This module is designed to support you in embarking on advanced historical research, and it aims to help you develop the skills needed to complete your undergraduate dissertation. Through this module, you will be guided through the cognitive and analytical steps you will need to take to define your future dissertation topic, construct a detailed research proposal, conduct a reflexive feasibility study for your project, present your preliminary findings, and respond to feedback from academics in the department.

The module aims to guide you to design your research proposal, locate it in its relevant historiographical field, test its viability and scope of available sources, as well as produce outlines, detailed structures and bibliographies for your project. The module makes use of both standard and innovative forms of delivery, with a combination of lectures, online talks, drop-in consultation sessions, and one-to-one consultation sessions with potential supervisors and course convenors.

What our students say:

‘The lectures greatly helped me in understanding how I will accomplish the dissertation.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)

‘The guest speakers were particularly interesting and provided a lot of insight [...] which helped me understand how to use the archives themselves.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)

This module aims to provide you with a solid introduction to the discipline of history at the beginning of your Part-II studies. The module, accordingly, explores the discipline at large, including: its characteristic practices, methods and traditions; its use of different source materials; and its relation not just to the past, but also to the present and the future.

The module includes three thematic blocks. The first section (Contexts of History) provides an overview of different types of historical scholarship, focusing on the methods, theories and intellectual tendencies that characterise them. The second section (Sources and Evidence) examines the use and application of different types of sources as evidence in historical research. The third section (History in Public) considers the public role and function of the discipline, as well as the challenges that historians have faced in the public spotlight, and, finally, the role that the study of history can play in your future.

What our students say:

‘I appreciated the perspective each lecturer brought on how history is written in their area of expertise. It was both fascinating and highly informative. The seminars were also very helpful and overall very good.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)

‘I liked the seminars, and I liked the range of sources we learned about.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)

This year-long module enables you to explore both what literary criticism currently is and what it may yet become. You will have the opportunity to consider a whole range of major theoretical and philosophical concepts, such as the body, race, gender, violence, ecology, God, time, death, war, self, and the animal, etc. We currently look at a range of fascinating modern thinkers, ranging from Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche, through to more recent figures such as Simone Weil, Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, Fred Moten, Cornel West, and Sara Ahmed. You will have the opportunity to write in both short and long form, to present orally alongside fellow students, and to explore, if you wish, radically experimental modes of theoretical writing.

The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.

This module invites you to explore the history of an object that is of crucial importance to our ideas about both human health and human identity – the mind. A Global History of the Mind will give you the opportunity to explore how societies across a wide range of times and places have sought to understand, cure and control the mind. Drawing on materials and case studies from around the world, whether modern-day Polynesia or the medieval Middle East, this offers a truly global perspective on the history of the mind.

At the same time, the module encourages you to explore the connections between changing ideas about mental health and sickness to broader questions about human identity – most notably those concerning race, gender and the potential loss of human distinctiveness in a world where artificial intelligence is possible. Unlike traditional courses on mental health, which almost invariably focus on the emergence and spread of western psychiatry, this module offers a decentered perspective. We will examine the mind from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives, bringing together philosophy, medicine, religion, race, gender, and social control. In so doing, we will explore questions of urgent relevance to our own society – most notably the ways in which ideas about the mind have featured in the racialization and gendering of people through systems of patriarchy and colonialism. In addition, this module will use case studies from history to give you the resources to consider and question modern ideas about the mind and its role in society.

As well as completing a traditional essay assignment, this module includes a group podcasting assignment. Working together with your classmates, you will develop the skills to put together your own podcast on the history of the mind.

What our students say:

‘The seminars were wonderful. We looked at some quite complicated ideas, but the lecturer led them in a way that enabled us to think for ourselves and come to our own understandings on the topics, without making us feel stupid for not getting things straight away.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)

‘I really enjoyed how the module looked at a lot of different periods/countries. It had a good range and was fascinating.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)

This module explores American writing as part of a 'cultural declaration of independence' in the 19th century, with particular focus on literatures of dissidence and imaginative resistance including radical abolitionist writings.

What we call ‘American Literature’ and how we define America and ‘the American experience’ depends on who is writing and to whom. In this module we encounter many different voices, many conflicting and contrasting views, a diversity of complex experience, and a great range of writing in form and style. And we explore such as: What role do different literary forms play in narrating the self? How does American writing seek to establish a new way of looking at the world? And, how and why does literature help shape forms of protest and new critiques of modernity?

Key writers usually include Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Rebecca Harding Davis, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Jacobs.

This module examines Russian history from 1825 through to the outbreak of the First World War, focusing on differences between Russia and the countries of western Europe. It explores the nature of the tsarist autocracy, seeing how successive governments sought to introduce social and economic changes that would allow Russia to become more modern, while preserving intact a traditional system of rule.

The module also examines the rise of the revolutionary movement from the 1850s onwards, discussing the tactics used in efforts to destroy tsarism, ranging from terrorism through to mobilising the working population of the cities and countryside against the government. While a good deal of attention is given to the various social and political pressures that exploded in the February Revolution, lectures and seminars encourage students to explore tsarist history as a fascinating subject ‘in its own right’, rather than simply as a prelude to the dramatic events of 1917.

What our students say:

Comments from anonymised student evaluations described the lectures as ‘fantastic’ and ‘very engaging’ and that the resources provided as ‘amazing’. Others noted that the tutor was ‘incredibly knowledgeable’.

20th-century British history is largely a story of change. The impact of democratisation, war, economic decline, the loss of empire, and internal fragmentation has resulted in a nation seemingly in constant flux, often unsure of its identity and its values.

In this module you will explore the patterns of social, economic, cultural and political change which have most affected the lives of the British since 1900. The overarching themes are the formation and reformation of identities based on class, gender, race, empire, nation, and the dual process by which the British were integrated into the state as citizens, and into the market as consumers. As well as being introduced to the key historiographical debates, in this module you will be encouraged to explore the subject through an eclectic mix of primary sources, including cartoons, posters, fiction, press reports, and advertisements.

What our students say:

‘The lectures were incredibly informative and helped me to understand core themes and historiography so I could go away to research it myself.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)

‘Material was presented to both support and disprove ideas we were covering and well fleshed out. These were also the most detailed and interesting lectures I had this term, focusing on a specific decade on each but never forgetting to cover broader trends of history. It also allowed us to use alternative primary sources like posters, fiction and news coverage from the period in depth and showed them to be just as valuable as textual sources.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)

This module explores colonial writing at the end of empire, the explosion of new national literatures in the era of decolonisation in the middle of the twentieth century, and contemporary writing that draws on and reinvents these decolonising commitments. Our interest throughout will be in how literature reflects and critiques imperial impulses and anxieties, and how literature undertakes the work of cultural, political, and psychic decolonisation. We read both exciting major writers, key to the canon of colonial and postcolonial literature, and new voices that grapple with the ongoing powers of empire and racism.

Migration is arguably the defining characteristic of the post-WW2 world. This module explores contemporary creative representations of migration in multiple modes - considering exile, expatriation, travel, urbanisation, and statelessness in literary genres that include fiction, memoirs, poetry and travel writing, as well as some visual media and philosophy. In particular, we critically examine the voluntary nature of migration, emphasising different kinds of displacement. The module, taught in a City of Sanctuary, draws on histories that encompass transatlantic slavery, the Holocaust, postcolonial and climate displacement, travelling cultures, globalisation, and an ongoing ‘refugee crisis.’

What does it mean to die? Does it hurt? Is it frightening? Will I see those I love again? What does it mean to kill, whether an enemy, a friend, or myself? Death is a universal human experience, a cataclysm, triumph or adventure we all confront. But how we do that has varied vastly across history. In the European Middle Ages, the Church’s doctrines shaped ideas of death, from burial in the consecrated ground of churchyards to the theology of heaven, hell and purgatory. The living and the dead were a community: those on earth could speed the dead through their passage in the afterlife, and those in heaven could intercede for the living. Yet at the margins lay a shadowy world, in which the restless dead returned to haunt those left on earth, and the despairing took their lives in an act known as ‘self-murder’.

