MA English Studies
Contemporary Literature and Film
The Gothic
General Pathway
2014 – 2015
1
Handbook
Contents
Page
Welcome
Your Degree
Course Timetables
Contacts
Special Circumstances / Student Support
Places to Eat and Drink
Graduate Student Life
Places to Study
Graduate Seminars and Conferences
Funding for Further Study
Bookshops
Enrolment
Term Dates for Academic Session 2012–2013
Calendar for Academic Session 2012–2013
Deadlines for Coursework & Handing It in
Submission of Assignments
Equality of Opportunity
Cores and Electives 2012–13
The Dissertation
Marking Guidelines
The Personal Tutor System
Student Representatives
Attendance
Change of Address
Library and IT Resources
3
3–6
5
6
7
8
8
8
8–9
9
9
9
9–10
10–11
12
13
14
14–15
16
16–19
19
20
20
20
20
Appendices
Programme Management and Support
Programme Committee
Programme Leader
Student Support Strategy
Attendance Regulations
Assessment and Progression Regulations
Plagiarism
The Manchester Metropolitan University Fire
Regulations
22
22
23
24
25
26
26
Provisional Core and Elective Unit Outlines
29–55
27
2
Welcome
Welcome to the MA English Studies in the Department of English at Manchester
Metropolitan University (MMU).
This handbook is intended as a guide to your degree and it contains a wide variety of
information designed to answer most of the questions you may have.
There are Postgraduate Regulations and a Definitive Document for your degree: these are
the “official documents” detailing your study at MMU and they are available on Moodle (our
online study area) for you to consult. Once you have registered, you will be able to access
Moodle. Paper copies of the Postgraduate Regulations and the Definitive Document can be
made available to you – just ask one of the programme team.
Your Degree
NEW STUDENTS AND SECOND YEAR PART TIME STUDENTS: PLEASE PRINT OFF
YOUR OPTIONS FORM, COMPLETE IT AND POST IT TO THE ADDRESS STATED ON
THE OPTION FORM (www.hlss.mmu.ac.uk/welcome).
As you know, on the degree you choose the pathway you wish to follow:



Contemporary Literature and Film
The Gothic
General Pathway
Each pathway features two ‘core units’ geared to ground you in that area of study. To qualify
with an MA English Studies that names a pathway, you must take both of its core units and
also complete a dissertation in that subject area. You also need to take two ‘elective units’ (i.e.
optional units) and two ‘research skills’ units (‘Research Skills’ and ‘Dissertation Preparation’).
Alternatively, you may select any two core units (from either pathway), two elective units,
complete the two research skills units and a dissertation on any agreed topic related to the
study of English, film, television, critical theory etc., and you will qualify with an MA in English
Studies.
It is also possible to exit prior to the completion of all the taught units and the dissertation to
gain either a Postgraduate Certificate (60 credits) or a Postgraduate Diploma (120
credits). The regulations for the award of PGCert. and PGDip. can be found in the Definitive
Document. Units count for 20 credits and the dissertation 60 credits for a total of 180 credits.
The table on p. 5 shows which units are available in the 2014-14 academic year:

Full–time students take one core unit per term (Autumn and Spring) on Wednesdays,
5.30–7.30, and one elective (optional) unit per term (Autumn and Spring) on Tuesdays,
5.30–7.30.
3

Full–time students also take the 'Research Skills' unit on Tuesdays in the Autumn
Term, 7.30–8.30, and the ‘Dissertation Preparation’ unit on Tuesdays in the Spring
Term, 7.30–8.30 (although these units do not run for the duration of the term – both
usually have around five taught sessions and after that you consult the unit leader or a
supervisor at mutually convenient times).

Part–time students in their first year take one core unit per term on Wednesdays,
5.30–7.30 (Autumn and Spring). Elective units are taken in the second year, one in
each term on Tuesdays, 5.30–7.30 (Autumn and Spring), unless students prefer to
take a core from another pathway as an elective and come in on a Wednesday, 5.30–
7.30, to do so (thus widening their range of options). NB Students who choose a
Wednesday evening core as an elective still have to come in for an hour on Tuesdays
for 'Dissertation Preparation' – see below.

