UNIVERSITY OF KENT
MODULE SPECIFICATION TEMPLATE
1. The title of the module: Jane Austen and Material Culture
2. The School which will be responsible for management of the module: English
3. The Start Date of the Module: Autumn 2010
4. The cohort of students (onwards) to which the module will be applicable: 20105. The number of students expected to take the module: 12
6. Modules to be withdrawn on the introduction of this proposed module and consultation
with other relevant Schools and Faculties regarding the withdrawal: NA
7. The level of the module (e.g. Certificate [C], Intermediate [I], Honours [H] or Postgraduate
[M]): M
8. The number of credits which the module represents 30
Note: undergraduate full-time students take modules amounting to 120 credits per year
and postgraduate full-time students take modules amounting to 180 credits per year for a
Masters award
9. Which term(s) the module is to be taught in (or other teaching pattern): Autumn or spring
10. Prerequisite and co-requisite modules: none
11. The programmes of study to which the module contributes: MA in English; MA in
Eighteenth-Century Studies
12. The intended subject specific learning outcomes and, as appropriate, their relationship to
programme learning outcomes:
to introduce students to material culture theory as it has developed in relation to literary study
in recent years, with a particular emphasis upon the literary study of the long eighteenth
century.
to ensure that students can apply debates in literary theory to the reading of Austen´s fiction.
to enable students to question relationships between materiality and fiction and develop their
understanding that fictional objects are qualitatively different from, but related to, historical
objects.
13. The intended generic learning outcomes and, as appropriate, their relationship to
programme learning outcomes:
to develop the students’ ability to argue a point of view with clarity and cogency, both orally
and in written form.
to provide teaching which is informed by current research and scholarship and which requires
students to work across disciplinary boundaries.
to develop students’ independent critical thinking and judgement.
14. A synopsis of the curriculum:
UNIVERSITY OF KENT
Austen makes a particularly interesting subject for advanced study because her work is both
widely enjoyed and the focus of much specialist academic work. The Austen of the (feminist)
academy is often initially unrecognisable to the general (´feminine´) reader, and part of the
project of this module is to explore the gap between these kinds of reading through the
medium of material culture. ´Material Culture Studies´, focussing on the function and
significance of physical objects in literary texts, has been increasingly important to scholars of
the long eighteenth century in the last decade, and this approach raises questions that are
especially pertinent to readings of Austen´s fiction. Is domesticity a trap or a refuge? Does the
female body require liberation or control? Is material wealth the realisation of every woman´s
dream or the basis of moral corruption? Is the ‘improvement’ of landscapes and estates a sign
of culture or of arrogance? Approaching Austen´s writing through the objects which populate
her fiction, we will situate these questions in relation to modern literary criticism and the
unfamiliarity of early nineteenth-century artefacts.
15. Indicative Reading List
Primary Texts
Jane Austen, Emma (1816); Northanger Abbey (1817); Pride and Prejudice (1813);
Mansfield Park (1814); Persuasion (1817); Sanditon (composed 1817); Sense and Sensibility
(1811)
Secondary Texts
Appadurai, Arjun. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Attfield, Judy. Wild Things: The Material Culture of Everyday Life. Oxford and New York:
Berg, 2000.
Batchelor, Jennie and Cora Kaplan, Women and Material Culture, 1660-1830. Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Berg, Maxine. Luxury and Pleasures in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2005.
Berg, Maxine and Elizabeth Eger, eds. Luxury in the Eighteenth Century: Debates, Desires
and Delectable Goods. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Trans. Richard
Nice. London: Routledge &Kegan Paul, 1984.
Buchli, Victor. The Material Culture Reader. Oxford and New York: Berg, 2002.
Byrne, Paula, Jane Austen and the Theatre. London: Hambledon, 2002.
Copeland, Edward. Women Writing about Money: Women’s Fiction in England, 1790-1820.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Gay, Penny. Jane Austen and the Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Heydt Stephenson, Jill. Austen’s Unbecoming Conjunctions: Subversive Laughter, Embodied
History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Johnson, Claudia L., Jane Austen: Women, Politics and the Novel. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1990.
Lynch, Deidre Shauna. The Economy of Character: Novels, Market Culture, and the Business
of Inner Meaning. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1998.
Millar, Daniel. Material Cultures: Why Some Things Matter. London: UCL Press, 1998.
Moss, Sarah. ‘Food and Money in Emma’, in Eating Culture, ed. Tobias Doring, Markus
Heide, Susanne Mühleisen. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2003, pp. 195-209.
Moss, Sarah. Sweet Surrender: Food and Gender in British Women’s Fiction 1774 – 1837.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009.
UNIVERSITY OF KENT
Nagle, Christopher C. Sexuality and the Culture of Sensibility in the British Romantic Era.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Selwyn, David, Jane Austen and Leisure. London: Hambledon, 1999.
Styles, John and Amanda Vickery. Gender, Taste and Material Culture in Britain and North
America, 1700-1830. Yale: Yale University Press, 2006.
Todd, Janet, ed. Jane Austen in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Tuite, Clara. Romantic Austen: Sexual Politics and the Literary Canon. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Vickery, Amanda, Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England (Yale: Yale
University Press, 2009)
Wiltshire, John. Jane Austen and the Body: ‘The Picture of Health’. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992.
16. Learning and Teaching Methods, including the nature and number of contact hours and
the total study hours which will be expected of students, and how these relate to
achievement of the intended learning outcomes:
The module will be taught by Jennie Batchelor and Sarah Moss. There will be 10 seminars of
2 hours, in which students will be encouraged to engage in debate and develop their own
theoretically informed interpretations of literary material. Time will also be made available
for individual essay consultations. Students are expected to study for 20 hours per week.
The trip to Godmersham will allow students to focus on the difference between fictional and
material objects, as well as providing the opportunity to explore Austen´s contexts in
immediate ways.
17. Assessment methods and how these relate to testing achievement of the intended learning
outcomes:
Students will be required to submit written work 5-6000 words in length on which they will
be assessed at the end of the module.
18. Implications for learning resources, including staff, library, IT and space:
Library purchases for this module will develop existing strengths in the long eighteenth
century and women´s writing.
19. As far as can be reasonably anticipated, the curriculum, learning and teaching methods and forms
of assessment do not present any non-justifiable disadvantage to students with disabilities