English Literature and American Studies BA (Hons)

The US is a paradox when it comes to nature: it is both the country that invented the national park concept and the biggest carbon dioxide emitter historically; it was the first country to celebrate Earth Day in 1970, but it is also where the hyper consumerist lifestyle first emerged; it is the birthplace of some of the oldest and most important environmental NGOs and of climate denial. How can we make sense of the US and its relationship to nature? Are Americans doomed to destroy the natural wonders of their nation? Can we envision a red, white and green nation that would put science and technology at the service of sustainability and environmental justice?

The module will answer these questions by examining the US’ complicated relationship to nature chronologically. In doing so, we will re-examine and challenge conventional narratives of US history by integrating the role of nature as a historical actor in its own right. Examples of themes covered include: nature and conquest; Native American environments; nature and technology; the wilderness myth; animals in US history; environmental disasters; urban nature; the rise of environmentalism; environmental justice and environmental racism; waste and pollution; toxicities, etc.

The module will approach these themes using the tools of the environmental humanities. Combining historical, visual and literary analysis with insights from ecology and other ‘hard’ sciences, we will achieve a thorough understanding of environmental phenomena in their full complexity.

From Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Christabel (1816) to Alan Ball’s True Blood (2008-), this module invites you to explore the dark, shadowy world of the Gothic in relation to a diverse range of literary texts and modern media. Combining the study of familiar canonical fictions with new and challenging material, we will train our focus on the enigmatic figure of the vampire, examining its various transitions and developments through the lens of critical and cultural theory.

Through an analysis of the Gothic, the module aims to develop your critical thinking, as well as your existing knowledge of literature, film, and television dating from 1816 to the present day. In doing so, it will encourage you to reflect on and interrogate the complex ways in which Gothic texts engage with, and intervene in, broader cultural debates about gender and sexuality.

This module will enhance your awareness and appreciation of one of the most controversial and stimulating authors of the early modern period (and beyond!), Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593). Marlowe wrote plays and poems that expose our darkest hearts, showing characters lusting for power, and each other. Building on your brief contact with Marlowe at Level 5, this module will offer a chronological survey of his short but staggering career, situating each of his works in relation to the tumultuous contexts of their production and reception, including later appropriations. This will involve looking at Marlowe in relation to discussions of early modern politics, religious conflict, sexuality, urbanisation, imperialism, science and magic, ethnicity, geography, and historiography. The module therefore offers a unique opportunity to see how one writer’s remarkable career developed.

You will explore a selection of key prose texts (novels and short stories) about the First World War that were written between 1914 and the present day. You will relate these novels and short stories to a range of influential critical ideas across literary studies and history. The module will help you to understand the close links between literary writing about the war and the way the war has been remembered in Britain at different points in time and will develop your research skills beyond your own discipline by allowing you to engage with scholarly concepts and sources in history, psychology and sociology. By reading a range of autobiographical and fictional prose texts, you will think about the value of literary texts as sources of cultural history, and you will investigate the changing historical contexts in which these texts have been produced, published and read. Themes and topics you will cover include the representation of soldiers, enemies and allies, class and gender in war writing, formal and publishing aspects and memory and remembrance.

The Romantic period (1789-1832) was a time of revolutionary change in literature, yet the literature of the period is typically represented by a narrow list of elite poets. On this module you will learn about a much more diverse range of writing: by men and women, by the poor and the rich, and taking in styles from satirical poetry, to advertising, to magazine fiction, to essays about opium addiction. Is there a distinction between ‘high’ and ‘popular’ culture, and who gets to decide the answer? This was a question the Romantics asked, and it is one you will learn to answer. You will also learn to investigate the diverse range of literature produced in the period yourself by using e-resources to find texts from the period that you think are valuable. You will develop an enhanced knowledge of the literature and culture of the period and as a result you will learn to question the way that literary critics tell stories about who and what should count in literary history.

