Reflect on what it means to do criticism in a post-theoretical age. This module asks what happens to literary interpretation after all its many theoretical upheavals – from Marxism and feminism to postcolonialism and queer theory. Is it time to get back to the close reading of literature? Is there still room for pleasure, appreciation and creativity in the practice of criticism? We might question whether literature, in the traditional sense, even exists anymore.

You will pose these questions in relation to a range of traditional and non-traditional texts.

Explore literary criticism as it is now 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
• The animal

You will study 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.

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 you will encounter many different voices, many conflicting and contrasting views, a diversity of complex experience and a great range of writing in form and style.

You will explore such questions 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?

Not all professional contexts are the same – and within any organisation there are diverse people with varied backgrounds. This module focuses on enhancing your intercultural competency and cultural awareness, with a particular emphasis on ‘place-based’ learning. Considering the cultural dynamics of the North West of England and the broader UK helps us reflect upon intercultural dynamics in very different locations.

Through analysis, discussion and self-reflection you will strengthen your ability to navigate diverse workplace settings and enhance your employability in today’s interconnected world.

This module explores how drama, poetry and prose shape the shifting discourses of politics, sex, science and education across first the Tudor period (1485-1603) and then through Stuart rule and revolution (1603-1688).

You will consider how both male and female writers use a range of media to reconfigure relationships between bodies, spirits, nature, cities, nation, empire and capital. Discover the surprising ways that literary texts chart the emergence of ‘modern’ sensibilities through the struggles of both spiritual and secular reformations and civil war.

Hone a strong sense of purpose and gain the satisfaction of applying your skills and knowledge to a community, charity or student-led initiative.

Your challenge will be to take responsibility for arranging and completing a voluntary or fundraising activity—locally, virtually or during vacation periods at home. You will need to show that you have made a positive difference through this activity.

In class, you will be asked to reflect on this experience and explore the wider social impact of the work. In doing so you will build your confidence in your ability to contribute meaningfully to society through your future personal and professional path.

You are invited to collaborate in an interdisciplinary team with other students as you explore major global challenges such as climate change, inequality or emerging technologies.

Throughout the module you will examine how the humanities, arts and social sciences contribute to understanding and addressing complex issues. Classroom discussions and activities focus on the process of identifying problems and considering innovative, ethical responses, while helping you to consider and articulate the relevance of this work to your personal and professional development.

Exploring the adaption of literature to film and other media, this module focuses on the adaptation of popular and ‘classic’ literary texts to such forms as theatre, graphic novels, film, television, song and games.

You will be invited to reflect on adaptation as a powerful and complex cultural process, one that interprets literature as well as adapts it.

Throughout the module you will complete a creative project that enables you to produce your own work of adaptation. This may take many forms such as written, (audio)visual, musical, digital, or three-dimensional and/or take the form of a game, production or performance, etc.

Examine some of the ways in which literature has explored and expressed the complexity of belief and doubt, redemption and apocalypse, damnation and revelation. You will consider the ways in which moments, motifs and ideas indebted to the sacred can be found within a wide range of texts.

Although welcoming consideration of all three Abrahamic faiths, we will focus primarily on Christian traditions and texts.

Authors studied may include:

• Julian of Norwich
• Gerard Manley Hopkins
• Oscar Wilde
• G. K. Chesterton
• James Baldwin
• Margaret Atwood
• Toni Morrison

Explore medieval drama, poetry and prose, paying particular attention to how these texts relate to concepts that still shape our world today.

Examples might include:

• Concepts of the environment
• Human and non-human identities
• Good and evil
• Political rights

In our study, you will encounter knights, werewolves and visionary women, and traverse dream-visions, wildernesses and marvel-filled worlds. Although the module will introduce you to Old and Middle English languages, we are happy for students primarily to access such texts in Modern English translation. No prior experience with early languages is necessary.

Explore how ideas can be developed into real-world projects with lasting value. Through hands-on collaboration and problem-solving, you will develop innovative projects, learn how to bring ideas to life and explore ways to sustain them.

Whether you are working in a team or individually, you will be encouraged to experiment with different approaches to making a difference in artistic, cultural, social and community spaces.

The years of Queen Victoria’s reign (1837-1901) saw great social, political and cultural transformation. Changing social conditions, extraordinary scientific breakthroughs and the emergence of new technologies all altered the ways in which Victorians thought about themselves and their environment. The literature of the period responded resourcefully to the turbulent circumstances from which it emerged.

In this module, you will examine a wide range of Victorian writing, including novels, short fiction, poetry, drama and non-fictional prose and will explore and interrogate all the complexities of the Victorian age.

In your third year you will study at one of our international partner universities. This will help you to expand your global outlook and professional network, as well as developing your cultural and personal skills. It is also an opportunity to gain a different perspective on your subject through studying it in another country.

You will choose specialist modules relating to your degree and potentially modules from other subjects offered by the host university that are specific to that university and country.

The availability of places at overseas partners varies each year. In previous years destinations for students in the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences have included Australia, USA, Canada, Europe and Asia.

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 final year, you will develop your research, thinking and writing, as you build toward a substantial, self-directed project.

Almost anything is possible; for example, you could choose to explore famous literary names or themes, or research obscure figures and unusual topics. You might draw on the University Library’s special collections, or venture way beyond Lancaster to develop your research. Perhaps you will be inspired by the medievalism of historic Lancaster or the Romanticism of nearby Lake District or be drawn to the far textual shores of the digital world.

You can focus your work towards a professional career or build towards postgraduate study at master’s level. Finally, you can opt to write in classic literary critical styles or push the boundaries of literary study in new and startling ways.