Part–time students take the ‘Research Skills’ unit in the first year on Tuesdays, 7.30–
8.30, in the Autumn Term, and 'Dissertation Preparation' in the second year on
Wednesdays in the Spring Term, 7.30–8.30 (although these units do not run for the
duration of the term – both usually have around five taught sessions and after that you
consult the unit leader or a supervisor at mutually convenient times)
Student Representatives
The Department of English at MMU actively encourages student representatives from
both the part-time and full-time cohorts. These representatives attend meetings and
can collaborate and engage with the faculty on behalf of the student body. It is highly
desirable that two student representatives are active each year.
4
Autumn Timetable
Contemporary
Literature and Film
Core (Wed):
Representing
Contemporary
Cultures 1
Research Skills (Tues)
The Gothic
General Pathway
Core (Wed): The
Rise of the Gothic
Choose any Core from
the columns to the left
Research Skills (Tues)
Elective (Tues)
(choose 1):
Research Skills
(Tues)
Elective (Tues)
(choose 1):
Contemporary Queer
Cultures
Contemporary
Queer Cultures
Contemporary Queer
Cultures
American Gothic
American Gothic
American Gothic
Independent Study
Independent Study
Independent Study
Elective (Tues)
(choose 1):
Spring Timetable
Contemporary
Literature and Film
Core (Wed):
Representing
Contemporary
Cultures 2
The Gothic
General Pathway
Core (Wed): The
Gothic and
Modernity
Choose any Core
from the columns to
the left
Elective (Tues)
(choose 1):
Elective (Tues)
(choose 1):
Elective (Tues)
(choose 1):
Ethics in Theory
Ethics in Theory
Ethics in Theory
Border Fictions
Border Fictions
Border Fictions
Independent Study
Independent Study
Independent Study
Dissertation
Preparation
(Wed)
Dissertation
Preparation (Wed)
Dissertation
Preparation (Wed)
5
Please note: You must pass all your units before progressing to the Dissertation (see
Appendix regarding Progression at the end of this handbook).
Provisional details about the units offered are on pages 28-47 of this handbook. You will
receive full details about each unit (including a detailed syllabus) from the unit leader when
the course starts. This will give information on week-by-week reading and further reading
lists, as well as assessments and deadlines for submission (deadlines are also listed below).
You will be taught exclusively on the All Saints Campus of MMU, with seminars and any other
scheduled events usually taking place in the Geoffrey Manton Building (GM) just off Oxford
Road (opposite the Manchester Aquatics Centre). This is also where your degree will be
administered.
Please see (http://www.mmu.ac.uk/travel/allsaints/) for a map of the All Saints Campus.
Contacts
MA English Studies, Overall Programme Leader – Dr. David Miller
(David.Miller@mmu.ac.uk)
MA English Studies: Contemporary Literature and Film, Programme Leader – Dr. Sarah
MacLachlan (s.maclachlan@mmu.ac.uk).
MA English Studies: The Gothic, Programme Leader - Dr Linnie Blake
(l.blake@mmu.ac.uk)
MA English Studies (General Pathway), Programme Leader – Dr. Andy Moor
(a.moor@mmu.ac.uk)
Dissertations tutor: TBC
Admissions tutor: Dr Sorcha Ni Fhlainn (S.Ni-Fhlainn@mmu.ac.uk)
Publicity and Marketing Officer – Dr. Andy Moor (a.moor@mmu.ac.uk)
Faculty Administration
Programme Officer: Ms Rachel Martin (Student Information Point, Geoffrey Manton Building)
– (r.martin@mmu.ac.uk), Tel. 0161–247–1731.
Ms Martin is the Administrator for the MA English Studies and should be contacted if you have
any queries regarding the administration of the course – she can be contacted via the Student
Information Point (SIP), located next to Reception in the Geoffrey Manton Building (currently,
the SIP is not open after 5:00pm). Of course, you can e–mail any time. Ms Martin keeps up–
to–date student records, so you need to make sure that she always has the most recent
6
contact information for you.
