English Literature with Mandarin BA (Hons) module descriptions

First year | Second year | Third year

With Languages: Conversation and practice sessions are held weekly throughout Blocks 1 and 2, and then you undertake the intensive part of your study of Mandarin in Block 3.

First year

Block 1: Introduction to the Novel

In this module you will learn to read novels critically at undergraduate level. Building on your experience of reading fiction at school, college or for leisure, you will learn to develop deep analytical readings and apply your growing critical skills to the wide range of novels you will encounter on this module and throughout your undergraduate career. This module aims to get you thinking about how novels work and how, as readers, we can understand them from different perspectives. Learn how to recognise subtle changes in narrative position, when to trust or distrust a narrator, how to recognize and read different subgenres (e.g. Realism, Romanticism, Modernism and Postmodernism), and how to use literary criticism to reveal interpretations you never expected or imagined. You will learn to incorporate critical reading into your preparation for workshops and assessments to enhance your understanding of literary texts. This module is designed to provide you with the core academic skills in reading, writing and research necessary to make the most of your time at university and the analytical and communication skills that will, after graduation, make you attractive to future employers.

Assessment: Class Test (40%) and Research Essay (60%)

Block 2: Journeys and Places

This module, with its focus on journeys and places, offers an opportunity for you to explore some of the key concepts underpinning your study of literature in English from around the globe. You will take a post-disciplinary approach to your studies, using techniques from diverse areas to address key questions related to journeys and places in your analysis of literary texts.

You will attend interactive lectures with students from across the School of Humanities and Performing Arts. You will have opportunities to apply the concepts addressed in these lectures to your study of a diverse range of literature within subject specific workshops and assessments.

The themes covered during the module may include journeys, spaces and the concept of welcome; (im)mobilities and journeys through time and space; representation and imaginative geographies; gender and placemaking; belonging and place attachment; journeys, places and identities; as well as themes related to sustainability and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

Assessment: Coursework (30%) and Essay (70%)

Block 3: Beginner Mandarin

You will be introduced to Mandarin, learning introductory and basic words, phrases and structures about yourself, family, immediate surroundings and daily activities and routine. You will also be introduced to basic social, cultural, political, historical and artistic topics.

Assessment: Reading, Listening, Writing and Speaking Tests (100%)

Block 3: Post-Beginner Mandarin

This module will further develop your language skills. The focus is on enhancing basic and personal communication skills and moving to more topics including family, other people, living conditions, educational background and employment. You will engage in basic dialogues and social interactions, expressing feelings, actions and needs and responding with thanks, apology, agreement and disagreement in answer to questions. You will also be introduced to basic social, cultural, political, historical and artistic topics.

Assessment: Reading, Listening, Writing and Speaking Tests (100%)

Block 4: Poetry and Society

Through this module you will develop your understanding of poetic form and genre and consolidate your close-reading skills by scrutinising a range of poems and poets from different historical periods. You will explore the historical origins and development of specific poetic genres such as epic and pastoral and learn the conceptual tools and technical vocabulary needed for critical analysis of poetry.

Assessment: Essay 1 (40%) and Essay 2 (60%)

Second year

Block 1: Exploration and Innovation: Medieval to Early Modern Literature

This module looks at the birth of English literature, offering an introduction to literature written between the medieval era and the mid-eighteenth century in England and Europe. Text will be considered in their national, cultural, and historical contexts. You will explore examples of poetry, drama and prose organised around key themes such as power, faith, love and sexuality.

Assessment: Commentary (30%) and Comparative Essay (70%)

Block 2: Exploring Work and Society

This module is designed to prepare and support you towards the pursuit of post-degree pathways. It will focus on the specific skills, capabilities and knowledge needed to adapt and flourish in professional environments and contexts. There will be an emphasis on enhancement of core attributes, competencies and transferable skills as well as developing familiarity with the world and politics of work. The module will prepare you for applying for jobs and employment within diverse and dynamic working environments beyond university by introducing reflective practices to support your long-term professional development.

You will be introduced to the UN Sustainable Development Goals and invited to engage critically around themes including race, gender, identity, and geopolitical issues, to conceptualize a more equitable society, and environmentally sustainable world, as relevant to your career aspirations.

You will engage with subject-specific workshops to gain greater understanding of worlds of work open to graduates of English literature. You will take part in lectures, seminars, group discussion, independent learning, tutorial support and engagement with your peers.