This module develops your awareness and understanding of post-Renaissance adaptations and appropriations of Shakespeare’s work, from the seventeenth century to the present day. It engages with Shakespearean adaptations belonging to different literary genres (in particular, drama and prose fiction) and different media (written texts, films). It examines the ways in which selected Shakespearean texts are transformed in subsequent adaptations, and the issues underpinning these transformations, especially those concerning race, gender, and class. It also engages with theoretical debates surrounding authorship, literary value, canonicity, and popular/high culture.

From Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) and its popular television adaptation (2017) to Yorgos Lanthimos’ film The Lobster (2015), this module invites you to explore a wide and diverse range of novels, short stories and other media in order to promote and analyse the study of contemporary theoretical debates on gender, love, the body and sexuality.

Through the theoretical lens of feminism, psychoanalysis, queer theory and postmodernism, the module aims to develop your critical thinking and your existing knowledge of literature, film and television, from 1985 to the present day. It will encourage you to explore the complex issues raised by diverse critical theory and close analysis of a range of late twentieth and twenty-first century literature, film and television adaptation. By doing so, you will reflect on the ways that twenty-first literature and other media engages with, interrogates and often offers alternative narratives on present debates about gender, love, the body and sexuality.

You will study a selection of texts, written from the eighteenth century to the present day, that engage with the natural environment in various ways. These include natural histories and popular science, pastoral and environmental poems, environmental protest literature, apocalyptic novels, and the ‘new nature writing’. You will learn how literary writers describe the world around them and how they use the natural world to articulate their own personal needs, feelings, and desires. You will study texts that draw attention both to natural beauty and to environmental catastrophe. You will learn how writers as diverse as Gilbert White, William Wordsworth, Charles Darwin, Rachel Carson, and Robert Macfarlane have changed the ways in which readers engage with the world around them. As part of your studies, you will learn to produce your own literary engagement with the natural world in a ‘creative field journal’, inspired by the writings of Charles Darwin, Robert Macfarlane, Amy Liptrott, and others. By the end of the module, you will have gained a sophisticated understanding not only of the ways that writers can change the world, but also how they can save it.

This module will survey the ‘Sensation Mania’ of the 1860s as a historically significant literary phenomenon that seemed to threaten the growing respectability of the novel form. We will examine how a variety of sensation narratives, including novels, plays and short fiction, participated in contemporary debates over sexuality, morality, race and class. You will learn about the radical spaces these sensational texts provided for Victorian readers to question and to ‘queer’ societal ‘norms’. We will investigate the historical context in which sensation literature emerged, considering its debt to the Gothic; its strong ties to penny dreadfuls and tabloid journalism; the art of serial publication; the power of circulating libraries; the influence of notorious criminal trials, and important legislative changes such as divorce law reform.

Early modern/Shakespearean theatre was fascinated by questions of gender and its representation onstage. Early modern drama offers us important insights into its culture because, as a popular form which has become enshrined in the canon as ‘high art’, it gives us access to both popular and elite culture. This module explores the drama of the early modern period through the lens of stage gender and its intersections with race and race-making, faith, sexuality, and women’s writing and performance.

You will read plays by early modern men and women to explore topics such as: early modern femininities and masculinities; women’s performance and the early modern boy-actor; trans, queer, non-binary and gender nonconforming identities. We will structure our reading around the intersections of gender with questions of (1) faith (how, for example, does the English stage depict the gendered Muslim or Jewish subject in travel plays?); (2) race-making (how does the English stage depict racialised blackness and whiteness on an actor’s body? How does the stage forge concepts of race that we have inherited today?); and (3) sexuality (how does the Shakespearean stage represent queer desire? Is the Shakespearean boy-actor an inherently queer figure?). Because we are students of literature, for all of these categories, we’ll examine how these forces shape the language of the stage and the plays performed there.

