MA Literature, Culture and Modernity helps you to acquire specific skills in a number of areas including critical thinking, research methods, cultural and literary theory, analysing literary and cultural texts in the context of debates on modernity.
You will develop your analytical and conceptual thinking skills and gain the expertise to focus on a specific research topic that interests you. During this course you will carry out advanced research and produce original and innovative studies.
Course Structure
The syllabus consists of four taught modules, followed by a dissertation. You will select three option modules from a range which varies from year to year. Modules focus on nineteenth, twentieth and twenty first century literature and culture, exploring literature in relation to popular and working-class culture, analysing the interaction between literature, cinema and theory, and examining issues of identity, gender and power. You will also follow the core module Research Methods which helps prepare for the Dissertation and for further study.
The course has both full-time and part-time routes which you can take over one or up to three years respectively:
Full-time study option:
Semester 1
You will concentrate on the beginnings of modernity in the late eighteenth century. You will also have the opportunity of developing advanced theoretical skills, by benefitting from a hands-on approach to applying theory to literary and cultural texts.
Theory, Text and Writing (30 credits)
A series of lecture-seminars on philosophical contributions to major questions surrounding contemporary writing:
- What is postmodernism?
- What is the relationship between language and writing?
- How can one write politically?
- How does one’s awareness of gender affect writing?
You will read the work of theorists such as Lyotard, Derrida, Adorno and Butler and examine how a wide variety of contemporary writers have explored these questions in creative practice.
Study Theory, Text and Writing as a single module.
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Anthony Burgess and his Contemporaries (30 credits)
This module is dedicated to the work of Manchester native Anthony Burgess and his literary contemporaries, with a special emphasis on literary experiment in the 1960s and 1970s in Britain. It will consider Burgess’ relation to literary culture, his contribution to advances in literary form, and his relation to other writers in the period. We will be reading novels, journalism, and other critical writing by Burgess, as well as works by such writers as J.G. Ballard, Christine Brooke-Rose, B.S. Johnson, Michael Moorcock, Caryl Phillips, and Harold Pinter.
The module is supported by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation (IABF) which is located in Manchester city centre. Parts of the module will be held at the IABF, and students will have the opportunity to use the Burgess archive located there.
Study Anthony Burgess and his Contemporaries as a single module.
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Semester 2
This semester takes the concept of modernity into the twentieth and twenty first century. You will also have the opportunity of starting to develop your own research topic in close consultation with an expert supervisor, which you could then develop for your Dissertation.
Literature in the Academic and Cultural World (30 credits)
This module explores the ways in which literature features in academic and cultural worlds and is taught in block release sessions. You will learn how to maximise your potential as a researcher and consider the ways in which literary writing and research on literature can be disseminated in the wider cultural world. You will look at topics such as literary events and festivals, arts organisations, arts marketing, networking, publishing online and in print, fundraising and sponsorship. You will also visit local arts organizations, where there are opportunities for work experience, and you will develop an independent research project.
Study Literature in the Academic and Cultural World as a single module.
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Gothic: Modernity and Monstrosity (30 credits)
This module examines the construction of monstrosity in a range of Gothic texts from the late eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries, and in cinematic versions of classic Gothic texts. It explores the politicisation of monstrosity in the wake of the French Revolution, and considers a range of themes that shape the notion of the monstrous in Gothic writing. Seminars will address issues such as commodity, spectrality and the uncanny; wildness and sublimity; crime and deviance; beauty and degeneration; sexuality and perversion; imperialism and desire; vampirism and impurity; and the inhuman.
Study Gothic: Modernity and Monstrosity as a single module.
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Semester 3
Dissertation
This piece of work, 12,000-14,000 words, gives you the opportunity to develop an independent research project in close consultation with a supervisor from among the academic staff with expertise in your area of interest.
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