Cultural Studies and Humanities modules | Leeds Beckett University

Module overview: This module introduces the theoretical and practical principles of adaptation from literary text to a range of mediated forms. Focusing on the study of one key chosen text, students will explore its adaptations to various other literary and media forms. This study enables students to consider the key principles that underpin textual adaptation, show awareness of the ways in which form (whether literary or mediated) impacts upon the production of a text, analyse the adaptation as an important ingredient in literary production, and respond creatively to literary text(s), or selections of texts, by producing their own short adaptations.

Level: 4
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 2

Module overview: This module aims to help students transition to degree level work by developing strategies for the interpretation of contemporary literary texts. Across the module, students will engage with a range of texts that seek to explore and respond to the contemporary period. Module teaching will focus on literary innovations and ways in which texts interact with techniques, approaches, and debates in literary studies today. Students will encounter a range of critical approaches to module texts and develop key skills in analysis, argumentation, and presentation that will go on to inform their subsequent work at degree level.

Level: 4
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 1

Module overview: This module continues the survey of literary forms and genres at L4 by focusing on the novel. Centring on a single, long novel from a canonical text published in an early period, this module seeks to explore, with some emerging knowledge of context, the formal features of the novel , and to introduce students to critical theory as a means to enable elaborate reading of a (longer) literary text.

Level: 4
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 2

Module overview: This module introduces students to a wide variety of poetry written in English. As well as learning about the major traditions and types of poetry (such as the lyric, the elegy, and spoken word), students will gain an understanding of some of the key forms (such as the sonnet, free verse, visual) in which poetry is presented. In addition to developing their sense of the variety of poetic traditions and forms, the module provides students with the technical vocabulary and interpretive tools to enable them to approach the reading and analysis of poetry with confidence. The module also introduces students to several key statements of poetic theory with the aim of enhancing their critical and creative skills.

Level: 4
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 2

Module overview: This module introduces students to Shakespearean drama. Focusing on examples of Shakespeare’s works in different genres, and providing entry-level discussion of Renaissance drama, it aims to provide a framework through which these texts can be interpreted in relation to the historical moment in which they were produced.

Level: 4
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 1

Module overview: This module introduces students to the study of narrative at university level by examining a series of short stories, introducing key concepts (such as genre and subgenre, context, and theory) as well as more specific ideas about narrative fiction (such as reliability, authority, perspective, chronology, story versus plot, and more). It also inducts students into personal development learning, encouraging reflection upon learning processes.

Level: 4
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 1

Module overview: The Writers’ Workshop (1) is an introduction to the practices and processes of creative writing at undergraduate level, taking in a range of forms. Drawing on examples from literary and digital texts, students will begin to contextualise their practice with other writers and works. Students will also begin to deploy - through the mechanism of the workshop - skills of initiative, creative response and collaborative working as a foundation for their learning in creative writing through the entirety of the programme.

Level: 4
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 1

Module overview: Between the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and the First World War, Europe underwent wide-ranging changes. This period is often referred to as the modern era, and the way people experienced rapid and significant change is their lives is referred to as ‘modernity’. In this module we will investigate some of the major developments which are considered to have shaped the modern European world (as distinct from, say, the medieval). We will take a thematic approach, looking at topics such as the Enlightenment, political and industrial revolutions, changing class structures and gender relations, and Europe’s often violent encounters with the wider world. In this way students will establish a knowledge-base of key elements of European modernity and a chronological framework for further studies.

Level: 3
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 1

Module overview: The purpose of this module is to introduce students to the social and cultural history of modern Britain. Focusing on the period from 1780-1914, the module introduces the key themes and historiographical debates around the emergence of modern Britain, predominantly through a social and cultural lens. Students encounter the key developments in modern Britain, embracing urbanisation, the class system, popular culture and mass leisure, crime, poverty and social reform. These themes, and the historiographical debates that inform them, form the focus of lectures. Seminars then focus on source analysis and group work, with a particular emphasis on the core assessment of the module. The emphasis of this module is on introducing students to social and cultural history through source-based work (that is, both primary and secondary sources). This module will help expand students’ knowledge of modern history, and their capacity to undertake source analysis.

Level: 4
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 1

Module overview: This module introduces students to the history of European empire-building in the period between 1500 and 1900, highlighting the centrality of these processes to the making of the modern world. Focusing mainly on sites affected by Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch and British activities, it explores questions of why Europeans sought to colonise other parts of the world and how they did so. Students will examine the immediate and long-term consequences of colonisation for both colonisers and colonised and will question the relative importance of trade, military strength and culture in motivating and facilitating European expansion.