In this seminar-based module you will study the roots, trajectory, and legacies of the African American Freedom Struggle since 1945. Although the primary focus will be on the movement for racial justice in the US South between roughly 1954 and 1968, that history will be placed in longer chronological and broader national and international contexts. More specifically you will study the grass-roots activities of African Americans engaged in various forms of resistance and protest alongside the histories of the major civil rights groups – the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). You will interrogate their tactics, examine their often fraught relationships with each other, and assess their achievements and failures in the face of widespread resistance to racial change. You will examine the contributions of the extraordinary ordinary people at the heart of the struggle, as well as those of nationally prominent leaders such as Martin Luther King. In this module you will also analyse the relationship between the civil rights movement and the federal government, address the role of the media and popular culture in shaping both the history and popular understandings of the post-war Freedom Struggle, and examine the international coordinates and impact of the struggles.

The dissertation gives you the opportunity to work on a sustained piece of research of your own (guided) choice and to present that research in an organised and coherent form in a major piece of writing. The module will teach you how to function as an independent researcher, learner and writer. The dissertation represents the culmination of your studies as a Joint Honours student. You will apply the skills developed in your earlier studies to a discrete body of primary sources, working upon a clearly defined topic. In designing and implementing your research project, you will draw on insights and approaches from both of the disciplines that from part of your degree. The dissertation will develop your research skills and allow you to work independently, drawing on the advice and guidance of a designated supervisor.

In July 1979 a broad-based opposition movement led by a small group of young guerrillas - the ‘Sandinistas’ - overthrew the Somoza dictatorship which had ruled Nicaragua for 43 years. The euphoria of triumph quickly soured, as the new Sandinista government faced division at home and aggression from overseas, in the form of a US-funded proxy conflict, known as the ‘Contra War’. In this module, you will learn how ordinary Nicaraguans experienced the revolutionary decade by working with a wide range of sources, including memoirs, poetry, and murals. You will draw on testimonios and oral histories to critically evaluate the impact of the revolution’s programmes in education, agrarian reform, and women’s rights; and you will explore the Contra War in the context of the wider Cold War struggle between the Soviet Union and the United States. Finally, you will use your detailed knowledge of the period to assess the relative importance of a number of factors, including US aggression and Sandinista failings, which together caused the eventual defeat of the revolution.

In this module, you will be provided with the skills to complete a written dissertation and a public-facing output on a topic that you will agree with your supervisors. The dissertation with public history represents an opportunity to apply the skills you have acquired at earlier levels, as well as a chance to develop new skills, both theoretical and practical, associated with public history. In Semester One you will produce the written piece of work. This written piece, which can take the form of a ‘short dissertation’ or ‘extended essay’, may be an analysis of a discrete body of primary sources, a discussion of historiographical controversy, or an intervention in a current debate about the public understanding of the past. In Semester Two you will work with your supervisors to produce a public output (the ‘knowledge exchange’ component), such as a digital exhibition or public history podcast, based on your research for the short dissertation/extended essay. The knowledge exchange aspect may include work with an external partner. The ‘Dissertation with public history’ is an exercise in research and public engagement and is intended to develop your research and communication skills, as well as your ability to work independently. Topics will be supervised by two appropriate tutors, one with subject-specific knowledge, the second with knowledge exchange experience.

This module will introduce students to experimental filmmaking and encourage them to explore modes of creativity beyond the mainstream. It will provide critical overviews of selected experimental filmmakers and movements and encourage students to combine practice and theory through critical evaluation of their own productions. The module will alternate critical and historical sessions with practical sessions that will encourage students to produce critically informed work that challenges prevailing conventions. Students will also explore different types of experimentation and interrogate the boundaries between experimental and mainstream film.

This module will introduce students to transnational cinema with an aim to help them understand creative practices and filmmaking contexts beyond Europe and North America. It will provide critical overviews of transnational cinema, migration and diaspora, national and anticolonial positionalities in relation to film movements, and production and distribution contexts. The module will enable students to critically engage not only with films beyond the western mainstream or arthouse cinema but also with how globalisation necessitates transnational collaborations as a survival strategy to counter Hollywood’s dominance in the global market. Students will also engage with debates and discussion on, for example, Transnational vs Global/World cinema, First/Second/Third Cinema, Imperfect Cinema/Aesthetics of Hunger and film manifestoes from the Global South. Through critical, historical, and productional sessions along with screenings of films, the module will enable students to produce critically informed work that challenges prevailing understanding about cinema furthering the goal of decolonising the film curriculum.