In this module, we explore varied experiences of death across the medieval centuries in the Christian West, from end-of-life care to execution, and from battlefields to the Black Death. We discover the different means of investigating death, from the chronicles that describe the walking dead, to the archaeology of burial practice, and from murder trials to palaeogenetics, unlocking the passage of disease. This is, by nature, a disturbing field of study. But what we learn cuts to the heart of what it means to be human – in the past and today.

How has disability been experienced in the past? To what extent have different societies and political regimes ‘disabled’ individuals in different ways? Who or what defines the boundaries of bodily normality in any given society?

In this module, we will explore how varying cultural and political understandings of the body have affected the experiences of those living with impairments in the contemporary world, from the influence of eugenicist thought in 1930s-40s Germany, to the rise of disabled activism from the 1960s, and UN imperatives to raise the profile of disability rights from the 1980s.

Drawing on cutting edge research from the small but rapidly blossoming field of disability history, this module will explore how individuals of different genders, religions, and social, ethnic and cultural backgrounds experienced disability differently in recent history. Each week we will explore a different aspect of disability history within a specific geographical and temporal context, which will offer a well-rounded yet targeted perspective on the varying ways in which physical difference has been conceptualised, represented and experienced in recent history. In doing so, the module will offer a lens through which to better understand shifting conceptualisations of citizenship, statehood, and identity in the modern world.

This course explores how American Literature has evolved from its colonial origins, with particular emphasis on key writing from the seventeenth to the nineteenth-centuries. What we call ‘American Literature’ and how we define America and ‘the American experience’ depends on who is writing and to whom.

We shall encounter many different voices, many conflicting and contrasting views, a diversity of complex experience, and a great range of writing in form and style. We pay particular attention to colonialism and freedom in the literature of early modern America, including rival ideas of self, nation, race and religion. And we explore questions such as: Why does the idea of America as a 'city on a hill' become so vital? How is the 'frontier' imagined? What strategies do writers use to challenge the hegemony of colonialism? Key texts usually include Native American Oral Literature and the writings of De Las Casas, Bradstreet, Rowlandson, Wheatley, Jefferson, and Franklin.

During the 16th century, Europe witnessed some of the most important developments in the shaping of the modern world. Although you will learn about these events, the module will focus on the broader historical processes through which you can understand them. At the same time, you will engage with the methodologies and debates that historians of the present-day find most interesting, critically appraising their strategies for assessing patterns of historical change and continuity.

You will therefore examine the work of environmental historians, asking whether transformations in society and the economy can be explained by changes in climate. The module will also ask whether colonial expansion led people to develop new ideas about racial and cultural difference, while at the same time trying to understand how newly colonized people tried to navigate their way through new hierarchies and relationships.

In addition, it will ask whether long-standing questions about transformations in religious life, popular culture, and the centralization of government, can be enriched by approaching them through the prism of new approaches. When you study the body, health, and disease, for instance, you’ll discuss the unexpected role of medical expertise in the development of a renewed form of Catholicism at the end of the 16th century. Meanwhile, focusing on the history of printed news may enable you to understand why rumours and religious bigotry spread so rapidly during the Reformation and Wars of Religion.

What our students say:

‘I really loved working with the lecturer for this module, he made the lectures interesting and chose to approach the topics in ways which I had personally not encountered. The seminars too were informative with proper discussion going on, really expanding on the lectures while still being relevant to them.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)

‘This was my favourite module I did this term. An area of the module I valued was the fact that it was not taught in any type of chronological order, with every week being about a different topic about the early modern period, it kept me engaged every week. The lecturer was excellent; it was clear that he not only loves the material based on how enthusiastic he was, but also that he wanted us to love the material as well.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)

HIST215: Introduction to Latin Translation for Undergraduates

This is a special intensive course for students who have little or no previous knowledge of Latin. The course concentrates on the basics of Latin Grammar and vocabulary as used in the Medieval period. However, it will also be very useful for students of the Roman and Renaissance periods. By the end of the course, students should be able to read sources such as title deeds, court rolls, government records, wills, and inscriptions.

This year-long module explores the adaption of literature to film and other media. We currently focus on how Austen’s so-called ‘classic’ Pride and Prejudice is adapted to classical Hollywood cinema, and how Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet has been adapted to both postmodern Hollywood and Bollywood cinema. We also explore the trajectories between Carroll’s Alice books and film animation, and how Dante’s Inferno has been adapted to a videogame. We study a range of other literary texts and media, ranging from children’s fiction to horror, social realism to science fiction, poetry to graphic novels, and reverential adaptations to outright parodies. The module includes a creative project that enables you to produce your own work of adaptation. This may take many forms – written, (audio)visual, digital, or three-dimensional -- and/or take the form of a game, or production, or performance, etc.

The details of this module (for example, the materials studied) vary from year to year.

This module focuses on the ways in which early modern English literature understood and represented love, sex and death and the connections between them. Reading texts from the late medieval period through to late seventeenth century, we explore how ideas about love, sex and death were shaped by discourses of religion, science, gender, marriage and the body, and how these changed over time.

Our readings are mainly be focused on topics designed to provide us with ingress into the literature, culture and historical vitality of the period. Poetry, prose and drama will be explored, and readings will range from the earthy late-medieval play Mankind to Milton’s capacious epic, Paradise Lost, and from the love sonnets of Philip Sidney, Mary Wroth, and John Donne to the dark and disturbing theatre of John Ford.

Perhaps more formative for the modern British state than any before or since, the years 1660 to 1720 saw Britain’s territorial boundaries and infrastructure forged, with constitutional monarchy, expanding state bureaucracy, and political parties as its principal tenets. During the same period, political power in England changed hands; new political personnel operated within novel political institutions and voiced innovative political economies.

Making Modern Britain will challenge participants to analyse and debate formative changes to British literature, commerce, art and architecture as well as to discuss the changed relationship between Britain and the world during this period. Participants will therefore receive a broad understanding of late 17th and early 18th century British history; they will also develop expertise in the following subfields: cultural, art, political, parliamentary, global, economic, constitutional, gender, and business history.

What our students say:

‘The access to databases for sources was very useful. The structure of the module was very valuable and easy to follow. The workshops were really useful, with them being more than an hour, because I felt like they improved my understanding of all the reading and all the content in the lectures.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)

‘Learning more about the economic state of Britain; the way the connections between lectures and readings were handled. Even if it was more challenging to do, it really forced you to think about the module and its contents critically.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)

After a survey of the main events leading to the declaration of war against Nazi Germany, this module explores the development of resistance and collaboration in countries that were first occupied, namely, Poland, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, France and the Netherlands. The transition between active collaboration to increasing resistance is traced through Vichy France. The module next moves to the Eastern Mediterranean (Greece and Yugoslavia), where resistance became effectively organised, and then to the USSR, focusing on Belarus, Russia, Baltics and Ukraine. Lastly, the module looks briefly at countries that were first part of the Axis and eventually switched sides from 1943 onwards (Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania), paying special attention to Italy.

Although the last segment of the module concentrates on the Holocaust, the fate and treatment of Jews is looked at in each of the countries and regions analysed. Seminars deal with the analysis of sources, including political documents, photographs, posters, letters, films, documentaries and personal memoirs.

What our students say:

‘The lecturer was very good at giving advice and providing extra reading when asked.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)

‘I found I gained the most from workshops, they really helped to build on my knowledge and I had a really interactive seminar.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)

This module examines early modern literary representations of power, politics and place. We consider a broad range of genres (prose, poetry and drama), moving from the late medieval period’s interest in spiritual and earthly travel to the episodes of power, revolution and restitution that characterised Stuart rule (1603-1688). The module examines the literatures of political influence and change from the late fourteenth through to the seventeenth centuries, from John Mandeville’s marvellous journeys through Europe, Northern Africa, Asia and the Holy Land to the fantastical romances of Margaret Cavendish, and the brilliant and edgy theatre of Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson to the writings of revolutionaries such as John Milton and Margaret Fell and monarchist libertines like Aphra Behn.