* Please make sure you inform Ms Martin of any change to your address/telephone
number/e–mail as appropriate throughout your degree.
* Please note: The Student Information Point (SIP) is the first administrative point of contact
for all students. All general inquiries can be made via the SIP – (sipsouth@mmu.ac.uk), Tel.
0161 247 1751.
Disabilities Officer:
Dr Sarah MacLachlan (s.maclachlan@mmu.ac.uk)
All consultations are strictly confidential.
Contacting You
Much of the communication between you and the university will necessarily be by email.
When you enrol you will receive an MMU email address. Please note: THIS IS THE EMAIL
ADDRESS YOU MUST USE WHEN WRITING TO ANYONE ABOUT YOUR COURSE.
Please check your MMU email account regularly for messages from the Programme team.
Special Circumstances
You should discuss with your Programme Leader or the Disabilities Officer (listed above) any
disability you may wish to have registered with the University and taken into account in
relation to your performance. It may be that you have a special need in relation to the
learning process that we should, and can, take into account or make different arrangements
for. The University has a Learning Support Unit, which draws up Personal Learning Plans for
students with disabilities of all kinds – from dyslexia (which they can test for) to mental health
and/or physical incapacity.
Please also contact your Programme Leader (or a unit leader) if for any reason you are
unable to attend a scheduled class. Outside of scheduled classes, meetings with individual
tutors for essay advice, etc., should be made on a one–to–one basis. Please make sure that
you have contact details for tutors and that you let them know in advance if you cannot make
a meeting you have arranged.
Student Support
A variety of support mechanisms are available to students enrolled on the MA English Studies
within MMU. These are detailed on the Student Services Website, which can be accessed at:
www.mmu.ac.uk/academic/studserv
Students with disabilities, or wishing to register a disability, are invited to contact the Learning
Support Unit at: www.mmu.ac.uk/academic/studserv/learningsupport
This web site also contains a downloadable form of the University Guide for Disabled
Students. All information can be made available in different formats according to need.
7
Faculty Student Support Officer David Peters is available for 15 minute appointments at the
following times in 2013-14:
Monday: 12.00pm– 2.00pm (drop in)
Tuesday: 1.00pm–3.00pm (drop in)
Friday: 10.30– 12.30pm (drop in)
To book a longer appointment, call David on 0161 247 6459 or contact him at
(D.Peters@mmu.ac.uk).
Places to Eat and Drink
If you are at the University during the day (between 8:30am and 4:00pm) you will be able to
use University cafeteria facilities. The new catering facilities in the Business and Student
Hub, where all the MA teaching will take place in 2013-14, include a coffee bar, hot and cold
food refectory, and snack and drink machines.
Outside of the University, Oxford Road has a number of places to eat and drink. The
pubs/bars most frequented by students (and they also do food) tend to be: Trof (The Deaf
Institute) and The Sand Bar, both on Grosvenor Street, and The Salutation on Chatham
Street. The Royal Northern Music College (next building up Oxford Road towards Chorlton)
also offers hot and cold catering, drinks and refreshments, with a discount for MMU students
on production of a Student ID card.
Graduate Student Life
Students have organized their own reading groups outside of class time and this has always
worked successfully, both intellectually and socially. The Gothic Reading Group will run from
2013; please check Moodle and notice boards for details. Moodle will also be used to
advertise visiting lecturers, seminars, and other academic events of interest to MAES
students.
There is an established film programme at MMU – Trauma – which screens themed groups of
films on Mondays, with a drink and informal discussion afterwards (see
http://www.traumafilm.com/menu.htm) for more information – or find the Trauma Films group
on Facebook.com).
Facebook groups can be a useful way for students to socialize online and arrange to meet.
Since many of the students on your course are likely to be studying part–time (and are often
in full–time work), their time on campus may be limited. W haven't set up a formal Facebook
group ourselves, but would suggest that any students who are happy to befriend each other
online do so. A Facebook page has already been set up by existing students, called 'MMU:
The Masters of English Studies'.
