Students undertaking English and Politics at Queen’s explore literatures in English in the widest possible sense. From the earliest writings in Anglo-Saxon to contemporary Irish, British, and ‘global’ literatures, students study English in its historical, cultural and ideological circumstances and material manifestations. In Politics, our students assess the sources of conflict, co-operation, power and decision-making within and between societies, how differences are expressed through ideology and organisation, and how, if at all, disagreements and problems are resolved.
English at Queen's has an extraordinary literary heritage, as represented by globally esteemed writers, e.g. Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, who gives his name to the Seamus Heaney Centre, and T.S. Eliot Prize recipients Paul Muldoon & Ciaran Carson.
English and Politics highlights
Professional Accreditations
The study of politics is not directed towards any one professional pathway, but rather provides the generic skills for success in a number of professional fields including the civil service, media, the charity sector, education, etc.
Global Opportunities
English at Queen’s offers a range of Study Abroad opportunities, from the Erasmus programme with a range of European partners, to the chance to study at a number of partner institutions in the United States. Politics also has links with Queen’s University’s Global Research Centre, The Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice. Many of the staff in Politics are Fellows in the Mitchell Institute, where they work in collaboration with experts in peace and conflict studies from other disciplines such as law, sociology, and the creative arts. http://www.qub.ac.uk/Research/GRI/mitchell-institute/
Industry Links
We regularly consult and develop links with a large number of employers including, for example, BBC Northern Ireland as part of our work-based learning initiatives.
World Class Facilities
Research-led Teaching: cutting-edge research drives our externally commended teaching, most recently evidenced in the latest student satisfaction survey.
Internationally Renowned Experts
Professor Mark Burnett is a leading scholar of Shakespearean adaptations and their global contexts and his most recent monograph is ‘Hamlet’ and World Cinema, published by Cambridge University Press in 2019. He is the founder and director of the Sir Kenneth Branagh Archive.
Dr Jane Lugea is an expert in the areas of language and stylistics. Her AHRC-funded research project on dementia explored how dementia is represented in the minds of fictional characters, and how these literary representations effect real readers.
Professor Philip McGowan is President of the European Association for American Studies (2016-2020) and sits on the Executive Board of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society.
Dr Edel Lamb is an expert on childhood and early modern literature and she is currently completing the first book-length study of writing by girls in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Dr Gail McConnell is an internationally renowned critic of poetry and an award-winning poet whose first collection, The Sun is Open, published by Penned in the Margins (2021) was the winner of the John Pollard Foundation international poetry prize and the Christopher Ewart-Biggs memorial prize (2022).
Dr Alex Murray is an expert in Victorian and modernist literature. He is editor of the international journal, Cusp: Late 19th-/Early 20th-Century Cultures, and his most recent monograph, Decadent Conservatism: Aesthetics, Politics, and the Past, was published by Oxford University Press in 2023.
Professor Glenn Patterson is the Rooney Prize and Betty Trask Prize-winning author of ten novels. He is the Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre and writes regularly for BBC Radio Three and Four, The Guardian. His co-authored screenplay for Good Vibrations was nominated for a BAFTA for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer.
Prof. David Phinnemore is an expert on EU Treaty reform and EU enlargement, which led to his secondment as an advisor to the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Student Experience
From Personal Tutors to peer mentoring, we work closely with students to ensure they are supported at every stage of their degree.
A thriving cultural scene organised by our undergraduate and postgraduate communities, from the English Society and Poetry and Pints to the Lifeboat and the Yellow Nib, makes studying English at Queen’s a unique proposition. https://www.facebook.com/QubEnglishSociety
Students can work with our visiting Fulbright Scholars, leading US academics who spend a semester at Queen’s each year.
Further Study Opportunities
Further study is also an option open to English graduates. Students can choose from a wide range of Master’s programmes, including:
• MA in English Literary Studies
• MA in Poetry: Creativity and Criticism
• MA in Creative Writing
• MSc in Software Development (conversion course)
• MLaw – Master’s in Law (conversion course)
• PGCE in Education
• MRes in Arts and Humanities (English) – research-led
Internationally Renowned Experts
Professor Nick Laird is a recipient of the Betty Trask and Eric Gregory Awards, whose most recent collection is Up Late (Faber, 2023). The central sequence from Up Late won the Forward prize for the best single poem. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books.
Student Testimonials
“I chose Queen’s because the wide choice of modules essentially allows me to build my own degree. I enjoy the way we are taught through lectures and tutorials where we are given an overview of a topic, able to research more for ourselves, and then debate with our peers in tutorial sessions. The School is very open to the input
of students and I enjoy the level of student engagement through societies and student-staff consultative committees.”
Jessica Simonds, Colwyn Bay, Wales, BA Politics (2015), MA Violence, Terrorism and Security Graduate (2016)
In their first year students undertake 3 modules in each subject, which introduce key concepts in English and Politics. They will also develop critical and writing skills necessary in order to make the transition to study at university level.
Stage 2
In year 2, students take three English and three Politics modules, building on the skills gained in stage 1 to develop and broaden their interests in English and Politics.
Stage 3
In their third year, students can select from a wide range of modules which are rooted in staff research expertise, including the Politics Internship double module. They may also opt to undertake a dissertation (in English OR Politics). Students can also elect to take a work based learning module.
9 (hours maximum) 5 at Stage One, at Stage Two and Three, English students have 3hrs contact time per module per week
Medium Group Teaching
6 (hours maximum) 5 at Stage One, at Stage Two and Three, English students have 3hrs contact time per module per week
Personal Study
15 (hours maximum) hrs minimum
Small Group Teaching/Personal Tutorial
0 (hours maximum) Varies
Learning and Teaching
At Queen’s, students work in an ambitious learning environment that embeds intellectual curiosity, innovation and best practice in learning, teaching and student support to enable students to achieve their full academic potential.
On the English and Politics degree we do this by providing a range of learning experiences which enable our students to engage with subject experts, develop attributes and perspectives that will equip them for life and work in a global society and make use of innovative technologies and a world class library that enhances their development as independent, lifelong learners. Examples of the opportunities provided for learning on this course are:
E-Learning
Information associated with lectures and assignments is often communicated via a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) called Canvas. A range of e-learning experiences are also embedded in the degree through, for example: interactive group workshops in a flexible learning space; IT and statistics modules; podcasts and interactive web-based learning activities; opportunities to use IT programmes associated with design in practicals and project- based work etc.
Lectures
Introduce basic information about new topics as a starting point for further self-directed private study/reading. Lectures also provide opportunities to ask questions, gain some feedback and advice on assessments (normally delivered in large groups to all year group peers).
Personal Tutor
Undergraduates are allocated a Personal Tutor during Level 1 and 2 who meets with them on several occasions during the year to support their academic development.
Self-directed study
This is an essential part of life as a Queen’s student when important private reading, engagement with e-learning resources, reflection on feedback to date and assignment research and preparation work is carried out.
Seminars/tutorials
Significant amounts of teaching are carried out in small groups (typically 10-20 students). These provide an opportunity for students to engage with academic staff who have specialist knowledge of the topic, to ask questions of them and to assess their own progress and understanding with the support of peers. You should also expect to make presentations and other contributions to these groups.
Supervised projects
In final year, you may choose a year-long double-weighted Dissertation module which requires you to carry out a significant piece of research on a topic that you have chosen. You will receive support from a supervisor who will guide you in terms of how to carry out your research and will provide feedback to you on at least 2 occasions during the write up stage.
Assessment
Details of assessments associated with this course are outlined below:
Assessments are designed to evidence your engagement with the learning objectives of each module, which will be advertised in advance of module selection. Modules are assessed variously through project work, individual and/ or group presentations, as well as more traditional written essays and assignments. Details of how each module is assessed are shown in the Student Handbook which is provided to all students during their first year induction.
Feedback
As students progress through their degree at Queen’s they will receive general and specific feedback about their work from a variety of sources including lecturers, module co-ordinators, placement supervisors, personal tutors, advisers of study and peers. University students are expected to engage with reflective practice and to use this approach to improve the quality of their work. Feedback may be provided in a variety of forms including:
Feedback provided via formal written comments and marks relating to work that you, as an individual or as part of a group, have submitted.
Face to face comment. This may include occasions when you make use of the lecturers’ advertised “Feedback and Guidance hours” to help you to address a specific query.
Placement employer comments or references
Online or emailed comment
General comments or question and answer opportunities at the end of a lecture, seminar or tutorial.
Pre-submission advice regarding the standards you should aim for and common pitfalls to avoid. In some instances, this may be provided in the form of model answers or exemplars which you can review in your own time.
Feedback and outcomes from practical classes
Comment and guidance provided by staff from specialist support services such as, Careers, Employability and Skills or the Learning Development Service.
Once you have reviewed your feedback, you will be encouraged to identify and implement further improvements to the quality of your work.
The information below is intended as an example only, featuring module details for the current year of study (2024/25). Modules are reviewed on an annual basis and may be subject to future changes – revised details will be published through Programme Specifications ahead of each academic year.
Issues in Contemporary Fiction: Gender, Race, Ecology
Overview
This module examines a broad sample of recent fiction. In doing so, it raises a set of related questions: 1) whose contemporary experience does this literature address? 2) what economic or political factors lead to a shared sense of the contemporary? 3) how does modern fiction relate to these broader social forces?
The module has a three-part structure. Part 1 examines the ways in which contemporary fiction responds to and in turn shapes debates about gender and gender difference. Section 2 analyses literary treatments of race and the aftermaths of colonialism. The final section of the module explores the ways in which recent fiction speculates on our collective future especially in the context of climate change and the threat of ecological catastrophe and asks what if anything can be done in the face of this threat.
Learning Outcomes
At the end of this module students will have gained a general understanding of the theoretical and methodological issues that surround the study of contemporary literature. Students will have learned to subject a range of recent fiction to a technical or formal analysis. They will also be able to read texts in context and will have a basic understanding of the social, economic, and political forces that shape these contexts.
Skills
Students will learn to develop a) analytical skills b) methods of textual analysis c) an understanding of meta-critical issues d) a clear and succinct writing style e) oral presentation skills f) a capacity for independent inquiry g) an ability to collaborate and work in groups h) computer skills.
The module provides a wide-ranging introduction to political developments in contemporary Europe. Following analysis of the nature and consequences for Europe of the Cold War, the module analyses some of the major political, economic and security challenges Europe has had to face since 1989 including the processes of economic and political transformation in Central and Eastern Europe as well as war in the former Yugoslavia and Ukraine. Featuring prominently in the module are developments in the process of European integration with a primary focus on the EU, how it is organized and operates, what powers it has, the attitudes of selected states in contemporary Europe towards membership, and the effects of integration on them. In doing so, the module considers the origins and implications of the Eurozone crisis for European integration as well as public attitudes towards the process.
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this module, students will
1. Understand the historical background to contemporary Europe;
2. Analyse critically selected major political developments and trends in Europe since the end of the Cold War;
3. Appreciate key concepts and understandings associated with the political organization of Europe;
4. Appreciate key concepts and understandings associated with the European Union as a political entity;
5. Analyse how the major European states have engaged with the European Union since 1957;
6. Understand public reactions to European integration.
7. Appreciate selected major political and security challenges facing contemporary
Skills
The module will develop students' analytical, research and communication skills; allow students to refine their essay-writing skills; and enhance their abilities to think critically.
This module offers a broad introduction to key topics in English language. It lays the foundations for the systematic study of the language in all its diversity. Among the topics covered are: common beliefs about “good” and “bad” accents and dialects; phonetics, syntax and morphology; and the social, situational and geographical variation in language, with an emphasis on the history and development of the English language. Another important area of inquiry is how language works in cultural contexts and intersects with issues of power and gender. In summary, the module enables students to move beyond ‘common-sense’ ideas about language towards the academic and analytic perspective appropriate for university level.
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this module, students will have become aware of the levels of structure which make up the spoken and written varieties of a language, the communicative functions of these levels, and of the relevant descriptive and analytical frameworks to analyse and describe them, with regard both to present-day English and to stages in its historical development. Students will also have gained the skills for the confident oral delivery of some of the issues and topics addressed on the Course.
Skills
While Units One and Two focus on theoretical and analytical concepts and frameworks, Units Three and Four provide case studies from ‘real-world’ contexts such as the media and the historical development of the English language, to which students will apply the skills they have gained in Units One and Two. The module incorporates online assessment for Units One and Two, which will account for 30% of the mark and will take the form of online exercises, to be completed by students in weeks 3-6. Units Three and Four will be assessed at the end of the semester as essay assignments, worth 70% in total. Students will write two essays of 1400-1700 words each: one essay will address the issues covered in Unit Three (35%), and the other essay will address the issues covered in Unit Four (35%).
This module is envisaged as introducing students to literary interpretation as conceived by English studies at university level. It aims to provide students with critical skills and technical vocabulary necessary to study poetry and prose for the rest of their degree. The module focuses on a small selection of texts designed to help students make the transition from the critical strategies used at A-level to those of academic English. In turn, the two sections of the module include contributions from the Heaney Centre and creative writing colleagues and the mode of assessment will allow for reflective development of writing skills through resubmission of formative writing for summative assessment.
Learning Outcomes
At the end of this module students will have learned to read and analyze poetry and prose using the techniques, vocabularies and approaches of contemporary academic English studies. They will have made the transition from reading and writing at A-level, having learned the research skills and critical terminologies necessary for the close, contextual reading of prose and poetry and writing about both genres in a suitably academic register. They will be equipped to undertake advanced study of literary works in semester two modules.
Skills
Students will learn to develop: critical and analytical skills; methods of textual analysis appropriate to the genres of poetry and prose; writing and research skills appropriate to degree-level English; oral presentation skills; independent study skills; and an ability to collaborate and work in groups; the ability to read and prepare for weekly lectures and tutorials.
This module aims to introduce students to the broad field of political theory and philosophy, a necessary and integral component of the study of politics generally. Taking a contemporary approach to the subject, the module stresses the vital importance of theoretical enquiry for understanding, analysing, and criticizing everyday socio-political life. Students are therefore introduced to key concepts and problems in the study of politics, including the meaning of democracy, the fraught relation between the individual and society, and the contested nature of power and political authority. In exploring these themes, students come to an appreciation of the complexities surrounding our everyday notions of democratic rule, freedom, justice, citizenship, government, and power.
Learning Outcomes
Students should acquire an understanding of a number of ways of conceptualising and analysing critically key aspects of political life. On successful completion of the module they will have demonstrated capacities for reading texts in contemporary political theory and exploring the implication of these writings for practical politics.
Skills
Analytical and conceptual skills. The ability to argue cogently in oral and written communication.
What is to be done? Sustainability, climate change and just energy transitions in the Anthropocene
Overview
The module will comprise three distinct sections:
1. Section one will introduce students to the module and set the context for a study of environment and sustainability in the context of the Anthropocene;
2. Section two will focus on key issues such as society’s dependency on fossil fuels and associated socio-ecological conflicts; and
3. The third section will concentrate on pathways towards sustainability, using complex systems thinking to help integrate students’ appreciation of the contributions of diverse disciplines. In doing so, this module will introduce students to some of the most significant problems facing our world and offer alternative individual and institutional pathways to a more sustainable future.
Breakdown of lecture/tutorial topics
Section One
Society-environment interactions
Risk society
Welcome to the Anthropocene
Is climate change a ‘wicked’ problem?
Climate change mitigation & adaptation
The politics of our personal/ political responses to the Anthropocene
Section Two
Carbon captured? Carbon lock in & our dependency on fossil fuels
Extractive industries
Sustainability politics and policies
Social conflicts and the environment
The organisation of ‘sustainable degradation’
The mythic lure of techno-optimism
The impact of neoliberalism or transnational global environmental negotiations and law making
The political economy of lobbying and capture
Section Three
Just Energy transitions x 2
Renewable energies, people and place
Rethinking Economics and Rethinking prosperity x 2
Post-growth rethinking beyond GDP/GNP, critical approaches to wellbeing
Creativity, envisioning and Developing sustainable communities and societies
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the module, students will be able to:
-Understand key concepts such as the ‘Anthropocene’, socio-technical transitions, just transition, environmental and climate justice, energy democracy;
-Articulate key socio-ecological issues such as enclosure of common natural resources, carbon lock-in, sustainability policy formation;
-Analyse society-environment interactions in the context of unequal resource distribution and inequality in both a global and national context;
-Offer a cultural political economy analysis of anthropogenic climate change and just energy transitions;
-Critically evaluate the concept of sustainability/sustainable development;
-Confidently integrate a variety of disciplinary perspectives and bodies of knowledge within the arts, humanities and social sciences and between the latter and natural science and technological studies;
-Formulate their own conceptualisation of desirable and realisable low and post-carbon energy futures;
-Utilise learning technologies to deepen their learning process.
Skills
Ability to work with other people;
Ability to work across and integrate different disciplinary perspectives on the same issue;
Managing & Prioritizing Knowledge: identify relevant and subject-specific knowledge, sources and data; manage such information in an independent manner
Analytical Thinking: identify, understand, interpret and evaluate relevant subject-specific arguments made by others; construct independent arguments *
Critical & Independent Thinking: ability to think critically and in creative and innovative ways and construct one’s own position in relation to existing and ongoing debates in the fields of study
Communication Skills: ability to communicate clearly with others, both orally and in writing Teamwork: ability to work with others in a team, negotiate conflicts and recognize different ways of learning
Diversity: ability to acknowledge and be sensitive to the range of cultural differences present in the learning environment
Self-Reflexivity: ability to reflect on one’s own progress and identify and act upon ones own development needs with respect to life-long learning and career development
Time Management: ability to negotiate diverse and competing pressures; cope with stress; and achieve a work / life balance Technical and practical skills
Information Technology: demonstrate the knowledge and ability to use contemporary and relevant ICT Organizational skills
Efficient and effective work practice: demonstrate ability to work efficiently to deadlines
Clear organisation of information: show efficiency in the organisation of large amounts of complex information and the ability to identify, describe and analyse the key features of the information.
Organisation and communication: demonstrate ability to use evidence to develop logical and clear arguments; show aptitude for the effective use of information in a direct and appropriate way
Enterprising thinking: Demonstrate ability to think and argue in novel and enterprising ways, to display originality of
The module examines the development of the international system and raises questions about how and whether this system is changing in light of processes of globalisation. International relations theories which relate to state and territory, sovereignty and order will be introduced, as well as issues of war and conflict in its broader sense. World Politics also offers an introduction into specific global regions: Europe, Americas, Asia, and Africa
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this module, students will:
Critically follow world affairs and appreciate the historical background to contemporary developments
Demonstrate an awareness of the major currents in world affairs and foreign policy analysis
Pursue intellectual questions in a rigorous and academic manner, employing analytical skills and critical thinking
Develop intellectual skills including managing and prioritising knowledge on world affairs as well as organisational skills including demonstrating the ability to use evidence to develop logical and clear arguments
Skills
This module will assist in developing students’ skills in a number of important areas. These include:
Intellectual skills
Managing & Prioritizing Knowledge: identify relevant and subject-specific knowledge, sources and data; manage such information in an independent manner
Critical & Independent Thinking: ability to think critically and construct one’s own position in relation to existing and ongoing debates in the field
Professional and career development skills
Communication Skills: ability to communicate clearly with others, both orally and in writing
Diversity: ability to acknowledge and be sensitive to the range of cultural differences present in the learning environment
Self-Reflexivity: ability to reflect on one’s own progress and identify and act upon one’s own development needs with respect to life-long learning and career development
Time Management: ability to negotiate diverse and competing pressures; cope with stress; and achieve a work / life balance
Technical and practical skills
Information Technology: demonstrate the knowledge and ability to use contemporary and relevant ICT
Organizational skills
Efficient and effective work practice: demonstrate ability to work efficiently to deadlines
Clear organisation of information: show efficiency in the organisation of large amounts of complex information and the ability to identify, describe and analyse the key features of the information
Organisation and communication: demonstrate ability to use evidence to develop logical and clear argument; show aptitude for the effective use of information in a direct and appropriate way
This course aims to delve into essential themes within the field of Comparative Politics, providing students with the tools to comprehend fundamental structures, institutions, and processes that underpin contemporary political systems. Through the application of the comparative method, students will gain insight into the dynamics of real-world politics. The initial lectures will establish a theoretical foundation for the comparative method, emphasising its utility as a means of understanding diverse political landscapes. Subsequent lectures will employ this method to examine various themes, including regime types (democratic versus authoritarian), systems of governance (global versus local), institutions, political organisations and outputs of public policy. Notably, the course adopts a broad approach by not confining itself to specific geographic regions; instead, it explores a diverse range of cases to underscore the usefulness and applicability of the comparative method across different contexts.
