English

This course provides a study of Anglo-American modernist fiction including the best-known works and authors as well as their most salient features. 

The courses covers imperatives of African rural development; development and underdevelopment theory and comparative perspectives; globalization and the political economy of rural poverty; rural poverty indicators; the roles of the state in rural development; social infrastructure and rural development; women, children, and rural poverty alleviation; the land question and rural development; NGOs and local initiatives in the rural sector; environmental issues in rural development; and a critique of selected rural development projects.

This seminar explores issues of medieval embodiment. On the one hand, students are looking at the role of the lived body as it is depicted in literature – the body that eats and sleeps, loves and desires, suffers and dies; on the other hand, they are examining the significance of divine physicality that becomes manifest in Christ’s incarnated and resurrected body. Students pay close attention to the imbrications between sacred and secular notions of the body, and they also challenge the idea of the Middle Ages as "dualistic," by questioning predominant dichotomies between body and soul, immanence and transcendence, masculinity and femininity. By drawing on written representations of the body by authors such as Geoffrey Chaucer, Margery Kempe, John Gower, and William Langland, as well as on some of the seminal studies on medieval embodiment, students explore the medieval body as a site of multiple and competing discourses.

This course considers the interactive relationship between English literature and popular culture that has developed in a wide range of forms and media such as films, TV shows, performances, graphic novels, music, video games, and the Internet. By reading selected texts from English literature and examining relevant popular culture examples, it investigates the process by which literature and popular culture mutually influence each other.

Albert B Lord's theory on oral poetry from THE SINGER OF TALES forms a basis for the course. Research that has appeared since the writing of that book is discussed and an attempt made to evaluate the influence that the theory has had on research of medieval literature that is partly based on oral tradition. In the latter half of the course the focus is on the Eddic Poems.

This course covers the entire Anglophone world from Canada to Trinidad and from Ireland to Australia. It focuses on three key ideas: nation, migration and globalization in post-colonial works of literature from countries that were former colonies of the British Empire. Although there are differing postcolonial literatures and histories in various parts of the world, these three categories embrace some common themes and questions that have developed in many countries following the formal end of colonial rule. These postcolonial issues include questions of race, gender, historical memory, globalization and resistance, to name a few. The selected texts - from Africa, Ireland, Asia and the Pakistani diaspora in the UK - give specific social, cultural, and historical contexts for examining these issues. In addition, these dramas and stories allow for a better understanding of some of the artistic innovations of postcolonial literary forms.

This course examines creative writing practices across a range of different literary forms. Students will be guided through the process of generating ideas, drafting, workshopping, editing and revision to produce a portfolio of creative writing.