Module Catalogue 2024/25

Pre Requisite Comment

N/A

Co Requisite Comment

N/A

Aims

This module is designed to manage students' transition from undergraduate work to postgraduate study and research. It introduces them to new and current trends in the discipline and allows them to lay the preliminary conceptual and theoretical groundwork for the development of their Masters dissertation project.

To this end, it enables them to develop:

• Knowledge and understanding of the importance of disciplinary and cross-disciplinary research
frameworks
• Knowledge and understanding of a variety of disciplinary methodologies, sources and resources
• The capacity to situate individual research in relation to major critical fields

Outline Of Syllabus

After an introductory week, focusing on critical methods, the module will examine methods of research in literary studies through case studies of theories and approaches which may include:
• Canonicity
• Historicism and cultural materialism
• Formalism
• Feminism
• Queer theory
• Postcolonialism and world literature
• Psychoanalysis
• The archive
• Digital humanities

Intended Knowledge Outcomes

At the end of the module, students should:
• Have theoretical and practical knowledge of the value and problems of critical frameworks and
methodological approaches
• Have developed skills in analysis and reflection
• Understand the discipline of literary studies and be able to situate their own intellectual
development within that disciplinary framework

Intended Skill Outcomes

At the end of the module, students should be able to:
• Apply a series of critical and theoretical frameworks to their research
• Be able to situate different critical and theoretical arguments in their respective fields
• Reflect critically on their work and intellectual development

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

Small group teaching/workshops are the most appropriate teaching strategies for the deep learning required at Masters level. This will be supplemented by learning activities and independent study.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

At the end of the module, students will submit a 4000-word essay that will examine one or more of the critical theories and/or approaches they have studied on the module and in which they will position their own work in relation to those theories and/or approaches. This will require students to show understanding both of a key critical theory and/or method and encourage reflection on the conceptual and theoretical basis of the research they will undertake at Masters level.

General Notes

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