Learning Outcomes
On successfully completing the module students will be able to:
- Understand the field of comparative politics and be familiar with the comparative method.
- Identify key debates in the field of comparative politics and extrapolate key questions of theoretical and societal relevance.
- Demonstrate a basic understanding of differences between political institutions, key processes and the outcomes they produce.
- Demonstrate a basic understanding of the key actors active in political systems and the dynamics of power underpinning their relationships.
- Understand the main methodological approaches used in the field of comparative politics as well as the major data sources.
- Independently apply basic concepts of comparative politics to cases beyond the ones reviewed in class.
Skills
Intellectual skills:
- Managing & Prioritising Knowledge: identify relevant and subject-specific knowledge, sources and data; manage such information in an independent manner.
- Analytical Thinking: identify, understand, interpret and evaluate relevant subject-specific arguments made by others; construct independent arguments.
- Critical & Independent Thinking: ability to think critically and construct one’s own position in relation to existing and ongoing debates in the field.
Professional and career development skills:
- Communication Skills: ability to communicate clearly with others, both orally and in writing.
- Diversity: ability to acknowledge and be sensitive to the range of cultural differences present in the learning environment.
- Self-Reflexivity: ability to reflect on one’s own progress and identify and act upon one’s own development needs with respect to life-long learning and career development.
- Time Management: ability to negotiate diverse and competing pressures; cope with stress; and achieve a work / life balance.
Organisational skills:
- Efficient and effective work practice: demonstrate ability to work efficiently to deadlines.
- Clear organisation of information: show efficiency in the organisation of large amounts of complex information and the ability to identify, describe and analyse the key features of the information.
- Organisation and communication: demonstrate ability to use evidence to develop logical and clear arguments; show aptitude for the effective use of information in a direct and appropriate way.
- Enterprising thinking: Demonstrate ability to think and argue in novel and enterprising ways, to display originality of thought and argument and the ability to clearly support arguments in innovative ways.
Without understanding the methodology of research practice it is not possible to undertake political research effectively or to critically assess the work of others. Equally, without research skills it is not possible to test our assertions, assumptions, knowledge and preconceptions about the political world. Research methods are therefore crucial if we are to be able to address the important questions of ‘how do we know’ and ‘what is there to know’, which are critical in all fields of political studies. Consequently, this module has four aims. Firstly, to introduce students to the political research environment, incorporating both the elements and processes that underpin inquiry. Secondly, the module seeks to examine different methodologies and techniques to enable the undertaking of both original and critical research. Thirdly, to encourage candidates to develop a critical appreciation of data including both content and use. Fourthly, to promote a general awareness and working knowledge not only of the complexities of political research but also of the variety of environments in which research takes place.
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this module, students will be able to:
• Describe the relationship between the researchers of, the actors in and the environment determining political and social processes.
• Develop communication skills through computer lab participation and writing for coursework.
• Identify both the strengths and weaknesses of different research techniques.
• Pursue intellectual questions on the basis of interpretation and analysis of data in a rigorous and academic manner by employing analytical skills and critical thinking.
• Critically assess the collection of data and understand its use as a tool for understanding political processes.
• Evaluate and discriminate between qualitative and quantitative data analyses and, in doing so, demonstrate a willingness to implement good practice.
• Interpret the research of others and appreciate the problems involved in both collection and interpretation of data.
• Compare, contrast and choose between different quantitative research methods and justify the choice through an awareness and working knowledge of quantitative methodology.
• Implement basic intellectual skills that include data understanding, analysis, numeracy, and problem solving.
• Present research findings in an appropriate manner and communicate finding to others in a clear and concise manner in written form.
Skills
To think analytically and methodologically, to apply quantitative analysis techniques using specialised computer software, and to interpret and communicate results of statistical analyses.
This module focuses on a critical analysis of key texts and themes in the history of modern political thought. It has two aims. Firstly, by adopting a historical approach to the development of modern political thought we learn about the ideas that have shaped our own political thinking. We are typically unaware of the ways in which this history has shaped how we frame problems and our basic assumptions about how to respond to them. Adopting a historical perspective on modern political thought helps us to bring these unexamined assumptions into focus and allows us to think more creatively about how to respond to political problems. In learning about this history we are learning about ourselves
Secondly, the course has a practical aim. Ideas are tools for responding to problems. By learning about the different arguments of these thinkers we can acquire tools to help us think about our own political problems. Some of the ideas of these thinkers are good ones, some not so good and there is often disagreement about which is which. We can learn from the mistakes of others as much as we can learn from their positive contributions.
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this module, students will:
- Be familiar with the central arguments of key texts in the history of modern political thought
- Understand the main traditions of thought which have shaped contemporary political thinking
- Be equipped with the analytical skills necessary to necessary to interpret and criticize complex arguments.
Skills
The aim of the module is to provide students with the necessary analytical and interpretive tools to understand complex arguments. It will provide students with an opportunity to develop communication skills (listening, oral and written), and equip students with basic intellectual skills (particularly critical thinking and analysis). Students will also learn to present their own thoughts and arguments in a logical and coherent manner and to make points in a clear and succinct manner. These are key transferable skills.
This module introduces students to the literature and culture of the period 1900-1930, with a focus on the literary movements grouped under the term ‘modernism’. These literary texts will be examined as complicated and ambivalent responses to the experience of modernity. Students will cover key figures of British and Irish ‘High Modernism’, including James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot, alongside American modernists and writers of the so-called ‘middle brow’. Particular attention will be paid to the historical contexts in which these texts were produced, and on their conditions of publication and consumption. These contexts include: the aftermath of the Great War; gender politics, from the New Woman to Suffrage and beyond; the politics of race; terrorism and violence; queer sexualities; urban decay and urban development; the relationship between cultural centres and peripheries; poetry and its publics; American cultural politics; media, and the rise of youth cultures. More broadly, the modules will explore theories and manifestations of ‘modernity’, examining the challenges of modern technologies and social formations to literary practice.
Learning Outcomes
Having completed this module, students will have developed an appropriate knowledge and understanding of the literature of modernity. They will be able to read a variety of texts from the period 1900-1930, including novels, poems, short stories, novellas, and periodical essays. Students will be able to read these texts in relation to a number of contexts, including political, social, and cultural developments. They will also develop the skills to read these texts with an eye to their formal complexity and ingenuity, tying this experimentation to the dynamic social contexts to which they responded. Students will be introduced to a number of digital resources that will encourage their independent research into the periodical publication of modernist works. Moreover students will be able to interrogate a number of dominant critical frameworks, including: those that have, until recently, elevated modernism above the broader literary culture of the period; those that diminish the influence of Victorian literature on modernism.
Skills
Having completed this module students will be able to:
• Analyse modernist literature in both a historical and critical context.
• Demonstrate an understanding of the complex relationship between formal literary innovation and social transformations.
• Examine the relationship between ‘high’ cultural forms and the so-called ‘middle brow’ works of the period.
• Explore how literary texts challenged dominant understandings of race, gender, and class.
• Demonstrate transferrable skills in the forms of critical thinking, group discussion, written communication, and individual academic research.
• Demonstrate advanced research skills, in particular the use of digital platforms to explore the nature of modernist periodicals.
This module aims to map the world of the Anglo-Saxons through their language, literature and material culture. Students will learn about the heroic past and values of the Anglo-Saxons, magical rituals and prognostications, and systems of faith and beliefs. A fascinating range of texts and genres from the period (c. 7th-11th centuries) will be studied in relation to their cultural context and audience. These include: heroic poetry; elegies; riddles, charms and prognostications; historiography; and biblical writings. Students will engage with selected texts in the original language and consider issues of literary interpretation and translation. They will also be introduced to concepts of authorship, gender, genre, time, health, self, otherness and religion. Students will become familiar with the basics of Old English literary and religious vocabulary and acquire a working knowledge of the Old English manuscript tradition.
Learning Outcomes
To introduce the study of Old English; to introduce the world of Anglo-Saxon literature and culture.
Skills
Having completed the module, students should have acquired the basics of Old English grammar and poetics, the ability to translate and discuss critically selected Old English texts and to relate texts to their cultural and historical contexts.
This module introduces students to the intellectual arguments and counter-arguments of the period known as the Age of Enlightenment, running through the long eighteenth century and embodied in its literature. As an increasing emphasis on rationality as a means to human understanding came to challenge earlier forms of social and political legitimacy, attitudes to self and identity; science and religion; gender and sexuality; politics and government were significantly reformulated from the eighteenth century onwards, with literature and the arts reflecting and participating in the broad historical movement that this shift in thinking represented. We will introduce and debate some of these key ideas of the Enlightenment (or of the various forms of Enlightenment) in relation to the development of generic categories and poetic forms over the period. The module will be organized around a series of texts and debates implicated in significant cultural and historical developments such as the growth of individualism, consumerism, ideas of political liberty and rights, and of the nation and its overseas empire. The module will include selections of poetry and prose (including literary forms such as the periodical essay, life writings, the political pamphlet, and the novel) to be read in relation to contextual, literary-theoretical, and historical considerations. We will also examine revisionist responses to the Enlightenment, reflecting the interests of contemporary authors seeking to represent the marginalized or silenced voices of the period such as those of women, labouring classes, slaves, and colonial others.
Learning Outcomes
Students completing this module will have gained, through their engagement with literary texts and genres, an understanding of major Enlightenment ideas and their impact on historical development. They will be able to read and contextualize literature of eighteenth century in particular with regard to such ideas, and to discern their significance for contemporary literature and society. They will be able to distinguish and appreciate a diversity of genres and texts characteristic of the period, and to read and interrogate such genres and texts in a critical way. They will be introduced to major digital resources giving them the skills that will enable independent research should they wish to progress further in this area. Students will be equipped to debate political, religious and social issues in an informed way with regard to the emergence of such controversies, and their continued development in modern forms. Students will also be able interrogate constructions of the Enlightenment and to deconstruct its various claims from contemporary perspectives critical of its legacy for the modern world.
Skills
Students who have completed this module will be able to:
• Analyse literary texts with regard to the major intellectual debates and forms of knowledge generated by Enlightenment thinking.
• Debate various religious, social and political issues produced in literature relating to Enlightenment.
• Demonstrate research skills with regard to the use of digital platforms such as Eighteenth-Century Collections Online and British Periodicals with regard to the exploration of such topics.
• Show an understanding of formal and generic developments in literature with regard to intellectual history.
• Examine the ways in which literary texts are implicated in the emergence of dominant understandings of political and social discourses.
• Demonstrate transferrable skills in the forms of critical thinking, group discussion, written communication, and individual academic research.
This module on International Organizations offers an introduction into the multilateral global security architecture. The core focus of the module is collective security. The module IO thus will deal with international law, collective security, regimes in international security and International security organizations. The United Nations system forms the core of the study. Peacekeeping, peace enforcement, peace building and the ‘outsourcing’ of core collective security tasks to regional players will dominate the sessions of the module. Core military interventions by international organizations will be analyzed. The module thus will deal with military interventions by the UN, NATO, CIS/CSTO, EU and core security and mediation tasks by the CIS, SCO and OSCE. The new policy agenda of energy security will be tackled by studying resource control: The NPT regime, the IAEA and oil and gas regimes thus will be scrutinized at the end of the semester. The major aim of the module is to outline the ‘institutionalized’ world order of today – with its hierarchies, cleavages and contradictions. The module is wedded to a strategic studies approach to IR.
This module explores the linguistic history of English from prehistoric times to the present day. Adopting a chronological approach and working always with reference to texts, it traces the development and use of the language through varieties of Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English and Present Day English. The key topics of the course, applied to each of the periods studied, are (i)internal features, examining underlying grammatical characteristics; (ii)external features, with particular reference to vocabulary; and (iii)transitional and sociolinguistic features, considering the social context of language change, paying attention to changing practices in language writing.
Learning Outcomes
This module should provide an informed understanding of the history of the English language and of language change, with reference to social and cultural factors; to increase students' analytical and descriptive abilities, enabling them to engage in linguistic analysis of texts from different periods and with different writing conventions.
Skills
Students who complete this module should be able to deomonstrate knowledge and understanding of the historical development of English, relating language to its socio-cultural context, and they should be able to apply that knowledge and understanding to particular texts, using analytical and descriptive skills.
Northern Ireland’s peace process, the legacy of conflict and enduring divisions present a range of ongoing challenges for politics and society. Drawing on expertise from across the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics – combined with that of relevant practitioners, where possible – this interdisciplinary, team-taught module will examine a range of thematic challenges with respect to conflict, conflict transformation, peacebuilding, community relations, public representations of the past, and democratic governance. Rooted in the case of Northern Ireland, the module will also routinely consider broader comparisons with other cases and possible generalisation to other cases. It will be structured into three main parts. First, it will critically engage with Northern Ireland’s past. What were the underlying sources of division, and what can we learn about the complexities and nuances of identity over time? Second, it will explore how the past continues to interact with contemporary Northern Ireland. How is this past represented and understood in today’s public history landscape? Is it possible for Northern Ireland’s contested past to be publicly represented in ways that promote mutual understanding? Can Northern Ireland now be characterised as a ‘post-conflict’ region? Finally, the module will look ahead. Does the current political settlement represent a sustainable form of governance for the region? What do internal developments, such as demographic change, and external challenges, such as climate change, mean for Northern Ireland’s future? By critically engaging with these interrelated themes through relevant disciplinary perspectives, this module ultimately seeks to better understand contemporary Northern Ireland, the history that has shaped it, and the future directions that are possible.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this module the successful student should be able to demonstrate in assessed essays, coursework and tutorial contributions:
- A familiarity with a range of topical issues and debates in Northern Ireland, including their historical roots, their contemporary political significance, and their relevance for the region’s future;
- An understanding of the Northern Ireland conflict and the peace process, including the factors that contributed to both;
- A critical appreciation of the challenges associated with conflict transformation, peacebuilding, community relations, public representations of the past, and democratic governance in a divided society from a variety of disciplinary perspectives in the humanities and social sciences;
- Awareness of the role that arts, culture, heritage and public engagement with the past can play in reducing political and social divisions;
- A heightened sense of the complexity of identity, politics and place in Northern Ireland.
Skills
Intellectual skills
• Managing & Prioritizing Knowledge: identify relevant and subject-specific knowledge; manage such information in an independent manner;
• Analytical Thinking: identify, understand, interpret and evaluate relevant subject-specific arguments made by others; construct independent arguments;
• Critical & Independent Thinking: ability to think critically and construct one’s own position in relation to existing and ongoing debates in the field.
Professional and career development skills
• Communication Skills: ability to communicate clearly with others, both orally and in writing;
• Teamwork: ability to work with others in a team, negotiate conflicts and recognize different ways of learning;
• Diversity: ability to acknowledge and be sensitive to the range of cultural differences present in the learning environment;
• Self-Reflexivity: ability to reflect on one’s own progress and identify and act upon ones own development needs with respect to life-long learning and career development;
• Time Management: ability to negotiate diverse and competing pressures; cope with stress; and achieve a work / life balance .
Technical and practical skills
• Information Technology: demonstrate the knowledge and ability to use contemporary and relevant ICT.
Organizational skills
• Efficient and effective work practice: demonstrate ability to work efficiently to deadlines;
• Clear organisation of information: show efficiency in the organisation of large amounts of complex information and the ability to identify, describe and analyse the key features of the information;
• Organisation and communication: demonstrate ability to use evidence to develop logical and clear argument; show aptitude for the effective use of information in a direct and appropriate way;
• Enterprising thinking: Demonstrate ability to think and argue in novel and enterprising ways, to display originality of thought and argument and the ability to clearly support arguments in innovative ways.
Havoc and Rebellion: Writing and Reading Later Medieval England
Overview
From the Black Death to the Uprising of 1381; from the usurpation and murder of King Richard II to the Oldcastle Rebellion of 1414; from the rise of the Lollard heresy to the Wars of the Roses – how did late medieval writing, from Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, Langland’s Piers Plowman, and Gower’s Vox Clamantis, to the work of a range of anonymous poets, dramatists, and chroniclers, respond to several decades of tumultuous social and cultural change? This module introduces students to the vibrancy and vitality of a crucial period in the history of English writing, and it explores the methodological challenges of reading literature historically. Students will engage with key historicist readings of the period’s literature and will consider literature in its material circumstances with reference to online facsimiles of key manuscript books, as well as the museological presentation of the period’s material culture. The key genres, conventions and preoccupations of the period will be explored in relation to the explosive social mobility that followed the devastation of the Black Death. The module will conclude on the eve of the coronation of Henry VIII, when it was assumed that the political and religious tumult of the ‘calamitous fourteenth century’ had finally been settled.
Learning Outcomes
Having completed this module, students will have developed an appropriate knowledge and understanding of late medieval literature and culture (c.1370-1509). They will have learned to address the challenges of reading literature in its historical contexts, and become familiar with the central tenets of historicist critical practice. They will have learned to interrogate critically the re-presentation of texts and artefacts from the Middle Ages in online archival and museological contexts. They will have learned to reflect critically on the idea of the Middle Ages itself and on questions of historical periodisation in general.
Skills
Having completed this module students will be able to:
• Analyse late medieval literature, paying attention to the relationship between texts and contexts assumed by historicist modes of reading.
• Demonstrate understanding of the complex relationship between literary forms and socio-political transformations.
• Situate the literature of this period in the contexts of its influence on literary ideas and modes of transmission, such as authorship and printing, that will be of critical importance to later periods
• Demonstrate enhanced digital capabilities, both in terms of using digital repositories and in working collaboratively on a digital project for assessment.
We are all familiar with people who have recently been quickly catapulted to the heights of fame and public attention. The status of such individuals is often associated with wealth and public exposure, and the rise of mass media makes it much easier for them to gain publicity and recognition instantly, across the world. But has it always been this way?
This module will examine the career and legacy of Charles Dickens, who was first recognised for his extraordinary creativity, in producing the works of literature for which he is best known. He was also, however, a careful and intelligent manipulator of his own public image, to the extent that the catchphrase ‘the man who invented Christmas’ survives to this day. By carefully scrutinising Dickens through fiction, journalism, letters, advertising, biography, photography, and film, students will come to understand just how ‘constructed’ this Victorian superstar was; they will also understand how the means he, his publishers, agents, and advisors, and his inheritors employed to develop and maintain his public image serve as forerunners for the phenomenon of celebrity culture in our own day.
