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This module provides a comprehensive introduction to the analytical frameworks at the heart of the MA Languages and Cultures programme. Through guided weekly readings, discussion-based seminars and reflective short assessments, you will develop the skills required to engage at an advanced level with the high-level texts and concepts you will come across during the taught and research components of your MA programme. Producing short reflective accounts will hone your writing and communication skills. You will be encouraged throughout to reflect on early ideas for your dissertation, which you will then develop on a more practical and concrete basis during the semester 2 Research Skills module.

This optional module for the MA English Literary Studies, taught by those contributing to the programme in a given year, will introduce you to the key critical, theoretical, historiographical and conceptual debates surrounding the study of genre. It will emphasise the issues which have been central to current scholarship on genre, and consider how literary and cultural texts have employed, combined, and subverted the formal conventions of genre.

This optional module for the MA English Literary Studies, taught by those contributing to the programme in a given year, will introduce you to the key critical, theoretical, historiographical and conceptual debates surrounding the study of genre. It will emphasise the issues which have been central to current scholarship on genre, and consider how literary and cultural texts have employed, combined, and subverted the formal conventions of genre.

This module approaches Shakespeare from a number of perspectives. It thinks about Shakespeare now: how his plays continue to be performed and adapted, on stage and for the screen, in the UK and abroad, and about how Shakespeare is continually being reinvented by being freshly edited, abridged, translated, reworked by novelists, or reinterpreted by new generations of critics. The module also thinks about Shakespeare in his own time – the Renaissance world in which his plays were first written and performed – and about how Shakespeare approached his own past: medieval England, ancient Britain, classical Rome. The module considers how Shakespeare’s plays lived on after his death, through the closure of the theatres during the civil war, to their revival by Restoration theatre-managers, appropriation by eighteenth-century editors and celebrated nineteenth-century productions. The module will enable you to consider how Shakespeare approached his own culture, and how he has been received and remade by different cultures at different times since. You will engage with recent critical thinking about, for example, early modern playhouses and original practice; reading the medieval past in the early modern; adaptation and appropriation; the Shakespearean cultural industry; ‘Global’ Shakespeare. The module will be taught by all those contributing to the MA in a given year.

This module approaches Shakespeare from a number of perspectives. It thinks about Shakespeare now: how his plays continue to be performed and adapted, on stage and for the screen, in the UK and abroad, and about how Shakespeare is continually being reinvented by being freshly edited, abridged, translated, reworked by novelists, or reinterpreted by new generations of critics. The module also thinks about Shakespeare in his own time – the Renaissance world in which his plays were first written and performed – and about how Shakespeare approached his own past: medieval England, ancient Britain, classical Rome. The module considers how Shakespeare’s plays lived on after his death, through the closure of the theatres during the civil war, to their revival by Restoration theatre-managers, appropriation by eighteenth-century editors and celebrated nineteenth-century productions. The module will enable you to consider how Shakespeare approached his own culture, and how he has been received and remade by different cultures at different times since. You will engage with recent critical thinking about, for example, early modern playhouses and original practice; reading the medieval past in the early modern; adaptation and appropriation; the Shakespearean cultural industry; ‘Global’ Shakespeare. The module will be taught by all those contributing to the MA in a given year.

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 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.

This core module for the MA English Literary Studies (Nineteenth-Century) pathway, taught by all those contributing to the pathway in a given year, will introduce students to the key critical, theoretical, historiographical and conceptual debates surrounding the study of the long nineteenth century. It will emphasise the issues which have been central to the emergence and revision of key areas of scholarship on the period over the last quarter century, and to effective methods for archival research.

This core module for the MA English Literary Studies (Twentieth-Century) pathway, taught by all those contributing to the pathway in a given year, will introduce students to the key critical, theoretical, historiographical and conceptual debates surrounding the study of the long twentieth century. It will emphasise the issues which have been central to the emergence and revision of key areas of scholarship on the period over the last quarter century, and to effective methods for archival research.

The disparate body of literature collected together under the title 1001 Nights, more popularly known as the Arabian Nights, is set primarily in the cities of the medieval Middle East, including Baghdad and Basra in Iraq, Cairo in Egypt and Damascus in Syria. The narratives include characters from all levels of society, from caliphs, princes, princesses and viziers, to poor men and women, as well as magical beings of various sorts. They recount great adventures and supernatural happenings; but among the more marvellous events appear many details of daily life, social activity and urban landscape. This module uses the 1001 Nights as a starting point for a thematic investigation of medieval Arab (largely urban) society.