Discipline of English,
National University of Ireland,
Galway
Visiting Students
COURSE OUTLINE
Booklet
2015-2016
Visiting Student Academic Co-ordinator:
Dr. Richard Pearson, Room 308, Ext 5613
Floor 1, Tower 1, Arts/Science Building
Visiting Student Administrative Co-ordinator:
Ms. Irene O’Malley, Room 511, Ext 2567
Floor 3, Tower 1, Arts/Science Building
Discipline of English Guidelines for Visiting Students
Please read the following carefully:
 Each Lecture and Seminar Course is worth 5 ECTS.
 Visiting Students may take as many Lecture Courses from the options available in
2BA and 3BA as their timetable allows. (Please note some lectures are capped
and some lectures are on at the same time.)
 Only ONE Seminar Course per semester is allowed to be taken by any student.
 Semester 1 Seminar classes commence during the third week of term (ie week
beginning September 21st)
 Registration for Discipline of English seminars takes place on:
Thursday, September 10th, 2015 from 10am to 12noon, Aula Maxima,
Ground Floor, Quadrangle Building.
 All Visiting Students are assessed by Essay only.
 Dates for submission of Essays will be announced at Lectures.
 Seminar Courses are assessed by continuous assessment and a final
essay/portfolio.
Lecture Courses Semester 1, 2015-2016
ENG304.E CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
This course will explore contemporary world literature through works of new and recent fiction. The course texts will
comprise of novels by writers from across several continents. We shall explore how these current voices make sense of our
complex contemporary global culture, using key critical approaches, literary criticism and literary reviews. We will examine
contemporary narrative strategies, authorial identities, and the relationships between story-telling, memory, history, and the
self. We will focus on debates that shape our own world: deriving from such topics and social issues as globalization and
capitalist development, sexuality and gender, race and ethnicity, memory and loss, migration and journeys, community and
the family, repression and moral guilt, decolonization and neo-colonial formations, and conflict and violence.
Venue:
Thursday 11-12 AM250 O’hEocha Theatre and Friday 1-2 Richard Kirwan Theatre SC001
Lecturers:
Dr. Sorcha Gunne and Dr. Richard Pearson
Texts:
J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace (1999)
Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions (1988)
Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go (2005)
Indra Sinha, Animal’s People (2007)
Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger (2008)
Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss (2006)
Hanif Kureishi, The Buddha of Suburbia (1990)
Ian McEwan, Atonement (2001)
Nadine Gordimer, The House Gun (1998)
Cormac McCarthy, The Road (2006)
Assessment:
Mid-term Assessment (40%)
End-of-Semester Examination (60%)
EN383.E LITERATURE & CULTURE: ROMANTICISM
Romanticism represents one of the most important periods of innovation in literary history. This course examines major
figures in the movement, c. 1790-1820, including Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Keats and Shelley, and critics and satirists
such as Thomas Love Peacock and Jane Austen. The Romantics challenged inherited orthodoxies of subject matter and style
in poetry and prose, emphasizing the value of imagination and the sublime, childhood, superstition, and taboo subjects of
sexuality and violence.
Venue:
Monday 4-5 O’Flaherty Theatre and Tuesday 5-6 IT250 IT Building
Lecturer:
Prof. Daniel Carey and Dr. Muireann O’Cinneide
Texts:
Course Reader:
Includes selected writings of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Shelley, Keats, John Clare, and lesser-known
writers, as well as extracts from political commentators such as Burke and Wollstonecraft. (The Course
Reader will be available from Print That on Concourse)
Individual Texts:
Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility (1811)
Maria Edgeworth, Belinda (1801)
Thomas de Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1821)
James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824)
(These texts will be available from the College Bookshop.)
Assessment:
Mid-term Assessment (40%)
End-of-Semester Examination (60%)
EN2118: NINETEENTH CENTURY BRITISH LITERATURE
(Home students register under ENG238)
This course investigates selected British Victorian prose, poetry, fiction, and drama, from 1832 until the turn of the century.
It discusses how class conflict, gendered ideologies, religious controversies, scientific discoveries and imperial ambitions
shaped (and were in turn shaped by) the literature of this tumultuous period.
Students wishing to read ahead should begin with Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton.
Venue:
Wednesday 9-10 AM150 O’Tnuathail Theatre and Wednesday 2-3 IT250 IT Building
Lecturers:
Dr. Muireann O’Cinneide
Texts:
Carol T. Christ and Catherine Robson, eds., The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume E, The
Victorian Age (New York and London, 2012).
(Available in the Book Store. Make sure you purchase the right volume).
Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton (1848)
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1860)
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1902)
Assessment:
Mid-term Assessment (40%)
End-of-Semester Examination (60%)
EN388.E STUDIES IN MODERN IRISH LITERATURE
Twentieth Century Irish Drama
This course introduces students to the rich, diverse and innovative drama of Irish playwrights in the twentieth century. It
charts the movement in Irish drama from the creation of the national theatre movement at the end of the 19 th century to the
present day. Plays ranging from the works of Lady Gregory and W.B. Yeats to those of Brian Friel and Marina Carr will
introduce students to the social, political, and cultural tensions, complexities and motives inherent in the making of modern
Irish theatre. By the end of the course, students will be able to identify, analyse and contrast a range of plays written in a
variety of theatrical styles and will be able to relate these dramas to changing issues in Irish society, politics, and culture
throughout the twentieth century.
Venue:
Wednesday 9-10 AC002 Anderson Lecture Theatre and Friday 9-10 AM250 Colm
O’hEocha Theatre
Lecturers:
Dr. Ian R. Walsh and Dr. Miriam Haughton
Texts:
John Harrington (ed), Modern and Contemporary Irish Drama (Norton)
All other primary texts not in the Norton Anthology will be provided or are available
through online databases.
Note: Students are urged only to buy the editions mentioned above, as cheaper editions
often contain uncorrected errors that will impede your appreciation and understanding of
the text.
Assessment
Mid-term Assessment (40%)
End-of-Semester Examination (60%)
Lecture Courses Semester 2, 2015-2016
ENG203.E GENRE STUDIES
This course will involve the study of literary genres and how these relate to and emerge out of the cultural contexts that
formed them. The course will focus on a series of literary texts representative of particular generic forms, for example, the
realist novel, science fiction, political writing, imperial romance, historical fiction, children's fiction, utopian writing, travel
writing. We will study generic narratives, myths and characters alongside cultural themes and contexts and evolving media
formats.
Venue:
Thursday 12-1 IT250 IT Building, 1st Floor and Thursday 3-4 Kirwan Theatre
Lecturers:
Dr. Andrew O’Baoill and Dr. Richard Pearson
Texts:
(not in running order):
George Eliot, Silas Marner (OUP)
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Norton)
H.G. Wells, The Time Machine (Norton)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland (Broadview)
Nellie Bly - 10 Days in a Mad House
Upton Sinclair - The Jungle
Jules Verne - Around the World in Eighty Days
Final text tbc
Assessment:
Essay (40%)
End-of-Semester Examination (60%)
ENG202.E 18TH CENTURY STUDIES
This course aims to introduce students to the literature and culture of eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland. The Victorians
loathed and disowned their eighteenth-century predecessors, denouncing their literature as disgusting, immoral, and horribly
impolite. This assessment is not entirely unfair. Yet eighteenth-century authors were deeply concerned with politeness, with
debating the meaning and role of literature and art-forms, and exploring the morality of human nature and society itself.
This course seeks to uncover some of paradoxes of eighteenth-century writing in order to recover the richness of its literary
heritage. It will look at the expansion of print culture, with the 'rise of the novel' as a dominant literary form, the
modulations of satire, the flowering of 'sentimental' literature and its more carnal dimensions. Themes covered will include
financial crisis, the tension between money and morality, and the slipperiness of gender and sexuality. While seeking to
historicise the period, the course will also raise parallels with modern culture and explore what resonances the literature of
the period might have for contemporary readers.