MMU English Dept and our research institute, IHSSR (Institute of Social Sciences and
8
Humanities Research), are also on Twitter: you can follow them @MMUEnglishDept and
@mmu_hssr
If there are any other networking ideas any of you have, let one of the programme team know
and we may be able to help facilitate it.
Places to Study
Study spaces are available to students on campus where the teaching of the MA takes place.
Student study areas are available in the Business / Student Hub; ask at reception for
directions. There are two rooms on the second floor of GM, which contain desks, computers,
book space and tea and coffee making facilities. Access is by key–code which can be
obtained from Rachel Martin (r.martin@mmu.ac.uk). In addition, there is always plenty of
space in the All Saints Library for quiet study. Both the Library and the Computer Drop In
(GM 101) provide internet and computing facilities.
Graduate Seminars and Conferences
In addition to formal taught sessions and student reading groups, students enrolled on the MA
are encouraged to take part in seminars organized by IHSSR in the Faculty. Details of these
will be advertised. You are also encouraged to attend the Human Sciences Seminar which is
offered by the Department of Philosophy at MMU. MMU also hosts a Graduate Conference at
the end of each academic year where our students are encouraged to present aspects of their
work at MA level as well as prospective and current PhD Level.
Funding for Further Study
Manchester Metropolitan University successfully bid to the Arts and Humanities Research
Council for a ‘bundle’ of post–graduate bursaries. A limited number of AHRC bursaries may
therefore be available for PhD study. In addition, there has, customarily, been a programme
of MMU funded PhD bursaries. Applications to either of these schemes will be invited in the
early Spring should they be available – and a talk on further study will take place as part of
your ‘Dissertation Preparation’ unit.
Book Shops
We don’t recommend any one particular bookshop for course books – where you buy from
will depend on where you live and whether or not you shop via the internet. However, we do
make orders of books from Blackwell’s University Bookshop in the University precinct on
Oxford Road. This means that if you can’t find a copy of something you want, or cannot order
it, Blackwell’s should have it. Of course, it also means that it will be the most convenient
place to find everything you need.
Amazon is great, but if you want to browse books then Waterstone’s on Deansgate (city
centre) or in the Arndale, and Blackwell’s in the University precinct, are your best bets. The
bookshop inside Cornerhouse may also be useful for film-related material.
Enrolment
9
Enrolment happens online and you will be contacted separately about this by our
Administrative team.
Please check (http://www.hlss.mmu.ac.uk/support/enrolment) for further details.
In 'Induction Week' (w/c 23 September) you should only have to collect your ID card. Once
you have enroled and collected your ID card you will be able to obtain a Student Union Card,
register with the Library to borrow books and with the Information Systems Team (Computer
Drop–In, Geoffrey Manton, 101) for internet access and an email account.
New students will begin with a Library Session on 24 September (meet at the Reception of
the Kenneth Green Library at 5.30). Afterwards there is a Welcome Session, 6.30 – 8.00, in
the Geoffrey Manton Building Atrium, where we will be joined by English Department staff and
MA Creative Writing students.
Teaching starts on Tuesday 30 September (Elective Units/Research Skills) and Wednesday
1 October (core units).
Term Dates for Academic Session 2014-15
Autumn Term
Monday 22 September 2013 - Friday 20 December 2013
Spring Term
Monday 13 January 2014 to Friday 4 April 2014
Summer Term
Monday 28 April 2014 to Friday 27 June 2014
Calendar for Academic Session
NB: a separate table showing all the coursework deadlines is given at the
bottom of this calendar)
2014
W/C 22 September
Enrolment: you should be able to collect your ID card anytime this week, provided you have
enrolled online. You will be given full details on how to enroll online beforehand. Please check
http://www.hlss.mmu.ac.uk/support/enrolment for further details.
10
23 September
All New Students: Induction Tuesday


Library Session (meet at 5.30, Sir Kenneth Green Library Reception).