We begin by understanding the full historical context of the French Revolution and the extraordinary impact this had on all areas of literature and thought. We examine revolutionary writing of the Romantic period, including the poetry of Anna Barbauld, William Blake, and William Wordsworth, and the prose of Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and Mary Wollstonecraft. Later we turn our attention to the emergence of the Gothic in the 1790s, and dives into this popular and lasting form.

The course aims to give students a sense of the diverse range of writers in this period. We use close knowledge of key texts to tackle broader, more abstract ideas such as: nature, the imagination, and the sublime. We will also consider literary ideas within a broader social, historical and philosophical context.

On this course we examine the relationship between politics and poetics for second-generation poets Anna Barbauld and Percy Bysshe Shelley, and then the remarkable and shocking slave narratives of Olaudah Equiano, Mary Prince, and the orientalism of S. T. Coleridge and Thomas de Quincey. Finally, the course moves inward to explore the core theme of subjectivity and the self, a theme that finds expression in both positive and negative ways in Byron, Keats, Clare, and Smith.

Some twenty years ago, the mass digitisation of historic materials catapulted historians from the ‘Age of Scarcity’ into the ‘Age of Abundance.’ Vast amounts of printed text, images, maps, objects and ephemera have since been digitised and delivered to audiences in keyword searchable form. Digital archives, such as British Library Newspapers, Early English Books Online, Eighteenth-Century Collections and Nineteenth-Century Periodicals, have long been the first point of call for historians. Ancestry and Findmypast’s capitalisation on the well-documented boom in family history means we can now access the census, birth, marriage and death records and other social and personal records at the touch of a button. Add in publicly funded, open access resources such as Old Bailey Online, Slave Voyages, Digital Panopticon and countless others to the mix, digital historians have been particularly well-served by the creation of the Western print archive 2.0.

But an over-reliance on digital collections has the potential for historians to be less critically reflexive about online resources, so we need to open the ‘black box’ of digital archives and develop new forms of source criticism. On the module, you will evaluate the ‘infinite archive’ and experiment with a range of tools, that may include artificial intelligence, heritage mapping, crowdsourcing, and data visualisation. You will develop a digital historians’ toolkit that provides a beginner-level introduction to the debates, concepts, and techniques used in digital history. These techniques can be applied to a wide range of historical topics. As well as providing you with an understanding of the new ways in which historians are researching their discipline, these skills can be applied to other modules, such as your dissertation, and provide transferable skills that can enhance employability.

What our students say:

‘I really enjoyed the module. [...] It offered an insight into a different approach to studying History.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)

This module explores both the broad contours and the key events of American history, from the passage and implementation of the US Constitution (1789) to the conclusion of the Civil War (1865). Using a variety of primary source material, we will look closely at the culture and politics of race, class and gender in this rapidly industrialising and expanding nation and will consider how and why different groups struggled to extend the promises of democracy defined in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights to all Americans.

This module combines a lecture series that offers an overview of the history of the United States in the 19th century with a closely linked set of seminars that focus on the construction of race, class and gender difference over the same period. Seminars are structured around primary readings and recommended secondary texts that offer critical and historical insight into the topics under consideration. This combination allows students to explore important thematic aspects of world history while simultaneously providing grounding for further study and research into the history of the United States in the 19th and/or 20th centuries.

The century following the American Civil War was one of profound social and political change. This module explores the period from post-Civil War reconstruction to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, following the history of the United States from a divided nation to one considered a ‘World Power’. In this period, industrialisation, consumerism, and war changed the face of American society and culture. This module will focus in particular on the construction of race, class and gender in the United States, and the intersections between society, politics, and culture. Using a range of primary sources – including great works of American literature – we will consider contrasting perceptions of ‘modernity’ in this period, and the impact this had upon the United States and its people.

This module combines a lecture series that offers an overview of the history of the United States in the 20th century with a closely linked set of seminars that focus on the construction of race, class and gender difference in over the same period. This combination allows students to explore an important thematic aspect of world history (the construction of race, class and gender difference) while simultaneously providing grounding for further study and research into the history of the United States. Seminars are structured around primary readings and recommended secondary texts that offer critical and historical insight into the topics under consideration.

This module allows you to explore the story of the German Kingdom from the mid-9th century until the early 12th. Formed amid the collapse of the Carolingian Empire, it came close to collapse in the early 10th century, yet it was saved by the Magyar crisis, emerging triumphant under the leadership of a new and charismatic dynasty, the Liudolfings. They re-founded the kingdom, turning it into the most dynamic state in 10th-century Europe. The vast empire they created — the so-called ‘Holy Roman Empire’ — would endure until 1804 when it was finally suppressed by Napoleon Buonaparte; but in the mid-eleventh century the power of its monarchs was hollowed out by a savage crisis from which the realm would never entirely recover — a devastating civil war that lasted five decades, from the mid-1070s until 1122.

This stunning narrative raises many questions. Why did it all go ‘right’? Why did it then go so ‘wrong’? This dramatic story provides fundamental insights into the nature of the medieval kingdom, its capacities and its limitations.

What our students say:

‘This module was very enjoyable; the period was engaging and interesting; the seminars were very beneficial in helping to decipher interesting yet challenging sources which I can use later in my degree.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)

‘Lectures were informative and well-organised, seminar readings were easy to access’ (Anonymous student evaluation)

The Vietnam War remains the only war that the United States has definitively lost in its 240-year history. This course explores the political, social, and cultural effects that the fighting in Southeast Asia triggered back home on American soil, specifically between the years 1964 and 1975.

Utilising a range of sources from memoirs to music and films to television coverage, you will gain a greater understanding of the forces that shaped ‘the Sixties’ and why the Vietnam War deeply affected American society for decades to come. We will engage with the presidencies of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, while exploring the anti-war movement, female and Black American involvement in the war, and how veterans fared when they came home to the United States.

The module, of course, will not eschew the war itself, and the first lectures will ground you in the key figures, decisions, battles, and massacres that led to a conflict which killed an estimated two million Vietnamese civilians, and 58,000 American soldiers.

What our students say:

‘Mark did an absolutely stellar job teaching this course. His lectures were well structured and informative. They never ran over the allotted time and allowed for good engagement and used a large range of media to convey the necessary information. The seminars were likewise amazing, a lot more free...allowing for more open discussion and spread of ideas among coursemates. History 269 is an outstanding module.’ (Anonymous student feedback)

‘The lectures were incredibly interesting and informative, fast paced but not too fast. The content was very interesting and I found the seminars helpful and aided my learning. I was very engaged in the module. Everyone I've spoken to really enjoyed the module’ (Anonymous student feedback)

The Roman Empire stretched from Britain to modern-day Syria, from Morocco to Romania. How did Rome control an empire which ranged from the societies of the Mediterranean basin to those of Arabia and temperate northern Europe? How did the peoples of these regions adapt to, or indeed resist, ‘becoming Roman’?

This module will give you a thorough foundation in the history of the Roman Empire from the first emperor Augustus in the 1st century BCE to late antiquity and the rise of Christianity in the 4th century CE. You will study the immense social, economic and religious changes that occurred across Europe and the Near East in this period, as well as the political and military history of the Empire. You will confront the challenges of writing Roman history from textual sources that are often fragmentary or have political and rhetorical agendas which are alien to us today. You will also learn to integrate material evidence, from coins and inscriptions to archaeology, into your understanding of the Roman Empire.

What our students say:

‘As someone who didn't know a lot on the topic, the lectures were very informative in helping me to build up my knowledge and the readings were accessible but still challenging... Reading about archaeology was also a very different approach to what I'm used to and greatly helped me with analysing physical sources rather than only written works.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)

‘Eleri is a phenomenal lecturer and seminar tutor. She is very engaging, attentive, and helpful... I think the most valuable aspect of the material itself was how well-rounded it was. Rather than just focusing on the city of Rome, or on religion, or culture, or otherwise, we got a well-rounded overview of the entire empire.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)

Between 1500 and 1865, Europeans embarked twelve and a half million captive Africans on slave ships for transportation to the Americas, the largest forced trans-oceanic migration in human history.