Venue:
Wednesday 10-11 Aras Ui Chathail Lecture Theatre and Thursday 3-4 Darcy Thompson Theatre
Lecturers:
Dr. Rebecca Barr
Assessment:
Essay (40%)
End-of-Semester Examination (60%)
EN2126 STUDIES IN EARLY MODERN LITERATURE
(Home students register under ENG204)
This course seeks to familiarise students with the rich variety of early modern drama and poetry. To this end, we will
consider the work of well-known authors such as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, alongside that of their
less-familiar contemporaries, including Elizabeth Cary and Aemilia Lanyer. The course is arranged thematically, rather
than in a text-based way, into two sections. Section A focuses on religious and political contexts that inform early modern
literature. During the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, England was ruled by several monarchs, experienced
religious reformation and conflict, faced a succession crisis and lived in threat of foreign invasion. We will be exploring
how these historical circumstances informed literary representations of kingship and court politics, and articulations of faith
and belief. Having addressed some political and religious contexts for interpretation of early modern literature, Section B
moves to consider identities (of gender, race and sexuality). This section of the course will address ideas such as gender
transgression, desire, female speech, selfhood, and difference as they are manifested in drama and poetry by male and
female writers.
Venue:
Monday 5-6 O’Flaherty Theatre and Tuesday 3-4 O’Flaherty Theatre
Lecturers:
Dr. Victoria Brownlee
Texts:
Christopher Marlowe, Edward II
William Shakespeare, The Tempest
William Shakespeare, Othello
William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra
Elizabeth Cary, The Tragedy of Mariam
Course Reader
Assessment:
Essay (40%)
End-of-Semester Examination (60%)
EN2127 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE
(Home students register under EN2123)This lecture course examines a range of sixteenth and seventeenth British literature
written by Shakespeare and his early modern contemporaries. Section A of EN2123 will run on Mondays and Tuesdays
from weeks 1 to 6, and Section B will run on Mondays and Tuesdays from weeks 7 to 12 of the semester.
Section A:
Topic TBD.
Section B:
Section B of ‘Studies in Renaissance Literature’ deals with Shakespeare’s Hamlet and its confluences. We will begin by
raising broad questions about what ‘Shakespeare’ means and why we continue to study his works today. Our first few
lectures will investigate the varied resonances of ‘Shakespeare’ across time and cultures. The remainder of this section will
then be dedicated to an intensive investigation of the work for which Shakespeare is best remembered in contemporary
society: Hamlet. Not only will we apply a variety of modern critical lenses (including feminist and Freudian theory) to this
Renaissance play, but we will also give some consideration to how Hamlet has been received and adapted by later authors
such as Iris Murdoch or Laura Bohannan.
Venue: Monday 5-6 AM250 Colm O’hEocha Theatre and Tuesday 3-4 IT250 IT Building
Lecturers:
Dr. Lindsay Reid and A.N.Other
Texts:
Section A:
To be confirmed
Section B:
A course reader, available from PrintThat
William Shakespeare, Hamlet (Norton edition), available from the university bookshop
Assessment:
Essay (40%)
End-of-Semester Examination (60%)
EN385 DRAMA AND THEATRE STUDIES
This course is an introduction to some of the key elements of dramatic writing, dramaturgy and theatre history from the late
nineteenth century to the present. We pay special attention to the ways in which meanings are produced by theatre, through
acting and directional practice, and to the various ways in which the theatre functions as a social institution. Naturalistic,
modernist, postmodernist and globalized forms of theatre are considered in relation to a number of case studies. The course
will also involve attendance at a theatre production during the semester.
Venue:
Tuesday 5-6 AM250 Colm O’hEocha Theatre and Wednesday 9-10 IT250 IT Building
Lecturers:
Prof. Lionel Pilkington and Dr Charlotte McIvor
Texts:
Students must read the following ten plays:
Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House (Nick Hern)
Arthur Wing Pinero, The Second Mrs. Tanqueray (Samuel French)
Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi (Dover Thrift Editions)
Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author (Drama Online)
Sophie Treadwell, Machinal (Nick Hern)
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (Faber and Faber)
Bertolt Brecht Life of Galileo (Methuen/Drama Online)
Harold Pinter, The Homecoming (Faber and Faber/Drama Online)
Lynn Nottage, 'Ruined' (Theatre Communications Group)
Suzan Lori-Parks, The America Play and Other Plays (Theatre Communications Group)
Assessment
Mid-term Assessment (40%)
End-of-Semester Examination (60%)
ENG302 MODERNISM/POSTMODERNISM
This course will introduce and explore two major cultural periodisations of the twentieth century: modernism and
postmodernism. While emphasis will be on readings of literature in English, the wider geographical and cultural contexts
will be discussed and parallel developments in other arts (including visual arts and architecture) will be explored.
Venue:
Tuesday 5-6 ENG-G018 Lecture Theatre 1, Engineering Building and
Wednesday 9-10 Kirwan Theatre
Lecturers:
Prof. Sean Ryder and Dr. Justin Tonra
Texts:
Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (Oxford paperback)
Muriel Spark, The Driver’s Seat (Penguin)
Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire (Penguin)
A Course Reader is available from Print That, and other texts will be made available on Blackboard.
Assessment:
Mid-term Assessment (40%)
End-of-Semester Examination (60%)
EN387 SPECIALIST STUDIES: TWENTIETH CENTURY LITERATURE
Irish Poetry and Fiction: Yeats, Joyce and After
This course focuses on two of the Irish giants of twentieth-century literature and on the impact of their work on subsequent
poets and fiction writers. W.B. Yeats and James Joyce will be the concentration of the first six weeks of the course, with
brief looks ahead at their influence; what emerges in more recent writers who borrow, steal, adapt, and contest their writing
will be the focus of the course for the second six weeks.
Venue:
Wednesday 2-3 IT250 IT Building and Friday 9-10 AM250 Colm O’hEocha Theatre
Lecturers:
Dr. John Kenny and Dr. Adrian Paterson
Texts:
W.B. Yeats, The Major Works, ed. Edward Larrissey (Oxford, 2008)
Writing After Yeats (course book available at Print That / on Blackboard)
James Joyce, Dubliners (1914), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Ulysses
(1922) [extracts]
Flann O’Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds (1939)
John McGahern, The Dark (1965)
Patrick McCabe, The Dead School (1995)
Kevin Barry, Dark Lies the Island (2012)
Eimear McBride, A Girl is a Half-formed Thing (2013)
Assessment
Mid-term Assessment (40%)
End-of-Semester Examination (60%)
ENG303 NINETEENTH CENTURY AMERICAN LITERATURE
This course focuses upon poetry, fiction and non-fiction from the mid-nineteenth century with an emphasis on the way in
which American writers are constructing a national literature and a national history, engaging with contemporary reform
movements, such as abolitionism and women's rights, and investigating religious belief. Texts include selections from
Whitman, Hawthorne, Melville, Stowe, Dickinson, Douglass.
Venue:
Monday 4-5 O’Flaherty Theatre and Friday 1-2 AC002 Anderson Lecture Theatre
Lecturers:
Prof. Sean Ryder and Dr. Sorcha Gunne
Texts:
Norton Anthology of American Literature: Eighth Edition, Volume B
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (Penguin edition)
Assessment:
Mid-term Assessment (40%)
End-of-Semester Examination (60%)
LIST OF SEMINARS (SEMESTERS 1 and 2)
You may choose ONE seminar each semester
STUDENTS MUST TAKE A DIFFERENT SEMINAR COURSE EACH SEMESTER. STUDENTS MAY NOT
TAKE TWO SEMINARS WITH THE SAME COURSE TITLE EVEN IF THE COURSE CODE IS DIFFERENT.