Indicative set texts & other media:
Lee Barron, Celebrity Cultures: An Introduction (Sage, 2015)
Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
Ralph Fiennes, The Invisible Woman (DVD 2013)
Bharat Naluri, The Man Who Invented Christmas (DVD 2017)
Michael Slater, Charles Dickens (Yale UP, 2011)
Learning Outcomes
Having completed this module, students will have developed an appropriate knowledge and understanding of the history of celebrity, and the role it has played in shaping cultural values. They will be able to read and engage critically with key Dickens novels from the 1830s-1850s, as well as with his journalism and letters. They will also be able to examine and perform critical assessments on other media that feature Dickens as the central figure, including film, photography, and advertising. Students will be able to analyse and interrogate the ways in which various media project the idea of celebrity in light of their target audiences, and will be able to assess the effects of the strategies employed.
Skills
Having completed this module you will be able to:
• Analyse Dickens’s literary texts in both historical and critical contexts.
• Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the meaning of ‘celebrity’ and the role it has played in shaping cultural values
• Examine how textual and visual media have had an impact upon the development of celebrity
• Explore the construction of the author as a complex amalgam of creative ability and targeted media manipulation
• Demonstrate how celebrities become brands in their own right, and are used in marketing to promote products and services
• Demonstrate transferrable skills in the forms of critical thinking, group discussion, written communication, and individual academic research.
• Demonstrate advanced research skills, in particular the use of digital platforms to explore the nature of celebrity culture
The Romantic period (c.1789-1832) witnessed dramatic social and historical change as the effects of major events such as the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, widespread Enclosure and the Industrial Revolution initiated the sense of ‘living in history’. In the midst of these revolutionary changes, poets wrote with new confidence of the importance of the imagination, as a creative and utopian force; of the beauty, fragility and power of the natural world; of political ideals of social justice; of the arguments for gender equality. Poetry became synonymous with the imagination as a force which could unite idealism with social change. This module studies a range of Romantic poetry, including but not restricted to, the work of Anna Laetitia Barbauld, William Blake, Lord Byron, John Clare, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mary Robinson, Felicia Hemans, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Charlotte Smith, and William Wordsworth. Poems will be studied through the key themes of the revolutionary imagination; the natural world; the language of class; representations of childhood; slavery and feminism. One hour of each week’s seminar time will comprise a close reading of one key poem for that week’s discussion, with the second hour being used for more generalized and broader discussion. The module will also include a specialised library visit and a field trip connected with the natural world.
Learning Outcomes
Students completing this module will have learned to read poetry in terms of its formal techniques and effects and to situate these interpretations in a range of contexts both historical and contemporary. They will be able to read and contextualize poetry of the Romantic period in particular, and to understand its significance for contemporary literature and society. They will be able to distinguish and appreciate a diversity of poetic genres and styles characteristic of the period, and to read and interrogate a range of diverse kinds of poetry in a critical way. Students will be equipped to debate political, aesthetic and social issues in an informed way with regard to their historical development, and their continued development in modern forms. Students will also be able to interrogate constructions of Romanticism and to deconstruct its various claims from contemporary perspectives both supportive and critical of its legacy for the modern world.
Skills
Students who have completed this module will be able to:
• Interpret a range of poems in ways which are attuned to their aesthetic effects and contextual meanings.
• Debate various aesthetic, social and political issues produced in poetry of the Romantic period.
• Show an understanding of formal and generic developments in poetry with regard to intellectual history.
• Examine the ways in which literary texts are implicated in the emergence of dominant understandings of political and social discourses.
• Demonstrate transferrable skills in the forms of critical thinking, group discussion, written communication, and individual academic research.
Utopia / Dystopia: The Future in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Literature
Overview
In the late nineteenth century, utopian literature met speculative fiction: the ‘nowhere’ of utopia was reimagined as the future, which was conceived as both the best and worst possible worlds. This course examines a variety of late nineteenth-century utopias and dystopias, but also shows the ways this imaginative tradition shaped literary prediction in the twentieth century (including works by Aldous Huxley, George Orwell and Margaret Atwood). It considers the ways twentieth-century writers both engaged with their literary predecessors and rewrote utopian and dystopian traditions to speak to the urgency of their own political moments. From the dangers and promises of science and technology to the future of feminism, socialism, race and mass culture, we will explore what utopias and dystopias reveal about their own historical moments, and analyze the claim that one person’s utopia is another’s dystopia.
Indicative selection of texts
Edward Bulwer Lytton, The Coming Race
H. G. Wells, The Time Machine
William Morris, News from Nowhere
Catherine Helen Spence, A Week in the Future
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland
E. M. Forster, ‘The Machine Stops’
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
George Orwell, 1984
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
Learning Outcomes
At the end of this course, students will be able to analyze the evolving generic traits of political fantasy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and will have gained an understanding of utopian, dystopian and speculative fiction as literary forms. They will be able to relate utopian and dystopian fiction to social debates and historical changes in the period in which it was produced (including debates over feminism, socialism, evolutionary biology and eugenics and the future of democracy and mass culture). They will be capable of analyzing the political function of utopian and dystopian literature, and the role of reading communities in the evolution of the genre. Students will be able to use their understanding of genre to reflect on continuities with as well as changes between late Victorian and twentieth-century literature.
Skills
• A demonstrable understanding of the relationship between the political and the literary, and an ability to see the relevance of debates generated by this ‘literature of ideas’ to the present as well as the past
• Transferrable skills in the forms of group discussion, ability to present material to peers and individual research and essay writing skills – the ability to synthesize texts and create a clear analytical argument
• The ability to interweave close and historical reading skills – a demonstrable awareness of the ways historical and cultural change shapes literary form within political fantasy from the nineteenth to the twentieth century
• Ability to apply theoretical and historical debates over genre (utopian and dystopian and speculative fiction) to a range of literary contexts
• An ability to show the ways fiction is shaped by reading communities as well as writers (including socialist and feminist readerships).
This module introduces students to the extraordinary diversity and achievement of Irish literature, from the Act of Union in 1800 to the late twentieth century. The module is chronologically structured, and places particular emphasis on situating texts in their wider historical contexts, as well as developing their relations to broader European movements and traditions. Encompassing poetry, fiction, and drama, the module considers a range of themes, such as romanticism, gender, the gothic, cultural nationalism, the politics of modernity, liminality and exile, and northern perspectives on an Irish tradition. Writers studied will include W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, and Seamus Heaney.
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this module the student should have an ability to set Irish literature in its historical context; an ability to make connections between differing genres of Irish writing; an ability to scrutinise the politics of Irish writing.
Skills
On completion of this module you should have an ability to set Irish literature in its historical context; an ability to make connections between differing genres of Irish writing and an ability to scrutinise the politics of Irish writing.
This module introduces students to the drama of the English Renaissance. It explores texts by a wide range of authors, including Shakespeare, Cary, Marlowe, Middleton, Rowley and Webster and examines the forces working on drama in the early modern period. Lectures will provide an introduction to the dramatic form, close readings of the set plays, and readings in relation to contemporary issues such as nationality, authority, desire, religion, sexuality, gender, strangeness, race, identity, social standing, fantasy, magic and taboo.
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this module, students should have learned how to study dramatic form and how to relate a text to its context. Through class discussion and formative assessments, you should have further developed your oral and written communication skills.
Skills
To familiarize students with the range of drama produced during the English Renaissance; to provide students with the knowledge and skills necessary to undertake Renaissance modules in Stage 3.
Modern American Fiction: Race, Class, Gender, Sexuality
Overview
This module introduces students to some of the key American novelists, contexts and critical issues associated with the modern era, roughly interpreted as the first half of the twentieth century (c.1920-1950). It does not ignore the orthodox intellectual approaches to the era, namely that of the modern or modernism and how the representative fiction of the era sought to find new forms and languages suitable to the task of interrogating this modernity. However, rather than rehearsing old debates about national particularity, the “melting pot” and US exceptionalism, the focus of this module is the ways in which exemplary African-American, female, working class and gay novelists, as well as their white, male counterparts, sought to undo and re-write narratives of identity and belonging according to particularities of race, class, gender and sexuality. Particular attention is paid to the interplay between narratives of affirmation and negation (or ‘noir’). The module examines these axes of difference as multiple and overlapping, rather than mutually exclusive; hence the focus is on the narrative, formal and linguistic complexities thrown up the re-making of American fiction through the related and diverging prisms of class and race, for example, or gender and sexuality, or even in terms of race, gender, class and sexuality. A repeated concern of the module is whether or to what extent we can use US fiction of the era to trace and interrogate wider social and political challenges to dominant/normative understandings of the United States, modernity, capitalism, and national identity. The set texts reflect this heterogeneity in terms of the writers to be studied and in terms of the diversity of styles, forms and genres that make up American fiction of the era.
Learning Outcomes
Having completed this module, students will have developed an appropriate knowledge and understanding of modern American fiction (c. 1900-1950). They will be able to identify the ways in which representative novels of the era interrogate the modern era and the complex relationship between literary form, popular culture and modernism as organizing concepts. They will also be able to examine and reflect upon the complex ways in which dominant and singular narratives of national belonging are untold and reimagined according to the related and overlapping categories of race, class, gender and sexuality – and the implications of this for an understanding of “American” fiction. They will be able to offer close readings of this fiction according to its use of literary form and language and its thematizations of the urban, the modern, “noir”, capitalism, gender and sexuality and race and class. On completion of the module, students will be able to reflect upon the usefulness of fiction of the era to contest received or orthodox accounts of US political, social and economic life and potentially to intervene in this life for affirmative and/or politically progressive ends.
Skills
Having completed this module students will be able to:
• Analyse modern American fiction paying attention to theoretical/conceptual and contextual issues and develop close critical readings of a diverse range of fiction.
• Demonstrate understanding of the complex relationship between literary forms and socio-political transformations.
• Think about the synthesis and weighting of different, sometimes competing interpretations of literary texts.
• Reflect on the usefulness of race, class, gender and sexuality as organizing categories to interrogate the exemplary fiction of the era and its thematizations of US identities.
• Demonstrate transferrable skills in the forms of critical thinking, group discussion, written communication, and individual academic research
• Demonstrate digital literacy skills required to make a digital map, using relevant software programmes, relating to one of the set texts.
This module examines the development of prose fiction in English from the later seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century. This is the period in which the novel emerged in its recognisably modern form, establishing itself as an important genre within literary culture. It was also an era of generic experimentation, as writers debated the nature of the novel, took the form in new directions, and grappled with earlier modes of writing in prose, such as romance and picaresque, allegorical and fantastical fiction. In this module, we explore the variety of prose fiction published during this period: from romance and amatory fiction, through works of realism and social comedy, to the sentimental and Gothic modes that emerged in the later eighteenth century. These works engaged closely with contemporary social, cultural and political issues, and we will consider texts that address topics such as travel and empire; science and civilisation; marriage and gender; crime, morality and the state of the nation. By considering these works in their literary and cultural contexts, the module both highlights the diversity of fiction written during this era and charts the early history of the novel up to the sophisticated narratives of Jane Austen.
Learning Outcomes
Having completed this module, students will have developed higher-level knowledge and understanding of prose fiction during the period 1660-1820. They will be able to identify the different kinds and modes of fiction published during this period, including romance and amatory fiction, works of realism and social comedy, the sentimental and Gothic modes. They will be equipped to assess critical arguments concerning the ‘rise’ of the novel as a distinctive literary genre during the ‘long’ eighteenth century. They will also be able to situate this body of fiction more broadly within its literary and cultural contexts. On completing the module, then, students will be able to articulate the key types of fiction in English during the period up to (and including) Austen, theories about the novel’s emergence as a literary form, and the engagement of these works with a range of contemporary issues.
Skills
Having completed this module students will be able to:
• Analyse works of prose fiction published during the ‘long’ eighteenth century, in terms of genre, technique, and social and cultural contexts
• Demonstrate understanding of the variety of forms, modes and styles within fiction during this period, and the pre-history of some of these ways of writing
• Adjudicate critical and theoretical ideas regarding the ‘rise’ or emergence of the novel genre during the period up to Austen
• Demonstrate understanding of the particular issues explored within this body of fiction - from issues such as marriage and travel to concerns about crime, morality and empire
• Demonstrate transferable skills in the forms of group discussion, written communication, and individual research
Liberal values in Europe, as elsewhere, are coming under serious threat, driven by identity politics designed to exploit societal divisions. The historical link between liberalism and diversity in Europe, and the extent to which one can negotiate and accommodate, if not facilitate the other, holds the key to sustainable, coherent and peaceful societies. The module provides an overview and critical analysis of minority protection offering engagement with issues underpinning national politics, law and societal processes in Europe. Using a critical approach to contemporary politics, this module provides:
- a historical analysis of state formation and nation building in Europe with context of religious wars and political revolutions, including the (re-)conceptualisation of basic concepts and terms such as territoriality, sovereignty, state, nation and citizenship;
- reassesses primordial views on ethnicity/nationality and language & religious identities and provides a sociologically informed political lens to reconcile the requirements for political unity, obligations to international law and ensure social cohesion for the culturally diverse society;
- examines the liberal and national ideological framings of equality protection in liberal-democratic regimes and the number of mechanisms from voting rights to proportional representation in state bodies, forms of cultural and territorial autonomy and federalism to engage with the challenges of the ongoing re-nationalisation in all parts of Europe.
This module will help students interested in European politics, human and minority rights, governance and nationalism, and politics of diverse societies to understand the origins of and anticipate political developments of their increasingly diverse societies.
Learning Outcomes
- Place issues of governance in diverse societies in the context of domestic and European political and legal obligations to ensure equality of all citizens;
- Contrast the differential impact nation-state building had in different parts of Europe on diverse resident populations and reflect on the role of European integration on political process;
- Ascertain importance of diversity and equality as guarantee for societal stability and peace in and around Europe
- Understand and be able to reflect critically on the impact accommodation and support for minorities has on the likelihood of conflict in contemporary Europe
- Communicate clearly and concisely, both orally and in written form on issues relating to equality and diversity in contemporary Europe
- Pursue intellectual questions in an academic manner, using analytical skills and critical thinking to develop transferrable skills
Skills
Intellectual skills
- Managing & Prioritizing Knowledge: identify relevant and subject-specific knowledge, sources and data; manage such information in an independent manner
- Critical & Independent Thinking: ability to think critically and construct one’s own position in relation to existing and ongoing debates in the field
Professional and career development skills
- Communication Skills: ability to communicate clearly with others, both orally and in writing
- Teamwork: ability to work with others in a team, negotiate conflicts and recognize different ways of learning
- Self-Reflexivity: ability to reflect on one’s own progress and identify and act upon ones own development needs with respect to life-long learning and career development
- Time Management: ability to negotiate diverse and competing pressures; cope with stress; and achieve a work / life balance
Technical and practical skills
- Information Technology: demonstrate the knowledge and ability to use contemporary and relevant ICT Organizational skills
- Efficient and effective work practice: demonstrate ability to work efficiently to deadlines
- Clear organisation of information: show efficiency in the organisation of large amounts of complex information and the ability to identify, describe and analyse the key features of the information
- Organisation and communication: demonstrate ability to use evidence to develop logical and clear argument; show aptitude for the effective use of information in a direct and appropriate way
An examination of the Politics of Ireland (North and South) since 1920.
Learning Outcomes
To provide an understanding of the political systems of both parts of Ireland and to understand Northern Ireland as an example of a deeply divided society.
Skills
The ability to think analytically, communicate ideas with peers, reproduce ideas in an exam setting, and construct cogent essays.
‘Critical and Cultural Theory’ names a panoply of intellectual movements, philosophical currents and political perspectives emerging out of the crisis in European culture and identity precipitated by the pace of political, technological and social change in the nineteenth century. That crisis was exacerbated by the world wars of the twentieth century, the rise of Communism, and the collapse of Western imperialism. This module introduces students to key issues in critical and cultural theory, historicising its emergence and reflecting on its current preoccupations. Beginning with the ‘masters of suspicion’, Freud, Nietzsche and Marx, who are often perceived to have brought the project of Enlightenment humanism to a shuddering halt, the module will trace the development of a variety of important theoretical perspectives, including Marxism, psychoanalysis, structuralism and poststructuralism, historicism, gender studies, and bio-politics and posthumanism. The module will build on the questions asked by the Stage One module ENG xxx Adventures in Literature and the History of Ideas and will complement the approaches taken on other Stage Two modules, given its historicising agenda.
Learning Outcomes
Having completed this module, students will have developed a basic knowledge of a range of theoretical traditions and be better equipped to situate the cultural and political preoccupations of the modern and postmodern literatures they are exploring elsewhere in the curriculum in relation to the intellectual, political and social developments of Western societies from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. They will be better attuned to the intellectual agendas and theoretical affiliations of the critical approaches used by both staff in the School and in the secondary critical materials they are encountering in other modules across their degrees. They will have learned to historicise and synthesise a range of often conflicting intellectual and philosophical traditions.
Skills
Having completed this module students will be able to:
• Identify and adjudicate between different intellectual approaches to literature, culture, gender and history
• Analyse and evaluate key critical terminologies and ideas and place them in their historical contexts
• Demonstrate an ability to read ‘secondary’ texts critically and with a view to their underpinning intellectual assumptions and agendas
• Demonstrate transferral skills in the form of group discussion, written communication, oral presentation and collaborative work
This module will introduce students to the analysis of civil wars and the fields of conflict analysis and peace studies. The aim of this module is to introduce students to theoretical and empirical problems in the study of the outbreak, development and resolution of armed civil conflicts. It explores the conflict cycle, the complexity of violent conflict, dynamics of political violence, the effects of certain situations on conflict dynamics, different types of actors in civil war, the outcomes of civil war, peace processes, and techniques such as mediation. It explores the main concepts (such as “conflict”, “civil war”, “peace”, etc.), some theories (such as the causes of civil war, the dynamics, and consequences), and some issues and debates (such as when and how to mediate conflicts) in peace and conflict studies. It also covers theoretical and methodological issues in peace and conflict studies, such as issues in classification and measurement.
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this module, students will:
-Understand basic approaches to the causes, development and resolution of conflicts
- Be able to identify and critically evaluate central concepts, issues, debates, and obstacles in civil wars, conflict resolution and peace
- Be able to explain, critically evaluate, and discuss central questions and theories on causes, development and resolution of conflicts
- Conduct independent research by independently finding, gathering, and evaluating information and texts on armed conflicts and peace
- Be able to recognise and differentiate between descriptive, explanative and normative studies
- Be able to distinguish between and locate primary and secondary sources of information
- Be able to identify different approaches to conceptualization and measurement of key variables as they relate to Peace and Conflict Studies
- Communicate ideas to others in a clear and concise manner, both orally and in written form
- Pursue intellectual questions in a rigorous and academic manner, employing analytical skills and critical thinking.
