University of London, Queen Mary

This course introduces students to poetry in English. Working across a wide range of examples, from the ancient through the contemporary, it introduces poetic genres, techniques, and key theoretical debates in the history of poetry. It helps students to make sense of how poetry works, why poets make the choices they do, and how poetic experiences emerge from the conjunction of sound, rhythm, form, the body, lyric subjects, performance, readers and listeners.

British cinema is often celebrated for its social realism, yet has made significant and influential contributions to the worlds of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. From the Gothic tradition of Dracula to nightmarish visions of London in 28 DAYS LATER and the spectacular popular fantasies of DOCTOR WHO and HARRY POTTER, this course investigates this alternative history or "repressed underside" of British cinema and the ways in which these films have responded to their social and cultural production contexts. This course includes field trips to sites of importance in London, such as Highgate Cemetery.  

This course examines trends in the depiction of European cities in literature and film from the 1980s to the present. It explores the relationship between aesthetic representations and social-cultural contexts, paying attention to traditions of literary and cinematic urbanism while also engaging with contemporary questions concerning urban identity and culture. The course provides students with the opportunity to pursue a substantial research project of their choosing, focusing either on one author's representation of more than one city, or on one city's representation by more than one author (/film-maker etc).

This course examines how Shakespeare has been adapted and appropriated in a variety of performance contexts. Students address and debate issues such as cultural and textual authority, authorship, gender, sexuality, national identity, ethnicity, adaptation, and appropriation. Possible topics, contexts and texts through which these issues are addressed may include, but are not limited to authorship; decolonization, postcolonial and settler cultures; queering Shakespeare; feminist performance; heritage and tourism; festivals; translation; popular culture; education.