Code
EN278.I/
EN278.II
Seminar Title
MILTON’S POETRY
Dr. Victoria Brownlee
Semester
available
1 and 2
This course focuses on John Milton’s biblical epic Paradise Lost,
which tells the story of Adam and Eve, their fall from Eden, and the
conflict between Satan and God. The seminar’s primary aim is to
facilitate a close reading of Milton’s poem while also referring to
seminal critical interpretations. We will explore the poem’s treatment
of character and motivation, good and evil, free will, gender, politics,
marriage, and literary epic. For the purposes of comparison, we will
consider extracts from the King James Bible, and explore how the
political, theological, and philosophical contexts of the seventeenth
century inform Milton’s reading of the biblical narrative of Genesis.
Venue
Monday 11-1
AMB-G043 Seminar
Room, Arts
Millennium
(Semester 1)
Monday 11-1
Room 302 Tower 1
(Semester 2)
Assessment: 30% continuous assessment (one oral presentation
(10%), and one written assignment (20%)); 70% final essay.
EN280.I/
EN280.II
TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE NOVEL
The Novel and the Ethical Effects of Reading
Ms. Kathleen Pacious
The crossover of literature and ethics is an exciting and recent field in
literary studies. This seminar pays particular attention to the capacity
of novels to persuade, influence, and affect their readers. We will
explore topics that include aesthetics vs ethics, empathising with
“bad” characters, the connection between novel-reading and
empathy, fictionality vs reality, the relationship between reader and
author, the role of affect in literary studies, and how to “measure”
readerly engagement and ethical influence. Eschewing the idea that
ethics only focuses on moral issues, we will draw on narrative theory
as we engage in close reading of four novels from 1818-1989,
drawing on historical and contemporary ethical theories.
The novels include: Jane Austen’s Persuasion (1818), Elizabeth
Gaskell’s North and South (1855), E.M. Forster’s Howard’s End
(1910), and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day (1989).
Assessment: 30% continuous assessment (10% in-class assignments,
20% mid-term essay), 70% final essay.
1 and 2
Monday 9-11
TB306 Tower 2
EN2112/
EN2100
CREATIVE WRITING
"Patrols of the Imagination"
Ms. Siobhan Kane
1 and 2
Tuesday 9-11
TB306 Tower 2
(Semester 1)
1 and 2
Tuesday 9-11
Room 302 Tower 1
1 and 2
Thursday 1-3
TB306 Tower 2
This course will provide a context and framework to nourish and
enhance students' interest and ability in creative writing, with a
mixture of weekly writing exercises and critical readings of notable
writers, with a particular focus on the short story, referencing some of
the genre's greatest exponents, such as; Edgar Allen Poe, Flannery O'
Connor, Raymond Carver, Roald Dahl, James Joyce, Kurt Vonnegut,
Alice Munro, William Carlos Williams, Annie Proulx, Kate Chopin,
and Ray Bradbury. The course will also touch on a diverse range of
novels, creative nonfiction, and poetry, and encourage weekly class
discussions around the culture and processes of creative writing.
Assessment: 30% continuous assessment (a combination of weekly
written exercises and critical reviewing,) and 70% final submission a creative writing project of the student’s choice i.e. a chapter of a
novel, some short stories, poems, play, or non-fiction.
EN2114/
EN2102
RENAISSANCE DRAMA
Ms. Kirry O’Brien
This course explores four plays, two by William Shakespeare and
two by his predecessor Christopher Marlowe. We will examine the
development of theatrical drama during this era, and invigilate many
of the concerns of the day that were addressed by said theatre:
Kingship, power, race, gender etc.
Texts: Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta and Edward II.
William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and Henry IV.
Assessment: 15% for the class presentation write up, 15% for a midterm minor essay and 70% for the final essay.
EN2115/
EN2103
RENAISSANCE DRAMA
Dr. Dermot Burns
This course examines the treatment of love in three of Shakespeare’s
plays: Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night and Measure for Measure.
The method of study will involve close textual analysis and
consideration of a variety of critical approaches to the plays.
Texts: William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night and
Measure for Measure.
Assessment: two short essays (15% each) - 30%, one final in-class
essay 70%.
EN299.I/
EN299.II
FILM AND SHAKESPEARE
Dr. Lindsay Reid
1 and 2
Tuesday 9-11
Q1, Huston School
of Film and Media
(Block Q, Earls Isla
nd)
1 and 2
Tuesday 11-1
TB306 Tower 2
1 and 2
Wednesday 9-11
TB306 Tower 2
What happens when a Renaissance-era stage play is adapted for the
contemporary screen? Why have successive generations of
filmmakers so often sought to reinterpret Shakespeare’s works? What
does the plethora of modern film adaptations say about the
‘Shakespeare Industry’? This seminar is designed for students
interested in exploring Shakespeare's dramatic art alongside
cinematic adaptations of his plays. We will study one tragedy and
one comedy from Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of
the Shrew, respectively) as a means to understanding the
interpretative choices made by filmmakers who have reworked these
two texts. Feature-length films under our consideration will include
Romeo and Juliet (1968), Shakespeare in Love (1998) and 10 Things
I Hate About You (1999), among others.
Assessment: 15% group presentation, 15% film review, and 70%
final essay
EN2116/
EN2106
SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDIES
Ms. Kirry O’Brien
This seminar will examine, in detail, some examples of
Shakespearean Comedy. Shakespeare’s comedies end in marriage:
however, many trials and obstacles have to be overcome along the
way. We shall explore the complex issues raised on the journey
towards a so-called happy ending. Recommended (not obligatory)
text: RSC William Shakespeare Complete Works ed. Jonathan Bate
and Eric Rasmussen.
Plays: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, Twelfth Night,
Measure For Measure.
Assessment: 15% for the class presentation write up, 15% for a minor
essay and 70% for the final essay.
EN2117/
EN2107
SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDIES
Ms. Kirry O’Brien
This seminar will examine, in detail, some examples of
Shakespearean Comedy. Shakespeare’s comedies end in marriage:
however, many trials and obstacles have to be overcome along the
way. We shall explore the complex issues raised on the journey
towards a so-called happy ending. Recommended (not obligatory)
text: RSC William Shakespeare Complete Works ed. Jonathan Bate
and Eric Rasmussen.
Plays: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, Twelfth Night,
Measure For Measure.
Assessment: 15% for the class presentation write up, 15% for a minor
essay and 70% for the final essay.
EN441.I/
EN441.II
PLAYS, PLAYERS AND PLAYHOUSES
Victorian Farce and Melodrama
Prof. Richard Pearson
1 and 2
Monday 3-5
TB306 Tower 2
1 and 2
Semester 1
Thursday 9-11
Room 302 Tower 1
This seminar explores the popular forms of theatre that dominated the
nineteenth century: farce and melodrama. We will examine a number
of texts within each genre to identify their central characteristics, and
then consider how these plays were situated in the theatrical and
cultural contexts of the day. We will look at the playwrights, theatres,
managers and actors who wrote, staged and performed some of the
most popular examples of the forms. Above all, we will explore the
question of why these forms became so dominant in the nineteenthcentury London theatre.
Texts include a series of One-Act farces: J.M. Morton, Box and Cox
and Grimshaw, Bagshaw and Bradshaw; William Brough,
Apartments; Mark Lemon, The Ladies’ Club; J.S. Coyne, How to
Settle Accounts with your Laundress; and a series of Melodramas:
Dion Boucicault, The Colleen Bawn and Jessie Brown; or, The Relief
of Lucknow; Charles Dickens & Wilkie Collins, The Frozen Deep;
Colin Hazlewood, The Chevalier of the Maison Rouge; or, The Days
of Terror!; Tom Taylor, The Ticket-of-Leave Man; H.M. Milner,
Mazeppa.
NOTE – YOU WILL NEED TO BRING A TABLET, LAPTOP
OR E-READER TO THESE CLASSES, AS ALL TEXTS ARE
ONLINE.
Assessment: Portfolio (30%); final essay (70%).