Skills
This module will assist in developing students’ skills in a number of important areas. These include:
Intellectual skills
- Managing & Prioritizing Knowledge: identify relevant and subject-specific knowledge, sources and data; manage such information in an independent manner
- Analytical Thinking: identify, understand, interpret and evaluate relevant subject-specific arguments made by others; construct independent arguments
- Critical & Independent Thinking: ability to think critically and construct one’s own position in relation to existing and ongoing debates in the field
Professional and career development skills
- Communication Skills: ability to communicate clearly with others, both orally and in writing
- Teamwork: ability to work with others in a team, negotiate conflicts and recognize different ways of learning
- Diversity: ability to acknowledge and be sensitive to the range of cultural differences present in the learning environment
- Self-Reflexivity: ability to reflect on one’s own progress and identify and act upon ones own development needs with respect to life-long learning and career development
- Time Management: ability to negotiate diverse and competing pressures; cope with stress; and achieve a work / life balance
Technical and practical skills
- Information Technology: demonstrate the knowledge and ability to use contemporary and relevant ICT
Organizational skills
- Efficient and effective work practice: demonstrate ability to work efficiently to deadlines
- Clear organisation of information: show efficiency in the organisation of large amounts of complex information and the ability to identify, describe and analyse the key features of the information
- Organisation and communication: demonstrate ability to use evidence to develop logical and clear arguments; show aptitude for the effective use of information in a direct and appropriate way
- Enterprising thinking: Demonstrate ability to think and argue in novel and enterprising ways, to display originality of thought and argument and the ability to clearly support arguments in innovative ways
This module explores contemporary approaches to the study of security and terrorism. It will examine changes in definitions of security and terrorism, the evolution of approaches to the study of security and terrorism. Students will be familiarised with the main “threats” to state and human security; the changing nature of war and other organised violence; and areas of security policy and practice including arms control, alliance formation, peacekeeping and peacebuilding, among others. Students will also explore domestic and transnational non-state terrorism, state terrorism, and counter-terrorism policy and practice.
Learning Outcomes
On completion of the course students will:
• Be familiar with the main theories and approaches to the study of security and terrorism; and the debates between them.
• Understand and be able to discuss the relative merits of different theoretical approaches to security issues.
• Be able to critically evaluate international policy and practice in key areas of security policy and counter-terrorism.
• Be able to communicate ideas to others in a clear and concise manner, both orally and in written form;
• Be able to pursue intellectual questions in a rigorous and academic manner, employing analytical skills and critical thinking.
Skills
Managing & Prioritizing Knowledge: identify relevant and subject-specific knowledge, sources and data; manage such information in an independent manner.
• Analytical Thinking: identify, understand, interpret and evaluate relevant subject-specific arguments made by others; construct independent arguments.
• Critical & Independent Thinking: ability to think critically and construct one’s own position in relation to existing and ongoing debates in the field.
Communication Skills, including oral and written communication.
• Time-Management
• Information Technology skills;
• Organisation and communication skills;
• Enterprise Thinking.
This module serves as in introduction to the European Union and demonstrates how this evolving and expanding tier of European governance impacts on national political systems. The module is divided into four parts. The first part sets the scene for the study of the EU and introduces students to the evolution of the EU, the treaty base and the theories of integration. The second part explores the composition and powers of the main EU institutions (such as the Commission, the European Parliament, the Council and the Courts). It also accounts for the decision making process and the role of NGOs in the EU system. The third part focuses on the EU policy base and explores a selection of salient policy regimes within the EU. These include the common agricultural policy, environmental policy, the euro, the single market, enlargement and immigration policy. The fourth part explores the role of the EU on the world stage via lectures on trade policy and defence policy before turning to assess the UK’s current relationship with the EU post Brexit.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the module participants:
- Should be able to demonstrate a critical understanding of the UK’s relationship with the EU
- Should understand debates about explanations of the EU referendum outcome and challenges for delivering Brexit
- Should be able to understand how different theories and approaches in political science can help make sense of the UK’s changing relationship with Europe
- Should have developed basic blog writing skills and basic policy brief writing skills
Skills
Students will advance their:
Intellectual skills
• Managing & Prioritizing Knowledge: identify relevant and subject-specific knowledge, sources and data; manage such information in an independent manner
• Analytical Thinking: identify, understand, interpret and evaluate relevant subject-specific arguments made by others; construct independent arguments
• Critical & Independent Thinking: ability to think critically and construct one’s own position in relation to existing and ongoing debates in the field
Professional and career development skills
• Communication Skills: ability to communicate clearly with others, both orally and in writing
• Teamwork: ability to work with others in a team, negotiate conflicts and recognize different ways of learning
• Diversity: ability to acknowledge and be sensitive to the range of cultural differences present in the learning environment
• Self-Reflexivity: ability to reflect on one’s own progress and identify and act upon one’s own development needs with respect to life-long learning and career development
• Time Management: ability to negotiate diverse and competing pressures; cope with stress; and achieve a work / life balance
Technical and practical skills
• Information Technology: demonstrate the knowledge and ability to use contemporary and relevant ICT
Organizational skills
• Efficient and effective work practice: demonstrate ability to work efficiently to deadlines
• Clear organisation of information: show efficiency in the organisation of large amounts of complex information and the ability to identify, describe and analyse the key features of the information
• Organisation and communication: demonstrate ability to use evidence to develop logical and clear arguments; show aptitude for the effective use of information in a direct and appropriate way
• Enterprising thinking: Demonstrate ability to think and argue in novel and enterprising ways, to display originality of thought and argument and the ability to clearly support arguments in innovative ways
This module sets out to help students understand and analyse the development of International Relations as a discipline through its theories and major issues. The key theories of international relations are examined, from Realism, through Marxism to contemporary approaches such as Poststructuralism, with a focus upon how each one criticises and responds to the others revealing its strengths and weaknesses. Within this, major issues of international relations will be explored from a theoretical and conceptual perspective, such as the balance of power, peace, international society, norms and gender. Finally, the course turns to modern challenges to the discipline of International Relations, such as International Political Economy, the spread of Globalization, and contemporary concerns with security and the War on Terror. The module therefore considers how well International Relations is responding to these challenges.
Learning Outcomes
Upon completion of this module, students should be able to: Understand the main approaches to the study of IR, including current theoretical developments in the discipline. Understand the relationship between the academic analysis of international relations and the actual behaviour (e.g. foreign policy) of states. Communicate ideas to others in a clear and concise manner, both orally and in written form. Pursue intellectual questions in a rigorous and academic manner, employing analytical skills and critical thinking.
Skills
The module aims to equip students with basic intellectual skills (e.g. critical thinking, analysis, problem solving), as well as communication skills.
This module investigates the ways in which language intersects with the social and political reflexes of power and ideology. Students are encouraged to challenge, through exposure and then analysis, the discourse conventions that characterise the language of powerful groups and institutions. This module places particular emphasis on print and broadcast media, legal, political and advertising discourse, and on other forms of institutional rhetoric. Among the topics covered are: The Discourse of Institutions and Organisations; Power and Talk; Language and Gender; Language and Race; Language and the Law; Humour as Power; Political Discourse and the Language of Advertising.
Learning Outcomes
Students should be able to carry out systematic analysis of differing forms of language in different contexts of use. The moudle should help students to analyse a range of texts and practices, understand the ways in which language is used to exercise control, understand the anatomy of texts and text-types, especially print and broadcast media, and advertising discourse. Also analyse critically the interrelation between powerful institutions and the discourses they disseminate in the public sphere. Students should also further develop effective oral and written communication skills.
Skills
Students are invited to think in new ways about the English language in relation to its social and political context. Students should also develop skill in unpacking a variety of spoken and written texts, and in developing arguments about the way language practice is informed by and reinforces relationships of power. It is hoped that the course itself acts as an empowering tool, helping students to interrogate the discourse that surrounds them in everyday social contexts.
This module examines the interface and inter-relationships between politics, philosophy and economics and draws on the disciplines of political economy, political theory and moral philosophy, and political science to provide a comprehensive account of these relations. Particular topics covered will vary from year but may include, for example:
issues in classical political economy
the relationship between political ideology and economics,
the history of economic thought,
how democratic institutions interact with the economy and the notion of public goods.
Post-war economic development project,
Modernity and conceptions of development
Debates about the concept of the rational actor
Freedom and economic life
Distributive justice
Libertarian ideas about the relations between the market and politics
The idea of ‘market society’
Workplace democracy
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of the module students will:
• Have a familiarity with some of the key debates in classic political economy and moral and political philosophy concerning economic power, the economy as a political creation and the relationship between the state and the economy; freedom and economic relations
• Be able to apply these concepts and debates to questions of economic development, the ethical implications of contemporary development trajectories and to current policy issues;
Skills
Students will develop the ability to think critically and philosophically about economics and the economy, while placing it in its appropriate political context.
Students will be able to communicate ideas to others in coherent and concise, written and oral form;
Students will be able to think analytically, critically and logically about a range of important contemporary social issues.
Foundations for Speech Analysis: The Phonetics of English
Overview
This module offers you an introduction to the study of speech analysis. We begin by investigating the mechanisms which are used to produce speech and providing a framework for the convenient classification and description of pronunciation features. We then examine accent variation, in terms of aspects such as contextual effects, intonation and voice quality. Finally, the module gives you the chance to acquire an understanding of the acoustic characteristics of speech. Throughout the module, you will be required to develop your oral and aural skills in phonetics by means of various practical and online facilities. While the module concentrates on normal English speech, we may also have the opportunity to consider data from non-English speech and from non-normal speech.
Learning Outcomes
This module should give a practical grounding in phonetics. Knowledge of how speech works is needed for a variety of occupations. Students intending to teach English will find phonetic skills essential in implementing oracy and literacy requirements in the classroom. Drama students can benefit from phonetic knowledge in order to deal with voice production, projection and accent learning. For foreign language learners and teachers, phonetics is invaluable in achieving target pronunciations. Future students of linguistics and communication should find that phonetics complements their study of linguistic communications and, finally, those interested in communication disorders need a detailed knowledge of speech production and perception in order to understand specific impairments and their effects..
Skills
When you have completed this module, you should be able to apply your knowledge of speech production and variation to a variety of communicative and educational situations. By means of your aural and oral training, you should have developed skills in detailed, analytic listening and in accurate perception, production and transcription of various phonetic distinctions. The 50% essay should enable you to acquire and demonstrate ability in critical assessment of, for example, the role of a speaker's phonetic profile in achieving particular communicative ends.
The Politics of the Planetary Crisis: power, people and place
Overview
We live in a time of climate and ecological crisis. Both globally and locally evidence of the negative impacts of a destabilised climate, extreme weather events and impacts of declining biodiversity and ecosystem health are resulting in impacts on human health and safety, food production, forcing people to migrate as well as having significant economic impacts. At the same time we see a variety of political and social responses to the ‘polycrisis’, ranging from political parties and governments developing climate and ecological policies, the rise in direct action climate and ecological justice movements such as Fridays for Future, Just Stop Oil, calls for universities to change what they teach and research so as to be ‘fit for future purpose’, as well as local communities responding in imaginative ways to the dangers and transformative opportunities presented by this crisis.
A unique feature of this module will be that which the first 10 lectures will be chosen by the academic teaching team, the last 10 will be chosen by students.
This module introduces students to the causes, consequences and solutions to the planetary crisis and how it intersects with existing forms of injustices, tensions and conflicts, as well as creating new ones. It explores the variety of ways communities, social movements businesses, political parties and states have, or have not, responding to the crisis. Questions considered will include.
1. What are the variety of explanations for or approaches to understanding the causes, consequences and solutions to the planetary crisis?
2. How and in what ways is decarbonisation connected to democratisation?
3. How are both the above connected to decolonisation?
4. Why, despite the decades of climate and ecological science indicating that humanity is facing a planetary crisis, have governments done so little?
5. Why, when governments ‘listened to the science’ in relation to shaping responses to the Covid 19 pandemic, they are not implementing the transformations in economies, societies and livelihoods demanded by the climate and ecological science?
6. How and in what ways have citizens, communities, movements and interest groups responding both to the planetary crisis and the perceived lack of government action in addressing it?
7. How have difference political ideologies responded to the planetary crisis – liberalism, capitalism, green politics, socialism, feminism, nationalism, fundamentalism, Marxist, right wing populism/fascism?
8. Is non-violent direct action justified, legitimate and/or effective as a political response to failures by governments to do what is necessary to protect a ‘habitable world’ and the life-supporting systems of the planet?
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this module, students will:
1. Be familiar with the main stakeholders/actors necessary to understand the planetary crisis;
2. Understand the range of explanations for the causes of the climate and ecological crisis and their intersection with class, race, colonial and gender injustice and politics
3. An awareness of the intersection between ‘facts/science/empirical realities’ and value based/ideological responses to these in policy and politics, and how there are multiple ways of responding to the same scientific evidence.
4. Awareness of the tension and computability between political ideologies and political/policy and economic responses to the polycrisis
5. Be able to identify the ideological and value-based dimensions of how both the understanding of the planetary crisis and responses to it are framed within the media, popular discourse and from different political perspectives
Skills
1. An understanding of the range of perspectives and knowledge-bases necessary to comprehend the dynamics shaping world that is now unfolding and within which students will have jobs, careers and families
2. Awareness of the necessity of an interdisciplinary understanding of the policy crisis
3. Group work, negotiation, planning and time management; in small groups of students develop their own research project, developing their independent research skills.
4. Independent thinking and initiative in both developing their group project ideas, choosing the last 10 lectures and associated resources, as well as individual self-reflection and applying the learning on the module to their lived experience in relation to the academic diary.
In this module we cover several perspectives pertaining to deeply divided societies and the unique challenges such conflicts face. We discuss, compare, and contrast cases such as Northern Ireland, South Africa, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Israel-Palestine while also discussing other cases from around the globe. Understanding deeply divided societies’ internal and external dynamics and effects is at the core of this module. It covers domestic causes and effects of identity-based conflicts, their regional embeddedness, and their effects on global politics.
Throughout the semester, students will learn to appreciate a range of dimensions throughout the conflict cycle, from claim making (violence, political competition), through strategies for conflict mitigation (institutional reform, societal cohesion, international involvement) and opportunities for conflict management (power-sharing, secession).
More specifically, we will investigate the challenges of reforming state institutions, their relationship with the governed, and international recognition of domestic claims to power and regime legitimacy.
Learning Outcomes
• Identify and explain the phenomenon and unique features of deeply divided societies
• Applying theoretical arguments related to such key features and the different processes deeply divided societies go through to both historical and contemporary cases
• Evaluate debates amongst scholars who represent different theoretical perspectives
• Comparing and contrasting cases of deeply divided societies from other types of conflicted societies
• Comparing and contrasting between cases of deeply divided societies
• Acquire a deeper and complex understanding of key topics in the study of deeply divided societies (T, P, A)
• Attain a better understanding of several theoretical traditions in International relations and comparative politics and the way they help us identify, examine, and understand deeply divided societies (T, P, A)
• Have the ability to critically analyse and formulate view on central debates and controversies in the study of deeply divided societies (T, P, A)
• Have the ability to compare and contrast between historical and contemporary cases of deeply divided societies (T, P, A)
Cognitive:
• Develop analytical thinking (P, A)
• Develop critical thinking (P, A)
• Apply theoretical concepts to real-life events (P, A)
• Synthesise information from various sources (P, A).
• Collect, sort, criticise, and analyse data (T, P, A)
Transferable:
• Communicate clearly both orally and in writing (P, A)
• Construct evidence-based arguments (P, A)
• Display originality of thought and argument (P, A)
The American political system is in many ways exceptional and has throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries exerted an increasingly global influence. Peoples worldwide have looked to America as an example of a resilient democracy, based on that peculiar combination of egalitarianism and liberty, community and individualism of which Tocqueville and others so highly spoke. The American republic has since its inception claimed to represent universal aspirations to democracy and freedom. Since the very beginning, however, a triumphal account of American democracy and its liberal tradition has coexisted uncomfortably with institutions of slavery and racial segregation, persistent inequalities and controversial ‘foreign entanglements’. American democracy has endured, yet it is often criticised for what it has become.
The American Civil War was the bloody resolution to a national deadlock over slavery and states’ rights but did not end institutional discrimination. Victory in World War II entrenched America’s role as the world’s leading military and economic power, from which emerged a prosperous middle-class society but, in turn, also tumultuous social change that would eventually result in historically high levels of polarisation. American wealth has dominated the global economy but coexists with high levels of socioeconomic inequality and widespread marginalisation, intensifying scrutiny of the country’s claim to being a democratic exemplar. While American ‘exceptionalism’ still underpins national politics, increasing socio-cultural, political, economic and ideological divisions pose a serious challenge to American democracy from within.
Learning Outcomes
This module is a survey course, introducing students to the American political system and current debates about democracy in America. Students will acquire an understanding of the key institutions of the American political system, its origin and evolving dynamics. Students will become familiar with contemporary debates on the nature of democracy and the democratic process in America, including controversies surrounding a range of socio-economic developments and related policy processes.
Skills
This module will assist in developing students’ skills in a number of important areas. These include:
Intellectual skills
• Managing & Prioritizing Knowledge: identify relevant and subject-specific knowledge, sources and data; manage such information in an independent manner
• Analytical Thinking: identify, understand, interpret and evaluate relevant subject-specific arguments made by others; construct independent arguments
• Critical & Independent Thinking: ability to think critically and construct one’s own position in relation to existing and ongoing debates in the field
Professional and career development skills
• Communication Skills: ability to communicate clearly with others, both orally and in writing
• Self-Reflexivity: ability to reflect on one’s own progress and identify and act upon one’s own development needs with respect to life-long learning and career development
Organizational skills
• Efficient and effective work practice: demonstrate ability to work efficiently to deadlines
• Clear organisation of information: show efficiency in the organisation of large amounts of complex information and the ability to identify, describe and analyse the key features of the information
• Organisation and communication: demonstrate ability to use evidence to develop logical and clear arguments; show aptitude for the effective use of information in a direct and appropriate way
• Enterprising thinking: Demonstrate ability to think and argue in novel and enterprising ways, to display originality of thought and argument and the ability to clearly support arguments in innovative ways
This module will introduce students to key aspects of British politics, focusing on institutions and elections and voting. The module will provide students with an understanding of the main institutions of the UK (Parliament, the executive, devolution), the parties and party systems of the UK, and elections and voting behaviour. The module will allow students to use the skills developed in PAI2043 Studying Politics in the study and analysis of elections and voting in the UK. The module takes a contemporary and practical approach and will develop the students’ analytical, statistical, and writing skills.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this module, students will be able to identify the key institutions and players in British politics and to identify and define the major issues in British politics. Moreover, students will be able to appreciate and explain the major changes in British politics that have taken place over time. Students will be able to locate and engage with data relevant to past and contemporary British politics.
Skills
Intellectual skills
• Managing & Prioritizing Knowledge: identify relevant and subject-specific knowledge, sources and data; manage such information in an independent manner
• Analytical Thinking: identify, understand, interpret and evaluate relevant subject-specific arguments made by others; construct independent arguments
• Critical & Independent Thinking: ability to think critically and construct one’s own position in relation to existing and ongoing debates in the field
Professional and career development skills
• Communication Skills: ability to communicate clearly with others, both orally and in writing
• Time Management: ability to negotiate diverse and competing pressures; cope with stress; and achieve a work / life balance
Technical and practical skills
• Information Technology: demonstrate the knowledge and ability to use contemporary and relevant ICT
Organizational skills
• Efficient and effective work practice: demonstrate ability to work efficiently to deadlines
• Organisation and communication: demonstrate ability to use evidence to develop logical and clear arguments; show aptitude for the effective use of information in a direct and appropriate way
• Enterprising thinking: Demonstrate ability to think and argue in novel and enterprising ways, to display originality of thought and argument and the ability to clearly support arguments in innovative ways
This module will examine gendered dimensions of performance from the late sixteenth century to the Restoration. It will introduce students to ways of reading performance via a range of playwrights, genres and theatrical contexts. Topics will include Shakespeare’s boy actors, the children’s playing companies, female performance, shifting dramatic practices and theatrical innovation. It will raise questions about performance spaces and traditions and the representation of gender, location, status, cross-dressing, the body and the actor on this stage.
