English

In this course, students explore what reading literature at university level entails. Students are invited to explore different models of authorship, readership, and textuality, in order to reflect on how meaning is produced in the genres of poetry and drama. For example, how do we identify meter and rhythm? What do terms like 'caesura' and 'parallelis' mean, and what are they used for? In drama there is a big difference between reading a play on the page and seeing it performed on a stage - how do we get from one to the other? This course explores the key terms and concepts needed to address such questions and enable students to read previously unseen texts confidently at a first reading.

The course introduces the fundamental principles of English phonetics and phonology, focusing on the production, classification, and analysis of speech sounds. Students study the physiological mechanisms of speech production and the articulatory and acoustic properties of English vowels and consonants. The relationship between phonetic realization and phonological structure is examined, including phonemes, allophones, and key phonological processes such as assimilation and contextual variation.

The course also addresses the differences between English and other languages (particularly Catalan and Spanish), with attention to common pronunciation difficulties arising from learners’ linguistic backgrounds. Students develop skills in phonetic transcription using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), improve their perceptual and productive pronunciation abilities, and learn to interpret and produce phonological representations of spoken and written English.The course is divided into the following teaching blocks: introduction to phonetics and phonology; physiology of speech production; classification of speech sounds, articulation and acoustic properties; the English phonological system; phonetic transcription; sounds in the speech chain, assimilation and weak form.

The South is a region that has always been obsessed with boundaries, whether territorial (the Mason-Dixon line), or those related to gender, social class, sexual orientation, and particularly race. In this course, students examine the ways in which the grotesques, monsters, freaks, and doppelgangers that populate the Southern Gothic are directly linked to the region's past, particularly to its difficulties in coming to terms with its history of slavery and with interracial sexuality. Authors to be studied include Edgar Allan Poe, George Washington Cable, Charles Chesnutt, William Faulkner, Carson McCullers, Flannery O’Connor, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, and Natasha Trethewey. 

The course provides an overview of working in the United Kingdom and examines the changing organizational structures of work in Britain. It examines the social and economic changes that affect the workplace in the UK. Topics covered include the sociology of work; trade unions; oppression at work; generational changes at work. 

This course investigates a period defined not by unity, but by rupture. We navigate the massive divide between Old English (Anglo-Saxon) and Middle English. When you look at Beowulf, you might ask, 'Is this actually English?' It is a valid question. 

What is 'Medieval English Literature'? The genre name suggests a unified culture and a recognizable language, but the reality is far more complex—and far more interesting. 

The linguistic and cultural distance is so vast that it forces us to rethink the origins of the English literary tradition.  

We also tackle the puzzle of 'Englishness' itself. If our language comes from Germanic tribes, and our greatest legendary king (Arthur) is Welsh, and our romance heroes are French, what does it actually mean to be 'English' in the Middle Ages? 

We explore these contradictions through questions like: 

- Why do Vikings appear as the heroes of 'English' poems? 

- Why is the dialect of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight nearly unintelligible compared to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, written at the same time? 

- Was the medieval era truly the 'Dark Ages,' or is that just Renaissance propaganda? 

No prior knowledge of Old or Middle English is required. Students will read texts in the modern English translation but will also experiment with reading the original languages. 

Postcolonialism first emerged as a discipline in the United States in the 1980s, but it has its roots in the work of anticolonial writers from the first half of the twentieth century. Postcolonial theory looks at the interaction between European nations and the societies they colonized and, in doing so, raises questions about concepts such as power, race, language and identity. Literature plays a key role in the anti-colonial struggle as it can offer an alternative vision to the official history of colonization. This course introduces students to some of the key concepts in postcolonial theory through the study of two novels, THE SECRET RIVER (2005) by the white Australian author Kate Grenville and THE WHALE RIDER (1987) by the Maori writer Witi Ihimaera.