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ENGL1089 2026-27
The Novel
‘A novel does not assert anything; a novel searches and poses questions’. The contemporary novelist Milan Kundera describes the novel as an exploratory and engaging form, a way of telling stories that involves readers both in its searches and in the questions it poses. This module gives you the means of participating fully in these acts of literature by raising questions of genre, and considering how such familiar terms as character, setting and plot generate meanings collaboratively with us, their readers.
This module locates the novel historically, to give the curious story of a peculiarly modern form. Our story begins in the eighteenth century, when the novel was effectively invented and sought its fortunes in a new market of leisured middle-class consumers. We trace its history from the boom years during the mid to late nineteenth century to the twentieth century, when the novel comes to compete with other popular cultural media, such as cinema, TV and then the internet. The final section of the module looks at texts in which the novel redefines itself globally, often through new hybrid and experimental forms associated with such movements as modernism and postmodernism. We will also consider the novel in our own time. -
ENGL1089 2025-26
The Novel
‘A novel does not assert anything; a novel searches and poses questions’. The contemporary novelist Milan Kundera describes the novel as an exploratory and engaging form, a way of telling stories that involves readers both in its searches and in the questions it poses. This module gives you the means of participating fully in these acts of literature by raising questions of genre, and considering how such familiar terms as character, setting and plot generate meanings collaboratively with us, their readers.
This module locates the novel historically, to give the curious story of a peculiarly modern form. Our story begins in the eighteenth century, when the novel was effectively invented and sought its fortunes in a new market of leisured middle-class consumers. We trace its history from the boom years during the mid to late nineteenth century to the twentieth century, when the novel comes to compete with other popular cultural media, such as cinema, TV and then the internet. The final section of the module looks at texts in which the novel redefines itself globally, often through new hybrid and experimental forms associated with such movements as modernism and postmodernism. We will also consider the novel in our own time. -
SOES2043 2027-28
The Oceans in a Changing Climate
A hands-on intro to how the ocean responds to and, in turn, shapes the changing climate. After introducing core climate basics, we examine how the ocean responds to external forcing at the surface and in the interior, through physical, chemical, and biological processes. We then explore the consequences of these changes for the atmosphere, cryosphere, marine ecosystems, and human society. Through lectures and hands-on practical sessions that involve analysing observations, interpreting earth-system model outputs, and experimenting with simple climate models, this module builds your climate literacy in an oceanographic context and equips you with essential skills for advanced study in the years ahead. -
SOES2043 2028-29
The Oceans in a Changing Climate
A hands-on intro to how the ocean responds to and, in turn, shapes the changing climate. After introducing core climate basics, we examine how the ocean responds to external forcing at the surface and in the interior, through physical, chemical, and biological processes. We then explore the consequences of these changes for the atmosphere, cryosphere, marine ecosystems, and human society. Through lectures and hands-on practical sessions that involve analysing observations, interpreting earth-system model outputs, and experimenting with simple climate models, this module builds your climate literacy in an oceanographic context and equips you with essential skills for advanced study in the years ahead. -
MUSI2132 2027-28
The Operas Of Benjamin Britten
In this module you will explore the operas by Benjamin Britten, one of Britain’s most influential composers. Britten’s operas are among the few 20th-century works that hold a central position in today’s operatic canon. They are produced regularly by world-leading opera companies, and they are available in numerous audio and video recordings. Proceeding in rough chronological order from Peter Grimes (1945) to Death in Venice (1973), you will become acquainted with Britten’s most popular works, including Billy Budd, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Turn of the Screw, and Owen WIngrave. Each opera discussed in the module will serve as a case study to explore a broad theme in operatic culture, including reception and dissemination, the adaptation of a literary source to an opera libretto, national identity, social issues, sexuality, and opera and the media. -
MUSI3138 2025-26
The Operas Of Benjamin Britten
