English

This course considers the profound changes which marked British literature from the Restoration to the beginning of the Romantic Age and contributed to the cultural shaping of the country. The first half of the century (the Augustan Age) saw a revival of classical standards in prose and verse, appealing to reason to edify, amuse, and criticize. With the reopening of theatres in 1660, new forms of drama also emerged, especially the “comedy of manners,” which reflected on the corrupt morals and hypocrisy rife in the upper-classes. Satire and parody thus became the main literary weapons during the Enlightenment period. The rise of the middle-class, the development of newspapers, the increase in literacy, together with the domination of Empiricism in philosophy and science and a new interest in feelings led to the invention of the novel. The latter not only appealed to wider audiences than previous literary genres but offered unprecedented insight into contemporary British society and history. Finally, in the second half of the century (the Age of Sensibility), public concerns yielded to more private ones and reason gradually lost ground to sensibility and imagination, thus paving the way to Romanticism.

This course focuses upon Supernatural literature and film from the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Students study novels by authors such as Ira Levin, Shirley Jackson, Jay Anson, Paul Tremblay, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and Koji Suzuki. Selected films from a variety of national contexts are also featured. Students are introduced to the work of key critics and theorists dealing with the supernatural as a literary and filmic form and are encouraged to consider the ways in which classic supernatural themes and tropes have been updated to reflect contemporary anxieties, social mores, and cultural preoccupations. Students reflect upon the ways in which supernatural literatures from a range of global cultures (the USA, Wales, Spain Japan and England) might differ in their approach to depicting the otherworldly and the uncanny. The ways in which past national and personal traumas (and sources of guilt) can be refracted through supernatural narratives is also considered, and issues pertaining to faith, identity, and modernity are discussed.

This course reassesses the multi-medial and genre-averse nature of the works of Samuel Beckett. The first part of the seminar focuses on modern interpretations of Beckett’s works in areas such as disability studies, queer studies, transhumanism, and feminism. The second part examines how Beckett challenges the boundaries and norms of the written word through various cross-generic mediums.

The course focuses on the new media technologies that have emerged and spread from the time of the Second World War and onwards. A clear emphasis is on digital media and network cultures, as well as the broad influence of television. Highlighted themes are the cultural understanding of technological development, convergence culture and intermedial relations. Different aspects of media and communication as moral panic, paper bureaucracy and tourism are also discussed. Finally, the arguments of some of the most influential late 20th century media theorists such as Raymond Williams and Marshall McLuhan are analyzed.

This course examines the history of British radicalism, with a focus on two moments: the late 19th century around the work of William Morris, and the post-war years, up to the 1980s. It explores the intellectual, artistic, and material production both of Morris and his circle and of alternative cultures in the post-war period. The course first examines the evolutions of radicalism in post-war Britain through the development of alternative cultures and “new social movements,” while exploring intellectual debates within the British left. It pays close attention to artistic expression and cultural practices within radical cultures. The themes covered include the intellectual debates of the New Left in the late 1950s and early 1960s; the cultural politics of the underground in the 1960s; the challenges of feminism; the emergence of participatory forms of political action around “community politics” and “community arts” practices; the influence of Black and Asian political and cultural organizations on a post-colonial critique of Britain’s imperial legacies; the cultural and class politics of Punk and the question of its position in the British history of radicalism. The second part of the course focuses on the work of William Morris. NEWS FROM NOWHERE (1890), “a Utopian romance” as well as a book supporting anarchist ideology, details the radical reconstruction of society. It serves as a base for the exploration of late-Victorian aesthetics and politics, and highlights the contemporary scope and significance of William Morris’s revolutionary cultural legacy.

This course reviews one of the most influential periods of English literature: the Renaissance. A wide range of literary texts, including poetry, drama and prose are studies. How the language and form of these texts were shaped by (international) religious, cultural, and political contexts are explored.

This course is an introduction to the rich history of medieval manuscripts with a particular emphasis on Irish codices. Themes include medieval manuscript culture and codex production; insular scripts and scribal techniques; Late Medieval and humanist scripts; the Corpus of Medieval Irish manuscripts; Modern Irish manuscript tradition; digital technology and manuscript research.

This course looks at the idea of "wildness" in children’s literature. The first half of the course examines landscape wilderness as it appears in a range of different children’s texts, from Ingalls Wilder’s canonical American text Little House in the Big Woods to Nicki Singer’s environmentally/themed Island. The second half of the course focuses on depictions of wildness associated with childhood, from Emily Hughes’ picture book Wild, to David Almond’s The Savage. Throughout the course students problematize the idea of wilderness, both in connection to the landscape and to the child. Students consider the long-standing connection between the child and nature, and how this might impact on the broader understanding of childhood. 

This course studies literary texts from the Victorian period alongside popular culture, images, and journalism. Students are exposed to key social issues of the era, including urbanization, class and gender division, and questions of Nation and colonialism.

To what extent does our study of Irish small presses and little magazines enable us to "take the pulse of a particular period," as Frank Shovlin puts it? How much credence should we give to the claim, leveraged by Robert Kiely, that Irish "small-press publishers provide some inkling of the real dissent" within cultural discourse? In this course, students engage with the full operational remits of a diverse range of presses and publications blending archival research with close textual analysis in search of answers to these kinds of questions. Given this mixed methodological approach, the course focus alternates from week to week: between book-historical sessions on individual presses and publications operating across various periods since 1950, and sessions centered on close reading the literary products of this small-press labor against the many social, political, and economic issues to which they respond in each case. Students look at an array of archival documents, manifestos, written editorials, paratextual materials, and other ephemera pertaining to each of the presses and publications under scrutiny, in order to understand their diverse material and aesthetic circumstances.