Welcome Party (GM Atrium, 6.30–8.00) – ALL STUDENTS, new and
returning.

Tues 30 Sept
Full–Time and Returning Part–Time Students: First teaching sessions
of elective units, 5:30 – 7:30.
Contemporary Queer Cultures
American Gothic
Wed 1 Oct
All New Students: first teaching sessions of core units, 5.30–7.30, and
'Research Skills', 7.30–8.30.
Representing Contemporary Cultures 1 (all rooms tbc)
The Rise of the Gothic
Research Skills on-line unit
Independent Study (contact Programme Leader if you want to opt for a
project of independent study instead of taking one of the taught electives
listed above).
W/C 3 Nov
Reading Week – No Classes Scheduled
Staff–Student Committee Meeting / Programme Committee Meeting
Fri 19 Dec
End of Term
2015
Wed 14 Jan
All F–T and New P–T Students: first teaching sessions of core units,
5.30–7.30.
Representing Contemporary Cultures 2 (all rooms tbc)
Gothic and Modernity
Tues 13 Jan
Full–Time and Returning Part–Time Students: First teaching sessions
of elective units, 5:30 – 7:30, and Dissertation Preparation, 7.30–8.30.
Ethics in Theory
Border Fictions
Independent Study (contact Programme Leader if you want to opt for a
project of independent study instead of taking one of the taught electives
listed above).
11
Dissertation Preparation
W/C 23 Feb
Reading Week – No Classes Scheduled
Staff–Student Committee Meeting / Programme Committee Meeting
Fri 3 April
End of Term
Mon 27 April
Summer Term Begins
There are no formal scheduled classes during the Summer Term, but if
you are a full–time student you will be working with a designated
supervisor on your dissertation. If you are a part–time student, you will
be encouraged to attend informal meetings with staff and other students
in your first year (details to be announced) and will work with a
designated supervisor on your dissertation in your second year.
May
Date to be confirmed: MA DAY (Dissertation Preparation presentation
day) – full–time and returning part–time student dissertation topic
presentations (4–8 pm)
June
EXAM BOARD (date to be confirmed)
Mid–July
GRADUATION (date to be confirmed)
Deadlines for Coursework – and handing it in
Unit
Representing
Contemporary
Cultures 1
Rise of the Gothic
Research Skills
Contemporary
Queer Cultures
Independent Study
American Gothic
Representing
Contemporary
Cultures 2
Assessment
Essay
Markers
tba
Date
23/01/15
SZ/tba
SZ/tba
tba
28/11/14
23/01/15
14/11/14
tba
23/01/15
Essay
tbc
23/01/15
Essay
Essay
Essay
tba/supervisors
tba
tbc
23/01/15
23/01/15
04/05/15
(1) Critical Review
(2) Essay
(1) Annotated
Bibliography
(2) Journal Style
Review
12
Ethics in Theory
Gothic and
Modernity
Essay
(1) Critical Review
(2) Essay
Border Fictions
Essay
Independent Study
Dissertation
Preparation
Essay
(1) Oral
Presentation
(2) Project Outline
Dissertation
Dissertation
tbc
tbc
04/05/15
13/03/15
tbc
tbc
04/05/15
04/05/15
tba/Supervisors
First Markers/
Supervisors
First Markers/
Supervisors
First Markers/
Supervisors
04/05/15
tbc
tbc
End September
(standard F–T 12
month/standard P–
T 24 month
completion)
End January (F–T
additional 4 months
requested)
End May (P–T
additional 8 months
requested)
Submission of Assignments
All written coursework for these units is to be submitted via Moodle in the MA
ENGLISH STUDIES area (guidance will be given as part of the 'Research Skills' unit).
Dissertations may be hard or soft bound (two copies, one with the student's name, one
anonymous – with the student's registration number only) and submitted to the
Coursework Receipting Office, 1st Floor, GM (more on dissertations to follow below, pp.
29–30).
Work cannot be submitted via Moodle if it is later than 2 weeks after the deadline. Any work
submitted after this date MUST be given to your Programme Leader.