Level: 4
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 1

Module overview: This module provides an introduction to major political, social, and cultural developments in twentieth century Europe. Adopting thematic and comparative approaches to the study European societies (including Britain), this module offers a useful framework for understanding modernity to post-modernity in the ‘Age of ‘Extremes’ and provides an essential foundation necessary for further study on the course. Key areas of exploration include: World War One, Interwar Europe, World War Two and the Holocaust, Post-War European population movements, reconstruction and integration, Cold War Europe and the 'Atomic Age', European society and culture in the 'age of affluence'.

Level: 4
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 2

Module overview: This module introduces students to some of the histories of relocation, cultural encounter, and migration that have shaped the modern world. In order to better consider the dynamics of cultural exchange associated with mobility across time and place, the module uses a comparative, case study approach focusing on various instances of cross-cultural contact over the past 500 years. The emphasis throughout the module is on encouraging class-room debates, building student confidence and knowledge about global historical developments, and providing students with the conceptual tools required for handling primary sources.

Level: 4
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 2

Module overview: This module introduces students to the methods and concepts of public history. It explores the key issues and debates in public history and examines the way that historical knowledge is created and used in non-academic environments.

Level: 4
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 2

Module overview: The module offers an introduction to the central debates and critical concepts in Cultural Studies. It asks key questions that media and cultural scholars investigate, such as:

What is ‘culture’?
How do media products work?
How do audiences experience culture?
How do cultural products make meaning?
How do the media represent the social world?
What role do the media play in cultural politics and power?

Level: 4
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 1

Module overview: This module examines a range of case studies about contemporary media consumption - from the habitual practices consumers develop as they interact with their mobile devices to how they navigate through virtual game worlds. The module discusses how social groups experience, consume and interact with the media forms they encounter in everyday settings. The module also emphasises how to research the ways in which the media is experienced. Therefore, it draws on ethnographic and empirical case studies, which demonstrate how media interactions are researched in the field. Overall, the Media Interactions aims to equip students with a grounding in the methods the media analyst might use to study audiences and consumers - methods they will potentially utilise throughout the rest of their degree.

Level: 4
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 1

Module overview: This module introduces students to the academic study of social media at degree level, including the intellectual and practical skills necessary to undertake such study rigorously. The module focuses critically on social media in relation to academic concepts, theories, debates, approaches, methods and skills. It draws on contemporary examples and topical cultural debates to interpret and understand the significances, affordances and impacts of social media in relation to a range of contexts, such as, indicatively: communication, society, culture, identity, knowledge, politics, marketing, commerce, work and research. Students are facilitated to think critically about their own use of social media, as well as to develop social media skills that are necessary for higher levels of study and transferrable to a range of graduate careers.

Level: 4
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 1

Module overview: The module offers an introduction to the organisation of cultural talk on contemporary BBC radio. It explores the way cultural talk is organised to fulfil the BBC’s public purposes concerning the creativity and diversity of programming and the provision of valuable programming to the listening public. This is used as the basis of an investigation of those aspects of contemporary UK radio’s public service philosophy in a world of digital media change. A major purpose of that radio philosophy is to ensure the provision of radio and cultural talk through national and local BBC stations. The module addresses considerations of the quality and diversity of available cultural talk and level of equity of access to it. It also considers the existence of community radio stations as representative of a diversity of UK culture and society possibly beyond the BBC’s capacity to represent.

Level: 4
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 2

Module overview: The module uses American cinema from the 1940s to the present as a prism through which to investigate questions of history, gender and representation. While the module uses gender as its key organising principle, dividing the syllabus into two blocks on femininity and masculinity, it examines issues of class and race. Drawing mostly on ‘mainstream’ Hollywood examples, it looks at some independent productions, thereby raising important questions in relation to representation as well as film aesthetics and form.

Level: 4
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 2

Module overview: Researching Television introduces key approaches to researching TV texts, audiences and institutions. As well as utilising current theory, the module equips students to critically apply models from TV Studies to the content and consumption of 21st-century TV. The module will introduce students to key studies of television, show how these studies can be linked with broader areas of cultural theory and applied to scholarly work.

Level: 4
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 2

Module overview: This module introduces the theoretical and practical principles of adaptation from literary text to a range of mediated forms. Focusing on the study of one key chosen text, students will explore its adaptations to various other literary and media forms. This study enables students to consider the key principles that underpin textual adaptation, show awareness of the ways in which form (whether literary or mediated) impacts upon the production of a text, analyse the adaptation as an important ingredient in literary production, and respond creatively to literary text(s), or selections of texts, by producing their own short adaptations.

Level: 5
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 1

Module overview: This module introduces students to ‘postcolonial’ literature and provides them with a conceptual and critical vocabulary for reading and analysing texts from formerly colonised regions of the world. By the early twentieth-century, nearly 85% of the earth’s surface was subject to European colonial rule. Rapid decolonisation followed the post-war period, and by 1997, the number of those living under British rule globally had fallen below one million. What impact did colonialism have on the lives of the colonised? How was colonial power resisted and rejected? What is the significance of this history to us now? And, given the central role played by narrative and representation in the expansion of empire, how has literature responded to, challenged, and intervened in histories and experiences of colonialism and exploitation? Through reading some of the most exciting, challenging, and powerful literature written in English in the last fifty years - by writers from formerly colonised spaces—this module offers students the opportunity to explore that history and its legacies in our postcolonial present.

