of migration across the world.

Among the topics covered in the module are multilingualism and mobility, globalization and language policy etc.

Assessment Method:

Assignment 50%, Set exercise 50%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Teaching the Language Skills

Code:

LS3LST

Convenor:

MRS Suzanne Portch

Summary:

This course provides an introduction to the processes involved in the development of the oral/aural (i.e., listening and speaking) and literacy (i.e., reading and writing) skills in a second language. 

Assessment Method:

Assignment 100%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Title:

Professional Communication Project

Code:

LS3PCP

Convenor:

DR Christiana Themistocleous

Summary:

In a competitive job market, understanding how the professional workplace functions, along with well-developed employability skills are essential to securing future employment.  This module aims to help students understand how to apply the knowledge and skills they have learned in their BA programme in English Language and Linguistics to the completion of a professional placement. Students may choose this module (plus an additional optional module) in lieu of LS3DI.

Assessment Method:

Assignment 50%, Project 50%

Disclaimer:

The modules described on this page are what we currently offer. Modules may change for your year of study as we regularly review our offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.