This module will provide a space to familiarize yourself with the case study as a tool for the investigation of social, economic, cultural, and technological phenomena connected with phenomena that reflect on the role of media in contemporary societies.

Whether your interests lie in how people from ethnic minorities or standards of beauty are represented in advertising, videogames or film, on how companies tap on influencers to market their products, or how Twitter is used by journalists to cover breaking news or by television viewers to discuss their favourite shows on TV, this module will offer you a mix of knowledge, reference materials and guidance to choose, plan, conduct, and write a case study for your assessment.

A key component of the module will involve the study of iconic case studies, such as The Disney Company’s evolution from a national animation workshop to a global media conglomerate, to Russia’s use of information agencies such as Sputnik International to deliver propaganda to audiences all over the world, and the BBC’s problematic use of the journalistic principle of balance. Lecturers delivering this module may vary their selection of case studies to reflect on the latest developments, ensuring they will be of interest to students enrolled.

The module will be a valuable experience to learn aspects of the research process you could apply for writing essays, under- and postgraduate dissertations, whilst providing you with skills you could apply in a variety of professions such as journalism, marketing, public relations, and policymaking. Part of the core knowledge and skills that you will be expected to develop for this module will involve you in familiarising yourself with the extensive array of Northumbria University’s digital resources. You will then be expected to use electronic repositories of data, reference, archive, and multimedia materials, such as LexisNexis, WaybackMachine, Box of Broadcasts, and EBSCO, among others, to research the original content required to develop your own case study.

Following a case study approach, you will investigate the idea of event cultures in historical, conceptual and organisational terms. The module will explore how particular events (e.g. media festivals and award ceremonies) are developed, structured and organised. The aim is to consider how we, as scholars of film, media and culture, might conceptualise events and in so doing gain a clearer understanding of their dynamics, practices and their impact upon industry and society. In this way, the module will illustrate the key ways in which specific events have been framed in scholarship and how these ideas might begin to be applied in the real world. As such, the module encourages you to develop a critical response to filmic events and, in so doing, reflect upon their broader historical, cultural and socio-political significance. The lectures will introduce key concepts that will be explored in the seminars. The main part of each seminar will focus upon group tasks and discussion of the theme, specific event or set texts. Seminar discussions are also intended to develop your communication skills and your ability to develop and respond to ideas in a collaborative environment. You are expected to prepare for the sessions by studying the set text(s) for each week, and also by carrying out additional recommended reading/viewing (which will be indicated in the module guide and on the e–Learning Portal).

Academic skills when studying away from your home country can differ due to cultural and language differences in teaching and assessment practices. This module is designed to support your transition in the use and practice of technical language and subject specific skills around assessments and teaching provision in your chosen subject. The overall aim of this module is to develop your abilities to read and study effectively for academic purposes; to develop your skills in analysing and using source material in seminars and academic writing and to develop your use and application of language and communications skills to a higher level.

The topics you will cover on the module include:

• Understanding assignment briefs and exam questions.
• Developing academic writing skills, including citation, paraphrasing, and summarising.
• Practising ‘critical reading’ and ‘critical writing’
• Planning and structuring academic assignments (e.g. essays, reports and presentations).
• Dissertation writing requirements
• Research Skills
• Ethical considerations
• Understanding research limitations
• Avoiding academic misconduct and gaining credit by using academic sources and referencing effectively.
• Listening skills for lectures.
• Speaking in seminar presentations.
• Presenting your ideas
• Giving discipline-related academic presentations, experiencing peer observation, and receiving formative feedback.
• Speed reading techniques.
• Developing self-reflection skills.