Learning Outcomes
Students will gain knowledge of modes of representation on the Renaissance stage. They will become familiar with important developments in theatrical practices in this period. They will be able to critically reflect on the ways in which dramatic texts refract contemporary issues of gender, sexuality, status and location and to evaluate these themes across dramatic genres and performance spaces.
Skills
Students will develop skills of close analysis of texts in relation to Renaissance performance and cultural contexts. They will develop the ability to explore questions of gender, genre, space and performance. The module will improve students’ written and oral communication skills and enhance their abilities to develop an argument independently and through group work.
Marvels, Monsters and Miracles in Anglo-Saxon England
Overview
The very nature of marvels insists on their subjectivity: they are defined by the experience of their viewer. To marvel from the Latin mirari or to wonder from the Germanic wundar is to be filled with awe, surprise, admiration or astonishment. When we try to generalise about the meaning of marvels and the use of wonder in the Middle Ages, we are confronted with multiplicity. How do we read marvels? What’s their role in medieval texts? Are monsters and miracles to be read as marvels? One of the most critical tools for discussing the nature of difference that is central to the marvellous is the idea of the ‘Other’ which offers both psychological and political means of analysing the experience of wonder. The Anglo-Saxons were fascinated by the idea of encounters with strangeness and difference – a fascination that expressed itself in a rich and diverse rang of textual, artistic and geographical representations of such imaginings. Difference was considered both marvellous and monstrous; terrifying and fascinating; disgusting and desirable.
This module examines the perceptions of the marvellous and monstrous in the literature of the Anglo-Saxons. It investigates the nature of those phenomena which the Anglo-Saxons experienced as marvels, how they interpreted their experiences of astonishment and how they recreated them for others. It analyses the importance of ‘marvellous difference’ in defining ethnic, racial, religious, class and gender identities, as represented in different genres including historiography (i.e. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle), travel narratives (Wonders of the East, Alexander’s Letter to Aristotle etc), hagiography (i.e. The Life of St Christopher) and other literary texts including Beowulf, Judith, Genesis B.
Texts in Latin, Old Norse and Middle English may be used for comparative purposes. Modern English translations will be provided for all the texts. Students are also expected to be able to engage with texts in Old English.
Learning Outcomes
On completion of the module students should be able to:
-Demonstrate a critical awareness of a variety of early medieval concepts and constructions of otherness and difference;
-Show a familiarity with a range of medieval texts, genres and cultural concepts;
-Demonstrate the ability to engage with both contemporary critical concepts and their applicability to pre-modern texts;
-Show evidence of independent research and study skills;
-Use relevant electronic databases to further their written work;
-Demonstrate a consistent level of contribution to seminar discussions.
Skills
This module will enable students to:
-Develop an informed sense of the complexity of concepts such as monstrosity, marvellous, superstition, miracle, religion, otherness;
-Consider and evaluate how difference (racial, religious, gender, national) was conceptualised in early medieval English culture;
-Acquire an understanding of various literary texts in relation to their cultural context and audience;
-Develop an ability to engage critically with the primary material as well as familiarity with modern scholarly and critical approaches;
Apply independent thought and academic research skills.
This is a Special Topic module offered by a visiting Fulbright Scholar. This course focuses on contemporary Irish women writers and their depiction of home in light of the poetic duality of scáth, an Irish word that may be translated as either shadow or shelter. This duality of scáth helps capture the complicated nature of home, especially for Irish women, who have historically been caught somewhere between viewing “home” as a sheltered respite or as an imprisoning shadow. After rooting the Irish female literary tradition in Irish myths, we will study both how today’s authors not only describe this paradoxical relationship but also offer models of women who simultaneously resist the shadows and create their own shelters of beauty and hope without denying or ignoring ugly realities. Sample texts include Emma Donaghue’s Room, Anna Burns’s Milkman, and Maggie O’Farrell’s This Must Be the Place.
Learning Outcomes
Students will develop their skills in: close reading of literary texts; analysis of literary texts within cultural, historical, and biographical contexts; oral communication; formulation of critical arguments; research methods; scholarly writing, including the integration of primary and secondary sources and adherence to academic conventions
This module aims to provide a strong background in English language by focusing on the print and broadcast media in Britain. It will also introduce students to some of the theoretical concepts and critical issues associated with Media studies. For students, one of the most effective ways to begin understanding the media is to analyse media texts such as newspaper articles, magazine advertisements, political speeches, television and radio interviews, talk shows in detail. Students will also look at non-verbal communication, layouts, and images to see how language interacts with other modes of communication. The course examines important media issues, such as the myth of a free press, racism, violence and commercialization and also provides important information on areas of media studies essential for analysing media discourse, i.e. media practices (the way reporters and editors work and how audiences shape and are shaped by the media).
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this module, you should have developed skills in a critical linguistic analysis of spoken and written media texts/textual and visual media. You should also have gained an awareness of the place of the media in their broader political, economic, social and cultural contexts.
Skills
This module should enable students to build upon and enhance the linguistic skills that they have already acquired during the course of their degree and in particular should allow them to acquire and demonstrate: an ability to critically analyse and interpret written and spoken media texts; a broad understanding of media practices and media audiences; knowledge of a range of theoretical and methodological approaches within the field of media and language; critical thinking about how print and broadcast media are produced and distributed; proficiency in oral and written communication skills.
This is a Special Topic module offered by a visiting Fulbright Distinguished Scholar in Creative Writing. The contents of the module, which will change on an annual basis, depending on the area of creative writing expertise of the Visiting Scholar, will provide an opportunity for students to work on a specific aspect of creative writing. The specific module content will be announced as early as possible each academic year. Students who sign up for this module will, as normal, have the right to switch to another module if the content does not suit their academic plans.
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this module students will have examined an aspect of creative writing and will have written extensively in the appropriate form or genre. Objectivity about their own creative practice will have been further fostered by the writing of a self-reflexive commentary to accompany their final submission. Students should have come some way towards developing their own creative voice.
Contemporary Irish and Scottish Fiction Devolutionary Identities
Overview
The past decades have not only seen an increasing interest in the historical, political and economic crosscurrents between Scotland and Ireland, but they have also witnessed a remarkable literary renaissance on both sides of the Irish Sea. This course explores the transformed literary landscape of Irish and Scottish fiction since the 1980s in relation to the (d)evolutionary processes of cultural and social change in today’s Atlantic archipelago, concerning in particular the Irish Republic’s economic boom in the 1990s (commonly referred to as the ‘Celtic Tiger’), the Peace Process in Northern Ireland, and the movement towards the reconstitution of the Scottish Parliament. We will examine how these changes and the issues that they raise are reflected in an indicative selection of Irish, Northern Irish, and Scottish novels, focusing on the relationship between the formal and stylistic experiments often found in these writings and the concepts of identity, society, the nation, history, and gender that they draw on, resist, and/or give rise to. In this respect, we will pay due attention to ideas about the role of literature, gender, sexuality, class, race, and religion in the (re)construction of national identity; questions of power, authority and authenticity, and the impact of globalization on cultural production; the politics of place and the rural/urban divide; revisions and representations of history, and issues of trauma and memory; the literary use of non-standard English; narrative tropes, techniques, and typographic experiments.
This course aims to establish a comparative framework in order to trace the shared concerns and noteworthy differences that characterise and constitute a significant part of the contemporary Irish and Scottish literary scene. It is designed to introduce students to dominant critical and literary paradigms as well as key debates in Irish and Scottish Studies raised by postcolonialism, postmodernism, (post-) nationalism, gender studies, and feminism. To that end, literary texts will be read alongside theoretical and cultural perspectives in both fields, copies of which will be provided in a course reader.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the module, students will have gained a in-depth knowledge of 11 Irish and Scottish novels and developed an understanding of the corpus of, and crosscurrents between, contemporary Scottish and Irish fiction. The module will introduce students to dominant critical and literary paradigms as well as key debates in Irish and Scottish Studies raised by postcolonialism, postmodernism, (post-) nationalism, gender studies, and feminism. They will be able to apply the knowledge they have gained in textual analysis of contemporary Irish and Scottish fiction, expanding their sense of new developments in subject matter, literary technique, and language use.
Skills
Students will gain a range of subject-specific, intellectual, practical and transferable skills: they will develop their critical assessment of texts and gain deeper analytic and textual competence. They will also hone their presentation and writing skills and learn to present and discuss complex issues with clarity and cogency, both orally and in writing, write clearly and succinctly, and organise study time effectively.
This module examines contemporary (twenty-first century) novels set during the period 1660-1820: from the Restoration of Charles II to the Regency era popularly associated with Jane Austen. These works form part of the boom in ‘historical fiction’, a branch of the novel genre that dates at least as far back as Walter Scott’s Waverley (1814) but which has gained renewed popularity and prestige in recent years. By examining narratives set during a specific time-period, the module assesses the strengths and limitations of historical fiction, the reasons for its cultural and commercial purchase, its relationship to the past and to our contemporary moment, and the usefulness of the term ‘historical fiction’ itself. ‘Historical fiction’ encompasses a variety of modes, sub-genres and aesthetic categories, and the module addresses examples of ‘popular’, mass-market fiction and ‘literary’ (highbrow) fiction; intersections with other novelistic forms (such as crime, mystery and fantasy fiction); and the place within historical fiction of literary adaptations (of Austen’s novels especially). Historical fiction often returns to familiar motifs and historical events – such as the Napoleonic Wars or the decade of the 1660s, which saw the return of the monarchy, the spread of plague and the Great Fire of London. At the same time, contemporary writers have also revisited this period in order to recover marginalised voices: to reclaim, and re-imagine, historical identities in relation to gender, sexuality, race and class. Among other elements, we will consider narratives that focus on servants and slaves, and that explore such topics as crime and the city; social hierarchy and the status of women; empire and national identity; fact, fiction and historical ‘truth’. Via a dual focus on history and the present, the module will thus ask what contemporary fiction tells us about our understanding of the past, and about our own contemporary concerns, anxieties, and obsessions.
Learning Outcomes
Having completed this module, students will have developed higher-level knowledge and understanding of contemporary ‘historical fiction’, in relation to the specific time-period 1660-1820. They will be able to identify and articulate the key critical and theoretical issues surrounding this body of fiction, such as the relationships between narrative, history and ‘the past’; fact, fiction, and historical ‘truth’. They will be equipped to distinguish different kinds of historical fiction and the various genres and modes in operation within these novels: popular vs ‘literary’ fiction; crime, mystery and fantasy; the role of literary adaptation. They will be able to situate recent historical fiction in relation to earlier novels and the history of the (sub-)genre. On completion of the module, they will be more fully attuned to the limitations and risks, popular appeal and value of contemporary historical novels, with particular regard to the period from the Restoration of 1660 to the end of the Regency era.
Skills
Having completed this module students will be able to:
• Analyse contemporary works of historical fiction in terms of genre, technique, readerships, and constructions of the past
• Demonstrate understanding of the various ways in which contemporary novelists have conceived and depicted the period 1660-1820
• Adjudicate critical and theoretical ideas regarding the relationships between fact and fiction, narrative and history within this literature
• Demonstrate understanding of the ‘politics’ of historical fiction, with regard to the voicing of the historically marginalised and the investigation of personal and group identities in terms of gender, sexuality, race and class
• Demonstrate transferrable skills in the forms of group discussion, written communication, and individual research
This module examines how politics conceived as relations between governments and with and between various socio-economic interests and groups shapes the global economy and the power relations it represents. Various issues addressed in the module include: how to think about power and authority in the global economy; contrasting national models of capitalism; the United States as a global economic hegemon in the post 9/11 era; the political economy of the rise of BRIC; the Doha Round of trade talks; Credit Crunch (causes, implications and responses); the geo-politics of currency rivalry; the global governance of oil; and a new global economic order to replace the old order?
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this module, students will:
• Understand the main theoretical and analytical approaches to the study of IPE;
• have knowledge of key issue areas in the study of IPE, including finance, trade, rising powers, development, sustainability and environment;
• appreciate different approaches to the understanding of IPE and political economy;
• understand global and heterodox approaches to political economy and consider the relation between concepts, political economy practices and everyday lives;
• be able to apply key concepts and analytical frames from the IPE literature in examinations of these key issue areas;
• pursue intellectual questions in a rigorous and academic manner, employing analytical skills and critical thinking;
• communicate ideas to others in a clear and concise manner, both orally and in written form.
Skills
This module will assist in developing students’ skills in a number of important areas. These include:
Intellectual skills
• Managing & Prioritising Knowledge: identify relevant and subject-specific knowledge, sources and data; manage such information in an independent manner
• Analytical Thinking: identify, understand, interpret and evaluate relevant subject-specific arguments made by others; construct independent arguments
• Critical & Independent Thinking: ability to think critically and construct one’s own position in relation to existing and ongoing debates in the field
Professional and career development skills
• Communication Skills: ability to communicate clearly with others, both orally and in writing
• Time Management: ability to negotiate diverse and competing pressures; cope with stress; and achieve a work / life balance
Technical and practical skills
• Information Technology: demonstrate the knowledge and ability to use contemporary and relevant ICT
Organisational skills
• Efficient and effective work practice: demonstrate ability to work efficiently to deadlines
• Clear organisation of information: show efficiency in the organisation of large amounts of complex information and the ability to identify, describe and analyse the key features of the information
• Organisation and communication: demonstrate ability to use evidence to develop logical and clear argument; show aptitude for the effective use of information in a direct and appropriate way
• Enterprising thinking: Demonstrate ability to think and argue in novel and enterprising ways, to display originality of thought and argument and the ability to clearly support arguments in innovative ways
and concise, written and oral form;
Students will be able to think analytically, critically and logically about a range of important contemporary social issues.
Students will have the capacity to identify many of the key causes, strategies and motivations of contemporary global economic trends and developments.
This Module offers students the opportunity to undertake a work placement for a total of 1.5 days per week for 12 weeks (18 days total) in a host organisation and complete a project relating to the work undertaken for the organisation.
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this module, students will have significantly developed their administrative knowledge and capacity; acquired a clear understanding of the work, organisation and operation of the host institution; produced a body of work that is both academically sound and, ideally, of practical utility for the host institution; and developed and acquired a range of skills including working within a team setting and complying with the norms and ethical standards of a professional working environment. Students will also have learned to locate their applied experience with academic interests and concerns.
Skills
This module will assist in developing students’ skills in a number of important areas. These include: Intellectual skills * Managing & Prioritizing Knowledge * Analytical Thinking * Critical & Independent Thinking Professional and career development skills * Communication Skills * Teamwork * Diversity * Self-Reflexivity * Time Management Technical and practical skills * Information Technology * Regulations and standards Organizational skills * Efficient and effective work practice * Clear organisation of information * Organisation and communication * Enterprising thinking
Students will undertake a piece of independent research and write a dissertation presenting that research and their conclusions. They will have the guidance of a tutor, but the emphasis is on their own independent research and writing. There should be no overlap between the chosen topic and work done for other modules. Students will be expected to develop and exhibit suitable theoretical and methodological frameworks for their chosen topic.
Learning Outcomes
The module will provide an opportunity to explore, to investigate and to identify themes for research within English. Students will be able to draw from a variety of theoretical, textual, analytical techniques, to examine and evaluate a given research problem.
Skills
By the end of the module students will:\n\nhave a developed critical understanding of an area of language study;\n\nhave developed the skills needed to conduct an independent line of research;\n\nbe able to write a cogent, well-illustrated dissertation, which displays originality of consistent thinking and application of ideas, concepts and theories.
The late twentieth century has seen a proliferation of Shakespeare on screen. This module investigates the phenomenon through the cinematic history of four plays - Henry V, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and Othello. It looks at the work of directors such as Laurence Olivier, Franco Zeffirelli, Orson Welles, Kenneth Branagh, Baz Luhrmann, Oliver Parker and Michael Almereyda. Debate will focus upon the following areas; the relationship between the playtext and the film; the malleability of Shakespeare as a cultural icon; the relevance of Shakespeare to a modern audience; the shifting status of Shakespeare as a signifier of gender, race, technology and politics.
Learning Outcomes
This module aims to inculcate an in-depth knowledge of the multifarious ways in which Shakespeare is appropriated in late twentieth-century cinema; to enable students to discriminate between various filmic versions of a play; to gain the confidence and capability to deploy critical and theoretical tools to talk about film constructively; and to reflect upon connections between Shakespearean production and the preoccupations of a particular historical moment.
Skills
Having successfully completed this module, you should have become familiar with a range of ways in which Shakespeare is appropriated in the cinema; you should have learned how to utilise a theoretical filmic vocabulary in the interests of larger analyses; you should be able to discriminate between various filmic versions of a play and to identify some of their cultural and intertextual influences; you should have further honed your presentational skills and, through regular teamwork, learned the value of collaborative practice.
This module examines in depth the work of two major twentieth-century American poets: Wallace Stevens and Elizabeth Bishop. The work of the module will divide evenly between the two writers, with the first five weeks concentrating on Stevens and the second five on Bishop. Students will engage with two main texts (the collected poems of each poet) and assess their writings either in terms of individual collections or as examples of a longer career in poetry.
Learning Outcomes
Having completed this module, students should have a thorough knowledge of the work of both Wallace Stevens and Elizabeth Bishop within a range of particular contexts: their connection to other poetic movements or schools or traditions; their place within a canon of twentieth-century American poetry; their relation to philosophical movements, both within the United States and further afield; and of how their poems work as poetry. They will also be familiar with other examples of Stevens’ and Bishop’s writing, whether in the form of letters, essays, or in prose and how these assist in the understanding of their poetry within related contexts.
Skills
Students will develop the ability to read and critically analyse poetry in a range of forms and modes: short poems; philosophical poems; narrative poems; long poems. Their skills in assessing fundamental examples of twentieth-century American poetry between 1923 and 1976 will be enhanced by a range of approaches: comparing poems by Stevens or by Bishop from across her/his oeuvre, and/or by comparing the work of both writers; by reading their work in relation to key critical and contextual understandings of their contemporary moments (Modernism, late Modernism, World Wars 1 and 2, the Depression, the Middle Generation). Students taking this module will develop an appreciation of poetry on its own terms as exemplified by two giants of the form in the United States.
Drawing on contemporary theories regarding new national and postcolonial literatures, this module will introduce students to post-independence Indian literature in English through a selection of texts including fiction, poetry, drama, travel writing and journalism. These will be accompanied by critical readings and discussions engaging with issues such as the role of English in India; the politics of nationalism, regionalism, caste and gender in contemporary India; India’s global reach and its (literary) diaspora; as well as current media and travel writing in India. While the emphasis will be placed on canonical literary texts (in printed form), other materials such as film, media, and internet resources will be used to complement and contextualise these literary works.
Learning Outcomes
Students will gain a broad understanding of contemporary Indian literature within a framework provided by current critical theories regarding new national and postcolonial literatures.
Skills
This module will develop the following skills:
- ability to engage in literary analysis
- the ability to understand and use current critical theories (specifically those relating to postcolonial and new national literatures in English)
- the ability to closely work with peers through group discussion
- oral engagement through discussion and class presentation
- formal written presentation of individual research work in the area
Stylistics is the application of analytical models and methods from linguistics to rhetorical texts, including (but not limited to) fictional and persuasive texts. In this module, the students are introduced to the analytical frameworks used in contemporary Stylistics, which draw on a range of approaches from Pragmatics, Corpus Linguistics and Cognitive Psychology. The frameworks are applied to texts to demonstrate how the linguistic patterns employed lead to stylistic effects. The students will practice applying the models to a variety of texts, identifying the linguistic features that contribute towards style in language.