EN444.I/
EN444.II
PAIN AND PLEASURE IN JACOBEAN THEATRE
Prof. Lionel Pilkington
Jacobean drama is well known for its often-spectacular stage
explorations of sexual transgression and social punishment. This
course considers four of the most famous of these plays, and
examines the relationship between theatricality, social order, power
and sexual desire. The main emphasis of the course will be on close
textual analysis, and to that end a detailed knowledge of all four plays
will be essential. As well as class presentations, there will be two
short critical essays.
Texts: William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure (Penguin);
Anon The Revenger’s Tragedy (New Mermaids or Methuen);
Thomas Middleton and John Rowley’s The Changeling (NHB or
New Mermaids); John Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore (NHB or
Revels New Student Edition).
Assessment: 30% for continuous assessment (15% for a short [1000
word max] essay and 15% for general class participation including
completion of a one page in-class analysis). 70% for final (2,000
word max) essay.
Semester 2
Thursday 9-11
Room 302 Tower 1
ENG201.I/
ENG201.II
EXPLORING THE CREATIVE ARTS
Ms. Mary McPartlan
1 and 2
Wednesday 11- 1
Large Acoustics
Room, Aras na Mac
Leinn.
1 and 2
Monday 1-3
TB306 Tower 2
This ten-week course aims to offer students of literature and theatre
an opportunity to experience other relevant art forms, thereby gaining
a valuable broader context for their chosen field of study.
Thus,traditional Irish music, old style and contemporary song and
dance, one contemporary Irish Film, one contemporary Irish Play and
a TG4 documentary will be included, with a view to developing a
critical understanding of the creative arts, and the varied forms of
cultural expression. The Arts in Action programme will be a
compulsory element of study with attendance at three of the
workshop- lunchtime performances, follow up class discussion and
written reviews.
Valuable resourceTexts:
- Carson, Ciarán, The Pocket Guide to Irish Traditional Music;
- Breathnach, Breandán. Folk Music and Dances of Ireland;
- Hast, Dorothea and Scott, Stanley. Music in Ireland: Experiencing
Music, Expressing Culture;
- Brennan, Helen. The Story of Irish Dance;
- White, Harry, and Barra Boydell, eds. The Encyclopdia of Music in
Ireland. 1st ed. Vol. 1&2;
- Mulrooney, Deirdre. Irish Moves: An Illustrated History of Dance
and Physical Theatre in Ireland.
Assessment: 30% Continuous assessment and 70% end of term essay
of 2,000 words.
ENG205.I/
ENG205.II
OLD ENGLISH I – INTRODUCTION TO LANGUAGE AND
READING
Francisco Rozano Garcia
Old English is an exciting and beautiful language. Apart from being
an invaluable object of study to those with an interest in etymology, it
is the vehicle for some of the most challenging and captivating
literature you will ever read. This course will provide you with a
thorough introduction to learning to read Old English without painful
memorisation! We’ll think about many important theoretical issues
related to engagement with the language and its texts, and we’ll
explore the culture of the Anglo-Saxon people.
Texts: Robert Hasenfratz and Thomas Jambeck’s Reading Old
English.
Assessment: Weekly assignments 30% (five assigned, best three
chosen); Essays 70% (two short essays assigned, worth 35% each).
ENG207.I/
ENG207.II
19TH CENTURY WRITING: SCARY LONDON
Anna Gasperini
1 and 2
Thursday 9-11
TB306 Tower 2
1 and 2
Tuesday 11-1
Room 302, Tower 1
(Semester 1)
Victorian London was the natural environment of some of the
scariest monsters of literature in the English language. This course
focuses on representations of the Victorian city in serialized popular
fiction, cheap literature written specifically for lower-class readers.
Using a critical approach based on new historicism and spatial
theory, the course analyses the monstrous characters and spaces of
literature from the perspective of Victorian London’s geography,
class structure, and such infrastructures as markets, workhouses,
hospitals, and cemeteries. Finally, the course examines how the space
and characters of Victorian London survived, through adaptation and
reinvention, in contemporary fantasy fiction.
Main texts: Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist 1837 (Oxford edition);
G.W.M. Reynolds, The Mysteries of London 1846-52; James
Malcolm Rymer, Sweeney Todd (1846-7); Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere
(1996).
Assessment: 30% Continuous Assessment (20% Short Writing
Assignment + 10% Class Presentation) , 70% Final Essay
ENG208.I/
ENG208.II
TWENTIETH CENTURY STUDIES
Dr. David Clare
This seminar will examine the children’s fiction of Belfast writer
C.S. Lewis, alongside Irish children’s literature that either influenced
his work or that has much in common with it. Lewis was heavily
influenced by the literature of his native country – particularly Irish
works of fantasy by Swift and Stephens. Like Wilde and Edgeworth,
he attempted to infuse his work with spiritual and moral teachings
while never losing sight of the need to tell a good story. Writers who
came after Lewis, such as Lavin, have tried to emulate his success at
introducing supernatural happenings into the prosaic lives of ordinary
children. The anti-colonial themes in the work of Lewis and the other
writers will also be discussed.
Texts: Jonathan Swift – Parts I & II of Gulliver’s Travels; Maria
Edgeworth – Eton Montem, “The Orphans”, and “The White
Pigeon”; Oscar Wilde – “The Selfish Giant” and “The Happy
Prince”; James Stephens – The Crock of Gold; C.S. Lewis – The
Magician’s Nephew, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and The
Voyage of the Dawn-Treader; Mary Lavin – A Likely Story [All but
the Lewis and the Lavin will be included in a Course Handbook].
Assessment: 30% continuous assessment (class participation, one
oral presentation and one, brief written assignment); 70% final essay.
Monday 2-4
IT204 IT Building
(Semester 2)
ENG223.I/
ENG223.II
SPECIAL THEME
Dr. Sorcha Gunne
1 and 2
Wednesday 3-5
Room 302 Tower 1
1 and 2
Monday 9-11
Room 302, Tower 1
Bodies and Ireland
This module will explore representations and registrations of the
body in a selection of Irish and related writing and film from the late
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It will consider both the
specificities of the Irish socio-historical context and the
corresponding conditions of global modernity. As such, it will
examine the tensions, negotiations and new articulations that can be
read through the lens of both Irish social history and transnational
configurations of bodies, particularly women’s bodies. The module
has been arranged into 4 interconnected units of intellectual debate.
By way of introduction, we begin by considering the female
embodiment of Ireland in discourses of nationalism. We will then
think about the embodiment of Ireland through the literary trope of
the body in the bog. We next turn to the topic of food and hunger
before concluding with two units that will explore the policing of
women’s bodies in various manifestations.
Reading list includes:
Seamus Heaney, North (1975, selections from)
Aislinn Hunter, Stay (2002)
Marita Conlon-McKenna, Under the Hawthorn Tree (1990)
Eavan Boland, Domestic Violence (2007, selections from)
Shani Mootoo, Cereus Blooms at Night (1996)
Emer Martin, Baby Zero (2007)
Eimear McBride, A Girl is a Half-formed Thing (2013)
Assessment: 30% continuous assessment, 70% final essay
EN298.I/
EN298.II
Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene
Dr. Clíodhna Carney
Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene (1590s) is one those very rare
works of art into which a whole culture seems to have been poured.
There is everything in it: love, sex, evil, religion, theories of
government, philosophy, violence, slavery, perversion. And above
all, brilliant poetry. Spenser was looking in two directions: back to
the literature of Virgil, and forwards through the political and
religious change of his own time into a hypothetical future world.
Our class will involve a close reading of Books 1 and 2, and students
can bring all sorts of other interests to bear on our discussions:
history, science, philosophy, political science, mythology, classics.
Text: Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, ed. A. C. Hamilton, rev.
ed. (Longman, 2007).
Assessment: 30% continuous assessment (4 short written
assignments: 20% (i.e. 4 x 5%); one panel discussion: 5%, one
debate: 5%) and one long end-of-term essay: 70%.