Any assessed work submitted after the due dates will be subject to penalties for late
submission as set out in the University Regulations for Taught Postgraduate Programmes of
Study. A summary of Assessment and Progression Regulations is included in the Appendices
at the end of this handbook.
In exceptional circumstances, extensions to due dates may be given. However, they may
only be given prior to the due date and must be agreed by your Programme Leader.
If you subsequently feel there were genuine mitigating circumstances which affected your
13
work and which you feel should be taken into account, a request can be made, via your
Programme Leader, to the Exceptional Factors Board which deals with all requests.
We aim to mark essays and provide feedback within four working weeks of their submission.
Do feel free to contact your tutor for feedback if you have not heard back within four weeks.
Criteria for marking are published as part of the Appendices of this Handbook. They are also
available on Moodle.
Equality of Opportunity
The University has an Equal Opportunities Policy which can be viewed at:
www.mmu.ac.uk/humanresources/equalities.
If you have any concerns or questions about issues of equality, you are encouraged to speak
to any of the following people:




MA English Studies Programme Leaders
MA Unit Tutors and Personal Tutors
Head of the Department of English: Dr. Jess Edwards (j.edwards@mmu.ac.uk)
Department
of
English
Disabilities
Officer:
Dr
Sarah
MacLachlan
(s.maclachlan@mmu.ac.uk)
MA English Studies: Contemporary Literature and Film
New full–time students must take the following core units: ‘Representing Contemporary
Cultures 1’ (Autumn), ‘Representing Contemporary Cultures 2’ (Spring), ‘Research Skills’
(Autumn) and ‘Dissertation Preparation’ (Spring), plus 2 electives (1 in Autumn, 1 in Spring).
New part–time students must take the following core units: ‘Representing Contemporary
Cultures 1’ (Autumn), ‘Representing Contemporary Cultures 2’ (Spring) and ‘Research Skills’
(Autumn).
Returning part–time students must choose 2 electives (1 in Autumn, 1 in Spring) and
‘Dissertation Preparation’ (Spring) – core units not previously taken may also be chosen as
electives.
MA English Studies: The Gothic
New full–time students must take the following core units: ‘The Rise of the Gothic’ (Autumn),
‘Gothic and Modernity’ (Spring), ‘Research Skills’ (Autumn), ‘Dissertation Preparation’
(Spring), plus 2 electives (1 in Autumn, 1 in Spring).
14
New part–time students (campus and online) must take the following core units: ‘The Rise of
the Gothic’ (Autumn), ‘Gothic and Modernity’ (Spring) and ‘Research Skills’ (Autumn).
Returning part–time students must choose 2 electives (1 in Autumn, 1 in Spring) and
‘Dissertation Preparation’ (Spring) – core units not previously taken may also be chosen as
electives.
MA English Studies: General Pathway
New full–time students must take ANY TWO core units (1 in Autumn, 1 in Spring), plus
‘Research Skills’ (Autumn), ‘Dissertation Preparation’ (Spring) and 2 electives (1 in Autumn, 1
in Spring).
New part–time students must take ANY TWO core units (1 in Autumn, 1 in Spring) and
‘Research Skills’ (Autumn).
Returning part–time students must choose 2 electives (1 in Autumn, 1 in Spring) and
‘Dissertation Preparation’ (Spring) – core units not previously taken may also be chosen as
electives.
The Dissertation
The dissertation is a very important part of the MA in English Studies. It is an opportunity for
you to choose a specific topic and develop your own approach and methodology. The end
result will be a piece of writing of approximately 15,000 words that will stand as evidence of
your ability to use your recently acquired knowledge to focus on a specific area of research
interest, providing your reader with a dissertation that has a clearly defined thesis and a
carefully constructed argument. The rewards of work of this kind are considerable. We hope
you will enjoy this aspect of your MA programme and that you will relish the opportunity to
work closely with your supervisor. Please see details of English staff research interests via
the English Department homepage – this will help you to select a suitable supervisor
(http://www.eri.mmu.ac.uk/staff/). Few of you will have produced an essay of this length
before, and you may feel unprepared to take on the responsibility of organizing a programme
of detailed reading of material related to the project, selecting the most relevant research
material from the notes that you will have made, prioritizing the different elements that will
constitute your chapters and putting together a piece of writing of this academic rigor;
however, you will receive guidance regarding these areas as part of the taught unit
'Dissertation Preparation' and this guidance will be continued by your supervisor. You should
be familiar with the systems of referencing and acknowledgement* that are an accepted part
of academic work by the dissertation stage – the MHRA style is recommended by the English
Department and you will have been introduced to it as part of the 'Research Skills' unit.