Level: 5
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 1

Module overview: This module explores the emergence and development of the Romantic movement in Britain between 1780 and 1830. The module encourages students to engage not only with ‘canonical’ Romantic poetry, but with a range of literature and across a wide cultural and historical spectrum. It also introduces students to theoretical and critical methods of analysing Romanticism.

Level: 5
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 1

Module overview: Writing Fictions explores key aspects of characterisation, story world-building and fictionalisation, building on the foundational work begun at Level 4. Students will respond to a range of contemporary authors from different cultures to produce their own short stories or extracts from longer works in progress (novellas or novels). They will study and practise key aspects of narrative craft - for example, characterisation, dialogue, dramatisation, point of view and story architecture - and how these are deployed in both short stories and novels/novellas.

Level: 5
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 1

Module overview: ‘Context’ - we are often told we need it, but what is it, where does it come from, and what is its relation to other forms of information? As part of students’ preparation for level 6 research skills, this module takes a theoretically informed approach to contextual study of literature.

Level: 5
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 2

Module overview: This module introduces students to a selection of literature of the twentieth century, examining how literature writes about some of the key events of the period (for example, WWI, WWII, post-war austerity and the Cold War). Key terms used to describe the writing of the period and its cultures more broadly, such as Modernism and Postmodernism, will be introduced. The module considers texts that focus on the idea of alienation and dystopia and the place of the individual in society. We will explore why writers of the period turned to imagining the future in order to express their concerns with their present moments. We will examine a number of key issues of the period (see aims). In preparation for writing the dissertation, students will be guided through the process of developing their own research question for the essay for this module and will become a more independent learner.

Level: 5
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 2

Module overview: This module will explore the questions of poetic voice and audience and the relationship between them. Rather than encouraging students to ‘find’ their voice, as has become customary on many creative writing poetry courses, the emphasis will be on a much more fluid and contextual sense of voice/multi-vocality. During the module students will extend their knowledge of contemporary poetry, be encouraged to identify potential audiences for their work and to start to situate it within a wider literary world. The primary means of module delivery will be the creative writing workshop - where students share their work and respond to that of others. The module will extend the students’ range of employment skills relevant to the creative writer with a focus on the publishing industry and other audiences, the local writing community, performance, and exploring questions of originality, plagiarism and intertextuality.

Level: 5
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 2

Module overview: Genocide is a hallmark of the modern era. The killing fields of Armenia, Central and Eastern Europe, Cambodia, Rwanda and Bosnia, to name a few, are deplorable legacies of our recent history. By examining the origins, implementation and aftermaths of genocide, this module seeks to offer a broader awareness of the ‘banality of evil’ within all societies. The module engages extensively with historiography and contemporary debates about victims and perpetrators, the ‘grey zone’ of resistance, collaboration and survival, and particularly the politics of remembrance. The module also encourages students to critically examine why past genocides, such as the Nazi Holocaust, have assumed such importance in contemporary society, and asks students to engage with debates about the politics of commemoration requiring the use of theory and empirical evidence. We will consider debates about the language and history of remembrance in relation to genocide, and consider a range of case studies.

Level: 5
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 1

Module overview: This module introduces students to the study of environmental history. It is concerned with the shaping of the modern British landscape and the interpretation of the landscape in different media, including visual art, material culture and literary fiction. Reflecting recent trends in social and cultural history, the module also looks at the history of material forms, from water to electricity, and of the senses through which the environment has been apprehended. The module concludes with a consideration of conservation and the place of landscape in contemporary policy-making.

Level: 5
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 1

Module overview: This module explores the ideological challenges posed by communism and fascism to liberal democracy in the twentieth century. In particular, it focuses on the ‘Age of Extremes’ (1918-1991), in which authoritarian ideologies of the left and right embraced mass politics and offered alternative visions of social and political organisation that directly challenged the hegemony of the liberal-capitalist order. The module questions the usefulness of totalitarianism as a concept to understanding this era in history.

Level: 5
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 1

Module overview: This module focuses on the development of detective fiction and the changing representations of criminality in the Victorian era through to the interwar period of the twentieth century. Students are expected to read key texts by the following authors: Charles Dickens, Henry Mayhew, Arthur Morrison, W. T. Stead, Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie. This is an interdisciplinary module and students are expected to draw on both the disciplines of English and History to perform well in the module.

