Acting, Performance and English Literature BA(Hons)

You will be expected either to complete a graduate or professional level work placement – or, as an alternative an enterprise or citizenship project with a tangible end product (e.g. feasibility study for turning hobby/idea into a personal business or setting up campaign group/developing volunteering/charity initiative) plus associated documentation – plus a self-reflective evaluation of the process. In preparation for this you will undertake career planning and placement research, supported by workshops and tutorial meetings.

You’ll have the opportunity to undertake a training project in one of a range of theatre skill areas, such as directing, performing, physical theatre, technical theatre, or workshop facilitation. A programme of training will help to prepare you to undertake an independent project which demonstrates your skills and understandings.

You will draw on examples of contemporary practice in responding to theoretical approaches and debates. You will encounter a range of contemporary examples of performance practice across media through a series of lectures which will be supported, where possible, by theatre visits, video materials, and other media resources. The workshops will introduce you to the critical and aesthetic contexts in which such work exists, and assessment will focus on your ability to locate and devise specific examples of practice within the relevant critical frameworks.

In this module you will examine contemporary cinema as a global media industry, with a particular emphasis on the processes of globalisation and circulation that allow film texts to become meaningful far outside the contexts in which they were made. While the global dominance of Hollywood is central to this, cultural influences, values and meanings flow in multiple directions. You will develop knowledge of key theories in film and global media studies, including theories of globalisation, cultural hybridity and exchange, national identities, and imagined communities. By focusing not only on the films themselves, but on their production, distribution, promotion and reception, the module provides you with a detailed understanding of how and why cinema spreads around the globe, and the tensions this cultural flow creates at a political, social, economic and cultural level.

This module provides a practical orientation in some of the main genres of film and television, and a training in how to write for them. You will analyse and discuss the narrative structures, character types, and other conventions of a range of genres, and try your hand at writing them yourself. These genres could range from documentary to sitcom, from horror to romantic comedy, or from action movie to period costume drama. Finally, you will become proficient at writing in a particular genre, which you will select from those you have studied. You will produce a script according to a genre-specific brief, and then reflect on the process of writing to the constraints of the familiar generic conventions of the film/television industry.

The nineteenth century was the period in which the novel was the dominant literary form, in the wake of the heyday of Romantic poetry and before the advent of cinema. In this module we will study and analyse a selection of novels that represent some of the most significant developments in the genre during the Victorian age. We will explore the ways in which the Victorian novel reflected the most important issues of the day, from industrialisation and political reform to women’s rights and class conflict. The module will also investigate the significance of novelistic subgenres such as Sensation fiction and the late gothic novel during the second half of the nineteenth century, mapping these onto shifting attitudes towards the politics of gender, race and empire.

This module gives you the chance to study some of the most exciting and experimental novels ever written. Beginning at the start of the twentieth century, with ground breaking works of modernist fiction by the likes of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, you will study innovative new developments in form, style, and technique, as well as the historical context behind these transformative texts. The module then introduces you to the postmodernist experimentation of the later twentieth century. Together, we will explore new departures in narrative, style and language; the relationship between fiction, history and text; and the breakthrough novels that shaped the twentieth century.

This module takes a tour through modern and contemporary American poetry. We’ll explore history, politics, identity, and competing ideas of what is means to be ‘American’, by studying the work of 10 extraordinary poets. We’ll be exploring American poetry from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day, looking at significant poetic movements and sociopolitical contexts. The module explores a range of poets which may include Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Claudia Rankine, and Robert Lowell.

No English degree would be complete without the opportunity to study the greatest writer in the language – Shakespeare. This module is your chance to do just that, both by situating Shakespeare’s plays in relation to their historical and cultural backgrounds, and by considering their rejuvenation in recent film and stage productions. For a greater understanding of Renaissance drama, the module will also compare Shakespeare’s work to some of his contemporaries, such as Marlowe, Jonson, or Webster.

World Literature is a module that invites you to look beyond the “Englishness” of English Literature. Your reading list will take you on a voyage of discovery around different cultures, countries, and continents, which you will explore through their literary texts. These texts will reflect both the global reach of the English language and the enthralling experience of reading works in translation. Besides embracing the challenges posed by studying works from unfamiliar cultures and traditions, this module will consider some of the important questions raised by the study of world literature, such as the nature of hybridity, the limitations of the canon, and the globalisation of literature.

The Final Year Project is an opportunity to demonstrate practical skills in a significant theatre or performance role. Building on skills developed through earlier study, you will be able to negotiate a practical project that may focus on performing, directing, applied theatre practice, writing or technical and production skills. With input from a supervisor, you will then be asked to work largely independently to deliver the agreed project. Many of the practical projects appear in the Department’s annual Common Grounds Festival.

The Research Dissertation module facilitates your journey to acquiring expertise and specialism in a project allowing you to showcase summative learning across your course. You will be supported in undertaking guided independent research aimed at the generation of original knowledge in the study of media content, industries, practitioners, technologies or users and/or their cultural, social, political and economic premises and consequences. You will synthesise primary and secondary data and sources in your systematic, methodological analysis of a chosen topic in a field reflecting your course such as communication, journalism, film, digital media, entertainment, acting and performance, cultural production, sports media, music or promotional culture. This involves reviewing appropriate literature, identifying and executing a suitable methodology and research design and carrying out appropriate forms of analysis.

This module will help you imagine and plan for your future. Whether you want to be an actor, director, film-maker, producer, technician, or teacher, or to do something outside the creative industries, you will need to find the right context in which to work with others and develop your practice. In this module you will reflect critically on your current work and investigate potential employment opportunities, thinking about where you may want to take your career. You will conduct research into a specific industry and/or cultural context that matters to you, learning about what others are doing and imagining what you might contribute.

This module takes the form of a Working Party research process in which the group collectively researches, designs and delivers a Panel Session within a ‘Conference’ on a set topic chosen from a range of options. At that Session, each of you will present a provocation or make an alternative research presentation. Initially, the group works with the tutor on gaining a broad understanding of the field in question and designs a Call for Papers which summarises the field and identifies the main questions and debates. Each of you then respond to their Call for Papers by designing a detailed proposal for a research process which will culminate in a contribution to the Panel Session. There is scope for creativity in the design of individual presentations and in the curatorship of the event.

The twentieth century saw a golden age of experimental playwriting, to rival any since ancient Greece. From the pathos of Arthur Miller’s resurrection of tragedy to the hilarity of Dario Fo’s farces; from the politically motivated criticism of Bertolt Brecht’s plays to the bafflingly enigmatic absurdities of Samuel Beckett’s; from the witty repartee of Tom Stoppard’s dialogue to the grotesque brutality of Sarah Kane’s in-yer-face theatre – this is a unit in which no two weeks are even remotely the same. Besides embarking on an odyssey of innovation and controversy in modern drama, this module will also take you far beyond the English-speaking world, giving you a chance to study playwrights from a range of countries who changed the face of the western tradition of dramatic literature.

The late nineteenth century witnessed surging interest in the market for popular fiction and the emergence of new genres that responded to and helped to shape public attitudes to empire and criminality through the invention of characters that embodied various forms of heroic and/or demonic masculinity. The ‘Extraordinary Gentlemen’ of this era of popular fiction have retained an appeal that has proved resilient to transformations in attitudes to national identity, class and gender, as well as to the challenging of stigmas associated with ‘otherness’ and queered identities. In this module we will try to understand the basis for the appeal of ‘Extraordinary Gentlemen’ for late-Victorian and Edwardian audiences, and to examine their plasticity and openness to subsequent adaptation.