Approaches to the Long Eighteenth Century

Learning Outcomes

Subject Specific Practical Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• identify and develop a topic for further research which might form the basis of an MA dissertation
• apply appropriate critical and historical approaches to diverse cultural forms
• describe and evaluate the state of research and scholarship on gender and culture in cross-disciplinary perspective
• identify lines of enquiry about gender and cultural change common to historical and literary disciplines

Cognitive Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• critically evaluate both primary source materials and arguments in secondary texts
• synthesize and integrate the analysis of primary sources and secondary texts in a coherent written argument
• conceptualize historical and cultural issues in new ways as a result of interdisciplinary work
• identify and analyse the shifting historical frameworks through which gender is understood across the period

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• What is common and what is specific to the approach of different disciplines to the study of gender and culture in the eighteenth century
• Specific issues raised about gender across literary, historical and history of art and design disciplines
• How to research develop an appropriate interdisciplinary topic in the period using archival sources
• Current key debates in eighteenth century studies
• How questions of sexuality and gender changed across the long eighteenth century

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• develop ideas in concert with others in the context of discussion and debate
• draw upon a range of relevant primary and secondary sources to explore specific historical questions
• identify and outline the main debates in a given field
• communicate a coherent and convincing argument at length in written form
• demonstrate the capacity for self-directed problem-solving and independent work with a strict time-frame

The core course for the MA, convened on a multidisciplinary basis, and taught by all those contributing to the MA in a given year, will introduce students to the key theoretical, historiographical and conceptual debates surrounding the study of the long eighteenth century. It will emphasise the gender issues which have been central to the revision of scholarship on the period over the last quarter century. The course looks at how gender inflects such terms as ‘luxury’, ‘progress’, and ‘public’ and ‘private’, by which contemporaries attempted to explain social and cultural changes. Indicative topics through which these issues will be addressed include: the body; consumption; education social disorder; sensibility; sexuality; print culture; portraiture; the rise of the novel; cultural production and authorship; dress and material culture; recent perspectives in gender and history. These topics are studied mainly in Britain, but with some comparative dimension to their treatment in Europe and in America. The course will use primary materials from the period, i.e. literary texts, periodical literature, legal documents, fine art and popular visual images, artefacts etc. in relation to a wide range of secondary critical and historical texts drawn from literary criticism and history, history, the history of art, the law and political economy. The course examines how far separate disciplines have been involved in a common debate about gender and cultural change, and how far they have developed specialised accounts of such change.

The course will explicitly raise questions about the problems and possibilities of interdisciplinarity in Literature, History and the History of Art and Material Culture, and the conceptual and methodological issues involved in interdisciplinary study.

An introductory session on the historiography of the period will be followed by sessions on topics such as Portraiture; the Body; Sensibility; Gender/Class/Ethnicity; Print Culture. In the two final weeks of the course we will synthesize and review the work covered.

Teaching and learning methods

Teaching methods include:

• seminars involving both tutor and student led discussion;
• use of internet and other electronic resources on the long eighteenth century

Learning activities include

• participation in general discussion of themes drawn from weekly reading;
• oral seminar presentation;
• independent reading and research;
• development of archival skills;
• development of techniques and conventions of visual analysis.

Resources & Reading list

Textbooks

Margaret J.M. Ezell (1999). Social Authorship and the Advent of Print. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.

Margaret J.M. Ezell (1993). Writing Women’s Literary History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.

V.A.C. Gatrell. The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People 1770-1868.

Amanda Vickery (1998). The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England. New Haven: Yale University Press.

David H. Solkin (1993). Painting for Money: The Visual Arts and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century England. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Hannah Barker and Elaine Chalus eds. (1997). Gender in Eighteenth Century England. London: Longman.

John Brewer (1997). Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century. Harper Collins.

Michel Foucault (1991). Discipline and Punish. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Aileen Riberio (2002). Dress in Eighteenth Century Europe. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Ellis Markman (1996). The Politics of Sensibility: Race, Gender and Commerce in the Sentimental Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Janet Todd (1987). Sensibility: An Introduction. London: Methuen.

Ruth Richardson (1989). Death, Dissection and the Destitute. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Norma Clarke (2000). Dr. Johnson’s Women. London: Hambledon.

Linda Baumgarten (2002). What Clothes Reveal. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Paula McDowell (1998). The Women of Grub Street: Press, Politics and Gender in the London Literary Marketplace, 1678-1730. OUP: Clarendon.

Assessment strategy

There will be no non-contributory assessments in this module, but classroom activities and individual discussions, should help you to judge how you are progressing in the module.

Formative

This is how we’ll give you feedback as you are learning. It is not a formal test or exam.

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat Information

Repeat type: Internal