Literature, Culture and Society
MA PGDip PGCert

Modules

• Representations and Contexts: An Introduction Core

Representations and Contexts: An Introduction (Core)

This module establishes the methodological framework that will underpin your approach to studying literature / artistic representation across the course of the programme – namely, New Historicism - by offering an introductory exploration of the symbiotic relationship between text and cultural context.

The module will be organised chronologically: while we’ll begin by looking at the impact of key political moments such as the Jacobite Rebellion on Horace Walpole’s architectural design of Strawberry Hill House, and the depictions of Catholicism that we find in his writing, we’ll conclude by considering the role played by contemporary events including COVID-19 and BLM on shaping literary and artistic representation.

The assessment options for this module will grant you the opportunity, if you wish, to produce a creative narrative informed by an important cultural period through which you’ve lived (ie, Brexit, Donald Trump’s presidency, etc), accompanied by a commentary justifying the ways in which your lived experience has impacted the mode of representation used in your writing.

Therefore, this module gives you the opportunity not only to analyse the ways in which other writers have interacted with changing social and cultural climates, but also to put theory into practice by allowing your own social experiences to shape your creative expression. 

• Restaging History: Adapting and Reacting Core

Restaging History: Adapting and Reacting (Core)

This module will have you thinking about the impetus behind staging certain historical narratives at certain historical moments by highlighting the potential for past narratives to acquire new theatrical meanings (intended or adventitious) when reinterpreted in given cultural contexts.

It will also trace evolutions in acting styles and traditions from the eighteenth century to the present day and unpack the ways in such developments reflect cultural, social and national innovations.

The module will focalise renowned historical actors with local ties to Strawberry Hill (including David Garrick, Peg Woffington, Kitty Clive, and Dorothy Jordan), and will explore the emergence of the private theatrical: a form of dramatic entertainment for which Strawberry Hill House became renowned throughout the early nineteenth century.

You will have the opportunity to engage with archives and artefacts located at local heritage sites, including:

• Garrick’s Villa
• Twickenham Museum
• Bushy House
• Richmond’s Local Studies Archive
• Strawberry Hill House

You will also have to collaborate with SHH on a creative assignment centring on the genre of private theatricals and/or the potential for theatrical renditions of history to be adapted and interpreted in line with cultural assumptions and understandings underpinning the culture into which they are re-introduced.

• Global Literature and Rebellion: Contesting the Western Canon Core

Global Literature and Rebellion: Contesting the Western Canon (Core)

At the heart of this module are the fundamental questions:

• What makes literature literary?
• Who decides what defines a work of literature as a ‘classic’ or canonical text?
• What does the Western canon tell us about political and cultural attitudes to concepts such as race, gender, ethnicity and religion?
• Is it really the case - as the average English literature curriculum might imply - that across history all the best authors have been white, middle-class men, or does the omission of minority groups from mainstream syllabi tell us less about who was writing valuable literature in the past, and more about the political prejudices that continue to shape the present?

This module will introduce you to feminist and postcolonial challenges to the notion of a canon. By focalising an international cohort of critically-neglected authors, including Ngũgĩ wa Thiong​'o, Bessie Head, Clarice Lispector, Allen Ginsberg, and Marjane Satrapi, and encompassing a diverse range of genres and representational forms, spanning avant-garde poetry, novellas, comic strips, and curatorial exhibitions, it will allow you to scrutinise the ways in which such challenges might be applied not only to literary representations, but to visual, media, and curatorial representations concurrently.

• Making the Past: Narrative, Representation, Interpretation Core Option 1

Making the Past: Narrative, Representation, Interpretation (Core Option 1)

In this module you'll think critically about how the kinds of historical narratives produced and consumed within society can exercise power, by legitimating or delegitimating particular world views or political projects, and by affording some histories representative space while others are excluded.

The module will open with an evaluation of the kinds of texts produced by professional historians, considering in particular the influence of national and Eurocentric nature of some historical frameworks.

Then you'll learn about historical narratives as they emerge from film, fiction, museums, art, video games and other entertainment forms.

The aim of this module is to allow you to think about the different ways in which historical knowledge is produced and consumed. Specifically, we suggest you consider:

• How narrative forms structure the presentation of historical knowledge
• The connections and differences between fictional and non-fictional historical forms
• The role and practice of storytelling in public historical contexts
• How and why some histories feature prominently in the historical record, while others are silenced
• The ways in which the re-telling of some historical narratives, or their silencing, can have political implications.
• Heritage Spaces: Makings and Meanings Core Option 1

Heritage Spaces: Makings and Meanings (Core Option 1)

This module examines the relationships between the heritage sector and issues such as identity, nostalgia, social inclusion and the normalisation of cultural values.

Drawing on links with professional expertise in the field, the module looks closely at techniques for staging, curating, designing and story telling about the past.

You will be asked to consider what ‘authenticity’ means in the context of heritage sites and what type of ‘experience’ of the past are provided at such sites for audiences.

The module has a strong vocational focus, giving you the opportunity to engage with - and test - models of the presentation of historical knowledge through theoretical and practical consideration of a number of prominent heritage sites and spaces of various kinds, some in the West London area near St Mary’s.

These sites include:

• Strawberry Hill House
• Ham House
• Orléans House
• Hampton Court Palace
• Marble Hill House
• Richmond town centre
• Ham House

You will observe and critique their current presentation to the public, engaging with issues such as the constructed narrative of the building/site; its ‘preferred’ meanings and significance, how particular spaces within it are presented in light of that narrative and to consider alternative constructions of the past which might be offered through its physical remains.

You will also attend a taught session at The National Archives as a research resource for aspects of 'local' history, with support training in various record series.

• Dissertation Core Option 2

Dissertation (Core Option 2)

You will produce a 15,000 word essay on a topic of your choice (to be decided in collaboration with your supervisor).

• Creative Portfolio Core Option 2

Creative Portfolio (Core Option 2)

You will conduct a work-based creative project in collaboration with Strawberry Hill House.