Useful information on 'Planning and Organizing a Master's Thesis' and 'Dissertation
Presentation and Submission' is available on Moodle.
15
* Please see the section on plagiarism below (p. 27), a topic you will cover in 'Research
Skills'.
Marking Guidelines
The Programme is regulated by the provisions of the Manchester Metropolitan University
Regulations for Taught Postgraduate Programmes of Study (available online via the
Humanities Law and Social Science homepage, see Student Handbook).
The marking scheme is as follows:
Fail Marks

Failure is defined as the failure to reach the threshold standards defined in the 50 to
59% category below. Marks in the 45 to 49% range are deemed to be ‘marginal fails’.
Passmark = 50%
Pass

For a Postgraduate Certificate or a Postgraduate Diploma to be passed, a student must
gain an overall aggregate of 50%. For a Master’s Degree to be passed, a student must
gain an overall aggregate of 50% with at least 50% in the dissertation.

For a Postgraduate Certificate or a Postgraduate Diploma to be awarded with Merit, a
student must gain an overall aggregate of 60%. For a Master’s Degree to be awarded
with Merit, a student must gain an overall aggregate of 60% with at least 60% in the
dissertation.
Merit
Distinction

For a Postgraduate Certificate or a Postgraduate Diploma to be awarded with
Distinction, a student must gain an overall aggregate of 70%. For a Master’s Degree to
be awarded with Distinction, a student must gain an overall aggregate of 70% with at
least 70% in the dissertation.
Note – work will be subject to internal (and where appropriate, external) moderation.
See:
http://www.mmu.ac.uk/academic/asu/Regulations_for_UG_or_PG_Programmes/Taught_PG_
Regulations_09_10%20_FINAL_VERSION.pdf
for full details regarding MMU regulations.
16
Marking Criteria Guidelines
Students of the MA in English Studies will be judged to have met these criteria
in the production of their coursework in relation to the following schema:
Lower than 25% – (Irrelevant or barely started work). Work in this category will
demonstrate virtually no attempt to answer a question or address the
requirements of the task, and is likely to imply a deliberate attempt to submit
work which is either illiterate, almost completely irrelevant or so cursory as to be
virtually worthless.
25–34% (low fail – work in this area shows little sustained engagement with
course material and fails to meet most or all of the unit learning outcomes at
threshold level)
 makes little effort to engage successfully with primary material on the unit
 lacks any obvious knowledge of critical writing or theoretical issues in the
area
 shows an inability to construct a coherent argument
 shows an inability to write clearly in academic language. There may be
unacceptable errors of grammar, punctuation and vocabulary.
 fails to present references etc satisfactorily.
35–44% (comprehensive fail – most of the unit learning outcomes not achieved
at a threshold level). Note that work falling in this area will still successfully
achieve a minority of the learning outcomes)
 Shows unsatisfactory knowledge or misunderstanding of primary material
on unit
 Fails to demonstrate awareness of recent critical writing in the area, or
considerably misunderstands it
 Shows unsatisfactory knowledge (or a lack of knowledge) of
cultural/theoretical issues
 Fails to present a coherent argument
 Fails to present ideas clearly and in appropriate academic language
 Fails to present references etc to academic standard.