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this module, students will have an understanding of the key frameworks used in stylistic analysis and the ability to apply them to rhetorical texts. Through practising this application, students will learn to identify patterns in the linguistic features that lead to stylistic effects. Consequently, students will have a heightened awareness of the use of language for artful and persuasive purposes.
As well as subject-specific outcomes, students will gain from this module more generally by learning methods in the qualitative analysis of texts, to write critically and to present an argument clearly.
Skills
During this module, students will have the opportunity to acquire the following skills:
Module-specific:
- Linguistic analysis of rhetorical texts
- Criticism of linguistic theory and practice
- Identification of formal linguistic features
Generic:
- Qualitative research methods
- Writing critically and reflectively
- Presentation skills
Speech Worlds: Phonological Acquisition, Variation and Disorder
Overview
The module focuses on four main areas of phonetics. First, you will refine your existing skills in phonetic description and transcription by expanding your knowledge of articulatory categories and distinctions. We then examine methods of profiling speakers' phonetic and phonological systems, using a range of appropriate models. The third component of the module concentrates on intonational aspects of speech. Here, we will examine recent theoretical developments alongside traditional accounts, and we will assess the role of intonation in various communicative situations. Finally, you will gain knowledge of and practical ability in the acoustic analysis of speech. Building on the basic acoustic skills you acquired in Patterns of Spoken English, you will now move on to understand the role of instrumental analysis in the quantification of speech production characteristics. In each of these four areas, we will analyse speech from a wide range of contexts, including disordered speech and children's speech. Throughout the module, you will be encouraged to develop your aural phonetic skills by means of an audio-tape, specifically designed to accompany the course, along with CD-ROM packages.
Learning Outcomes
This module should equip you with a firm understanding of the role of advanced phonetic study in assessing and profiling speech. You should be in a position to undertake a detailed analysis of a speaker's output and to account for breakdowns in speech production using appropriate and informed explanations. Your experience of this module should encourage you to appreciate the value of detailed phonetic knowledge in, for example, English teaching where a detailed understanding of oracy skills can be central to educational development, in foreign language teaching and learning, and in clinical speech contexts.
Skills
The central aim of this module is to develop your theoretical and practical skills in phonetics. We will achieve this aim by examining the processes involved in the production of speech and describing/ transcribing them in detail; by understanding and evaluating models for phonetic analysis; by applying phonetic and phonological analysis as a means of understanding the structure of normal and disordered speech, and by using techniques of acoustic analysis in investigating phonetic data.
This module explores Ireland’s unique contribution to the Gothic through an extraordinary range of texts that encompasses classics of the genre (such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula) alongside lesser-known writers such as Gerald Griffin and James Clarence Mangan. Whilst the reading for the module exemplifies the formal diversity of the genre, particular emphasis is placed on the accelerating use of the short story as a literary vehicle for terror (notably in the work of Sheridan Le Fanu and Elizabeth Bowen). The module pursues several interrelated lines of intellectual inquiry: the longstanding perception of Ireland as a site of Gothic horror; the role of Gaelic folklore and myth in creating supernatural terror; the reception and development of Gothic themes in Irish writing; and current critical debates in the field. In tracing the widespread prevalence of Gothic motifs and themes, the module seeks to delineate the contours of a distinctive aesthetic, and reflects on questions of colonial and gender politics, as well as dilemmas of national and sexual identities as they appear in the dark glass of Irish Gothic writing.
Learning Outcomes
On completing this module, students should have a thorough knowledge of the Gothic genre as it developed in Irish writing, and be able to identify and expand upon the distinctive formal and thematic features of this literary tradition. Students should also be able to situate texts in a range of relevant contexts, relating Gothic motifs and themes to the historical and cultural particularities of their production. Students should also gain good understanding of the current critical debates surrounding Irish Gothic writing.
Skills
Over the course of the module, students should develop/acquire the following skills:
• to analyse primary and secondary material in a scholarly manner;
• to research appropriate critical and historical material on any given literary topic;
• to edit and present scholarly arguments and literary analyses to peers;
• to negotiate a ranging critical field, and situate in relation to it their own analytical perspective.
This course aims to explore the writing and culture of the working class, to ask how socio-economic distinctions inflect judgements of ‘taste’, and to develop an understanding of the historical role of class in shaping identities across ethno-nationalist lines. A good deal of scholarship in recent decades has signalled a growing awareness of British working-class writing, though Irish Studies, by comparison, has tended to neglect issues of social class. We will therefore engage the more substantial body of scholarship on British working-class literature to inform our discussion of Irish working-class writers, signalling new and exciting possibilities for future scholarship.
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, students will have refined their broad critical understanding of key thinkers in cultural materialist and left-wing literary theory. They will have applied this understanding to over a dozen key texts (including films), engaging a range of historical and social contexts across twentieth-century British and Irish writing, analysing the recurrence of key themes and ideas in working-class writing. Students will also have related these readings to developments in postcolonial, postmodern and feminist theories, where applicable, drawing on a broad range of cultural and intellectual perspectives.
Skills
During this module, students will have the opportunity to practise the following skills:
- Critical analysis of key debates in literary and cultural theory;
- Engagement with interdisciplinary debates regarding historiography and the sociology of culture;
- Application of learning to key texts in working-class writing;
- Comparative analysis of literary and filmic representations and conventions;
- Writing critically and reflectively;
- Presentation skills.
This module aims to raise questions about the relation between works of fiction set in the Victorian period, and made-for-TV reappropriations of these texts. It considers the way that we ‘read’ the Victorian period through visual image, and the impact of technologies of the visual on the written word. It introduces different theoretical approaches to film, and explains, by means of example, the differences between cinema and television. It explores connection between cinematic practice (montage, the shot, editing, sound, space and mise-en-scène) and notions of writing. It will ask questions about the nature of genre, spectatorship, and issues of ideology and effect. The module will concentrate on identifying the range of different resources required to understand the flow of images on the TV screen, and will examine how ‘adaptation’ is conceptualised, particularly the ways in which the comparison of book and film is haunted by notions of faithfulness and the ‘original’ primacy of the literary work.
Learning Outcomes
Having completed this module, you should have refined your ability to analyse literary texts sensitively in relation to films made for TV. You should have developed your skills in constructing written and spoken analyses and arguments, based on assembling appropriate primary and secondary evidence from textual and visual media. You should have developed an ability to conceptualise adaptations, to speak in a theoretically informed manner about reappropriations of works set in the Victorian period, to distinguish between film and television as visual media, and to read visual images in such a way as to appreciate how literature and film work together to produce cultural artefacts.
Skills
This module should enable you to build upon and substantially enhance the skills that you have already acquired during the course of your degree, and in particular should allow you to acquire and demonstrate the following: broad comprehension of modern scholarly debates concerning adaptations; understanding of how Victorian social and cultural contexts are translated or interpreted for the modern age; understanding of the fundamentals of film and television art; the ability to analyse critically the interrelation between works of fiction and their made for tv counterparts, in the process identifying their complexities and contradictions; effective oral and written communication skills.
Literature and Science in the Nineteenth Century: Evolution, Degeneration, and the Mind
Overview
This course will explore the diverse ways that writers responded to the dramatic developments in science in the nineteenth century, from Darwinian evolution and degeneration theory to the fascination with psychology, mesmerism and the mind. These emergent bodies of knowledge transformed conceptions of the self and society, and we will examine the strategies used by writers to engage with new conceptions of time, fears about progress, and the challenge to religious beliefs presented by the prospect of a directionless universe. Considering the emergence of social science and anthropology, as well as developments in evolutionary biology, psychology and the occult sciences, we will explore the ways science helped to shape nineteenth-century ideologies of race, class, and gender, and led to experiments with new and popular subgenres (including science fiction, imperial adventure, detective fiction and the utopian/dystopian novel).
Learning Outcomes
You will gain an understanding of the ways science participated in nineteenth-century constructions of race and empire, class and gender, and informed debates over subjectivity and social relations. You should be able to relate developments in biology, psychology and social science to fictional modes of representation, including developments in realist fiction, fantasy, and subgenre fiction. You will gain a more nuanced grasp of relationships between science, literature and culture in the nineteenth century.
Skills
You should build on skills developed on ENG2070, including the ability to relate texts to their historical contexts, the ability to engage with texts in both thematic and formal terms, the ability to relate scientific developments to literary developments (including the rise of science fiction, imperial adventure, detective fiction and the utopian novel), the ability to contextualise and question relationships between literature and science in the nineteenth-century, and to explore the dynamic relationships between fictional and non-fictional writings, the development of a critical awareness of the way science shaped (and was shaped by) nineteenth-century politics and culture. You will also acquire enhanced skills of independent thought and research, group-work skills and oral presentation skills.
The dissertation is a research project that the student develops, designs and implements. There is a Dissertation Synopsis of approximately 1,000 words and the end product is a substantial piece of written work of 12,000 words on a topic that has been agreed between the student and his/her supervisor.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the dissertation, students will be able to: (a) develop a sustained argument, test a hypothesis, and/or write an original narrative; (b) carry out research including finding appropriate sources of information for the topic in question; (c) review appropriate theories for the topic.
Skills
Students participate in a workshop at the start of the dissertation, which focuses on how to formulate a dissertation question, how to conduct research for the dissertation, and how to organise and write the dissertation. Students engage in further consultation and skills development with their individual dissertation supervisor. A further workshop is held at the start of the second semester. Students work closely with their supervisor throughout the research, drafting and writing of their dissertation. The skills required for ongoing research and writing of a dissertation are acquired and monitored through liason with the supervisor.
This Module offers students the opportunity to undertake a work placement for a total of 3 days per week for 12 weeks (36 days total) in a host organisation. Students will undertake a project relating to the work they are undertaking for the host organisation.
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this module, students will have significantly developed their administrative knowledge and capacity; acquired a clear understanding of the work, organisation and operation of the host institution; produced a body of work that is both academically sound and, ideally, of practical utility for the host institution; and developed and acquired a range of skills including working within a team setting and complying with the norms and ethical standards of a professional working environment. Students will also have learned to locate their applied experience with academic interests and concerns.
Skills
This module will assist in developing students’ skills in a number of important areas. These include: Intellectual skills * Managing & Prioritizing Knowledge * Analytical Thinking * Critical & Independent Thinking Professional and career development skills * Communication Skills * Teamwork * Diversity * Self-Reflexivity * Time Management Technical and practical skills * Information Technology * Regulations and standards
National and Ethnic Minorities in European Politics
Overview
Often trapped between the competing logics of nation and state, minority groups in Europe have played an important role in the twentieth century's bloodiest tragedies and have been targeted in many conflicts. However, contemporary Europe offers a substantial institutional approach to put minority issues on an entirely novel footing. This course looks at the role of minority groups in Europe addressing their competing claims over political representation, economic resources and cultural rights that persist throughout the Union. The course will examine minority issues from a comparative perspective to shed light on challenges that face specifically postcommunist European societies and will address issues pertaining to recognition of minority rights in the ‘older’ EU member states.
We start with the analyses of the origins of minority rights, the establishment of the European minority rights regime, and the relationship between national minorities and majorities in contemporary Europe. The module will engage with issues on European minority rights agenda moving beyond the perspective of nation-state, and will focus upon the impact of both, social processes domestically and geopolitical considerations regionally to enhance understanding of complicated relationship between the human rights and non-discrimination agendas globally. It engages literature on postcommunist Europeanisation, minority rights regime and accommodation of rights of migrants during the complex path of building European institutions. Taking its starting point in theoretical debates of post-cold War minority protection in Europe, the module is focused empirically on European cases, East and West, where tensions between groups have been identified and examined in terms of ethnic and/or national identities. By contrasting the issue relevant for national minorities throughout Europe the course will allow greater understanding of consequences going in hand with the recognition of national minority rights for European societies with growing numbers of old and new minority communities.
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this module, students will be able to:
• Place minority situations in a broader context of domestic and European politics
• Contrast the differential impact European integration had on minority groups in different waves of enlargement
• Ascertain importance of national minorities as guarantors of geopolitical stability
• Understand and be able to discriminate the impact of new and old minorities have on likelihood of ethnic conflict in contemporary Europe
• Communicate clearly and concisely, both orally and in written form contemporary situation in Europe
• Rigorously pursue intellectual questions in an academic manner, using analytical skills and critical thinking.
Skills
This module will assist in developing students’ skills in a number of important areas. These include:
Intellectual skills
• Analytical Thinking: identify, understand, interpret and evaluate relevant subject-specific arguments made by others; construct independent arguments
• Critical & Independent Thinking: ability to think critically and construct one’s own position in relation to existing and ongoing debates in the field
Professional and career development skills
• Communication Skills: ability to communicate clearly with others, both orally and in writing
• Teamwork: ability to work with others in a team, negotiate conflicts and recognize different ways of learning
• Self-Reflexivity: ability to reflect on one’s own progress and identify and act upon ones own development needs with respect to life-long learning and career development
Organizational skills
• Clear organisation of information: show efficiency in the organisation of large amounts of complex information and the ability to identify, describe and analyse the key features of the information
• Organisation and communication: demonstrate ability to use evidence to develop logical and clear argument; show aptitude for the effective use of information in a direct and appropriate way
Political Parties and Elections in Northern Ireland
Overview
This module analyses political parties and elections in Northern Ireland. The module is motivated by the following simple question: What drives citizens’ party choice in Northern Ireland elections. The module situates the Northern Ireland case in the context of the international literature on political and electoral institutions. Specifically, given the consociational institutional context of Northern Ireland, what expectations should we have of how citizens choose parties at election time? The module assesses the relative importance of ‘conflict’ and ‘non conflict issues’ in determining voting behaviour.
The following is an indicative description of the seminars
1. Introduction
2. The Institutional Context: Consocationalism
3. Social Bases of Voting: Religion versus other effects
4. Ideological Bases of Voting: Ethno-national ideology versus other ideological effects (economic left-right, liberal-conservative, pro-EU anti EU)
5. Psychological identification: Positive Affective attachment versus negative identification
6. Group representation: Tribune versus Catch-All effects
7. Holding parties responsible for governing performance
8. Parties from the South and the East: What would happen if...?
9. Implications for other deeply divided places and consociational contexts
Note that there will be an element of quantitative statistical analysis in this module. Students should be prepared for this.
Learning Outcomes
Understanding of the nature of party competition and electoral choice in Northern Ireland
Skills
Intellectual skills
Understanding theoretical interpretations of political choice and understanding how theories are empiricallly tested
Professional and career development skills
Participation in seminars and knowledge of methodological matters
Earth, Energy, Ethics and Economy: The Politics of Unsustainability
Overview
The continuing problematic relationship between key dynamics of modern economic and social systems and the non-human world is one of the most pressing issues of the 21st century and will continue shape the political agenda both nationally and globally. This module will examine some of the key debates of the politics of sustainable development, including: green ethical and political theory; the role of the environment and nature in political theorising; the economic and policy alternatives to unsustainable development and the normative underpinnings of a sustainable society.
Learning Outcomes
Upon completion of this module students will: Have a firm understanding of the key ethical, political and economic dimensions of green theory Be able to identify and understand the varieties of schools of thinking with green theory. Have a firm understanding of sustainable development; Be able to relate green theory to the politics of sustainable development; Be able to relate green political theory to other schools of thought within contemporary political theory; Be able to articulate and defend their own understandings of both green political theory and sustainable development; Be able to relate the empirical and scientific arguments and debates about sustainable development to normative theorising about sustainable development; Be able to defend and explain interdisciplinary methodological approaches to the study of sustainable development
Skills
Knowledge of the main issues, thinkers, schools of thought and debates within green political and ethical theory; knowledge of the political, economic and ethical dimensions of debates about sustainable development; ability for independent research and study; critical, analytical and independent thinking; presenting informed arguments in class; critical independent and reasoned judgement and assessment and appreciation of the arguments of others; awareness and appreciation of the complexities and nuances of different normative positions; relating the issues, thinkers and schools of thought covered in this module to other modules that students have done in Politics or other pathways.
An examination of the range of concepts related to the notion of identity in modern and contemporary Europe. The module offers an interdisciplinary survey of the construction of identity in localities, regions, and states of Western Europe, with a particular emphasis on the role of identity in cultural integration and diversity
Learning Outcomes
To introduce students to the notion of identity and the various factors (linguistic, ethnic, national, social, historical) which have contributed to the identity of western Europeans.
Skills
Development of critical and analytical skills. Emphasis on comparative methodology and the ability to synthesise knowledge in both written and oral form in a cross-national (European) context.
Understanding the nature and sources of the world’s pre-eminent superpower is indispensable in analysing global security arrangements and the liberal international system. Using international relations theoretical perspectives and approaches in security studies, this module introduces students to a number of themes and debates concerning the central role of the United States in the international system and the contemporary global order. More specifically, it critically engages students with US foreign policy during the Cold War, US grand strategy, the purposes of US global military presence and its influence in the contemporary liberal global order, the “Pax Americana”, and other pertinent issues, placing these in historical context from the Cold War up until the current challenge of the rise of China. The course uses various historical cases to elucidate central dynamics in US foreign policy, from US involvement in Latin America during the Cold War to US counter-terrorism strategies in the War on Terror. In this sense, the course is designed to provide substantive content regarding US foreign policy and its dynamics as well as critically evaluate the role of US power in the international system.
This module introduces students to the centrality of gender and sexuality in shaping political dynamics at the local, national and global level. It approaches the topic from three perspectives - feminist political thought; strategies for political mobilization and change; and the relevance of gender in international affairs. The module aims to offer an introduction to the contribution of feminist intersectional scholarship in challenging understandings of politics and international relations as gender-neutral and draws attention to the, often neglected, experiences, agency and political claims of gender minorities. It considers key contemporary issues such as intersectionality and feminist politics, sexuality and reproductive justice; social movements and anti-gender politics; war, peace and security; climate change and the politics of global crises.
Lectures will chart the development of feminism in its diverse ideological strands and ‘waves’.
Students will have the opportunity to discuss theoretical perspectives and empirical examples as entry points to the gendered complexities of global politics.
Learning Outcomes
To provide a political perspective on gender; to clarify the diversity of feminist thought; to analyse and explain the causes of women's inequality in the public and private realms; and to provide an understanding of the inequalities confronting women.
Skills
The ability to comprehend the politics of sex and gender in an historical and theoretical framework; to develop a political perspective on gender; to debate positions; to engage in small group activity; to improve oral presentation and essay-writing skills.
The study of public administration and policy has witnessed resurgence in political and other social sciences in recent years, as scientists in these fields seek to better understand a) how political preferences are translated into action, or otherwise, and b) the role played by contemporary bureaucratic systems and international organisations in shaping public policy. The recent financial, economic and political crises across the OECD have also renewed popular interest in key aspects of governing, including the regulation of markets, the organisation and role of the public service, the interplay between institutions and policy choices, and the politics of reform – all of which require analysis that moves beyond the political sphere. This Module, addresses these and other questions by drawing on a new generation of scholarship with which the Convenor is closely involved. In combining theoretical learning with real-world practice, it will provide students with high-quality competence in respect of the dominant theories and schools of thought concerning the organisation and management of contemporary government.
The Module provides students with the opportunity to develop a more detailed understanding of modern governing by exploring the interplay between politics and public administration in the process of policy making. For the last three decades, the disciplines of public administration and policy-making have been predominantly taught in business schools (under such titles as public sector management) but without recourse to concepts or theories which political science usefully offers and which are now in much demand. This Module thus presents an excellent opportunity for graduate students to gain proficiency in public administration and policy, and to develop detailed knowledge of modern governing in and beyond the political arena.