Level: 5
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 1

Module overview: This module would be designed to provide students with new methods of historical research as well as practical (and marketable) skills that they can put on their CVs once they leave Leeds Beckett. The Level 5 module will be a combination of lectures and lab work (in lieu of seminars), and getting students to do the work of applying what we’re talking about in lectures to real online outputs each week in the lab. This includes learning how to design a WordPress site, using JSTOR Labs (free to use for those at an institution that subscribes to JSTOR, as Leeds Beckett does) to data mine academic journals to determine historiographical trends, engaging with apps like Snap2Map to layer changes to specific landscapes of inquiry over time, and exploring the possibilities of virtual reality (VR) for research and research communication. This will include the use of Google Cardboard to learn about how VR is an exciting new field of historical research and engagement, and to create small VR projects of their own through their smartphones.

Level: 5
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 2

Module overview: This module explores key themes in the way in which labour in the British empire was extracted by coercive means through four main case studies: slave societies in the Caribbean, colonial Indian indentureship, slavery at the Cape between the seventeenth- and nineteenth-centuries and forced labour in West Africa during the interwar and World War II period. The module will examine the development of slave systems and other mechanisms to compel colonised people to work. It explores the economic and ideological rationale behind transitions to enslaved labour, the ways in which slaveholders, planters and overseers controlled workers and the many ways in which workers resisted their bondage. The module also considers the creation of new identities and cultures amongst slaves and other unfree labourers, and the different experiences of men and women. It examines the rise of British anti-slavery from the eighteenth century right up to the mid-twentieth century, encompassing the 1926 League of Nations' Slavery Convention, and looks at the ways in which the institution was abolished in different contexts and locations. Students will compare and contrast events and experiences across the four case studies, exploring debates and disagreements between historians and other scholars. The module enables students to develop knowledge gained from Level 4 modules, such as Migration & Cultural Encounters and Trade, Colonisation & Empire.

Level: 5
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 2

Module overview: This module develops an understanding of late twentieth century British by exploring some of the key themes in its social and cultural history during the period c.1979-1990. In doing so, it expands students’ the capacity to engage with historiographical debates and critical primary source analysis

Level: 5
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 2

Module overview: This module introduces students to the variety of resources, questions and contexts that underpin the historical, political and geographical development of media and cultural studies. The module attends to national and international contexts. The module ranges widely across the terrain of 'modern' media culture, and looks at a range of historical and analytical issues associated with this complex arena. In this way the module will provide students with a historical, political and geographical grounding and context for their studies, as well as broader perspectives on current issues across the wider degree programme.

Level: 5
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 1

Module overview: This module introduces students to a range of theoretical perspectives on media in their mass and social communications forms, so as to enable them to develop critical thinking and deploy critical analysis. The module focuses on the original work of theorists whose ideas continue to be significant to the study of media, communications and culture. Students will develop an extensive knowledge of different paradigms in media and cultural theory, and how these paradigms contribute to debates about the role of media in contemporary culture and society. Students will also gain a critical understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of each theoretical perspective. The conceptual skills and knowledge honed in this module can be applied by students to other modules studied at Levels 5 and 6 of their degree programmes. Critical engagement with the methodological assumptions that underpin different theoretical perspectives will equip students with transferable skills, especially applicable to the Level 6 Dissertations.

Level: 5
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 1

Module overview: This module explores the relationship between popular music and the moving image. It looks at the use of music in, for example, silent and sound cinema, the Hollywood musical, Disney and Bollywood, popular music and television, promotional video, music and advertising, new media and ‘live’ performance. There will be detailed analysis of the economic, technological and cultural elements which influence the production and consumption of popular music and its visual representation. The module will be assessed by an essay. The module provides opportunities for students to refine their skills in collaborative work in classroom sessions and independent study in the preparation of the essay.

Level: 5
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 1

Module overview: A key element of literary and media studies theory and practice is its essential interdisciplinarity. Nowhere is that intersection more acutely alive than in the field of performance, whether that be Shakespeare read or performed, a writer reading their own work or someone else interpreting it, musicians performing Mozart, the phenomenon of tribute bands, the idea of 'liveness' and 'recording', oral and literary cultures, the journey from text to screen or loudspeaker. In all these ways and more, performance and text are definitive in themselves yet entirely open to interpretation. In this module we look at a carefully selected range of examples of where theory, text and performance intersect, and explore the possibilities and illuminations that an interdisciplinary approach to cultural studies offers us, bringing together skills and models of theory and analysis from English and Media to investigate this new field, uniting key concerns of the degree programme overall into a bespoke module for joint honours students.

