Modern and Contemporary Literature and Culture (MA)

Course content

You'll study the development of ‘modernity’ in association with particular genres and writers, and assess the importance of political movements and new identities to modern writing. You'll investigate the cultural meanings and associations of important developments in literary technique in the 20th century. You'll develop an understanding of the interplay of modern writing with a range of cultural issues, and learn some of the ways in which modern historical and technological development affected notions of writing.

You'll study modules from a range of options offered by the Department of English and Related Literature and other arts and humanities departments. You'll also hone your research skills with dedicated training, and complete a research dissertation. You'll study 180 credits in total.

Modules Dissertation Modules You'll address some of the major literary trends and cultural debates of modern and contemporary times. You'll consider the different ways that ‘modernity’ has been understood, focussing on the multiple art-forms and theories of art that this understanding yielded. You'll examine a broad swathe of writers, genres and intellectual disciplines. Typical subtopics include modernist difficulty, utopian fiction, confessional poetry, race and modernity, and neoliberalism. Typical authors studied include James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, T S Eliot, Marianne Moore, Gertrude Stein, Aldous Huxley, Samuel Beckett, Ralph Ellison, John Berryman, Paul Muldoon, and Zadie Smith. On the Postgraduate Life in Practice module, you'll learn valuable skills in research, writing, reflection, presentation, publishing and career development. Core modules Reading Modernity Postgraduate Life in Practice Option modules You will also study three option modules. Examples can be found below. Some option module combinations may not be possible. The options available to you will be confirmed after you begin your course. “They’ve Gotta Have Us”: African American Film and Literature after 1960 Literature and Activism The Sickness of Style Auteures: Gender, Power, and Authorship in Film and Literature The Translation of the World: Reading the Global Nineteenth Century Bad Feelings: Negative Affect in Contemporary Literature Our modules may change to reflect the latest academic thinking and expertise of our staff, and in line with Department/School academic planning. Dissertation Dissertation Your dissertation offers you the chance to examine a topic in depth and to develop your research skills. You'll work on a 12,000-14,000-word dissertation with regular supervision from a member of staff. You'll submit your dissertation at the end of your course. Recent dissertation topics include: 'Mad Men' and Masculinity Coping through Comics: Junot Diaz's Pop Culture Pain Oral Poetry in the Digital Age The Individual and Loneliness in the Fiction of Joshua Ferris German Interwar Women's Writing Revelations in the Work by T S Eliot and Jules Laforgue The Artist in the Fiction of Anthony Burgess