Supported independent learning activities may include responding to real-world briefs, placements/shadowing, engagement with community projects or initiatives, creating proposals for projects or initiatives in a professional setting. These activities will be tailored to your English Literature with Mandarin programme.

Assessment: Portfolio (100%)

Block 3: Post-Beginner Mandarin

Assessment: Reading, Listening, Writing and Speaking Tests (100%)

Block 3: Intermediate Mandarin

This module will build on the language skills you have already learned to develop these even further. You will use a wider range of vocabulary and more complex structures and various means of communication. You will develop your ability to respond appropriately in general conversations and learn to enter unprepared into a verbal conversation or communication in writing on topics that are familiar, of personal interest or pertinent to everyday life and society, explaining your viewpoint in a structured way. You will learn to understand, without difficulty, the most familiar topics and enhance your ability to discuss and comprehend general social, cultural, political, historical and artistic topics.

Assessment: Reading, Listening, Writing and Speaking Tests (100%)

Block 4: Romantic and Victorian Literature

This module introduces you to the exciting and significant range of literature from the Romantic and Victorian periods between 1780 and 1901. You will explore texts by writers such as Mary Wollstonecraft, William Wordsworth, Jane Austen and Byron in relation to the huge social upheavals of the time (including the impact of the French Revolution) and the new and radical ideas about childhood, the rights of man, and of woman, the natural world and the imagination emerging at the time. We then examine how Romantic ideas mutate in the literature of the Victorian period (1837-1901). The primary focus in this part of the course is on the novel, the dominant literary genre of the period, and students study writers like Dickens, Charlotte Bronte and Thomas Hardy, and examine the ways in which they represent issues such as class-conflict, urban poverty, faith, national identity and changing gender-roles. Students also look at the changing forms of Victorian poetry and the emergence of a distinctively female poetic tradition during the period.

Assessment: Coursework (40%) and Essay (60%)

Third year

Year long: Dissertation

You will propose, refine, develop, research and write a dissertation on a topic supervised by a member of the English team. We will support you throughout the year with skills-oriented workshops on devising and planning a project, engaging with scholarship, writing, editing and referencing. This will be complemented by workshops on key theoretical approaches such as structuralism and poststructuralism, Marxism, feminism, ecocriticism, queer theory or critical race theory as well as anti-theory or ‘against theory’ movements.

Assessment: Research Portfolio (20%) and Dissertation (80%)

Block 2: Print and Digital Revolutions

The two great revolutions in the creation and dissemination of writing are the invention of the printing press in the 15th century (the Gutenberg revolution) and the invention of computing machines and networks in the 20th century (the Digital revolution). This module is concerned with those two revolutions and teaches students about them in chronological order and in a hands-on manner.

In the first half of the module students will learn about the historical conditions of the pre-printing manuscript culture of the late medieval period and how the arrival of printing altered the socio-cultural and economic environment in which writings were created and disseminated. They will create texts of their own using these technologies. In the second half of the module students will learn about how machines store and process texts and what new opportunities for analysing text arise from their being in digital form. Students will create digital texts and computer programs for analysing them.

Assessment: Test (30%), Report 1 (35%) and Report 2 (35%)

Block 3: Intermediate Mandarin

Assessment: Reading, Listening, Writing and Speaking Tests (100%)

Block 3: Advanced Mandarin

This module refines and perfects the learning of your chosen language to the highest advanced level. This level will require the use of a wider range of vocabulary and complex structures. You will develop an understanding of extended authentic speech and more complex factual and specialised texts, including on TV, radio and in films. You will learn to use language flexibly and effectively for social and professional purposes. You will lead a discussion with arguments and debate on a variety of familiar, unfamiliar and complex topics, using language flexibly and effectively with precision. You will develop a high level of understanding of specialised social, cultural, political, historical and artistic topics.

Assessment: Reading, Listening, Writing and Speaking Tests (100%)

Block 4: Modernism and Magazines

You will examine the origins of Anglo-American modernism by considering a selection of key authors, critically analysing how they responded to modernity. You will also consider where modernism was first published, that is, in the pages of the modernist 'little magazine'. This module encourages you to interrogate the relationship between modernism and wider culture through study of a range of modernist texts and magazines.

Assessment: Essay (40%) and Research Portfolio (60%)