Level: 5
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 1

Module overview: This module explores comedy in contemporary media and society. It addresses all kinds of comedy in exploring the analytical and theoretical literature on comedy’s purposes and structures. Thereafter two forms of comedy are given detailed attention. Firstly, stand-up performance, secondly, romantic comedy in cinema. In the case of stand-up the focus is on performance, relationship to audience, the comedy act and its structure and the different ways comedians of different gender identification, sexuality, ‘race’ and class produce stand-up performances (and comedic identities.). The romantic comedy is explored for its heterosexual, heteronormative and racial assumptions and their partial disruption in UK and US films of recent decades. In the case of both forms of comedy they are also situated in the specific ways they are mediated - it stand-up either live, televised or the stand-up DVD phenomenon; romantic comedy as a women’s genre of cinema attendance - and (as) remediated through DVD and streaming services.

Level: 5
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 2

Module overview: The module explores the relationship between young people, crime and media culture. The study of youth and crime cultures will be approached through various historical, theoretical and sociological perspectives. The module will address a range of themes including deviance, resistance, labelling, policing, violence, and crime as a fiction/film genre. Students will critically consider these themes in relation to different frameworks for understanding youth and criminality including delinquency, antisocial behaviour, countercultures, subcultures, club cultures, gangs, drug use and surveillance. The importance of media and film as vehicles for fostering certain fictional and non-fictional representations of young people’s involvement in crime will also be examined. Students will be introduced to a broad scope of literature in this area so as to facilitate intellectual argument and debate.

Level: 5
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 2

Module overview: Life Writing is the autobiographical branch of creative non-fiction. This is an important genre distinction in terms of creative practice. When the subject of a creative non-fiction piece is, say, Oliver Crowell (the subject of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall), the author must conduct extensive research into the precise conditions of the relevant historical context (in this case, the English Reformation), in order for the work to be convincing, accurate, and ‘real’ for the reader. In the case of Life Writing, the subject for research and writing is the self. This module will employ a number of creative writing exercises and regular workshops to help students refine their work in light of peer and tutor feedback (in class, online, verbally, and in writing). Students will read a range of exemplary works of autobiographical non-fiction with a critical eye, and from these examples, they will begin to make connections between the techniques and approaches of published works and their own, in an effort to contextualize their own practice.

Level: 6
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 1

Module overview: Students will gain an understanding of the cultural connections between Africa and the African Diaspora through the analysis of a range of key literary works. Through close reading and analysis of the modules primary texts and the interrogation of postcolonial theoretical debates, students will be encouraged to explore the intersections and tensions between issues of race, gender, identity, education and language within the contexts of slavery, colonialism, migration and exile. The examination of the role and transmission of African cultural forms across the African Diaspora will equip students to engage with influential theoretical perspectives and learn to make connections across genres; scrutinizing the relationships between literature and oral culture, folk traditions, dialect and music. Through this literary, cross-continental journey students will develop a deeper and keener awareness of the history and legacy of colonialism, cross-cultural fertilisation, cultural adaptation and transmission and cultural resistances in the face of oppressive regimes.

Level: 6
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 1

Module overview: This module examines the relationships between writing and the Northern Ireland conflict (1966-1998). Students will consider the ways in which writing responds to serious and prolonged political and social crisis; how it offers insights into issues normally considered to be purely within the realm of party or national politics; and how it negotiates the tensions between, on the one hand, the demands of artistic integrity and independence and, on the other, the pressures to speak out or to contribute towards the resolution of violent political division. Students will also look at texts produced after 1998, a time of somewhat uncertain ‘peace and reconciliation’.

Level: 6
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 1

Module overview: This module examines a selection of American plays from the 1920s to the 1990s, focussing on the ways in which they dramatize the relationship between public issues and private concerns.

Level: 6
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 1

Module overview: This module will expose students to a body of reading, thought, and practice in contemporary writing, loosely understood as ‘avant-garde’ or experimental writing. Given the renegade nature of these works, we will by necessity abandon such generic categories as poetry or prose, even as we try to understand how these texts usefully extend and interrogate precisely those categories. At the heart of all of these works is a common desire (to paraphrase Charles Olson’s dictum in Projective Verse) to MOVE, INSTANTER, ON ANOTHER - which is to say that these works (despite their apparent ‘difficulties’ and abstractness), may be read as radically mimetic of their particular circumstances. Through a programme of close reading, in-class (and online) discussion, and independent study, students will critically and creatively engage with a rich tradition of contemporary literary practice.

Level: 6
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 2

Module overview: This module explores the development of the Gothic from its literary origins in the mid-eighteenth century through to the mid-twentieth century.

Level: 6
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 2

Module overview: This module introduces students to debates about masculinity which took place during the long eighteenth century. Students will read a range of literary texts, including novels and poetry and focus on important models of manliness which were prevalent in the period. The module encourages students to situate texts in relation to historical context, and also to engage with theory.