EN2113/
EN2101
Creative Writing
Siobhan Kane
1 and 2
This course will provide a context and framework to nourish and
enhance students' interest and ability in creative writing, with a
mixture of weekly writing exercises and critical readings of notable
writers, with a particular focus on the short story, referencing some of
the genre's greatest exponents, such as; Edgar Allen Poe, Flannery O'
Connor, Raymond Carver, Roald Dahl, James Joyce, Kurt Vonnegut,
Alice Munro, William Carlos Williams, Annie Proulx, Kate Chopin,
and Ray Bradbury. The course will also touch on a diverse range of
novels, creative nonfiction, and poetry, and encourage weekly class
discussions around the culture and processes of creative writing.
Tuesday 1-3
Room 505, English
Dept
Semester 1
Tuesday 1-3,
TB306, Tower 2
Semester 2
Assessment: 30% continuous assessment (a combination of weekly
written exercises and critical reviewing,) and 70% final submission a creative writing project of the students choice ie. a chapter of a
novel, some short stories, poems, play, or non-fiction.
EN2119/
EN2120
Media Studies
Bernadette O’Sullivan
1 and 2
Friday 11-1
TB306, Tower 2
(Semester 1)
1 and 2
Wednesday 5-7
TB306, Tower 2
This Seminar series is an introduction to journalism. Students who
engage fully with all aspects of the seminar will begin to develop the
knowledge, practical skills and confidence to find their journalistic
voice: to generate ideas and research and develop a portfolio of
journalistic material. Students will select and attend two newsworthy
events on campus, in the city, or in their own locality and submit
follow-up work.
Assessment: Portfolio of journalistic work: 30% continuous
assessment and 70% for final portfolio of articles.
EN2121/
EN2122
Media Industries A
Andrew O’Baoill
How do issues of ownership, funding, and organisation shape our
media environment? This course will provide an introduction to study
of media industries, through a critical political economic lens. We
will examine a variety of models, including commercial, political
economic and alternative; identify the institutional pressures shaping
media texts; and discuss the role of a number of interventions aimed
at disrupting 'business as usual' in the mass media
ENG213.I/
ENG213.II
Assessment: 30% Continuous Assessment and 70% Final Assessment
Film Studies
Dr Fiona Bateman
This seminar is an introduction to studying film in an academic
context. During the semester students will develop new ways of
watching and thinking about films; they will learn how to ‘read’ a
film. Issues including genre, intertextuality, narrative and narration
will be discussed in class. The films (texts) which students will view
and analyse for the course are all Irish, chosen because they share
certain thematic characteristics but differ in significant ways.
The films are: Flight of the Doves (1971), Into the West (1992),
Mickybo and Me (2006) and Kisses (2008). As we will be focussing
on Irish films, this seminar will also address representations of
Ireland and Irishness on screen.
Assessment: 3 short assignments (10% each) and 1 essay (70%).
1 and 2
Thursday 9-11,
B1 Huston School of
Film & Media
(Semester 1)
Friday 12-2,
Q1 Huston School of
Film & Media
(Semester 2)
ENG222.I/
ENG222.II
Special Author: Jane Austen
Muireann O’Cinneide
1 and 2
Wednesday 3-5
TB306 Tower 2
1 and 2
Monday 1-3
CA002 Cairnes
Building
(Semester 1)
This seminar explores a selection of the writings of Jane Austen
(1775-1817). Austen’s current status as one of the best-loved and
most critically-admired novelists in English literature can obscure the
formative influences and cultural contexts of her work. This module
begins with some of Austen’s earliest work, tracing a transition in
narrative voice from parody to satire to a distinctive ironic mode. It
then traces the refinement of this mode into a powerful tool of ethical
commentary through examining two of Austen’s most complex and
often-misunderstood mature novels. We will also examine the
present-day cultural production of Austen as author through
twentieth-century cinematic adaptations and literary pastiches.
Main Texts: “Love and Freindship” (~1790); “Lady Susan” (~1794);
Northanger Abbey (1818); Mansfield Park (1814); Emma (1815).
Oxford University Press editions (where possible), esp. the 2008
edition for NA.
ENG217.I/
ENG217.II
Assessment: 30% continuous assessment (15% class presentation;
10% written assignment(s); 5% in-class participation); 70% final
essay.
MEDIA STUDIES
Exploring Journalism
Mrs. Bernadette O’Sullivan
This Seminar series is an introduction to journalism. Students who
engage fully with all aspects of the seminar will begin to develop the
knowledge, practical skills and confidence to find their journalistic
voice: to generate ideas and research and develop a portfolio of
journalistic material. Students will select and attend two newsworthy
events on campus, in the city, or in their own locality and submit
follow-up work.
Monday 1-3
AM112 Arts
Millennium Building
(Semester 2)
Assessment: Portfolio of journalistic work: 30% continuous
assessment and 70% for final portfolio of articles.
Code
EN336.I/
EN336.II
Seminar Title
BECKETT ON PAGE & STAGE: PROSE, POETRY,
DRAMA
Dr. David Clare
Samuel Beckett’s work is often described as ‘ahistorical’ and
as being set ‘nowhere’. In keeping with a recent shift in
Beckett criticism, however, this module seeks to place
Beckett’s work in socio-historical context. Close analysis of
the works is employed to reveal the depth of Beckett’s
lifelong engagement with the landscape and culture of his
native Ireland. Students will discover the degree to which
Beckett’s early work is critical of Free State Ireland and
narrow definitions of Irishness. They will learn that Beckett’s
later work is often set in a ‘liminal space’, with Beckett
superimposing the countries where he lived in later life
(England and France) over the Ireland of his youth; Beckett
does this in order to subtly explore the psychological effects
of exile, which is itself a very ‘Irish’ preoccupation. Other
topics covered in discussions include narrative and dramatic
experiment, Beckett’s play with genres, and the developments
in his style between the early 1930s and the 1980s.
Assessment: 30% continuous assessment (class participation,
one oral presentation and one, brief written assignment); 70%
final essay.
Semester available
1 and 2
Venue
Tuesday 3-5
Room 302 Tower 1
EN404.I/
EN404.II
CONTEMPORARY IRISH POETRY
Dr. Adrian Paterson
1 and 2
Thursday 1-3
Room 302 Tower 1
1 and 2
Monday 11-1
S202, Block S
1 and 2
Wednesday 11-1
Room 302 Tower 1
1 and 2
Wednesday 5-7
Room 302 Tower 1
This course traces the enormous variety of streams and
tributaries in Irish poetry after Yeats, with a particular
emphasis on the poems and poets of mid-century and how
they influenced later writers. Exploring local and
contemporary contexts, the focus is carefully drawn on close
readings of the most interesting poems. This allows for
discussion of exciting work from a range of known and lesserknown authors, including Louis MacNeice, Samuel Beckett,
Austin Clarke, Denis Devlin, Patrick Kavanagh, and John
Hewitt, considering in detail their influences and after-effects.
Text: Modern Irish Poetry: An Anthology, ed. Patrick Crotty
(Blackstaff Press), Coursebook.
Assessment will take into account the quality of class
participation and two brief written assignments (30%), and a
longer final essay (70%).
EN3109/
EN3111
POETRY OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR
Ms. Kirry O’Brien
This seminar engages with the poetry of World War 1, a
poetry written by men and women, combatants and noncombatants, at home and at the front. It examines how
literature helped prepare people for war and sustained them
through it. It also looks at the production of mythologies
which still inform our understanding of the Great War.
Assessment: 15% class presentation write up, 15% for midterm review/close reading of a poem or poster from the period
and 70% final essay.
EN3110/
EN3112
POETRY OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR
Ms. Kirry O’Brien
This seminar engages with the poetry of World War 1, a
poetry written by men and women, combatants and noncombatants, at home and at the front. It examines how
literature helped prepare people for war and sustained them
through it. It also looks at the production of mythologies
which still inform our understanding of the Great War.
Assessment: 15% class presentation write up, 15% for midterm review/close reading of a poem or poster from the period
and 70% final essay.