• The role of public administration in public policy
• Comparing systems of policy making and administration
• Autonomy and control in public administration and policy
• The policy process in theory and practice
• Regulatory governance
• The role of politico-administrative culture
• Public policy development and network forms of governing
• Public policy and administration at the sub-national level
• The role of international organisations in national public policy and pdministration
• The politics of administrative reform
In all cases, students will be exposed to theoretical approaches to these issues with a view to mastering them, and also expected to apply their learning to real-world practice of policy-making in a political environment. The Module will also involve engagement with statistical datasets and publications produced by international organisations such as the OECD, IMF and EU which have become of increasing importance in understand the motivations of national governments. The Module will be presented by means of 11 seminars, including some with invited practitioners, and assessed by means of written assignments and reflective learning logs.
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this module students will have acquired:
1. Critical knowledge and awareness of contemporary theories in public administration and policy making and their relevance to current problems faced by Western governments
2. Enhanced understanding of political-administrative relationships and their role in shaping contemporary policy making
3. In-depth knowledge of a number of key processes in contemporary government, including policy implementation, regulation, reform and evaluation
4. Competence in some of the key international and national debates concerning the future role, organisation and cost of public administration systems
5. Excellent knowledge of varieties in public administration systems and cultures, at national and local levels
6. The ability to sustain critical assessment of policy proposals and administrative organisation
7. Communicate ideas about the work and reform of systems of political governance
Skills
As per the University’s requirements, this module will assist in developing students’ skills in a wide variety of areas. These include:
Intellectual skills
• Managing, Understanding & Prioritizing Knowledge: identify relevant and subject-specific knowledge, sources and data; manage and use such information in an independent manner
• Analytical Thinking: identify, understand, interpret and evaluate relevant subject-specific arguments made by others; construct independent arguments in the context of theoretically informed knowledge
• Critical & Independent Thinking: ability to think critically and construct one’s own position in relation to existing and ongoing debates in the field
Professional and career development skills
• Communication Skills: ability to communicate clearly with others, both orally and in writing
• Teamwork: ability to work with others in a team, negotiate conflicts and recognize different ways of learning
• Diversity: ability to acknowledge and be sensitive to the range of cultural differences present in the learning environment
• Self-Reflexivity: ability to reflect on one’s own progress and identify and act upon ones own development needs with respect to life-long learning and career development
• Time Management: ability to negotiate diverse and competing pressures; cope with stress; and achieve a work / life balance
Technical and practical skills
• Information Technology: demonstrate the knowledge and ability to use contemporary and relevant ICT to source data and produce coherent information
• Data management: ability to source timely and relevant information from international organisations and databases
Organizational skills
• Efficient and effective work practice: demonstrate ability to work efficiently to deadlines
• Clear organisation of information: show efficiency in the organisation of large amounts of complex information and the ability to identify, describe and analyse the key features of the information
• Organisation and communication: demonstrate ability to use evidence to develop logical and clear argument; show aptitude for the effective use of information in a direct and appropriate way
• Enterprising thinking: Demonstrate ability to think and argue in novel and enterprising ways, to display originality of thought and argument and the ability to clearly support arguments in innovative ways
Radical Hope:Inspiring Present-day Sustainability Transformations through an Examination of Our Past
Overview
• Indicative module content
• Listening Carefully (Carsten Wergin)↓
• Looking at the ordinary – a tender practice of forging relationships (Tania Katzschner) ↓
• Radical Hope in Turbulent Times: sources of inspiration from politics to poetry (John Barry)
• The Rise of Optimism in the Conservation Movement (Elin Kelsey) ↓
• Expecting the Unexpected—The Role of Art in the Dissemination of Radical Hope (Patrick J. Reed) ↓
• The Art of Protest: Radical Hope Envisioned and Embodied (Amy Hay) ↓
• Recurring Earthquakes and the Rebirth of Hope (Sophia Kalantzakos) ↓
• Infrastructures of Hope (Erika Bsumek) ↓
• Air Pollution: Issues and Solutions (Hal Crimmel) ↓
• Thrifty Science (Simon Werrett) ↓
• Planting seeds of hope: Environmental Education for the Present & future (Kieko Matteson) ↓
• Environmental Security: The Courage to Fear and the Courage to Hope ( Allan W. Shearer) ↓
• Look Down for Hope – Phytoremediation in an Italian Steel Town (Monica Seger) ↓
• Living In Good Relation with the Environment: A Syllabus of Radical Hope (Alina Scott) ↓
• On Love and Property (Kara Thompson) ↓
• Design, Hybridity and Just Transitions (Damian White) ↓
• The Answer is Blowing in the Wind: Grassroots Technological Networks of Wind Energy (Kostas Latoufis; Aristotle Tympas ) ↓
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this course, you should be able to demonstrate:
• An understanding of the different dimensions of hope and its variants and opposites in the context of climate breakdown, environmental crisis
An ability to integrate different disciplinary perspectives on hopeful responses to the global ecological crisis;
• Understanding of the uses and resources from history and other countries;
• The ability to analyse and evaluate different disciplinary, historical and geographical examples and debates around radial hope and the Anthropocene;
• Develop ability to think critically, reason logically, and evaluate evidence in multidisciplinary context
• Understand main differences and similarities between political, ethical, economic, creative and historical methods of studying the Anthropocene
Skills
Ability to work with other people;
Ability to work across and integrate different disciplinary perspectives on the same issue;
Managing & Prioritizing Knowledge: identify relevant and subject-specific knowledge, sources and data; manage such information in an independent manner
Analytical Thinking: identify, understand, interpret and evaluate relevant subject-specific arguments made by others; construct independent arguments *
Critical & Independent Thinking: ability to think critically and in creative and innovative ways and construct one’s own position in relation to existing and ongoing debates in the fields of study
Communication Skills: ability to communicate clearly with others, both orally and in writing Teamwork: ability to work with others in a team, negotiate conflicts and recognize different ways of learning
Diversity: ability to acknowledge and be sensitive to the range of cultural differences present in the learning environment
Self-Reflexivity: ability to reflect on one’s own progress and identify and act upon ones own development needs with respect to life-long learning and career development
Time Management: ability to negotiate diverse and competing pressures; cope with stress; and achieve a work / life balance Technical and practical skills
Information Technology: demonstrate the knowledge and ability to use contemporary and relevant ICT Organizational skills
Efficient and effective work practice: demonstrate ability to work efficiently to deadlines
Clear organisation of information: show efficiency in the organisation of large amounts of complex information and the ability to identify, describe and analyse the key features of the information
Organisation and communication: demonstrate ability to use evidence to develop logical and clear arguments; show aptitude for the effective use of information in a direct and appropriate way
Enterprising thinking: Demonstrate ability to think and argue in novel and enterprising ways, to display originality of thought and argument and the ability to clearly support arguments in innovative ways
Writing Africa: The Colonial Past to Colonial Present
Overview
This module provides an overview of Anglophone prose fiction from and about the African continent, from the late 19th century to the present. Beginning with texts written at the height of British imperial power, the course charts imperial decline and decolonisation through literary eyes. Coming to focus on the African novel in English, students will study major concepts and debates in colonial and postcolonial studies and, by interrogating globalisation and the ‘colonial present’, will reflect critically on postcolonial theory itself. This course is structured around five themes: 1) Adventure, Exploration, Empire 2) Imperial Decline 3) Decolonisation: The Rise of the African Novel 4) Gender, Trauma, Conflict 5) Postcolonialism or Neo-imperialism
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this module, students will have analysed a range of colonial and postcolonial fiction set in sub-Saharan Africa, from the Victorian period to the present. They will have engaged critically with key debates in colonial and postcolonial studies concerning language, identity and representation, and applied these to course texts. Students will have extended their knowledge and understanding of module themes (including colonialism, decolonisation, postcolonialism, globalisation and neo-imperialism), and developed an informed critical vocabulary for the examination of colonial and postcolonial literatures.
Skills
On completing this module students will be able to:
• articulate their knowledge and understanding of colonialism, decolonisation, postcolonialism, globalisation and neo-imperialism
• analyse and evaluate key critical terms, and deploy an informed vocabulary for the examination of colonial and postcolonial literature
• demonstrate an ability to work with secondary materials
• identify independent research questions (having selected their own essay and presentation topics)
• display transferable skills in group discussion, written communication and oral presentation
• demonstrate skills in using online research and learning resources effectively (having participated in a digital resources workshop)
This module provides an opportunity for student to utilise disciplinary skills in a work-based environment within the context of reflective practice. Students will negotiate suitable placements in consultation with their academic supervisor and participate in a programme of related classes and events. Simulated work-based projects in which students work in groups with the support of the university’s Enterprise Unit in the Students’ Union are also possible.
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this module, students should have:
Increased ability to relate academic theory to the work environment
A developed understanding of the organisational culture, policies and processes
The ability to reflexively and critically evaluate their own learning from the placement
An appreciation of enterprise and innnovation
Enhanced career knowledge
Skills
Employability skills, including effective communication, teamworking and problem-solving.
Love Across the Divide: Northern Irish Literature and Culture 1968-Present
Overview
This module examines how Northern Irish texts, from 1968 to the present, engage with the ‘Troubles’ through the motif of ‘Love Across the Divide’. The attempt to negotiate the perennially fraught Anglo-Irish relationship through an Irish/British, Catholic/Protestant or Republican/Loyalist love story has a long literary history: and took on renewed urgency after the eruption of violence in the late 1960s. Exploration of this narrative trope illuminates the roles that gender, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, politics and class play in shaping individual, cultural and national identities. Students will study a wide variety of materials, including poetry, novels, plays, short fiction, TV & Film, to ask if the motif is mobilised differently across literary and/or cultural forms and if so, how and why? What do these narratives tell us about the progress (or lack of) with regards to women’s rights and gender politics in Northern Ireland? How should we read narratives exploring homosexual romance in a province where same-sex marriage is still prohibited? In thinking about how the conflict and its legacy have impacted on the most secret, intimate and surprising of things – sexual desire – students will be critically equipped to scrutinize the domestic debris of the ‘Troubles’.
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this module the student should be able to:
1. Discuss and evaluate a broad range of Northern Irish literary and cultural texts from the period studied.
2. Show an awareness of the historical and intellectual contexts to Northern Irish Literature, Culture and the Troubles.
3. Discuss differing critical approaches to Northern Irish literature and culture.
4. Think critically about the intersectional nature of identity, and the role that gender, sexuality, politics, religion, ethnicity and religion play in shaping our lives.
5. Comment upon the representation of the evolving political landscape and gendered nature of life in Northern Ireland from 1968 to the present.
6. Analyse how gender, sexual identity and desire can be politicised.
7. Reflect on the domestic impact of the violence and conflict of the ‘Troubles’.
Skills
Having completed this module students will be able to:
• Analyse texts from contemporary Northern Irish literature and culture with regards to their aesthetic, political and historical contexts;
• Demonstrate an understanding of the ‘politics’ of contemporary Northern Irish literature and culture;
• Critically appraise how identity is ‘intersectional’ with regard to ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, race and class;
• Demonstrate knowledge as to how the ‘Troubles’ were depicted in contemporary Northern Irish literature and culture, and how their impact can still be traced in the ‘post-Good Friday Agreement’ present;
• Demonstrate transferrable skills in the forms of seminar discussion, written communication, and individual research.
This module offers students the opportunity to explore the syntax and morphology of English. Starting from the insight that sentences have structure, and that all native speakers of English have knowledge of the rules that underlie that structure, this course focuses on the grammatical tools and theoretical concepts that allow us to investigate and describe the nature of our syntactic knowledge. Students are introduced to a basic formal framework for syntactic analysis (a simple phrase-structure model informed by modern Principles-and-Parameters Theory) and the kinds of questions and problems that such a model allows us to address, including those relating to child language acquisition and syntactic variation across different dialects of English. Throughout the course, the emphasis is placed on developing practical skills for data analysis alongside scientific skills of hypothesis formation and argumentation, and on setting the English language within the wider context of human language more generally.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the module, students will have proficiency in linguistic analysis using a theoretically-informed model of syntactic description, as well as an appreciation of the value of using such a model to discuss and explain not only real language data but also more abstract properties of linguistic competence. On a practical level, students will be able to identify and describe the major types of syntactic categories and constructions in terms of their formal characteristics and structural properties, as well as to manipulate constituents in order to arrive at a structural analysis. They will be equipped to evaluate alternative descriptions and analyses of linguistic phenomena and to argue for (or against) a particular solution to a problem.
Skills
The primary aim of this module is to familiarize students with a basic technical vocabulary and set of descriptive and analytical skills that can be applied to new data sets, including tests for identifying syntactic categories and for determining syntactic structure. A secondary aim is to develop an awareness of the kinds of linguistic facts that can be revealed by a theoretical approach to language involving introspective methods, including grammaticality judgments. In pursuing these aims, our purpose is not only to develop an ability to solve linguistic problems using the tools and concepts provided, but also to gain an understanding of how abstract structural notions can help us to capture and account for often subtle and surprising empirical patterns and generalizations.
This module focuses on two themes: party system change and the contemporary challenges that affect political parties. Why and how do new parties emerge? Why do old parties survive crises and new party challenges? Who joins political parties and how can we explain the decline in party membership? How can parties and their representatives be more representative of society at large? Should parties be funded through our taxes or private money These are some of the questions that will be addressed in this module.
The module is comparative in nature, with a focus on European and North American countries, but discussions of other cases are welcome.
Assessment is designed to hone the students’ presentation, writing, critical and knowledge-transfer skills: students make a presentation that is partly assessed through student peer evaluation, write a country report, and write a policy paper in which they advise a political party on addressing a contemporary challenge (representation of women and minorities, party finance, or membership).
Past students on this module have enjoyed the presentations and the advantages of peer assessment (making the presentation to the whole class, more focus on content and making a good presentation, and getting to exercise their critical skills through marking), as well as the relaxed style of the seminars and the ability to write a policy paper instead of an academic essay.
Learning Outcomes
- ability to critically discuss the functions and roles played by political parties in modern representative democracies
- ability to identify the challenges political parties currently face
- increased ability to use comparative qualitative and quantitative data to support arguments
Skills
I- oral presentation skills through a presentation and seminar activities
- written communication skills and knowledge-transfer skills through writing a case-study report and a policy paper, including ability to write for a non-academic audience
- critical skills through seminar discussions, writing a book review and a policy paper, and assessing their peers’ presentations.
This module is built around a problem-aware approach to the study of the Middle East and Politics affecting the region. It looks at the enduring issues and problems associated with perspectives on statebuilding and sectarian divisions in societies across the region and poses critical questions around issues that pertain to state-society relations. Discussion of the role of religious, language, ethnic and gender identities play up in societal and political conflicts in the region, alongside issues of political economy and security in the region are also approached to illuminate the relationships in societies and politics of the region, but also refracted in interstate competition in the Middle East. The module identifies factors that characterise the region as a unique geopolitical playground yet highlights parallels in the Middle East to other parts of the world where the role of state in delivering good governance is taken for granted.
Learning Outcomes
• Place issues of governance in the middle east in the context of domestic societal expectations and legal obligations to ensure political stability;
• Contrast the differential interactions between state and society in individual countries of the region and appreciate lessons to be learnt from managing diverse expectation of populations over time;
• Ascertain that diversity of populations in the region and within individual countries may enhance stability and peace under specific circumstances
• Understand and be able to reflect critically on the impact accommodation and support for societal initiatives can have on the likelihood of conflict in the region and within individual countries
• Understand and be able to critically engage with claims regarding the differences and similarities between politics of the Middle East as a region, as opposed to other regions of the world.
• Communicate clearly and concisely, both orally and in written form on issues relating to political situation in individual countries and the region as a whole.
• Pursue intellectual questions in an academic manner, using analytical skills and critical thinking to develop transferrable skills
Skills
Intellectual skills
• Managing & Prioritizing Knowledge: identify relevant and subject-specific knowledge, sources and data; manage such information in an independent manner
• Critical & Independent Thinking: ability to think critically and construct one’s own position in relation to existing and ongoing debates in the field
Professional and career development skills
• Communication Skills: ability to communicate clearly with others, both orally and in writing
• Teamwork: ability to work with others in a team, negotiate conflicts and recognize different ways of learning
• Self-Reflexivity: ability to reflect on one’s own progress and identify and act upon ones own development needs with respect to life-long learning and career development
• Time Management: ability to negotiate diverse and competing pressures; cope with stress; and achieve a work / life balance
Technical and practical skills
• Information Technology: demonstrate the knowledge and ability to use contemporary and relevant ICT
Organizational skills
• Efficient and effective work practice: demonstrate ability to work efficiently to deadlines
• Clear organisation of information: show efficiency in the organisation of large amounts of complex information and the ability to identify, describe and analyse the key features of the information
• Organisation and communication: demonstrate ability to use evidence to develop logical and clear argument; show aptitude for the effective use of information in a direct and appropriate way
This module provides a framework for understanding contemporary critical theory by exploring some key thinkers in the minor canon (e.g. Spinoza, Hume, and Nietzsche) before turning to exploration of contemporary debates and positions such as the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, poststructuralism, and radical liberalism.
Learning Outcomes
On successfully completing this module, students should have an appreciation of the central role that theoretical concepts play in understanding and critiquing social and political life. In particular, students will appreciate the contested nature of concepts such as reason, autonomy, progress, power, the body, the Other, and modernity, and be able to use these concepts in a critical and interrogatory way in political analysis. Students will also appreciate the contested and ambivalent nature of the Enlightenment legacy to contemporary social and political theory. Seminar discussions will develop oral presentation skills, and sharpen students' ability to debate succinctly some theoretically informed critical perspectives. On completion of the module, students should understand the critical potential of social and political theory in offering both critiques of and alternatives to the political legacy of the Enlightenment.
Skills
The ability to think conceptually and to construct cogent essays. Communication of complex ideas in a clear and concise form, both orally and in writing. Pursue intellectual and political questions in a rigorous manner, employing analytical skills and critical thinking.
Security politics has long been associated with the development, use and regulation of new technologies, from the ‘nuclear revolution’ to contemporary practices of cyber-security and surveillance. This module focusses on the inter-relationships of technology and security, and seeks to develop advanced understanding of the complexities of the “technopolitics” of security. This includes both novel technologies and the mundane materialities of security (fences, walls, guns). It introduces students to the role and political significance of science and technology from different theoretical perspectives, from political realism to the contemporary ‘material turn’ in critical security studies. It seeks to engage students in contemporary political debates and practices that entangle science and technology and security politics which may include issues such as cyber-security, UAVs/Drones, disarmament, nuclear terrorism, critical infrastructure protection, technologies of killing, biotechnology, biometrics, surveillance, border control, food security, health and medical technologies, and technologies of (military) bodies, among others. The module incorporates both theoretical perspectives (including IR/Security theory, and wider philosophy of technology and Science, Technology and Society approaches) and in depth empirical material.
Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of the module students will:
- Demonstrate an awareness and understanding of different theoretical understandings of science and technology in security politics and practice.
- Be able to discuss in depth the politics of several key security technologies.
- Critically engage in debates on key developments in the politics of security that relate to emerging technologies and technologically mediated forms of security practice.
- Be able to reflect upon the ethical and political implications of technological developments and practices in relation to security.
- Pursue independent, creative and critical thinking through both written work and group discussions.