In this module, you will study the slave trade in the broader context of Atlantic history. You will first see how slavery diminished in Europe during the late Middle Ages, just as Europeans began to systematically explore the Atlantic basin. You will then study the rapid expansion of the trade after Columbus’ voyages, as Europeans enslaved increasing numbers of Africans to work in the fields, mines, and ports of the Americas. Focusing on the 17th and 18th centuries, you will look closely at how the trade operated, and how Africans experienced their enslavement.

You will also study north-west England’s connections to the slave trade by investigating how Liverpool and Lancaster merchants outfitted slave ships and profited from the trade, and the slave trade’s influence on industrialization. In the concluding section of the module, you will see how the slave trade was abolished in the early 19th century, and the persistence of a clandestine trade until the end of the American Civil War.

What our students say:

‘The lectures and seminars were both great and extremely helpful in thinking critically and from a new perspective, which was invaluable in helping me to write the course's essay, but also helped me with my other coursework.’ (Anonymous student evaluations)

Given the extensive transformations experienced in the nineteenth century, it is no surprise that Victorian writers and thinkers reflected at length on matters of belief. These beliefs ranged from the public to the private, the collective to the individual, and included issues relating to politics, religion, economics, society, Empire, and so on.

In this module we explore: what people believed, why communities held those beliefs, and the experience of changing one’s beliefs and/or seeing those around you change their beliefs. We will think about such questions by looking at a range of material from the period, including fiction, poetry, and drama.

The authors we study will change from year to year but might include figures such as Oscar Wilde, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Wilkie Collins, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Christina Rossetti.

The nineteenth century saw widespread and rapid change across Britain. Responses to these changes varied enormously but looking back on the period it is noticeable how the Victorians were willing to experiment and test the boundaries of what was known.

In this module we explore that interest in experimentation by looking at a range of literature of the period, including novels, short fiction, and poetry. We think about experimentation thematically (e.g., science, spiritualism, vivisection) and formally (e.g., narrative perspective, fantasy, dramatic monologues, and sprung rhythm).

The authors we study change from year to year but might include figures such as George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, H.G. Wells, Charles Kingsley, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Robert Browning, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Vernon Lee.

Virginia was the founding point of the presence of English people in North America, and of the first Africans in English-speaking America. This module considers the problems of founding a new society in the Americas during the earliest years of English adventurism. We will explore topics such as slavery, the ethics of land claim, the relations between pre-settled peoples and newcomers, trade, commodities like tobacco, and the emerging tensions between England and the colonies.

The module begins, chronologically, with the earliest voyages to the North American mainland, the adventurism of Sir Walter Raleigh and the settlements on Roanoke Island and Chesapeake, the relationship with the Powhatan Confederacy, and the Lost Colony. It then moves its attention to the Virginia Company and the settlement of Jamestown and explores the different experiments by successive governors – John Smith and Sir Thomas Dale in particular – to build a stable and workable community. It looks at the introduction of tobacco, the switch towards a plantation economy and society using slave labour, and the fall of the Company. Finally, it explores the problems of proprietary government, and ends with the governorship of Sir William Berkeley and the rebellion for ‘liberty’ under Nathaniel Bacon, which marked the enslavement of indigenes and Africans.

What our students say:

‘The sources included within the lectures were excellent in terms of highlighting broader themes and the overall narrative. The seminars were also particularly useful in terms of reflecting on the entire module’. (Anonymous student evaluations)

‘[I enjoyed] the innovative approach Sarah took to the historiography, and the emphasis on the primary source material’. (Anonymous student evaluations)

In 21st Century Theory, we will build upon the general introduction to critical and cultural theory given on ENGL201 by focusing on one specific theme in contemporary theory: biopolitics. To explore biopolitics – or the politics of life itself – we will examine a selection of classic theoretical works by Michel Foucault, Georgio Agamben and others and then read them alongside some key literary and filmic texts from Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go to the Batman Trilogy. This course will seek to address the following questions. What exactly is biopolitics? How have theorists, novelists and film-makers imagined such concepts as sovereign power, bare life, the state of exception and so on? To what extent might it be possible to resist the biopolitical hold over our political imaginary?

The gods are encountered at every turn in the Roman Empire, but seldom in the same way or in the same places. This module explores the immense diversity of religious experience, practice, and belief in the Roman world in order to understand religion’s role in the shaping of society and identity across the Empire. You will learn to use a broad range of archaeological, epigraphic, iconographic and literary evidence to reconstruct the lived experience of religion in the Roman Empire, from gods worshiped by German soldiers on the rain-swept Romano-British frontier, to domestic shrines in the kitchens of Pompeii, to the great Greco-Roman pilgrimage sanctuaries of Asia Minor.

How can we use site plans to think about the experience of moving through a sanctuary? How do animal bones and pottery assemblages allow us to reconstruct the dynamics of religious sacrifice and ritual feasting? What insights do first-person accounts of encountering gods through dreams and visions by authors such as Aelius Aristides or Cicero give into personal relationships with the divine?

Through detailed analysis of primary material and in-depth engagement with modern scholarship on Roman religion, we will explore the complex role played by divine cults, sacred spaces, and religious identities in the construction of society across the vast geographic and chronological span of the Empire. You will also have the opportunity to take part in a field trip to sites and museums on Hadrian's Wall, to experience a range of temple locations and material evidence for Roman religion in person.

What our students say:

‘The lecturer’s enthusiasm and dedication was obvious – there was never a dull moment in the classroom and I really valued every single minute of those seminars. Genuinely some of the most fun I have had throughout my degree.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)

This module explores the origins of modern consumer society in Britain, introducing you to an exciting and innovative field of historical research. In the hundred years from the abolition of advertising tax in 1853 to the birth of commercial television in the 1950s, advertising became an omnipresent feature of modern capitalism. In this module, you will explore the causes and consequences of this process of commercialisation using a range of primary sources, from press reports and cartoons, to business archives, social surveys, and, of course, the advertisements themselves.

You will explore the changing relationship between people and their possessions, the impact of new shopping environments like the department store and the supermarket, and the rise of ethical consumerism. Advertising is political, and you will also examine how it helped Britain win two world wars and market the Empire to its own people. You will learn how advertisements work by designing your own advertising campaign in a particular historical context. By the end of the module, you will understand how advertising sells us much more than simply clothes or food, how it shapes the way we view gender and race, and how it creates support for a market economy based on the principles of freedom and choice.

What our students say:

‘I thoroughly enjoyed the module! My favourite aspects were to do with the psychology of advertising and how this impacted gender roles.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)

‘I really enjoyed the variety that this module offers. Every week was a new topic and a new way to analyse different perspectives from the module period.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)

‘I think the range of coursework styles for this module were really fun to complete.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)

On 6 January 2021, the US Congress was attacked in a chaotic offensive of fire and fury that led to five deaths and countless injuries. After decades of gradual polarisation, the United States – the preeminent world power and self-proclaimed beacon of democracy – was coming apart in dramatic fashion as the world looked on. Three weeks later, the US Capitol witnessed the arrival of a new president and heard an inaugural address which focused on the need for unity and warned of democracy’s fragility.

This course will examine the reasons why, and the extent to which, American society, culture, and politics polarised in the years since 1960. To do so, it will examine a wide range of issues, such as: race relations, class conflict, gender and sexuality, socioeconomic policy, media, the ‘culture wars’, the modern American presidency, and political polarisation between Democrats and Republicans.