EN426.I/
EN426.II
AMERICAN WAY OF DEATH
Prof. Daniel Carey
The seminar focuses on factual and fictionalised accounts of
murder in America, asking why violence is a central part of
American culture and the literary imagination. Texts include
Truman Capote, In Cold Blood, Norman Mailer, The
Executioner’s Song, Mikal Gilmore, Shot in the Heart,
William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow.
Assessment: One presentation and commentary (30%) and
70%: two essays at 35% each.
EN434.I/
EN434.II
STUDIES IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY FICTION
James Joyce's Early Fiction
Dr. Irina Ruppo
1 and 2
Friday 1-3
Room 302 Tower 1
2 only
Tuesday 1-3
Room 302 Tower 1
1 and 2
Tuesday 1-3
S202, Block S
This course will examine James Joyce’s first novel, A Portrait
of the Artist as a Young Man, and some of his short stories.
We shall consider various conflicting approaches to the texts
and develop new interpretations through class discussions and
debates. Texts: James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man; ‘Araby’; ‘The Dead’; ‘An Encounter’.
Assessment: 10% participation, 20% two short written
assignments and 70% for final essay.
EN442.II
VICTORIAN LITERATURE
Dr. Muireann O’Cinneide
This seminar explores the influence of imperialism and
colonialism on the fiction of the Victorian period (1832-1901).
It discusses the dynamics of colonial power and racial
hierarchies that underlay literary encounters with
‘foreignness’ in and out of England). Authors include Wilkie
Collins, Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling, Olive Schreiner,
Robert Louis Stevenson, and H.G. Wells. Main Texts: Elleke
Boehmer, ed. Empire Writing: An Anthology of Colonial
Literature 1870-1918; Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone (1868);
H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds (1898); Rudyard Kipling,
Kim (1901).
Assessment: 30% continuous assessment (15% individual inclass presentation; 10% written assignment; 5% in-class
participation exercises); 70% final essay.
EN448.I/
EN448.II
STORIES TOLD AND RE-TOLD
Dr. Irina Ruppo
The course examines authors’ use and adaptation of folkloric
and mythological material in their works. The course
examines a variety of early modernist and contemporary texts
alongside earlier materials alluded in or explored by those
texts. Straddling the perceived divide between popular fiction
and classic literary works, the course considers the writing of
W. B. Yeats, minor authors of the Irish Revival, J.R.R.
Tolkien, James Joyce, John Updike, and Douglas Adams. The
course enables students to query the nature of literary
production and reception across different time periods. It
allows them to explore why authors choose to underpin their
works by references to well known narratives, and,
conversely, why authors choose to revive forgotten legends.
Assessment: 10%: class participation; 20%: two short
assignments; 70%: final paper (2500 words).
EN459.I/
EN459.II
CONTEMPORARY IRISH WRITING
The Fantastic in Irish Writing
Dr. Irina Ruppo
1 and 2
The course will consider the use of the fantastic mode in Irish
writing across a variety of genres. It will explore the novels of
John Banville and Clare Boylan, the drama of Marina Carr,
and the short fiction of Neil Jordan and Éilís Ní Dhuibhne and
ask the questions how these writers use the fantastic mode to
explore contemporary social issues and to engage with and
challenge the Irish literary tradition. Texts: A number of short
stories by Éilís Ní Dhuibhne and poems by Matthew Sweeney,
Pat Boran, and others will be distributed in class. Longer texts
are Clare Boylan, Black Baby (1988), Marina Carr, By the Bog
of Cats (1998), John Banville, The Sea (2005) and Neil
Jordan, Sunrise with Sea Monster (1994).
Assessment: participation 10%, 2 written assignments 20%,
and final essay 70%.
EN464.I/
EN464.II
NEGOTIATING IDENTITIES
Dr. Leo Keohane and Ms. Aingeal Ní Chualáin
This course provides an introduction to twentieth-century Irish
writing and considers how writers in Irish and in English have
participated in the negotiation of modern and contemporary
Irish identities. Through a close critical reading of key
selected texts in Irish and in English, it will investigate the
ways in which writers have imagined and re-imagined Ireland
and Irishness from the literary and cultural revival of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through to the new
millennium. Issues to be addressed will include Ireland’s
transition from a traditional to a modern society, language,
gender, and the connections between literary production and
the imagined ‘nation’. A knowledge of Irish is not necessary
for this course.
Assessment: 30% continuous assessment: class participation,
oral presentation and abstract for final essay. 70% for 2
essays; one (25%) and the final essay (45%).
Thursday 11-1
Room 302 Tower 1
(Semester 1)
Friday 11-1
Room 302 Tower 1
(Semester 2)
1 and 2
Friday 11-1
Seminar Room,
Centre for Irish
Studies
EN470.I/
EN470.II
EN3101/
EN3102
OLD ENGLISH I – INTRODUCTION TO LANGUAGE
AND READING
Francisco Rozano Garcia
Old English is an exciting and beautiful language. Apart from
being an invaluable object of study to those with an interest in
etymology, it is the vehicle for some of the most challenging
and captivating literature you will ever read. This course will
provide you with a thorough introduction to learning to read
Old English without painful memorisation! We’ll think about
many important theoretical issues related to engagement with
the language and its texts, and we’ll explore the culture of the
Anglo-Saxon people. Texts: Robert Hasenfratz and Thomas
Jambeck’s Reading Old English.
Assessment: Weekly assignments 30% (five assigned, best
three chosen); Essays 70% (two short essays assigned, worth
35% each).
ALLUSION, ADAPTATION AND APPROPRIATION
Dr. Lindsay Reid
1 and 2
Monday 1-3
TB306 Tower 2
1 and 2
Friday 3-5
Room 302 Tower 1
1 only
Tuesday 1-3
IT203 IT Building
(Sem 1)
Works of literature are always in dialogue with texts that came
before; they inevitably recall and comment on the past even
when presenting something ‘new’. Using case studies from
world literature alongside critical secondary readings, this
module focuses on the intertextual relationships that exist
between and inform our understandings of literary works.
Drawing on a wide variety of short texts, our case studies may
include examinations of such topics as: how later literary
pieces like ‘The Story of Sindbad the Sailor’ from The
Arabian Nights or Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s ‘The LotosEaters’ build on famed episodes from Homer’s Odyssey; how
contemporary short stories by feminist authors such as Angela
Carter or Margaret Atwood revise and critique classic fairy
tales; how subsequent poets have responded to the sentiments
and form of Shakespeare’s sonnets; and/or how particular
characters from Greco-Roman mythology, such as Pygmalion
or Orpheus, have been variously reinterpreted by authors from
the Middle Ages to today.
EN599.I/
Assessment: 30% continuous assessment and 70% final essay.
LITERARY COMPOSITION
Dr. John Kenny
Please note: This seminar is not available to students of the
BA with Creative Writing
This module will introduce you to a number of related ‘nonacademic’ professional modes and genres of literary writing.
On a workshop basis, you will develop writing and project
skills as they apply in creative composition in the traditional
genres of poetry, drama and fiction and also as they apply in
various critical forms (cultural reporting; articles and profiles;
the personal essay; literary journalism in both senses: books
journalism, and nonfictional essay-writing). As a group, we
will explore how the critical and creative dispositions can
cooperate in the actual production of written work, and the
concept and practice of style will be extensively examined.
You will emerge with a working knowledge of the processes
of self- and group-editing, of the importance of producing
‘clean’ and individualised script, of the combined imperatives
of information and entertainment in the kinds of writing aimed
at a wide audience.
Assessment: Participation: 20%, minor writing projects: 10%;
major writing project: 70%.
ENG230.I/
ENG230.II
NINETEENTH CENTURY DETECTIVE FICTION
Dr. Coralline Dupuy
1 and 2
The focus of this course is a selection of the Sherlock Holmes
stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. The critical tools used in class
features structuralism, psychoanalysis, colonial and gender
studies.