Skills
Intellectual skills
• Managing & Prioritizing Knowledge: identify relevant and subject-specific knowledge, sources and data; manage such information in an independent manner
• Analytical Thinking: identify, understand, interpret and evaluate relevant subject-specific arguments made by others; construct independent arguments
• Critical & Independent Thinking: ability to think critically and construct one’s own position in relation to existing and ongoing debates in the field
Professional and career development skills
• Communication Skills: ability to communicate clearly with others, both orally and in writing
• Teamwork: ability to work with others in a team, negotiate conflicts and recognize different ways of learning
• Diversity: ability to acknowledge and be sensitive to the range of cultural differences present in the learning environment
• Self-Reflexivity: ability to reflect on one’s own progress and identify and act upon ones own development needs with respect to life-long learning and career development
• Time Management: ability to negotiate diverse and competing pressures; cope with stress; and achieve a work / life balance
Organizational skills
• Efficient and effective work practice: demonstrate ability to work efficiently to deadlines
• Clear organisation of information: show efficiency in the organisation of large amounts of complex information and the ability to identify, describe and analyse the key features of the information
• Organisation and communication: demonstrate ability to use evidence to develop logical and clear arguments; show aptitude for the effective use of information in a direct and appropriate way
• Enterprising thinking: Demonstrate ability to think and argue in novel and enterprising ways, to display originality of thought and argument and the ability to clearly support arguments in innovative ways
This module examines problems in contemporary normative political philosophy. Topics may vary from year to year, but will typically include questions about the interpretation of values such as freedom, equality, and welfare, principles of distributive justice, equal respect and social recognition, pluralism, toleration, and democracy.
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this module, students will:
-be in a position to think critically about the normative aspects of social and political life,
-understand and be able to construct normative arguments about moral and political problems
Skills
The aim of the module is to provide students with the necessary analytical and interpretive tools to understand complex arguments. It will provide students with an opportunity to develop communication skills (listening, oral and written), and equip students with basic intellectual skills (particularly critical thinking and analysis). Students will also learn to present their own thoughts and arguments in a logical and coherent manner and to make points in a clear and succinct manner. Students will learn to identify particular tasks and what is required to complete them.
The politics of asylum and migration are undergoing profound changes. States are closing down many routes for asylum seekers, turning attention to security and border control concerns. Bilateral and multi-lateral relations are imbued with concerns about controlling the movement of people as states work with and respond not only to each other, but to non-governmental and international organizations. These dynamics are imbued with global power relations, with changing notions of security and with age-old questions of sovereignty, citizenship, and belonging. The dominant policy direction favours solutions that emphasize either preventative protection or repatriation, both practices of containment and conflict resolution and management. We are witnessing a decline in the traditional category of refugees, but a rise in the number of internally displaced persons. Economic deprivation and poverty continues to pair with conflict to drive migration that muddies the waters between “forced” and “voluntary” categories. Increasing incidents of human smuggling and human trafficking, and a failure in many circles to effectively distinguish between the two, are demanding new policy innovations that are linking international criminal law to diplomatic relations – and migrants are caught in the middle. Finally, emerging categories such as “environmental refugees” are challenging the current refugee regime, which remains rooted in the 1951 Convention.
This module will examine these changes in the fields of refugee and migration studies, asking questions that assess not only shifting policy and practices but also the impacts these shifts have on the lived lives of migrants themselves. We will engage these questions and the issues they raise through thoughtful and critical dialogue. We will focus on the politics of migration and citizenship as dynamic practices rather than pre-determined institutions, and ask what roles the various structures and frameworks of contemporary International Relations play in these politics. Importantly, we will also ask what role individuals play, and examine the politics of voice and agency in both shaping, contesting and resisting state practices. To tackle these issues, we will engage with both policy and theoretical literatures and illustrate conceptual and philosophical arguments through extensive use of specific case studies from different regions of the world. We will emphasize contemporary and emerging issues, but also look at the historical contexts and questions that shape the politics of migration and citizenship as they exist today.
Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of this module, students will be able to:
• Demonstrate an awareness and understanding of key literature on migration, refugee and citizenship studies
• Frame and explain global policy directions and changes in the field of migration, and the role of security and economic discourses in shaping government practices and decisions
• Explain the dynamics and shifting relations of power and resistance between states, individuals and advocacy groups in shaping migration and citizenship politics
• Engage with and assess philosophical and theoretical developments in the field, and relate them to national and international law and policies and the experiences of migrants ‘on the ground’
• Communicate their ideas on a particular case in a coherent, clear and concise manner, both orally and in written form.
Skills
This module will assist in developing students’ skills in a number of important areas. These include:
Intellectual skills
• Managing & Prioritizing Knowledge: identify relevant and subject-specific knowledge, sources and data; manage such information in an independent manner
• Knowledge Development: ability to develop a strong research program that is ongoing over time and has several products
• Analytical Thinking: identify, understand, interpret and evaluate relevant subject-specific arguments made by others; construct independent arguments
• Critical & Independent Thinking: ability to think critically and construct one’s own position in relation to existing and ongoing debates in the field
Professional and career development skills
• Communication Skills: ability to communicate clearly with others, both orally and in writing
• Policy Analysis: ability to read and understand policy and legal documents and critically assess their foundations and consequences
• Presentational and Advocacy Skills: ability to present your ideas and arguments before a group of peers and respond to questions in a convincing fashion
• Teamwork: ability to work with others in a team, negotiate conflicts and recognize different ways of learning
• Time Management: ability to negotiate diverse and competing pressures and cope with stress
Organizational skills
• Preparatory Skills: always being well prepared for tutorials (e.g. required reading) and presentations.
• Time Management: effective use of study time, meeting coursework deadlines
• Independent Research: making good use of the library and the materials available
Students will undertake a piece of independent research and write a dissertation presenting that research and their conclusions. They will have the guidance of a tutor, but the emphasis is on their own independent research and writing. There should be no overlap between the chosen topic and work done for other modules. Students will be expected to develop and exhibit suitable theoretical and methodological frameworks for their chosen topic.
Learning Outcomes
The module will provide an opportunity to explore, to investigate and to identify themes for research within English. Students will be able to draw from a variety of theoretical, textual, analytical techniques, to examine and evaluate a given research problem.
Skills
By the end of the module students will:\n\nhave a developed critical understanding of an area of literary study;\n\nhave developed the skills needed to conduct an independent line of research;\n\nbe able to write a cogent, well-illustrated dissertation, which displays originality of consistent thinking and application of ideas, concepts and theories.
ABB including A-level English
Note: for applicants who have not studied A-level English then AS-level English (grade A) would be acceptable in lieu of A-level English.
A maximum of one BTEC/OCR Single Award or AQA Extended Certificate will be accepted as part of an applicant's portfolio of qualifications with a Distinction* being equated to a grade A at A-level and a Distinction being equated to a grade B at A-level.
Irish leaving certificate requirements
H3H3H3H3H3H3/H2H3H3H3H3 including Higher Level grade H3 in English.
Access Course
Successful completion of Access Course with an average of 70% including an average of 65% in Literature modules.
International Baccalaureate Diploma
33 points overall, including 6(English),5,5 at Higher Level.
Graduate
A minimum of a 2:2 Honours Degree, provided any subject requirement is also met.
Note
All applicants must have GCSE English Language grade C/4 or an equivalent qualification acceptable to the University.
How we choose our students
Applications are dealt with centrally by the Admissions and Access Service rather than by individual University Schools. Once your on-line form has been processed by UCAS and forwarded to Queen's, an acknowledgement is normally sent within two weeks of its receipt at the University.
Selection is on the basis of the information provided on your UCAS form. Decisions are made on an ongoing basis and will be notified to you via UCAS.
For last year's intake, applicants for this BA programme offering A-level/BTEC Level 3 qualifications must have had, or been able to achieve, a minimum of five GCSE passes at grade C/4 or better (to include English Language). Performance in any AS or A-level examinations already completed would also have been taken into account and the Selector checks that any specific entry requirements in terms of GCSE and/or A-level subjects can be fulfilled.
For applicants offering Irish Leaving Certificate, please note that performance at Irish Junior Certificate (IJC) is taken into account. For last year’s entry applicants for this degree must have had, a minimum of 5 IJC grades C/Merit. The Selector also checks that any specific entry requirements in terms of Leaving Certificate subjects can be satisfied.
Offers are normally made on the basis of three A-levels. Two subjects at A-level plus two at AS would also be considered. The offer for repeat candidates is set in terms of three A-levels and may be one grade higher than for first time applicants. Grades may be held from the previous year.
Applicants offering two A-levels and one BTEC Subsidiary Diploma/National Extended Certificate (or equivalent qualification), or one A-level and a BTEC Diploma/National Diploma (or equivalent qualification) will also be considered. Offers will be made in terms of the overall BTEC grade(s) awarded. Please note that a maximum of one BTEC Subsidiary Diploma/National Extended Certificate (or equivalent) will be counted as part of an applicant’s portfolio of qualifications. The normal GCSE profile will be expected.
BTEC Extended Diplomas, Higher National Certificates, and Higher National Diplomas can be considered, provided the subject requirements for entry to English are also fulfilled.
The information provided in the personal statement section and the academic reference together with predicted grades are noted but, in the case of BA degrees, these are not the final deciding factors in whether or not a conditional offer can be made. However, they may be reconsidered in a tie break situation in August.
A-level General Studies and A-level Critical Thinking would not normally be considered as part of a three A-level offer and, although they may be excluded where an applicant is taking four A-level subjects, the grade achieved could be taken into account if necessary in August/September.
Candidates are not normally asked to attend for interview.
If you are made an offer then you may be invited to a Faculty/School Visit Day, which is usually held in the second semester. This will allow you the opportunity to visit the University and to find out more about the degree programme of your choice and the facilities on offer. It also gives you a flavour of the academic and social life at Queen's.
If you cannot find the information you need here, please contact the University Admissions Service (admissions@qub.ac.uk), giving full details of your qualifications and educational background.
International Students
Our country/region pages include information on entry requirements, tuition fees, scholarships, student profiles, upcoming events and contacts for your country/region. Use the dropdown list below for specific information for your country/region.
English Language Requirements
An IELTS score of 6.5 with a minimum of 5.5 in each test component or an equivalent acceptable qualification, details of which are available at: http://go.qub.ac.uk/EnglishLanguageReqs
If you need to improve your English language skills before you enter this degree programme, INTO Queen's University Belfast offers a range of English language courses. These intensive and flexible courses are designed to improve your English ability for admission to this degree.
Academic English: an intensive English language and study skills course for successful university study at degree level
Pre-sessional English: a short intensive academic English course for students starting a degree programme at Queen's University Belfast and who need to improve their English.
International Students - Foundation and International Year One Programmes
INTO Queen's offers a range of academic and English language programmes to help prepare international students for undergraduate study at Queen's University. You will learn from experienced teachers in a dedicated international study centre on campus, and will have full access to the University's world-class facilities.
These programmes are designed for international students who do not meet the required academic and English language requirements for direct entry.
Studying for an English and Politics degree at Queen’s will assist you in developing the core skills and employment-related experiences that are valued by employers, professional organisations and academic institutions. Transferable skills such as team-working, analytical understanding, debating and presentation skills, and, increasingly, information technology and communication skills are embedded in the curriculum. Graduates from this degree at Queen’s are well regarded by many employers (local, national and international) and over half of all graduate jobs are now open to graduates of any discipline.
The following is a list of the major career sectors that have attracted our graduates in recent years: Publishing, Broadcasting Media, Journalism, Public Relations, Marketing, Advertising, Education, Librarianship, Civil Service, Local Government, Politics, Employer Links, Consultations. We regularly consult and develop links with a large number of employers including, for example, BBC Northern Ireland who provide sponsorship for the English course in Broadcast Literacy (currently offered at postgraduate level but soon to be offered at undergraduate level also). We also have an active and engaged Employers Forum, which is a panel composed of individuals of high ranking organisations in fields directly relevant to our degree programmes, including Northern Bank, Price Waterhouse, Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action, a range of government departments based at Stormont, and the BBC. The members of this panel advise staff in incorporating employability skills in the development of our degree programmes and in helping prepare our students for the world of work. They also contribute to advisory sessions for students on careers and employability.
Politics offers a range of employment placements where students can gain real world work experience which is invaluable in terms of employment after graduation. Given that Belfast is a regional capital with devolved powers, we can offer students placements in the high profile political and related institutions on our doorstep - for example in the Department of Justice, Equality Commission, Police Ombudsman’s Office, or BBC Northern Ireland. Graduate Careers and Achievements. Many of our former graduates have risen to the top of their fields and include many famous figures; for example: Seamus Heaney, Nobel prize-winning poet; Paul Muldoon, academic and poet; Stephen Rea, actor; Annie Kelly, journalist and writer; Annie Mac, radio presenter. You should also take a look at the Prospects website for further information concerning the types of jobs that attract English graduates.
Further study is also an option open to English graduates. Students can choose from a wide range of Masters programmes, including the MA in English Literary Studies and the new MRes in Arts and Humanities (English or Politics).
Other Career-related information
Queen’s is a member of the Russell Group and, therefore, one of the 20 universities most-targeted by leading graduate employers. Queen’s students will be advised and guided about career choice and, through the Degree Plus initiative, will have an opportunity to seek accreditation for skills development and experience gained through the wide range of extra-curricular activities on offer.
Degree Plus and other related initiatives.
Recognising student diversity, as well as promoting employability enhancements and other interests, is part of the developmental experience at Queen’s. Students are encouraged to plan and build their own, personal skill and experiential profile through a range of activities including; recognised Queen’s Certificates, placements and other work experiences (at home or overseas), Erasmus study options elsewhere in Europe, learning development opportunities and involvement in wider university life through activities, such as clubs, societies, and sports. Queen’s actively encourages this type of activity by offering students an additional qualification, the Degree Plus Award (and the related Researcher Plus Award for PhD and MPhil students).
Degree Plus accredits wider experiential and skill development gained through extra-curricular activities that promote the enhancement of academic, career management, personal and employability skills in a variety of contexts. As part of the Award, students are also trained on how to reflect on the experience(s) and make the link between academic achievement, extracurricular activities, transferable skills and graduate employment. Participating students will also be trained in how to reflect on their skills and experiences and can gain an understanding of how to articulate the significance of these to others, e.g. employers. Overall, these initiatives, and Degree Plus in particular, reward the energy, drive, determination and enthusiasm shown by students engaging in activities over-and-above the requirements of their academic studies. These qualities are amongst those valued highly by graduate employers. http://www.prospects.ac.uk
Employment after the Course
Many of our former graduates have risen to the top of their fields and include many famous figures; for example:
Seamus Heaney, Nobel prize-winning poet;
Paul Muldoon, academic and poet;
Stephen Rea, actor;
Helen Madden, writer and actor;
Annie Kelly, journalist and writer;
Annie Mac, radio presenter.
Employment Links
We regularly consult and develop links with a large number of employers including, for example, BBC Northern Ireland who provide sponsorship for the English course in Broadcast Literacy (currently offered at postgraduate level but soon to be offered at undergraduate level also).
We also have an active and engaged Employers Forum, which is a panel composed of individuals of high ranking organisations in fields directly relevant to our degree programmes, including Northern Bank, Price Waterhouse, Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action, a range of government departments based at Stormont, and the BBC. The members of this panel advise staff in incorporating employability skills in the development of our degree programmes and in helping prepare our students for the world of work. They also contribute to advisory sessions for students on careers and employability.
Politics offers a range of employment placements where students can gain real world work experience which is invaluable in terms of employment after graduation. Given that Belfast is a regional capital with devolved powers, we can offer students placements in the high profile political and related institutions on our doorstep - for example in the Department of Justice, Equality Commission, Police Ombudsman’s Office, or BBC Northern Ireland.
Degree Plus/Future Ready Award for extra-curricular skills
In addition to your degree programme, at Queen's you can have the opportunity to gain wider life, academic and employability skills. For example, placements, voluntary work, clubs, societies, sports and lots more. So not only do you graduate with a degree recognised from a world leading university, you'll have practical national and international experience plus a wider exposure to life overall. We call this Degree Plus/Future Ready Award. It's what makes studying at Queen's University Belfast special.
1EU citizens in the EU Settlement Scheme, with settled status, will be charged the NI or GB tuition fee based on where they are ordinarily resident. Students who are ROI nationals resident in GB will be charged the GB fee.
2 EU students who are ROI nationals resident in ROI are eligible for NI tuition fees.
3 EU Other students (excludes Republic of Ireland nationals living in GB, NI or ROI) are charged tuition fees in line with international fees.
The tuition fees quoted above for NI and ROI are the 2024/25 fees and will be updated when the new fees are known. In addition, all tuition fees will be subject to an annual inflationary increase in each year of the course. Fees quoted relate to a single year of study unless explicitly stated otherwise.
Tuition fee rates are calculated based on a student’s tuition fee status and generally increase annually by inflation. How tuition fees are determined is set out in the Student Finance Framework.
Additional course costs
In Year 2 students can apply for a number of optional exchanges with institutions in the USA. The cost will vary depending on the institution and length of exchange and can range from £500 - £6,000.
Students who undertake a period of study or work abroad, are responsible for funding travel, accommodation and subsistence costs. These costs vary depending on the location and duration of the placement.
A limited amount of funding may be available to contribute towards these additional costs, if the placement takes place through a government student mobility scheme.
All Students
Depending on the programme of study, there may be extra costs which are not covered by tuition fees, which students will need to consider when planning their studies.
Students can borrow books and access online learning resources from any Queen's library. If students wish to purchase recommended texts, rather than borrow them from the University Library, prices per text can range from £30 to £100. Students should also budget between £30 to £75 per year for photocopying, memory sticks and printing charges.
Students undertaking a period of work placement or study abroad, as either a compulsory or optional part of their programme, should be aware that they will have to fund additional travel and living costs.
If a programme includes a major project or dissertation, there may be costs associated with transport, accommodation and/or materials. The amount will depend on the project chosen. There may also be additional costs for printing and binding.
Students may wish to consider purchasing an electronic device; costs will vary depending on the specification of the model chosen.
There are also additional charges for graduation ceremonies, examination resits and library fines.
How do I fund my study?
There are different tuition fee and student financial support arrangements for students from Northern Ireland, those from England, Scotland and Wales (Great Britain), and those from the rest of the European Union.
Application for admission to full-time undergraduate and sandwich courses at the University should normally be made through the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS). Full information can be obtained from the UCAS website at: www.ucas.com/students.
When to Apply
UCAS will start processing applications for entry in autumn 2025 from early September 2024.
The advisory closing date for the receipt of applications for entry in 2025 is still to be confirmed by UCAS but is normally in late January (18:00). This is the 'equal consideration' deadline for this course.
Applications from UK and EU (Republic of Ireland) students after this date are, in practice, considered by Queen’s for entry to this course throughout the remainder of the application cycle (30 June 2025) subject to the availability of places. If you apply for 2025 entry after this deadline, you will automatically be entered into Clearing.
Applications from International and EU (Other) students are normally considered by Queen's for entry to this course until 30 June 2025. If you apply for 2025 entry after this deadline, you will automatically be entered into Clearing.
Applicants are encouraged to apply as early as is consistent with having made a careful and considered choice of institutions and courses.
The Institution code name for Queen's is QBELF and the institution code is Q75.
Additional Information for International (non-EU) Students
Applying through UCAS
Most students make their applications through UCAS (Universities and Colleges Admissions Service) for full-time undergraduate degree programmes at Queen's. The UCAS application deadline for international students is 30 June 2025.
Applying direct
The Direct Entry Application form is to be used by international applicants who wish to apply directly, and only, to Queen's or who have been asked to provide information in advance of submitting a formal UCAS application. Find out more.
Applying through agents and partners
The University’s in-country representatives can assist you to submit a UCAS application or a direct application. Please consult the Agent List to find an agent in your country who will help you with your application to Queen’s University.
