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DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2017/2018

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DRPS : Course Catalogue : School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures : English Literature

Postgraduate Course: Literature and Modernity II: Late Modernism and Beyond (ENLI11182)

Course Outline
SchoolSchool of Literatures, Languages and Cultures CollegeCollege of Humanities and Social Science
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) AvailabilityAvailable to all students
SCQF Credits20 ECTS Credits10
SummaryThis is the semester 2 core course for MSc Literature and Modernity and is only available for students on that programme.

This course examines topics in contemporary literary and critical theory with specific attention paid to questions of the politics of literary texts, the production of political identity through texts, and the contested questions of cultural politics through which texts are read. Topics to be covered include post-structuralism, post-colonialism, post-modernism, sexual politics and cultural identity.
Course description 1. Late Modernism, War, and Psychoanalysis
Elizabeth Bowen, The Heat of the Day (1949)
Lyndsey Stonebridge, 'Anxiety at a Time of Crisis: Psychoanalysis and Wartime' (2007)

2. Postwar Avant-Garde Theatre
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (1953) and Endgame (1957)
Theodor Adorno, 'Trying to Understand Endgame' (1961)

3. Neo-Modernist Poetry
Basil Bunting, Briggflatts (1966)
Selections from Rod Mengham and John Kinsella, eds., Vanishing Points: New Modernist Poems (2004)
Anthony Mellors, from Late Modernist Poetics: From Pound to Prynne (2005)

4. Postmodernism and Late Capitalism
Martin Amis, Money (1984)
Fredric Jameson, 'Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism' (1984)

5. Posthumanism and Cyberculture
J.G. Ballard, Crash (1973)
Jean Baudrillard, 'Ballard's Crash' (1976)
Donna Haraway, 'A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century' (1985)

6. Gender, Subjectivity, and Performance
Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus (1984)
Judith Butler, from Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

7. Race, Trauma, and History
Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)
Henry Louis Gates, 'Writing ¿Race¿ and the Difference it Makes' (1985)
Cathy Caruth, introduction to Trauma: Explorations in Memory (1995)

8. Postcolonialism, Hybridity, and Cosmopolitanism
Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (1988)
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, 'Reading The Satanic Verses' (1989)
Homi K. Bhabha, from The Location of Culture (1994)

9. Globalization and Post-Marxism
Don DeLillo, Cosmopolis (2003)
Jacques Derrida, from Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International (1993)
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, from Empire (2000)

10. Climate, Landscape, and Environment
Cormac McCarthy, The Road (2006)
Lawrence Buell, 'Toxic Discourse' (1998)
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Information for Visiting Students
Pre-requisitesNone
High Demand Course? Yes
Course Delivery Information
Academic year 2017/18, Available to all students (SV1) Quota:  36
Course Start Semester 2
Timetable Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) Total Hours: 200 ( Seminar/Tutorial Hours 20, Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 176 )
Assessment (Further Info) Written Exam 0 %, Coursework 100 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment) One essay of 4,000 words (100%)
-You may also submit a 1,000 word essay plan one month before your essay deadline. This essay plan will not receive a mark, but will form the basis of written feedback given by the course organiser with a view to helping you prepare for your summative assessment.
Feedback Detailed written feedback on optional formative assessment (essay plan) and summative assessment (essay). Both within 15 working days of submission.
No Exam Information
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
  1. Students should understand the ways in which post-World War II literary texts intersect with historical, political, social, intellectual, and ethical questions and contexts.
  2. Students should be able to articulate how the forms and literary strategies of post-World War II texts perform cultural and political work.
  3. Students should develop a critical vocabulary for the analysis of literary texts and cultural phenomena.
  4. Students should be able to reflect critically on current practices and disputes in literary and cultural theory and criticism.
  5. Students should be able to mount a substantial, sustained, and theoretically-informed argument about post-World War II literature.
Reading List
None
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills Not entered
KeywordsLaM2
Contacts
Course organiserDr Carole Jones
Tel: (0131 6)50 3068
Email: Carole.Jones@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMiss Kara Mccormack
Tel: (0131 6)50 3030
Email: Kara.McCormack@ed.ac.uk
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