What our students say:

‘The quality of teaching is by far the best that I have received whilst at Lancaster, the lecturer’s seminars were engaging and thought provoking and readings set were informative about the various topics from week to week. In my opinion I have written my best essay work whilst doing this module as it has given me a thorough understanding of post war American history.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)

‘The most interactive class I've taken. Encouraged me to want to research the topics each week in detail.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)

This module investigates Europe’s ‘dark years’ mostly, but not only, through films produced from the 1940s to the present. We study individual and collective attitudes towards the occupation, taking into consideration political beliefs, and contextualising the fate of European Jews prior to and during the Holocaust. We also explore conflicting memorialization of resistance, collaboration and the Holocaust. Although the module is open to include other countries, we look especially at the USA, UK, France, Poland and the USSR, in addition to Nazi Germany.

The module starts with a brief introduction to the relationship between film and propaganda in Nazi Germany, followed by its use in the UK and the USA to canvas support for ‘the people’s war’ or to counter US isolationism. We then explore photojournalism and the role of film and documentary in constructing the ‘foundational narrative’ of Gaullist France as a ‘nation of resisters’, and the challenge to that view with France becoming a ‘nation of collaborators’ from the late 1960s.

Towards the end of the module, we investigate films, photographs and Jewish testimonies on the USSR’s Great Patriotic War that were released during Khrushchev’s Thaw or Gorbachev’s Glasnost. Throughout the second term of the module, we chart the development of Holocaust testimony through documentaries and fiction films that focus sequentially on Gentile rescuers, Jewish victimization, survival, and resistance. We read them through the lens of Levi’s ‘grey zone’, as well as Lanzmann’s and Hilberg’s definitions of perpetrators, victims, or bystanders. Throughout this segment, students lead class discussions about a film or topic of their choice. The module deploys methodologies from social and cultural history, as well as film and media studies.

What our students say:

‘A very well organised module overall that suited to everyone’s strengths and aided everyone’s weaknesses. Great selection of film and reading materials, I could not recommend this special subject more.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)

‘The best course I’ve done at the university.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)

The course will begin with writing that looks back to the First World War, and end with writing that anticipates the Second World War. In between, you will explore and interrogate the inter-war ‘moment’ through close attention to texts by such as D.H. Lawrence,Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, and W H Auden. The course will focus on many of the great themes of the period such as exile, unemployment, Englishness, eugenics, militarisation, and political commitment, as well as many of the great cultural motifs of the period such as borders, radios, planes, cars, trains, cameras, and telephones. Close attention will also be paid to many of the great intellectual debates of the period such as the nature of history, the role of the State in everyday life, and the place of literary experimentation in time of war.

The details of this module (for example the texts or authors studied) may vary from year to year.

In this module we will look at a selection of biblical texts alongside literary works that appropriate, rewrite, and subvert them. We will be thinking about the Bible as literature; the reciprocal relationship between the Bible and literature; what the Bible does to a literary text. We will explore questions such as: in what ways does awareness of the Bible provoke more profound readings of a literary text? and does rewriting refine or subvert the Bible? We currently study work by such as Margaret Attwood, William Blake, Thomas Hardy, Angela Carter, John Donne, and Sylvia Plath, as well as Terence Mallick’s film The Tree of Life.

The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.

This module will focus upon the motif of ‘the child’ within 20th and 21st century horror fiction and film, and aims to explore the cultural significance of this motif through analysis of themes such as innocence and evil, psychic powers, child abuse, parenting, technology and grief. The module will develop in students a sophisticated ability to think critically and analytically about how an exploration of popular fiction and film can reveal deep cultural anxieties and fixations at both historical and psychological levels. We currently explore literary texts such as Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (1898), Daphne du Maurier, Don’t Look Now (1973), and Stephen King, The Shining (1977), and films such as The Bad Seed (1956), director Mervyn LeRoy, The Exorcist (1973), director William Friedkin, and Hereditary (2018), director Ari Aster.

The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.

The twenty-first century has seen the emergence of Middle Eastern literature in English and translation as one of the most exciting new areas of world literature. The region has experienced, so far this century, the ‘war on terror’, revolutions and wintery aftermaths, civil wars, sectarian violence, the rise and fall of ‘Islamic State’, and an ongoing refugee crisis. On this course, we will explore some of the shapes and styles of contemporary Middle Eastern literature, the concerns and aspirations that drive it, and its growing international visibility. We will study novels, short stories, and new genres from the region, in English and in translation. No prior knowledge is needed.

Course Outline:

This module is run by the Department of English Literature and Creative Writing, with the support of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Engagement team and the central Careers Team. It aims to enhance students’ employability by providing an assessed work placement opportunity as an optional module It will also encourage students actively to think about the transferability of skills gained through the study of English Literature and/or Creative Writing.

The Department, via the FASS Engagement team, will set up a number of work placements in the (broadly defined) culture, heritage and creative sectors: with, for example, publishers, museums, newspapers, heritage sites, and arts venues. Students may alternatively source their own work placements, subject to prior discussion with the FASS Placements provider. Information on how to source a placement will be circulated to all enrolled students during summer.

Recent placements include: Copywriter at Copify; Publishing and Editorial Intern at Saraband; Project Assistant at Lancaster City Council; Communications Assistant at Three Left Feet Theatre Company.

Students must be prepared to pay their own transport/accommodation costs, though a small Departmental contribution toward travel can be applied for. It is expected that placements will be either close to Lancaster University or to the student’s home; many placements occur remotely. Students typically work for 30-40 hours with their host organization (not all of which will necessarily be on-site) in the Lent term.

They maintain contact with both the departmental course convenor and FASS placements team throughout the placement period. Placement providers are required to complete risk assessment and health and safety forms and to ensure an induction process. Both students and placement providers are required to sign a Learning Agreement.

Please note that you cannot take both this module and ENGL 376 Schools Volunteering.

Please also note that the maximum number of students on this course is fixed, and that in fairness to students, and in dialogue with the FASS Placements Officer, we have chosen to set up a selection process. If you choose this course, you will be sent an online form to complete as an application. The criteria will be enthusiasm, commitment, and having aspirations which can be realistically met on this module. You do not have to have prior placement experience, but it is fine if you do.

The Dissertation is a module that progresses from the methodological understandings acquired in Second-Year courses.

You will write a 10,000-word dissertation exploring a challenging historical problem. While, in many cases, we expect that the topic chosen will arise from courses you are studying, it should also be possible to accommodate topics which do not have a direct bearing on your taught courses. The aim is to give you the opportunity to work in depth on a topic of your choice, and to gain the satisfaction of working independently and of making a subject your own. Research for dissertations will usually combine work on secondary literature with the use of primary sources (in translation where necessary). You are expected to demonstrate knowledge of the wider historical context of the subject being explored by including a critical review of relevant published work and to show an awareness of the limitations of primary sources used.

Course Aims and Objectives:

The final-year Dissertation is your opportunity to devise, research, and explore a topic of your own choice through a programme of directed independent study. You will be helped to begin your thinking at the end of your second year and then, through your third year, you will develop your research, thinking, and writing, as you build toward a maximum of 10,000 words. You will be supported throughout by your appointed supervisor with whom you will have a series of one to one tutorials. In addition, there are two overview lectures (one in the Michaelmas Term and one in the Lent Term) as well as four research skills seminars.

Almost anything is possible: some students explore famous literary names or themes, whilst others explore obscure figures and unusual topics; some draw on the University Library’s special collections or those housed within The Ruskin Library, whilst others go way beyond Lancaster to develop their research; some are inspired by the medievalism of historic Lancaster or the Romanticism of nearby Lake District, whilst others are drawn to the far textual shores of the digital world; some build towards MA study, whilst others build toward the world of work; and, finally, some write in classic literary critical styles, whilst others push the boundaries of literary studies in all sorts of new and startling ways.

