Module description

This course investigates prominent trends and genres in contemporary literature and fiction film, and places particular emphasis on cultural representations of catastrophe. We will explore the contemporary as a philosophical and critical category, in relation to cultural constructions of history and the future. We will also consider how themes and theories of temporality, scale, apocalypse, post-apocalypse, violence and capitalism shape cultural portrayals of different catastrophes (‘real’ and imagined). In relation to the overarching theme of catastrophe, we will contemplate changing definitions and artistic practices in the historical novel. Against the background of Umberto Eco’s and Linda Hutcheon’s influential work on postmodernist irony and historical metafiction, we assess how the genre has shifted and developed to embrace ideas of simultaneity, the archive, nostalgia, amnesia, revisionism, multidirectional memory. The module will additionally consider the growing cultural importance of popular genre and examine how transnational genres, far from valorising global sameness, offers a way to mark cultural difference, relationality, and the specific knowledge of nationally and locally embedded traditions. The primary texts studied will vary from year to year, but may include works by David Mitchell, Margaret Atwood, Cormac McCarthy, Roberto Bolaño, Lars von Trier, Claire Denis and Bong Joon-ho, amongst others. Primary texts will be available in English or English translation, and may, where appropriate, also be read in the original language.

In this module participants will be introduced to issues in research methodology and statistics within the context of research on the development of literacy....

In this module participants will be introduced to issues in research methodology and statistics within the context of research on the development of literacy. There will be coverage of the main issues in research design including both quantitative and qualitative approaches. This module aims to provide participants with the skills to evaluate critically research findings in the assessment of and intervention in reading and writing. This module will also provide the foundation to enable participants to design and carry out their own investigations.