Level: 6
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 2

Module overview: This module provides a sustained and advanced engagement, for students at Level 6, with Renaissance Tragedy, with a particular focus on the sub-genre of revenge tragedy. It deals with canonical works (such as Hamlet) but also introduces students to less familiar examples of the genre (such as The Revenger’s Tragedy). Its strategy is to enable students to understand and analyse the plays in relation to the culture in which they were produced and the ideological tensions which traverse the plays. The module considers some of the ways in which concepts of revenge were understood in English Renaissance culture and explores the ways in which it operated as the focus of political contestation on the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage. In considering plays as historically embedded and engaged works, the module considers issues of authority and resistance and the relation of violence to concepts of justice within the drama. It is also concerned with questions of identity and the ways in which these are implicated with issues of class, gender, ‘race’ and sexuality. The module considers the diversity of recent critical approaches in Renaissance studies and the ways in which students can utilise materialist, post-structuralist, post-colonial and queer readings in developing a more sophisticated critical perspective on the plays.

Level: 6
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 2

Module overview: This module examines how writers and film-makers have imagined city spaces and identities in a range of postcolonial locations. Through an exciting range of literary and cinematic texts, and drawing on theories of urban space, place, and postcoloniality, we’ll explore issues that are of central importance to the (urban) world many of us live in today, including: migrant labour; asylum seekers, refugees, and illegal immigrants; crime, conflict, and policing; memory, history, and urban space; class, gender, race, sexuality, and the postcolonial city; visibility and invisibility; acts of walking, building, mapping, making and remaking the city.

Level: 6
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 2

Module overview: After World War II, the onset of the Cold War led to the division of Europe into ‘West’ and ‘East’. The East European countries all fell under Soviet control, and were divided from their western neighbours by the ‘iron curtain’ so vividly evoked by Winston Churchill. However, between 1945 and 1989 both the communist monopoly of power and Soviet control over Eastern Europe were subject to numerous challenges, upheavals and compromises. In addition to high-profile popular challenges to the ruling authorities such as the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the Prague Spring of 1968, this module will also consider the various reforms adopted, the increasing role of dissent, and some of the ways that people reacted to, reshaped and resisted communism in their everyday lives. The module will follow a broadly chronological trajectory, from the initial spread of communism across the region after 1945 to the collapse of communism in the revolutions of 1989/90.

Level: 6
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 1

Module overview: This module forms part of the ‘Working with History’ strand and provides hands-on experience of making public history. Students will work in small groups on a discrete local history project commissioned by an external group or member of academic staff at Leeds Beckett University. Training workshops and tutorials will help to guide the research process, but the final outcome will be determined by each group in consultation with their sponsor. The module reflects a burgeoning interest in local communities about the places where they live, and will provide students with an opportunity to critically reflect on the skills they have developed and the public role of the historian.

Level: 6
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 1

Module overview: This module examines the process of decolonisation from its origins in the late colonial world through to debates today about the legacies of modern imperialism. There are few topics we study as historians today that inspire as much passion and protest as colonialism and the consequences of imperial rule. In this module we will consider today’s debates as part of the long process of ending or ‘undoing’ the unequal relations of colonial rule. We will begin by examining the unequal structures and racist ideologies of colonial governance, focusing in particular on the anticolonial resistance and nationalist movements that emerged to challenge imperial rule. We will consider the changing global context for imperial powers in the twentieth century and the era of decolonisation after 1945. We will examine the events of decolonisation, including elite negotiations, armed conflict and the everyday experiences of independence. Finally, we will spend a significant amount of time considering the post-imperial world. We will do this by looking at the difficulties and challenges of decolonising society, economy and mentalities in postcolonial Africa, Asia and the Americas. We will also consider throughout how the end of empire has shaped - and continues to shape - the identities, economic well-being and mental habits of those whose countries once dominated colonies.

Level: 6
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 1

Module overview: This module explores the complex and contested history of twentieth-century South Africa. Its focus is on the development, implementation, and aftermaths of the apartheid system of racial segregation and discrimination. Key themes include the aftermath of the 1899-1902 South African (‘Boer’) War, the development of a distinctive Afrikaner identity during the 1920s and 30s, changing ideas about race and class, and the formal establishment of apartheid in 1948. The module will not be confined to an examination of political and economic developments, but will also consider aspects of social and cultural life under apartheid, for example the so-called ‘Drum’ decade of the 1950s. The roles and experiences of women in twentieth-century South Africa will be explored, underpinned by a critical consideration of the historiography of gender in South Africa. The module will consider opposition to apartheid within South Africa and internationally, as well as the formal end of apartheid and white-minority rule in 1994. It will conclude by considering developments in South Africa post-1994, focusing on political transformation, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the construction of ‘new nationalisms’ and the writing of new histories. In exploring the themes of the module students will engage with the extensive historiography in this area, including for example on the heated debates about apartheid’s origins. In addition the module will take an interdisciplinary approach and draw on a range of primary sources including letters, autobiographies, testimonies, films and novels.

