MLitt/PgDip/PgCert Interdisciplinary English Studies

This class aims to provide students who are undertaking interdisciplinary research with a broad introduction to a range of methods and skills in humanities research, and to construct your own training pathway in order to gain specific expertise in a various methodologies or skills.

The class will allow you to engage with materials from Scottish, Irish and English historical, cultural, and literary studies. It will explore the formation of the idea of a national British literature at the end of the nineteenth-century, and its rapid disintegration with the pressures for devolution and independence in early-twentieth century Ireland and Scotland.

The class will focus on key moments, of economic depression, rebellion, and war, at which the ideas of a unified national culture were put under particular stress.

You'll read a range of primary literary and cultural materials in a historical and theoretical context, and will develop skills in textual analysis and critical engagement.

This class allows you to engage with materials from Scottish, cultural, historical and literary studies. You'll read a range of primary literary and cultural materials in a historical and theoretical context, and will develop skills in textual analysis and critical engagement. In doing so, the class will provide knowledge of some of the main developments in Scottish literary and cultural studies throughout the 20th Century. You'll gain an understanding of the relationships between literature, culture and theories of nationalism, also developing an awareness of a range of major issues in contemporary Scottish culture.

This class will engage students with literary and historical materials, and with theoretical work from animal studies and ecofeminism. This will inform discussions about the place, meaning and function of meat eating and meat avoidance, and debates about human-animal relations, from the early modern to the modern world.

As well as philosophical and religious work you'll read a range of primary materials, including literary works from A String of Pearls (aka Sweeney Todd) to Roald Dahl’s Pig; from Swift’s Modest Proposal to Coetzee’s Lives of Animals, via Dracula, and develop skills in textual analysis and critical and theoretical engagement.

Narrative processing is a field which has seen significant advances in recent years in psychology and neuroscience (eg Zwaan, situation models) and narratology (eg Ryan and transmedia narrative).

These bodies of research converge on the many ways in which narratives across cultures and media can be seen to share universal features. However, there is an even older body of work, deriving ultimately from Bartlett's memory studies, and developing through folklore and anthropology, which illustrates how narrative meaning and interpretation changes as it moves between social settings, media and cultures (Bauman, Barber).

This class invites you to engage with these three approaches critically, to form views on their implications for the use of narratives between cultural groups, and to consider potential practical applications for your findings.

This class is designed to engage students with recent research on sexuality in a global context.

This continues to be a controversial topic with key global institutions and organisations from churches to the UN being unable to forge an internal consensus about the protection and acceptance of LGBTQ lives.

Through looking at non-fiction writing, this class will introduce students to key issue in the field through the perspective of writers who travel across real and gender/sexual border and boundaries.

This class critically applies the linguistic theory of communication, and theoretical approaches to culture, to a range of problems in intercultural communication. We explore what a culture is, and whether cultures differ systematically. We learn about the linguistic theory of communication, and approaches to discourse and conversation, and speech acts, including ways in which these differ between cultures.

We consider how face and politeness can be theorized, and how they differ between cultures. We look at how languages differ, and whether differences in language lead to differences in thought. We look at the self, and identity, and their relation to culture and cultural difference, and we see how mobilities relate to intercultural communication.

This class is relevant for those who aim to teach English to speakers of other languages who need to understand issues around intercultural communication. It is also relevant to those studying literature who want to understand how communication works, particularly in the culturally complex situations in which literature can arise.

This class enables students to work with a staff member of their choice on a mutually agreed topic in the field of interdisciplinary English Studies. Within this broad field, this option is designed to give students the opportunity to pursue research interests which are not aligned to existing option classes. Through the Advanced Topics in Interdisciplinary English Studies class, the School will enable the student to enhance their employability post-graduation by:

• developing their desk-based research skills
• developing their skills in independent working

On successful completion of the module, the student will have:

• enhanced their desk-based research skills
• developed their skills in independent working

The placement option provides students with the opportunity to put their learning and research into practice in a real-world environment, conducting a piece of research according to a brief provided by the placement organisation in consultation with the module convenor. On successful completion of the module, the student will have:

• gained experience in putting their Interdisciplinary English Studies learning and research training into practice outside the academy
• gained experience in delivering a piece of research to a client's brief
• gained experience in negotiating the demands of two different institutions (the university and placement provider)
• demonstrated an ability to critically reflect upon their research practices and outputs

Graduates in English possess skills in written and spoken communication, working independently and thinking critically (HEA Student employability profiles), and this class offers an opportunity to put those skills to work in a real world context.

The 15,000 word dissertation offers you the opportunity further to explore issues of particular interest, encountered during the course. Dissertations should seek to make a scholarly contribution to the literary, historical and theoretical areas of enquiry that make up the Interdisciplinary English Studies.