Recent topics have included:

• Living in Liminality, Finding Yourself: Muslim Women's Boundary Negotiation and Identity Formation
• How is the Value of Sacrifice Presented in Post-War Japanese Literature?
• A Storm in Five Acts: King Lear, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Walter Benjamin
• Academia and Ecclesia: Following the Academy After the Church
• Playing with Time: Queer Temporality in Video Games
• “Out of the ash / I rise” : An Exploration of the Editing of Sylvia Plath’s Posthumous Publications and Legacy
• A Divine Being and a Fallen World: Milton's Justification of God's Ways to 17th Century England
• Virginia Woolf’s Paintings: Visual Arts and the Figure of the Artist in the Writings of Virginia Woolf
• Understanding the Effects of War on Children through World War Two Literature
• Green Romanticism: An Ecocritical Reading of William Wordsworth and Mary Shelley
• Kaleidoscopic Epistemology in the world of Anna Kavan
• “You'll be hungry all the time”: Food and Hunger in Jim Crace and Samuel Beckett
• RS Thomas: Post-Romanticism and Spirituality

The details of this module may vary from year to year.

On the 17 July 1936, a group of Spanish generals launched a military coup against Spain’s democratically elected Second Republic. The following three years would witness a bitter struggle to determine the future of the Spanish nation. Ending just months before Germany’s invasion of Poland in September 1939, the Spanish Civil War has since been dubbed a ‘dress rehearsal’ for the Second World War. On the rebel side, General Francisco Franco enlisted the help of Hitler and Mussolini to defeat his domestic opponents. Meanwhile, the Republic was supported by Soviet Russia.

Yet the Civil War was also a Spanish conflict with important local dimensions. Republican Spain enjoyed a rich culture of mass politics, and Spanish socialists, communists, anarchists, liberals and feminists fought to the last against Franco’s reactionary coalition of ‘Nationalists’. Following his victory in April 1939, Franco would outlive his international fascist allies by several decades, and the difficult legacies of the war remain keenly present within modern-day Spanish politics and society.

Drawing on a large range of sources, including autobiographies, oral histories, novels, films, songs, and political speeches, students taking this module will gain an in-depth knowledge on the domestic and international origins, outcomes, and legacies of the Spanish Civil War. Indicative topics will typically include the origins of the Civil War, The Second Spanish Republic, 1931-1936; Republican militias, including anarchist and communist factions; the Army of Africa: Legionnaires and Moroccan Regulars; militiawomen, the Sección Femenina and gender on both sides; diplomacy, non-intervention, and the International Brigades; fascists abroad – Hitler and Mussolini; the aftermath of war, victors, vanquished, and repression in Franco’s New State; the legacies and historical memory of the Civil War.

What our students say:

‘Spending 20+ weeks learning about a relatively short time period (3 years of war plus build-up and aftermath) meant that I was offered a thorough understanding of the topic. The thematic approach to the module was well-structured. I have definitely developed better skills at scanning texts and absorbing the most relevant information since the start of the module, as a result of the two points above. Constant exposure to primary source material each week has benefited my historical analysis skills. Finally, the learning environment in each seminar is engaging and enjoyable; I always looked forward to attending and rarely felt reluctant to contribute to discussions.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)

The 13th century began with a rebellion that sought to cast a tyrant from the throne of England, followed after fifty years by a revolution, in which a party of barons and bishops backed by a vast popular following seized power from the king and set up a council to govern in his stead: a move that was utterly radical. This period has been hailed as the foundation of the enlightened democracy we enjoy today – but the reality is far darker. This was a world in which religious leaders had the power to punish kings, where rebels fought as sworn crusaders, and where people willingly went to their deaths for a political cause believing themselves martyrs. This world was not democratic, but theocratic.

In this module you will explore the major events of the period, in England and across Christendom; from the making of Magna Carta and the Fourth Lateran Council, to the Albigensian Crusade, the seizure of power in 1258, and the bloody Battle of Evesham that brought the end of England's First Revolution. You will meet the people who shaped this world – from powerful queens like Blanche of Castile and Eleanor of Provence, to leading knight William Marshal and the masterful pope Innocent III; from tyrannical and hapless kings to the churchmen who defied them and were recognised as saints; and from Simon de Montfort, the revolution's charismatic and brutal leader, to the low-born men and women who flocked to his banner. You will be able to uncover their stories through their letters, testimonies, and eye-witness accounts, and a wealth of other primary sources.

Through a range of topics, you will be able to explore your particular interests – whether in the political, religious, military, gender or social aspects of this period – and consider the big questions arising from this module: what can move women and men, poor and rich, to risk their livelihoods, to take life and give their own to decide who ruled the realm?

What our students say:

'Teaching is excellent and the seminars were a great opportunity to discuss our own ideas and talk things through with an expert in the field. The seminars were something I looked forward to every week and we had the opportunity to explore many of the primary source material for ourselves.' (Anonymous student evaluation)

'Many parts [were the most valuable] – from the development of a close-knit group, to the challenging yet interesting assessment work, to the feeling of really ‘mastering’ the subject.' (Anonymous student evaluation)

The labelling of the Second World War as the People’s War in Britain draws attention to the importance of the men and women who waged it. With the blurring of the Home and Battle Fronts, the conventional gender contract in which men fight to protect the vulnerable at home and women keep the home fires burning was challenged, not least by the revolutionary act of conscripting women to the war effort.

In this module you will examine how the Second World War was experienced by a wide spectrum of British men and women, some of whom identified with the war effort, some of whom were deliberately excluded, or chose to challenge gender conventions in their choice of role. You’ll consider different categorisations of experience (military/civilian; home front/battle front; male/female) and explore whether there was a hierarchy of service and subsequently of remembrance.

Were gender roles in Britain really transformed by the exigencies of war? Through a wide range of written and visual sources, including autobiographical materials, poems, photographs, films, parliamentary minutes, newspapers, posters and cartoons, we will seek to understand individual and collective experiences of the war, and their gendered dimensions.

What our students say:

‘The lecturer for the module has been incredible. He has made each seminar interesting and engaging, and a genuinely enjoyable experience each week. Also, the lecturer’s feedback in class and on assignments has been both constructive and encouraging, and it is thanks to him that I have seen a huge improvement in my work throughout the year’. (Anonymous student evaluation)

‘This is by far my favourite module I have done during my time at Lancaster, the content was engaging and the module was very well structured. The lecturer’s enthusiasm for his subject made each lesson exciting and especially informative. We were given excellent guidance for each assessment and consistently encouraged to think independently and imaginatively about each topic’. (Anonymous student evaluation)

This year-long course offers an in-depth exploration of the Gothic mode from the vantage point of the early twenty-first century. It is split into five sections: Defining, Localising, Salvaging, Haunting and Transforming. These themes have been chosen to enable the combination of traditional Gothic concepts (ghosts, monsters) with new theoretical ideas addressing a range of topics including gender, sexuality, decolonisation, and environmental crisis. A small selection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century texts, incorporating both canonical and less familiar works, introduce key concepts and establish a foundation for approaching a diverse and challenging collection of contemporary works. These will cover anglophone writing in a variety of literary forms, including long and short-form fiction, drama, and the graphic novel. Asking the question of what Gothic *does*, rather than what Gothic *is*, the module aims to challenge preconceived opinions, boldly enter difficult territories, and show how Gothic may be used as a critical tool to address some of the most pressing questions facing contemporary Western culture.

Today the claim that God designed everything in the universe has given way to the theory of evolution. The usual story of this change is one of conflict between science and religion. This module, however, will challenge the popular narrative.

Focusing on the period 1450 –1800, we will reconsider the rise and fall of the idea that nature was the work of a divine intelligent designer. As well as trying to understand why the design argument became so important in the early modern period, we will seek to understand why it fell out of favour during the 18th century – long before the theory of evolution.

But we will not simply be studying the history of ideas. To understand the role of design in early modern science, we will study a wide range of disciplines and practices – from intellectual disciplines like philosophy, rhetoric and theology, to material practices including chemistry, architectural design, archaeology and art.

What our students say:

‘The course structure, teaching and seminars were the most engaging and useful I’ve had over my three years at university’. (Anonymous student evaluation)

‘The engaging and interactive seminars allowed for a comfortable environment which made the subject more interesting and enjoyable’. (Anonymous student evaluation)

This module will give students the opportunity to study all the major works of one of the most celebrated novelists in English literary history. It will combine close attention to the stylistic textures and narrative strategies of Jane Austen’s fiction with broader consideration of key themes and preoccupations such as friendship, desire, matchmaking, snobbery, illness, resistance, transgression and secrecy.