Level: 6
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 2

Module overview: With the establishment of devolved assemblies in Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh, and the recent referenda on Scottish independence and EU membership, the questions of what it means to be British and what constitutes ‘Britishness’, continue to exercise politicians and historians alike. The vitality of the debate stems from the social and political debates surrounding immigration and citizenship, the decline of Empire, European integration, and the future of the United Kingdom itself as a single political unit. This module places these debates in their historical contexts, exploring the emergence of a ‘United Kingdom’ from the acts of union with Scotland and Ireland in 1707 and 1801 respectively to the partial disintegration of this union with the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, to the triumph of devolution under Tony Blair’s New Labour government in 1999 and the EU referendum of 2016. Throughout the module students will be encouraged to consider the question of what constitutes ‘national identity’, and the relationship between cultural identities and the political questions of the day. Students will also be given the opportunity to develop their presentational and leadership skills by designing and running one of the seminar sessions as part of a group exercise.

Level: 6
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 2

Module overview: The annual foreign holiday has become enshrined as an accepted if not essential part of many Britons' lives in the twenty-first century, with as many as half the population taking a package tour overseas in 2014 (ABTA, 2014). The popularity of the foreign holiday today is, however, the result of centuries of past travel practices and many of our contemporary holidaying reference points from Tripadvisor to An Idiot Abroad have their historical precursors. This module traces the history of British holidaymaking abroad from the 'Grand Tour' to the package deal by considering motives for and experiences of travel. 'Britons Abroad' is arranged principally by theme, but also chronologically to allow students to evaluate changes in how travellers conceptualised, planned, executed and reflected on their journeys across two centuries. The thematic approach will offer students the opportunity to explore notions of national identity, racial inequality, coming of age, gender, edification, class, sexuality, consumerism and pilgrimage which are enabled and challenged by foreign holidaying. The module draws upon a diverse range of primary sources including diaries, travel ephemera, journalism and instructive literature, documents which are replete with accounts of Britishness, how to behave, what to see/do, the value of empire and the unpredictable nature of foreigners. We will also consider the ways in which encounters with other cultures and peoples are recorded, understood, and justified and in so doing explore how travel documents can reveal as much about British prejudices and perceptions as they reveal about the locations being visited.

Level: 6
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 2

Module overview: This module explores the history of Italy from the beginning of the country’s national resurgence during the late eighteenth century through to the present day. It examines the major political, economic, social and cultural developments of this history with a particular focus upon the themes of ‘continuity’ and ‘change’ from one period to another. The module employs a range of teaching methods and materials to offer an insight into the past of a country which has pursed its own distinctive path to modernity, through which some strong threads of continuity have continued to exist despite the enormous scale of the changes that have taken place. The module is divided into four parts, each of which is concerned with one of the distinct phases of modern Italian history: Nationalism; Liberalism; Fascism; Democracy.

Level: 6
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 2

Module overview: The module offers a critical introduction to celebrity studies and the literature on film stardom. It also explores their recent cross-overs, hybridisation and yet continuing distinction in the contemporary world. Media celebrity gives focus to television, radio and new media; the dynamics of contemporary celebrity and the theory, analysis and research necessary to make sense of contemporary media celebrity. Particular use is made of journals such as Celebrity Studies to explore the cutting edge of developments in ideas, research and methods. Historical contexts of film stardom are addressed yet the key focus is on recent developments of such stardom and research exploring its contemporary dynamics. Media celebrities are analysed using Marshall’s (2014) idea of ‘public subjectivity’ and film stars through Dyer’s (1979) still crucial idea of ‘star image.’

Level: 6
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 1

Module overview: ‘Race’ is a mechanism used to justify oppression, slavery and genocide. But just what exactly is ‘race’? How do racisms manifest and change over time? How can we challenge racial discrimination within the media and wider society? These are some of the important questions that this module critically investigates. After examining and understanding the historical and contemporary significance of ‘race’, ethnicity and culture, we shall begin to apply this knowledge to different aspects of popular culture such as film/TV, social media, advertising and fashion, music, and sport. Put simply, ‘race’ still matters.

Level: 6
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 1

Module overview: This module provides a critical overview of the historical, social, technological and cultural context surrounding digital media such as mobile devices, software apps and computer games. The module explores definitions and interpretations of the term digital reality and how it is used in contemporary culture. The module focuses on a range of issues surrounding digital media such as the ways in which mobile devices and software applications create hybrid experiences that combine technological mediation and sensory embodied experience. The module encourages students to critically engage with the issues surrounding digitally mediated experiences, especially in relation to interactivity, creativity, community and embodiment.