What happens when radically different forms of art meet? How do these fused forms change our understanding of the world? We will draw on material from different periods and continents, to explore works of art where, for example, film meets history, poetry meets philosophy, fine art meets sociology, religion meets fiction, and theatre meets politics.

Study the work of four giants of nineteenth-century British fiction: Jane Austen, Anne Brontë, Charlotte Brontë and Emily Brontë.

Focusing on questions of class, gender, power, environment and artistic technique, you will explore the tensions between Austen and the Brontes (south vs north, Regency vs Victorian, realism vs Gothic) and trace the imaginative continuities between them.

How might we engage with the implications of environmental transformation locally, nationally and globally? Where do we have agency and capacity to intervene?

This module brings together a range of perspectives—historical, political, philosophical and cultural—to explore the nature and severity of the effects of the climate crisis on our world.

Examining the evolution of film genres in a global context, this module focuses on the ways contemporary filmmakers innovate within established and classic genre traditions. You will analyse key genres such as Science Fiction, Horror and Comic Book films, considering their artistic, industrial and technological developments across different cinematic traditions.

Through case studies, you will explore how genre conventions adapt to national and transnational influences, addressing topics such as digital effects and world-building, genre hybridity and the role of franchises in global media. The module also considers how streaming platforms, audience reception and fan cultures shape contemporary genre filmmaking.

By the end of the module, you will have gained an advanced understanding of modern genre as a dynamic cinematic form. You will be equipped with critical and analytical skills essential for further research or careers in film criticism, curation and media industries.

What does it mean to imagine a world without borders? Using materials typically derived from case studies, reports, archives, film, television and literature, this module foregrounds interdisciplinary approaches.

You will be encouraged to develop your understanding of migration and displacement, and to envision alternative global migration futures in ways that can impact future policy, political and societal perspectives.

Both the Gothic and science fiction emerged in response to the 18th century ‘age of reason’ and the Western world’s investment in logic and progress. The Gothic explores the terrors of the past and its return while science fiction imagines alternative futures; in doing so, both voice the concerns of the present.

You will study both classic literary texts and contemporary film and other media. Exploring what the Gothic and science fiction each do, rather than what they each are, you will consider how these genres address some of the most pressing questions facing contemporary Western culture.

Examining a wide range of texts and authors from early periods to the age of the climate crisis, this module will explore the many and various ways in which the non-human world is celebrated, championed and exploited by the literary imagination.

You will explore questions such as:

• What do we mean by the ‘the environment’?
• What experiences, meanings and values do we take from, or discover in our surroundings?
• How have writers characterised the environment and in what ways might the literary imagination be significant for contemporary environmental concerns?

The early 20th century explosion of literary experimentation known as Modernism was a movement informed by the catastrophe of the First World War, the convulsion that was the Russian Revolution and a host of dramatic developments in art, music, cinema, philosophy, theology, politics and science.

Alongside reading the literature of the time you will also consider various related artistic movements such as Dadaism, Surrealism and Vorticism. Authors covered typically include T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys and W. B. Yeats.

What are the possibilities and pitfalls of community and citizen action, voice and agency? This module uses interdisciplinary case-studies to critically examine collaboration with communities.

You will participate in activities such as a mock citizens' assembly, visit local community groups and hear different points of view from a range of guest speakers on concepts like power, race, gender, class, affect and justice.

Explore postcolonial literature across a wide historical span. Your study will move from the explosion of new national literatures in the era of decolonisation through to contemporary writing that interrogates the legacies of racism and imperialism in our globalised world.

You’ll read exciting major writers who defined the emergence of African, South Asian and Caribbean literature in English in the middle of the twentieth century. You’ll also encounter today’s new voices, grappling with the afterlives of empire.

Cutting through all our thinking will be the question of how literature serves, in Ngugi wa Thiongo’s phrase, as a means of 'decolonising the mind'.

What do we understand by queerness? Looking back at earlier interpretations, we imagine how queerness might evolve—how it might be lived, felt and understood in the future.

You will explore queer futures from a range of perspectives and viewpoints, while examining both feminist and queer theory, as well as queer media and cultural texts and material relating to areas such as activism, politics and healthcare.

Study key texts and contexts from a short but remarkably intense period of literary history. Encompassing the work of writers such as Wordsworth, Blake, Keats and Shelley, you will explore the role of nature, the imagination and the sublime. You will also consider the emergence of the Gothic tradition and examine the interactions between literary and politics in a turbulent era of revolution and change.

Ben Jonson claimed of Shakespeare ‘he was not of an age but for all time.’ This module, however, examines Shakespearean drama and poetry in its own time and as a platform in which early modern debates about agency and government, family and national identity, were put into play. The stage was and is a place in which questions of gender, class and race, gain immediacy through the bodies and voices of actors.

By examining texts from across Shakespeare’s career, you will explore their power to shape thoughts and feelings in both their own age and in ours. You 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 your assessment for this module, you 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’s spectacular medieval Castle.

What is critical theory? Why is it one of the most controversial areas of contemporary culture today? And to what extent do theoretical ideas about power, race, gender and identity change the way we think about the world?

On this module you will explore a range of classic and contemporary themes, trends and topics in critical theory from the 1960s to the present. You’ll take a deep dive into key thinkers like Foucault, Deleuze and Agamben and key concepts like biopolitics, globalisation and animal studies.

Who does technology benefit or harm, and what should its role in society be? This module examines the social and ethical issues surrounding the development of modern technologies and their use in the modern world, with a vision to shape our future relationship with technology.

How do ideas understand, transform and conserve the world? In this module we will study examples of powerful ideas such as the nation, free speech, liberation, the free market, culture and nature. We will use case studies to help us explore the relationship between analysis, imagination and practice.