Film historians consider 1939 to be ‘the greatest year in the history of Hollywood,’ a year in which 365 films were released and 80 million tickets sold. This module considers how literature and film interact and conflict in that year to construct mythologies of the American past and present in the context of the Great Depression and on the eve of the Second World War. The module also considers the context of Hollywood, the functions of motion picture palaces, American film’s relationship to British literature, and more. Texts currently studied include John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men (1937), Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1846), and Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), and films such as Mr Smith Goes to Washington, director Frank Capra, Gunga Din, director George Stevens, and Gone with the Wind, director Victor Fleming.

The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.

Friedrich Nietzsche was far from alone in suggesting that God had died by the end of the nineteenth century; however, the literature of the fin de siècle (c. 1880-1914) paints a very different picture from the one offered by those who suggest that religion simply disappeared. A number of prominent writers in the period converted to Catholicism, whilst others explored the permeable boundaries between orthodox belief and esoteric spirituality. Those who turned to literature to think about religion did so in a wide variety of ways: experimenting with form, narrating religious experience, exploring the relationship between spirit and matter, and thinking about religious practice in ways both conventional and bizarre. Texts currently studied include: Oscar Wilde, Salome, G. K. Chesterton, The Innocence of Father Brown, and poetry produced by the Decadent movement.

The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.

Is it possible to ‘read’ a painting? Can an artist interpret a poem in paint? This module addresses the complex relationship between literature and the visual arts, tracing key debates in aesthetic theory from Romanticism to the twenty-first century. Literature and the Visual Arts will begin with an introduction to key critical terms and an examination of the painting-inspired poetry of, for example, John Keats and W. H. Auden. Subsequent seminars will explore the work of figures such as William Blake, John Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites who blur the distinction between literature and art; the revival of the Pop Art tradition and postmodern narrative practices; the advent of photography; and, finally, the fusion of word and image in graphic novels including texts such as Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. The module will draw on the unique resources of the University’s Ruskin Library and rare book archive.

What did theatre look like before Shakespeare? How were devils and vices, divinity and virtue, coronations and carnivals staged during the Medieval period? This module will introduce you to a range of medieval drama, including mystery cycles, civic pageantry, morality plays and interludes, as we explore the weird and wonderful drama of towns, cities, and courts, and look at some of the earliest professional companies to identify the distinctive features of medieval English theatre. As well as reading texts, you will watch recordings of modern performances of medieval theatre. NB No prior knowledge of Middle English is required --the use of modern translations is encouraged to aid understanding.

The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.

This course examines the early twentieth-century explosion of literary experimentation known as Modernism. Often this explosion is understood as a movement that ends around 1939; however, this course explores the ways in which Modernism continues, through and beyond the Second World War, as a restless spirit of experimentation. The course, then, has two parts. In the Michaelmas Term we explore ‘Modernisms Then’ (c1900 to c1939) where all students study major modernist texts – these usually include work by such as T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys, and authors involved in the Harlem Renaissance. In the Lent Term we explore ‘Modernisms Since’ (c1939 on) where each student chooses two 4-week min-modules from a range of options – these options usually include such options as: ‘British Migrant Modernisms;’ ‘The Woodcut Novel: Stories Without Words’; ‘Late American Modernisms’; and ‘Godot On – The Later Samuel Beckett.’

How are acts of desire, murder, fake and ‘real’ deaths represented on stage in early modern drama and how are these experiences gendered? This module will explore both the construction and deconstruction of death, desire, and genders, by focusing on performance. The performativity of gender, on stage and beyond, was materialised in the theatres of early modern England where boys played female roles, thus often representing both female desire and same-sex desire at the same time. We will study texts by Marlowe, Middleton, Heywood, Webster, Wroth as well as some contemporary productions and film adaptations. We will also engage in some short practical explorations -- such as getting the text ‘on its feet’; and the module will culminate in a series of short presentations and performances by the group. No previous experience of (or expertise in) acting is necessary.

The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.

It’s an illuminating fact that the very phrase ‘climate change’ was first deployed by colonising thinkers who wanted to transform local environments to serve their purposes. Today, it is clearer than ever that the catastrophic effects of global climate change will be most keenly felt by the global poor, especially in colonised or postcolonial spaces. This module explores how postcolonial writing, from a variety of locations, grapples with environmental change, crisis and collapse, especially the looming spectres of the so-called ‘Anthropocene.’ We’ll read established and emerging voices from Africa, the Caribbean, and elsewhere. Texts currently studied include: Raja Shehadeh, Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape, J M Coetzee, Life and Times of Michael K, and V S Naipaul, The Enigma of Arrival.

The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.

It has been argued that the Gothic, and the rise of the Gothic novel, is part of a history that goes back to long before the eighteenth century. This module therefore coins the term ‘Premodern Gothic’ to consider some of the ways in which a range of generically diverse texts produced in England between c.1450 and 1600 engage with Gothic tropes and sensibilities (ghosts, vampires, castles, darkness, magic, terror, and wonder etc.) long before the rise of the Gothic novel. Texts currently studied include: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, and Thomas Nashe’s The Terrors of the Night.

The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.

This module enables you to explore both critically and/or creatively the relationship between literature, film, and music, both digital and analogue. The module is designed to be suitable for those with and those without musical expertise.

Focussing on a wide range of literary texts, films, and music, the module will develop both close-reading and close-listening and pay particular attention to the ways in which text and sound both interact and fuse.

Themes will vary and could include:

• sonic cosmogonies
• film score
• improvisation
• error
• citation
• jazz (re)production
• lyricism
• orality
• the commons of hip-hop
• sampling
• both de- and re- territorialization

We employ diverse assessment methods designed to develop your skills further; so, for example, this could take the form of a project such as a sonic-textual response to a literary text and a related piece of music (you submit, that is, a song, session, remix, or playlist) or a critical text written in the style of an album review (you submit, that is, a poetical reflection, or listen-and-describe explication).

Texts, films and music studied will vary from year to year but may include C.S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew, H.P. Lovecraft’s The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, Saturday Night Fever (dir. John Badham), Amadeus (dir. Milos Forman), The Pianist (dir. Roman Polansky), Miles Davis, Birth of the Cool (dir. Stanley Nelson), Emese Kurti’s Screaming Whole, Rasheedah Phillips and Camae Ayewa’s Black Quantum Futurism Collective, Eknath Easwaran’s The Upanishads, and Across the Universe (dir. Julie Taymor).

This module is run as a partnership between the Department of English Literature & Creative Writing and the University’s Schools Outreach Office, and normally involves a 10-week placement in a local school. This will usually include classroom observation, teacher assistance, and the opportunity to design and develop a teaching-related ‘special project’ to be conducted with a designated group of students or the class as a whole. This will enable you to develop confidence in communicating your subject, as well as an increased awareness of the roles of schools and universities in educational processes and structures.

The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.

This module will trace the development of science fiction (or SF) in literature and film, providing an insight into the conventions of the genre and, in particular, how the key themes of the science fiction genre have been successfully adapted for the screen. It will encompass narratives of time travel, evolution, and temporal dislocation, and consider journeys, encounters, and species, as well as questions of human subjectivity, gender, race, transcendence, love, and loss. Work currently studied include texts such as: H.G. Wells, The Time Machine (1895), Octavia Butler, Kindred (1979), and Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, This Is How You Lose the Time War (2019); and films such as: La Jetée (1962) 2001, A Space Odyssey (1968), Star Trek: First Contact (1996), and Arrival (2016).

The details of this module (for example the texts or authors studied) may vary from year to year.

