Approaches to Critical and Creative Concepts

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge and Understanding

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

• key questions raised by critical concepts including: material culture and print culture across literary and historical disciplines; literary and critical studies; publishing and book history; heritage and cultural management;
• the complex formal, stylistic, generic and aesthetic dimensions of literary texts and their relationship to debates surrounding the creative industry;
• how critical, cultural, and scholarly material contributes to the ways we think about and respond to the literary and creative industry;
• key critical and creative concepts used in literary industries management;

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• synthesize and integrate the analysis of primary sources and secondary texts in a coherent written argument;
• describe and evaluate the state of research and scholarship on culture and literary industries in cross-disciplinary perspective;
• critically evaluate both primary source materials and arguments in secondary texts;
• identify lines of enquiry about cultural change common to historical and literary disciplines and the creative industies;
• identify and develop a topic for further research which might form the basis of an extended project.

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• work effectively in groups
• prepare and plan a project proposal

This is a core module for the MA in Global Literary Industries Management and introduces you to the critical and creative concepts pertinent to the linked fields of literary studies, literary industries, and creative writing. In Semester 1 you will consider the varied aspects of literary production, consumption and reception. You will look at questions such as what is an author? Why do genre and form matter? How does a text (or author) become canonical? What makes a bestseller? How does critical reception shape our understanding of texts, and what is its role in the literary and cultural industries? How do genre, form, format and materiality interact with markets, publics, scholarly, and critical reception? In semester 2, you will put your understanding of these critical and creative concepts into practice by undertaking a group case study of a phenomenon or problem within the literary and creative industries. Finally, you will design a brief for an in-depth research project that explores any aspect of the literary industries and which will form the basis for undertaking the Final Project module.

Teaching and learning methods

Teaching methods may include:

• seminars involving both tutor and student led discussion;

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

The module will use a range of primary materials e.g. literary texts, popular visual images, artefacts etc. in relation to a wide range of secondary critical and theoretical texts. The module examines how far separate disciplines have been involved in a common debate about cultural change and the creative industries, and how far they have developed specialised accounts of such change. The module will explicitly raise questions about the problems and possibilities of interdisciplinarity in the literary industries, and the conceptual and methodological issues involved in interdisciplinary study.

Resources & Reading list

Textbooks

Terry Flew (2011). The Creative Industries: Culture and Policy. Sage.

Jeffrey Nealson and Susan Searls Giroux (2011). The Theory Toolbox: Critical Concepts for the Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences. Rowan & Littlefield.

Rosamund Davies and Gauti Sigthorsson (2013). Understanding the Cultural Industries. Sage.

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

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.

Repeat Information

Repeat type: Internal & External