Reading list: Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet 1887
(Oxford UP); Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of
Sherlock Holmes 1891 (Oxford UP); Arthur Conan Doyle, The
Hound of the Baskervilles 1901 (Oxford UP); Arthur Conan
Doyle, The Final Problem 1893 (Oxford UP).
Assessment: At-home assignment 15%, in-class presentation
15%, two essays at 35% each (70%).
EN3105/
EN3107
TWENTIETH-CENTURY CHILDREN’S FICTION
Dr. Coralline Dupuy
Monday 11-1
Room 302 Tower 1
(Semester 1)
Wednesday 1-3
TB306 Tower 2
(Semster 2)
1 and 2
Wednesday 11-1
TB306 Tower 2
1 and 2
Friday 11-1
S202 Block S
The focus of this course is an in-depth analysis of modern
novels for children written in the last three decades. The
proposed method of study is comparative analysis. The critical
theories used in this purpose are Jungian psychoanalysis,
structuralism and gender studies. Through this course, the
students will be asked to appraise each text individually and
also to look at the general issues pervading the genre. These
include family politics, the role of imagination, ethics, and
mentors. Reading list: Roald Dahl, The Witches (1983, Puffin
Books). Louis Sachar, Holes (1998, Bloomsbury). Neil
Gaiman, Stardust (1998, Headline). S. F. Said, Varjak Paw
(2003, Corgi). Assessment: At-home assignment 15%, in-class
presentation 15%, mid-term essay (35%) and a final essay
(35%).
EN3106/
EN3108
TWENTIETH-CENTURY CHILDREN’S FICTION
Dr. Coralline Dupuy
The focus of this course is an in-depth analysis of modern
novels for children written in the last three decades. The
proposed method of study is comparative analysis. The critical
theories used in this purpose are Jungian psychoanalysis,
structuralism and gender studies. Through this course, the
students will be asked to appraise each text individually and
also to look at the general issues pervading the genre. These
include family politics, the role of imagination, ethics, and
mentors. Reading list: Roald Dahl, The Witches (1983, Puffin
Books). Louis Sachar, Holes (1998, Bloomsbury). Neil
Gaiman, Stardust (1998, Headline). S. F. Said, Varjak Paw
(2003, Corgi).
Assessment: At-home assignment 15%, in-class presentation
15%, mid-term essay (35%) and a final essay (35%).
ENG232.I/
ENG232.II
AFRICAN FICTION
Dr. Fiona Bateman
1 and 2
Friday 9-11
Room 302 Tower 1
1 and 2
Monday 1-3
Room 302 Tower 1
2 only
Tuesday 2-4
IT206
This seminar will focus on writing from and about Africa. We
will read and discuss novels as well as other texts from
Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Kenya. Issues to be considered will
include language and the oral tradition, postcoloniality,
tradition and modernity, gender, landscape and politics.
Reference to texts by both African and non-African writers
will enable analysis of contrasting narrative styles and
representations. Texts: Chinua Achebe Things Fall Apart
(1958); Ngugi wa Thiongo The River Between (1965); Tsitsi
Dangarembga Nervous Conditions (1988); and Chimamanda
Ngozi Adichie Americanah (2013).
Assessment: 30% for continuous assessment (one short piece
of written work and one presentation, 15% each) and 70% for
the final essay.
ENG233.I/
ENG233.II
ARTHURIAN LITERATURE
Dr. Dermot Burns
The main text under consideration on this course is Sir
Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur, the first major prose
narrative in English literature, which attempts to tell the
complete story of the rise and fall of the legendary King
Arthur. Our study will include the perusal of a broad range of
secondary texts concerning medieval chivalry, including
chivalric treatises, religious texts, other medieval romances
and pseudo-historical chronicles, in order to place Malory's
work within the context of a range of medieval views on
knightly virtue and behaviour. Major themes including
religion, love, honour and courage will be considered in light
of the striking events described in Malry’s rendition of the
Arthurian legend.
Assessment: 30% Continuous Assessment (1 mid-term essay)
and 70% Final In-class Essay.
ENG235.II
DIGITAL HUMANITIES
Dr. Justin Tonra
Computers have played an increasingly prominent role in
humanities research and study in recent years, but as literary
scholars, we have not given adequate attention to the effects of
this paradigm shift on what we study and how we study. In
this class, we will explore a range of topics from the
intersection of computing and literary studies, such as: what is
digital humanities? How have computers been used to study
literature in the past and present? How has technology shaped
and changed our reading patterns? Though computers have
expedited many traditional scholarly tasks, how can we
improve our analysis and insight through tasks that only a
computer can perform? The course will demonstrate the
fundamentally interdisciplinary nature of digital humanities,
though our practical focus will be on literary texts. Classes
will be divided between and lab, and students are expected to
have a good degree of digital literacy. Students must have
access to a laptop computer for each class. Core texts include
Siemens & Schreibman, eds. A Companion to Digital Literary
Studies.
Assessment: 30% continuous assessment; 70% final
assignment.
ENG240.I/
ENG240.II
LITERARY HISTORIES
Dr. Victoria Brownlee
1 and 2
This course assesses the shaping influence of particular
historical junctures on four early modern plays, Thomas
Dekker’s Whore of Babylon, Shakespeare’s Henry V and The
Merchant of Venice, and Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of
Mariam. By engaging with extracts from a variety of
contemporaneous documents, we will locate the issues raised
in these plays amid broader discussions of Catholicism,
kingship and nationhood, Jewishness, and femininity in early
modern England. Through this comparative scrutiny of the
intricate interactions of text and context, seminars will
elucidate how literary writings reinforce and undermine
dominant political and social attitudes, and assess the
difficulties inherent in reading history.
Monday 3-5
S202, Block S
(Semester 1)
Tuesday 9-11
S202, Block S
(Semester 2)
Assessment: 30% continuous assessment (one oral
presentation (10%), and one written assignment (20%)); 70%
final essay.
ENG241.I
LOOSE BAGGY MONSTERS
Victorian Serial Fiction
Dr. Richard Pearson
1 only
Monday 11-1
TB306 Tower 2
(Semester 1)
1 only
Tuesday 3-5
TB306 Tower 2
Unique to their period, but founding a cultural format of serial
consumption still present in soap operas and serial dramas
today, the 20-month part-issue novel challenges modern
assumptions about the neat and well-made text. Henry James
referred to such novels as ‘loose, baggy monsters’. This
seminar will focus on a close week-by-week reading of
Charles Dickens’ novel, Bleak House (1852-53). We will
explore the issues raised by an unfamiliar form of writing and
reading, and exmaine the essential elements of serial narrative
and the central figure of the narrator. We will also study how
these novels shape themselves as commodity-texts and encode
the politics of economic exchange and consumption in areas
such as gender and class relations. Finally, the seminar will
explore how the disturbing ‘monstrosity’ of these texts – their
excess, loss of control, and engagement with what lies beneath
the veneer of Victorian respectability – is expressed.
Set text: Charles Dickens, Bleak House (Penguin).
Assessment: portfolio (30%), final essay (70%)
ENG242.I
MODERNIST FICTION
Dr. Adrian Paterson
This seminar course considers the radical prose of two of the
twentieth century’s finest writers, Katherine Mansfield and
Virginia Woolf. Their innovations in technique and in
perception revolutionized the short story while their rivalry
and mutual influence spurred Woolf to conceive a new shape
for the novel. While reading closely and conducting a detailed
analysis of narrative form and prose style, we will be
considering key questions such as war, ego, science, time, sex,
gender, audience, and empire. We will also consider the place
of genre and length in bringing about change in modernist
fiction, and the role of essays and diaries in forming new
kinds of narrative. Active class participation is encouraged
and demanded. Texts: Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse
(Oxford), Orlando (Oxford); Katherine Mansfield, The
Collected Stories (Penguin).
Assessment: 30% continuous assessment, including class
participation and shorter written work; 70% final essay.