Ben Jonson claimed of Shakespeare ‘he was not of an age but for all time.’ This course examines Shakespearean drama and poetry in its own time: as a platform in which early modern debates about agency and government, family, national identity, were put into play, and in relation to how we perceive these issues now. The stage was and is a place in which questions of gender, class, race, gain immediacy through the bodies and voices of actors. By examining texts from across Shakespeare’s career, we will explore their power to shape thoughts and feelings in their own age and in ours. We will consider Shakespeare’s manipulation of genre (poetry, comedy, history, tragedy and romance) and the ways the texts make active use of language (verse, prose, rhyme, rhythm) and theatrical languages (costume, stage positions) to generate meaning. The course will consider how, in the past and in the present, Shakespeare’s texts exploit the emotional and political possibilities of poetry and drama.

As part of their assessment for this course, students may opt to take part in a full-scale public performance of one of the plays we have studied; this is usually staged at Lancaster Castle.

Working in a small group, you’ll select a written text, ancient or modern, obscure or well known, and together with other students work on converting the text into wholly new format. For example, this might be:

• A scholarly edition, a visual or digital adaptation
• An exhibition for a heritage space
• A podcast
• An art installation
• A fashion show

The brief will be to increase accessibility to, and awareness of, the selected text. In short, you will be taking the text “out of the box.”

Through a series of tutor-led workshops, you will be introduced to the processes and principles of adaptation.?

The module is designed to give you experience of the kind of work undertaken in industries such as heritage, journalism, and publishing.

This module examines the work of three of the great writers of the Romantic period: the poets Lord Byron and Percy Shelley, and the novelist Mary Shelley. Famously, these three writers lived and worked together during the summer of 1816, an episode that produced two of the dominant myths of modern literature – Frankenstein (in Mary Shelley’s novel) and the Vampire (in a story based on Byron by another member of the group, John Polidori) – both of which we will examine. Throughout their careers these writers were engaged in a creative and critical conversation with each other that addressed major themes including: conceptions of the heroic; the possibilities of political change; literary, scientific and biological creation; empire, slavery, and the East; transgressive love; gender roles; and the Gothic. The module will provide an opportunity to study in detail these writers’ works, and to consider them within their historical, cultural, and intellectual contexts.

The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.

The English East India Company (founded 1600) was the most famous corporation in world history: its business connecting the British Isles across the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans. It was a protagonist of globalisation. Its longevity – from Elizabeth to Victoria – provides a common thread with which to illuminate the broader English/British story and the separate histories of the territories with which the Company engaged. Historians have debated what the Company represented. It did much to stimulate global trade, but was it a private business in the modern sense? It ruled British territory on behalf of the British state, but was it a state in its own right?

This module encourages you to engage with these (and other) large and important questions and digest the high-quality literature that the Company has rightly attracted. But the core of this class will be the challenge and joy of digesting the remarkable corpus of documents and writings that the Company issued or provoked from well-known political economists like Karl Marx and Adam Smith, to managers like Elizabeth Dalyson and non-European writers such as Mirza Abu Taleb Khan. You will be introduced to translated Persian documents, the correspondence of Company factors in Japan, charters, board room minutes, pamphlets, and histories and will explore art and architecture in the cities it did so much to develop. You will gain a broad understanding of 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century British, Indian, and global history; and develop expertise in cultural, art, political, parliamentary, global, economic, constitutional, gender, and business history.

What our students say:

‘The seminars really got the whole group involved and we've all really bonded as a result. The information was so valuable and really helpful for revision!’ (Anonymous student evaluation)

‘I really appreciated the one-on-one meetings for essay feedback. Having twenty minutes set aside specifically for it made the feedback feel much more comprehensive.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)

This module is centred upon understanding Children’s Literature as a genre which evolves over time and doing so in the context of the places and spaces of fiction. Our two core themes are: first, the gradual move away from highly didactic reading that must teach children a clear moral lesson, towards reading for pleasure and enjoyment; and, second, the effect of this shift on spatial representation in the texts. We will compare the relationship between realist and fantastic spaces and consider the reason so many children's books are "bridge" texts that start and end in the real with the main narrative set in a fantasy world. Texts usually studied include: Gulliver’s Travels (1726), Robinson Crusoe (1719), The Water Babies (1852), Peter Pan (1901), The Hobbit, or There and Back Again (1937), and The Borrowers (1952).

Many writers have described the years of unprecedented historical change that surrounded the turn of the twentieth century as a time of 'cultural crisis'. This interdisciplinary module in US cultural history explores that so-called crisis through the close reading and analysis of a variety of important written and visual texts, including fiction and non-fiction, architecture and urban design, painting, photography and cinema. Module themes include: technology and culture, labour and capital, imperialism and the 'myth of the west', immigration and urbanisation, celebrity and consumer culture, reform politics, the Great War, and cultural modernism.

What our students say:

‘The lecturer made an effort to make the course a way to equip us with a richer view of life rather than just a tick-box exercise to pass an exam. He also actively took our advice and concerns throughout the course.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)

‘The lecturer’s overall teaching style is brilliant. Both his deep understanding of the course and his passion for it are contagious. The module also gave me a new perspective on history, learning, and life (not to sound too dramatic.)’ (Anonymous student evaluation)

‘The most valuable part of the module was the genuine attempt to get us to critically think about the world around us, using the modernity of 19th and 20th century America as a base. It really helped to broaden my mind on culture as a whole, and I am much more willing to fill my future with books and art, far more so than before.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)

This course explores twentieth and twenty-first century texts about the city that use Gothic generic conventions and modalities. The built environments of the Gothic are often plastic and mutable, the setting for animate, changeable, and malevolent forces. We will explore the ‘architectural uncanny’ and the ‘urban sublime,’ and consider how traditional elements of Gothic fiction are pressed to new ends in response to changing sensory, social and political contexts of urban space and place. While most sources will be textual (currently: Peter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor (1985), N. K. Jemisin, How Long ‘Til Black Future Month (2018), Caitlín R. Kiernan, 'Goggles (c.1910)' (2012), and Patrick McGrath, Ghost Town: Tales of Manhattan Then and Now (2005)) these will be complemented with reference to screen media, fine art, graphic novel and UrbEx photography.

The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.

In the Victorian period, the decaying castles, corrupt priests and ancestral curses that were so prominent in the first phase of the Gothic novel gave way to an increased emphasis on spectral and monstrous others: ghosts, witches, werewolves, vampires, mummies and other creatures of the night. The module will explore these phenomena in their historical, cultural and literary contexts, with particular focus on emerging discourses of gender, sexuality, colonialism and class. The module will pay special attention to visual aspects of the Gothic, examining book illustration, painting and photography from the period and their relationship with Gothic texts. Students will be asked to consider the relationship between newly emergent forms of modernity (from medical discourses to photography) and the preoccupation with history and the past that is a generic feature of the Gothic. Texts will comprise a selection of novels and short fiction, with additional images and extracts from contextual works provided online and in class.

This module is centred upon three new genres which emerge in the mid-late Victorian period: Detective Fiction; The Adventure Story; and Children’s Fiction. Why do these new forms appear when they do? What determines them? We will spend three weeks on each, focussing on key texts and writers within the emerging genre, and looking at how certain conventions, principles, and core concerns develop for new genres as well as considering issues of literary status and canonicity. Within each session we will explore texts in terms of overlapping themes within a genre and the issues they raise for how we interpret the subject; these themes include: Colonialism, Imperialism, Gender, and Education. Texts currently studied include: R. L. Stevenson, Treasure Island, J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan, F.H. Burnett, The Secret Garden, and E.E. Nesbit, Five Children and It.

The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.

In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf famously asks, ‘what would have happened had Shakespeare had a wonderfully gifted sister?’ This module follows Woolf’s lead by seeking to redress the historical marginalisation of women writers in the English literary canon through an exploration of: how women have come to writing at different historical moments; and what they have chosen to write, and how. A selection of texts from the 17th century through to the 21st, encompassing autobiographical forms, the novel, poetry, and drama, are used to examine relationships between gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, and literary production, and to explore continuities, connections, and disparities between different representations of female experience. Texts currently studied include: Pat Barker, Regeneration (1990), Jackie Kay, The Adoption Papers (1991), Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987), Sarah Waters, The Night Watch (2006), and Dorothy Wordsworth, Grasmere Journals (1800-3).

The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.