Level: 6
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 1

Module overview: One of the key ways in which the relationship between Literary Studies and Media Studies can be traced is in that most explicit of connections between them - the adaptation. This module is an investigation of the processes by which that relationship can take place, of the theories which describe it and of the tensions it raises when questions of ‘value’ are brought into the mix. The centre of the module is the critical adaptation project, a unique combination of creativity and scholarship. To support and contextualise this, the module takes a ‘case-study’ approach. Each case study raises different questions about the nature of the adaptation process, and its intertextual implications. It offers an interdisciplinary approach to its materials which brings together the key concerns of the course as a whole and asks students to be alert to the tensions and the possibilities of a critically inflected interdisciplinary approach.

Level: 6
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 1

Module overview: The module will examine the complex relationships between media and sport at both the industry and audience levels. Sports coverage plays a significant role across print, broadcast and online media in all contexts: local, regional, national and global. The ‘sporting world’ also produces ‘real events’ that generate widespread interest in various public and private arenas. Meanwhile, media coverage of sports personalities and celebrities is similarly extensive and founded on the commercial attraction of ‘real people’ whose public lives are subject to certain conditions and expectations. Discussion and debate will be applied to a range of different sports and celebrity figures. Sports media as cultural phenomena will be examined from historical, sociological, political and economic perspectives. Theories and ideas will extend beyond specific sports and mega-events like the Olympic Games to a consideration of related issues such as sports news production, sports rights, social media developments, fan cultures, branding, gender, ethnicity and identity.

Level: 6
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 2

Module overview: Outer space is knowable to the vast majority of humans only via media representations, an increasing number of which are now in circulation, including, for example: NASA’s famous Apollo photographs; digital images from deep space telescopes, satellites and Mars rovers; Google Mars; astronauts’ ‘selfies’ and live-stream broadcasts; speculative documentaries such as Netflix’s Alien Worlds (2020); proposed sci-fi films and Reality TV programmes produced in space. A new Space Age in the twenty first century has seen commercial interests led by billionaire space entrepreneurs, such as Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Branson, enter the outer space arena via space tourism, satellite internet and ‘commercial crew’ missions. These endeavours generate new privatised perspectives out on the universe and back on the ‘home planet’, Earth. This module explores the significances of diverse space media on discursive processes of ‘worlding’, or the generation of understandings of our world and new worlds out in the cosmos. Questions about who space is for and who is excluded from actual and imaginary space explorations will be key to developing a critical approach to space media. Additionally, although the impact of science and technology on people’s lives is profound and wide-ranging, it is extremely difficult for non-specialists to understand. The public communication of science and technology is a known priority for governments, universities and scientific bodies in the UK (UKRI, 2019), Europe and the wider world. Public engagement with complex scientific and technological developments is crucial to democratising knowledge and challenging the hegemony of big business and other powerful vested interests in determining humanity’s future. This module facilitates students to engage with the public communication of space to ensure that the potentials of space are available to everyone.

Level: 6
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 2

Module overview: This module explores socio-historical theories for understanding the progressive absence of work in an increasingly sophisticated technological society. While de-industrialisation marks the end of 300 years of industrialisation, a new capitalist cycle of what Schumpeter calls ‘creative destruction’ is underway. Beyond the disused mills and mines of what are now being termed ‘unplaces’, where workers once manufactured material things, new capitalist economies are emerging. Physical things like property and goods are being replaced by intangibles. Match.com, Uber and Airbnb have revolutionised relationships, personal transport systems and accommodation; they are weightless - they have no stock (Harris, 2019). In this module students examine, for example, the ways artificial intelligence and robots are replacing human personnel in automobile manufacture, banks and even social care. Tracing the shift to the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ (Schwab, 2020) the module examines its consequences. Schwab passionately predicts an optimistic future for social progress in the wake of emerging technologies. In the wake of this, the module explores a series of critical questions, such as, indicatively: how will society deal with joblessness and the social trauma of transformational change? Can workers re-invent themselves in an increasingly uncertain world? How will society ensure that its innovations are designed ethically and responsibly? And can technological change help to reduce inequalities while nurturing prosperity, well-being and health benefits?

Level: 6
Module credit points: 20
Pre-requisites: None
Module semester: Semester 2

Module overview: Music has always been at the leading edge of the development and launching of new media technologies, and this module will consider the impact of digital technologies on the making, marketing and distribution of musical works: for example, this will include, indicatively, reflection on the early days of ‘electronic’ music and its roots in the avant-garde, particularly (but not exclusively) as seen in Europe and Japan, then moving via the shift from analogue to digital modes of recording onto the rise of digital formats and streaming services. Our focus will fall on economic as well as aesthetic aspects of the making and distribution of music. The module will also scrutinise the effect that music has had on the development of the landscapes of the digital world from the advances in ‘fidelity’ demanded by digitally recorded sounds to the development of anti-piracy software which began in response to file-sharing and now has a much wider social application. In this way, the module will examine how music and digital technologies have together driven innovation and creativity in the development of the media technologies employed to capture, distribute and market music.