In this module you will explore the operas by Benjamin Britten, one of Britain’s most influential composers. Britten’s operas are among the few 20th-century works that hold a central position in today’s operatic canon. They are produced regularly by world-leading opera companies, and they are available in numerous audio and video recordings. Proceeding in rough chronological order from Peter Grimes (1945) to Death in Venice (1973), you will become acquainted with Britten’s most popular works, including Billy Budd, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Turn of the Screw, and Owen WIngrave. Each opera discussed in the module will serve as a case study to explore a broad theme in operatic culture, including reception and dissemination, the adaptation of a literary source to an opera libretto, national identity, social issues, sexuality, and opera and the media. -
MUSI3138 2026-27
The Operas Of Benjamin Britten
In this module you will explore the operas by Benjamin Britten, one of Britain’s most influential composers. Britten’s operas are among the few 20th-century works that hold a central position in today’s operatic canon. They are produced regularly by world-leading opera companies, and they are available in numerous audio and video recordings. Proceeding in rough chronological order from Peter Grimes (1945) to Death in Venice (1973), you will become acquainted with Britten’s most popular works, including Billy Budd, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Turn of the Screw, and Owen WIngrave. Each opera discussed in the module will serve as a case study to explore a broad theme in operatic culture, including reception and dissemination, the adaptation of a literary source to an opera libretto, national identity, social issues, sexuality, and opera and the media. -
MUSI2132 2026-27
The Operas Of Benjamin Britten
In this module you will explore the operas by Benjamin Britten, one of Britain’s most influential composers. Britten’s operas are among the few 20th-century works that hold a central position in today’s operatic canon. They are produced regularly by world-leading opera companies, and they are available in numerous audio and video recordings. Proceeding in rough chronological order from Peter Grimes (1945) to Death in Venice (1973), you will become acquainted with Britten’s most popular works, including Billy Budd, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Turn of the Screw, and Owen WIngrave. Each opera discussed in the module will serve as a case study to explore a broad theme in operatic culture, including reception and dissemination, the adaptation of a literary source to an opera libretto, national identity, social issues, sexuality, and opera and the media. -
ENGL3103 2027-28
The Origins of Climate Crisis: Ecology in Victorian Literature
Are we living in an age of climate change or climate crisis? In her 2019 speech to the World Economic Forum, Greta Thunberg famously declared “Our house is on fire”: a statement underscored by the Australian bushfire crisis of 2020 and the mass devastation of more than one million acres of ‘gigafires’ in California the same year (worse even than previous seasons of ‘megafires’). But how did we get here? What stories could have been—or were—told about the gradual changes to our global climate over time?
This module returns us to a pivotal moment in the history of climate change: to the rise of a new geological age defined by human influence (the Anthropocene). It charts the course of increasing fossil-fuel consumption, changes to rural and urban economies and, ultimately, the rise of smoke-filled city skies. Over the course of the semester, we will explore how British fiction, non-fiction prose, plays, and poetry from the mid-to-late Victorian age (ca.1850-1900) place empire, economics, and ecology at the centre of an emerging planetary crisis. In learning from the writers of a newly-global, capitalist society on the cusp of massive geologic change, we will explore our own position as critical readers, writers, and thinkers in an era of ‘sustainability.’ -
ENGL3103 2028-29
The Origins of Climate Crisis: Ecology in Victorian Literature
Are we living in an age of climate change or climate crisis? In her 2019 speech to the World Economic Forum, Greta Thunberg famously declared “Our house is on fire”: a statement underscored by the Australian bushfire crisis of 2020 and the mass devastation of more than one million acres of ‘gigafires’ in California the same year (worse even than previous seasons of ‘megafires’). But how did we get here? What stories could have been—or were—told about the gradual changes to our global climate over time?
This module returns us to a pivotal moment in the history of climate change: to the rise of a new geological age defined by human influence (the Anthropocene). It charts the course of increasing fossil-fuel consumption, changes to rural and urban economies and, ultimately, the rise of smoke-filled city skies. Over the course of the semester, we will explore how British fiction, non-fiction prose, plays, and poetry from the mid-to-late Victorian age (ca.1850-1900) place empire, economics, and ecology at the centre of an emerging planetary crisis. In learning from the writers of a newly-global, capitalist society on the cusp of massive geologic change, we will explore our own position as critical readers, writers, and thinkers in an era of ‘sustainability.’