EN3113.II
MODERNIST FICTION
Dr. Adrian Paterson
2 only
Tuesday 3-5
TB306 Tower 2
1 and 2
Friday 9 – 11
TB306 Tower 2
This course will explore major works of global modernist
fiction from about 1900 to 1940. As we read, we will cast a
critical eye on accounts of modernism that present it as a
retreat into aesthetic experimentation or an elitist cultural
sphere. Instead, we will seek to understand literary modernism
as a movement that embraces and insists upon the world, and
that is formed by means of global encounters and exchanges.
As we examine how modernist writers construct cosmopolitan
identities through their short stories and novels, the formal and
aesthetic innovations of modernism will provide invaluable
maps of the global. Ultimately, our goal will be to understand
modernism not only as a set of aesthetic and political
responses to empire, colonialism, and war, but also as a series
of related ways of imagining global community.
Texts: Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1902); Lu Xun,
“Diary of a Madman” (1918); Katherine Mansfield, “The
Garden Party” (1922); Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
(1927); Mulk Raj Anand, Untouchable (1935).
Assessment: 30% continuous assessment, including class
participation and shorter written work; 70% final essay.
ENG243.I/
ENG243.II
SPECIAL TOPIC
Women, Writing, and World Literature
Sorcha Gunne
This module offers an introduction to a selection of world
literature by focusing on gender and globalization in the late
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. We will examine
the ways in which texts mediate between local conditions and
literary forms, particularly in relation to gender, confronting a
(prospectively) global audience. The module has been
arranged into 5 units of intellectual debate and the works will
be read comparatively, in relation to one another, and as
contributions to particular literary and cultural traditions. We
will question the categories of ‘women’s writing,’ ‘global
literature,’ and ‘the West vs the Rest.’ We will also ask: what
it means to read texts in the ‘world-language’ of English; how
literary forms and strategies ‘travel;’ what are the potentials
and limitations of comparative analysis; and how we might
think of texts not only in relation to nations but also in relation
to world-systems.
Reading list includes:
Anita Desai, Village by the Sea (1982)
Nawal El-Saadawi, Love in the Kingdom of Oil (2001)
Toni Morrison, A Mercy (2008)
Nami Mun, Miles From Nowhere (2009)
Monica Ali, Brick Lane (2003)
Melissa Hill, All Because of You (2007)
Angela Makholwa, The 30th Candle (2009)
Assessment: 30% continuous assessment, 70% final essay
EN3103/
EN3104
LITERATURE OF THE INTERNET
Dr. Justin Tonra
1 and 2
This seminar examines the ways in which the internet has
influenced the structures, themes, and contents of recent
literature. A survey of the history and development of the
internet and the world wide web will form the basis from
which students will examine two distinct but related ways in
which the internet has influenced literature. First, the class
will consider the structural influence of the internet on literary
narratives and poetics by reading born-digital hypertext poetry
and fiction and their print antecendents. Second, students will
study recent works of literature with a thematic focus on the
internet, and analyse authors’ descriptions of how the internet
has shaped and changed human behaviour and
communication. Students will ultimately synthesise the
perspectives from these two strands to form a greater
understanding of how a new technology has influenced the
age-old practice of literature. Authors featuring in this course
will include Jorge Luis Borges, Raymond Queneau, Michael
Joyce, Ara Shirinyan, and Dave Eggers. Assessment: 30%
continuous assessment; 70% final assignment.
EN607.I/
EN607.II
WILLIAM LANGLAND’S PIERS PLOWMAN
Dr. Cliodhna Carney
Thursday 1-3
AC203 Lecture
Room
(Semester 2)
1 and 2
In England in the fourteenth century a man named William
Langland, about whom very little is known, wrote an
extraordinary, disturbing and ambitious poem. Piers Plowman
is a vast, alliterative, allegorical dream-vision, whose subject
is nothing less than greed, corruption, the reform of the clergy,
virtue, sin and salvation. This course will comprise an
intensive reading of the first seven passus of the poem, which
together form a coherent sub-section of the whole. Text:
William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman: A Critical
Edition of the B-Text, ed. A. V. C. Schmidt, 2nd ed. (New
York, NY.: Everyman, 1995).
Assessment: 30% continuous assessment (4 short written
assignments: 20% (i.e. 4 x 5%); one panel discussion: 5%, one
debate: 5%) and one long end-of-term essay: 70%.
EN609.I/
EN609.II
Masculinity and Crisis
Rebecca Barr
This course will examine the representation of men,
masculinity and cultural change in a selection of twentiethcentury novels. While first wave feminist criticism made the
study of gender an integral part of literary studies, it is only
relatively recently that critics have begun to interrogate and
analyse representations of masculinity in literature. This
course will examine novels by American, English, and Irish
authors that depict men and masculinity at moments of
personal or historical crisis. We will look in detail at the
differing forms these crises take, and the ways in which
authors use the form of the novel to articulate and develop
responses to changing roles of men.
Thursday 1 -3
AMB G043 Seminar
Room
(Semester 1)
Tuesday 1-3
TB306, Tower 2
(Semester 1)
Tuedsay 11-1
Room 302, Tower 1
(Semester 2)
1 and 2
Thursday 3-5
TB306, Tower 2
(Semester 1)
Monday 3-5
S202, Block S
(Semester 2)
EN435.I/
EN435.II
Modern American Poetry
Sean Ryder
1 and 2
This seminar examines a diverse range of experimental poetry
from American poets of the late twentieth- and early twentyfirst centuries. Themes to be discussed include: poetic
language, politics, originality, gender issues, and the role of
poetry in contemporary culture.
Wednesday 1-3
TB306, Tower 2
(Semester 1)
Wednesday 1-3
S202, Block S
(Semester 2)
The course text is: Paul Hoover, ed., Postmodern American
Poetry, 2nd edition (Norton, 2013).
Assessment: 30% continuous assessment, 70% final essay.
EN3117/
EN3118
Representing Ireland in the 1970s
Lionel Pilkington
1 and 2
Tuesday 11-1
S202, Block S
1 and 2
Monday 3-5
Room 302, Tower 1
1 only
Tuesday 9-11
S202, Block S
(Semester 1)
This module discusses the relationships between Irish writing
and politics in a crucial decade of Ireland's 20th century
modernisation. A selection of novels, poetry and plays will be
considered by means of close readings, seminar discussion
and some independent archive-based research. Special
attention will be given to Seamus Heaney’s Wintering Out
(1972) and North (1975), Brian Friel's The Freedom of the
City (1973), John Banville's Birchwood (1973), John
McGahern's The Leavetaking (1975).
EN3119/
EN3120
Technology and Culture
Andrew Ó’ Baoill
Does technology shape society, or do our social structures
drive how technology develops? What do we mean by 'new
media' and how does it differ from 'old' media forms? There
are numerous schools of thought on how to properly
understand the interplay of technology and culture, from
McLuhan's claim that "the medium is the message" to various
forms of social constructivism. In this class, we will explore
these issues drawing on contemporary case studies and the
work of a range of influential thinkers, including Marshall
McLuhan, Nancy Baym, Manuel Castells, and Henry Jenkins.
Assessment: 30% Continuous Assessment and 70% Final
Assignment
ENG247.I
Samuel Richardson Clarissa
Rebecca Barr (sem 1 only)
This is a seminar in extreme reading. Students will study
Samuel Richardson’s 'Clarissa'; the most important (as well as
the longest) novel of the eighteenth century. In its plot of a
young girl’s resistance to an arranged marriage, her rape at the
hands of a rake and her subsequent death, Richardson’s
controversial work produced a storm of admiration and shock.
The novel's unremitting representation of sexual aggression
and analysis of the human heart raises crucial questions about
textual interpretation and morality that continue to have
implications for contemporary readers, writers and critics.
Topics for discussion will include the novel in letters, the firstperson voice, literature and the law, sexuality, madness in
literature, and deconstructionist theory and reader response.