45–49% (marginal fail – NOTE that work in this category will demonstrate
that MOST unit learning outcomes HAVE BEEN ACHIEVED at a threshold
level). Work in this area will be broadly successful, but will demonstrate some
failure in some of the aspects set out below:
 Shows some unsatisfactory knowledge or misunderstanding of primary
material on unit
 Fails to demonstrate awareness or knowledge of recent critical writing in
the area, and may contain errors or omissions
 Shows unsatisfactory knowledge of cultural/theoretical issues
 Fails to present a coherent argument
 Fails to present ideas clearly and in appropriate academic language
17

Fails to present references etc to academic standard.
50–59% (threshold pass – all unit learning outcomes achieved at basic level):
 shows satisfactory knowledge of primary material on unit
 shows familiarity with some recent critical writing in the area
 shows satisfactory knowledge of cultural/theoretical issues
 shows an ability to construct a coherent argument
 shows an ability to use appropriate academic language with clarity
 shows an ability to present references etc to academic standard.
60–69% (good pass – all unit learning outcomes achieved):
 shows good understanding of primary material
 shows an evaluative treatment of a wide range of recent critical writing in
the area
 shows a productive use of relevant cultural/critical theory or theories
 shows an ability to construct a coherent and persuasive argument
 shows an ability to use appropriate academic language with clarity
 shows an ability to present references etc to academic standard
70–79% (excellent pass):
 shows excellent understanding of primary material
 shows confidence and skill in explaining and critiquing a wide range of
recent critical writing in the area
 shows a productive, imaginative use of relevant cultural/critical theory or
theories
 shows a clear ability to construct a coherent and persuasive argument
 shows an ability to use appropriate academic language with clarity and
flair
 shows an ability to present references etc to academic standard
80–89% (outstanding pass):
 shows excellent understanding of primary material
 shows confidence and skill in explaining and critiquing a wide range of
recent critical writing in the area, to a degree which contributes to
academic understanding in the area. Work may be close to publishable.
 shows an understanding of, and a productive, imaginative use of relevant
cultural/critical theory or theories, generating new understanding in the
area.
 shows a clear and powerful ability to construct a coherent and persuasive
argument
 shows an authority in the use of appropriate academic language,
producing writing which demonstrates clarity and flair
 shows an ability to present references etc to academic standard
90% or higher (extremely outstanding pass). Work in this area will be rare. In
addition to demonstrating at least all the qualities associated with an
outstanding pass, work in this range will clearly be of publishable quality AND
18
make a demonstrable and original contribution to academic understanding at at
least a national level.
See the MMU Taught Postgraduate Regulations for criteria by which Fail, Pass, Merit
and Distinction categories apply.
The Personal Tutor System
Each student is allocated a Personal Tutor from the programme team for the MA (usually one
of your core unit tutors). This allocation will be made within the first 2 weeks of the academic
year, once enrolment has been completed. Your Personal Tutor is there to support you
personally and to assist you academically. It is expected that you will meet with them at the
beginning and end of each term to review your progress, but you may consult them at any
time should the need arise. Since your Personal Tutor will also be a member of the
Programme Team, they should have a good knowledge of the specificities of the MA and
therefore be able to advise you on most aspects of your study.
You are required to meet with your Personal Tutor on two occasions during the academic
year, but may consult them at any additional times throughout the year. The required
meetings will take the form of discussion of progress and, where appropriate, the setting of
personal goals. This will form part of an ongoing Personal Development Planning (PDP)
scheme for all students.
Student Representatives
Each year nominations for Student Representatives are sought. The role of the Student
Representative is to convey student concerns to the Staff Student Committee meetings which
are held termly throughout the academic year. These meetings are a forum within which
students may feed back perceptions about the Programme to the Programme Team. As
such, they are an important element in ensuring that the quality of the course is maintained. If
you wish to be a Student Representative, please contact the Programme Leader within the
first 2 weeks of the Autumn term. The MMU Student Union offers support and training for
Student Representatives, beginning with a training programme early in the Autumn Term –
please contact the Union via (http://www.mmunion.co.uk) for details.
Attendance
Of course, you are required to attend all classes on the MA. Should you not be able to do so,
for whatever reason, please contact the tutor taking your unit, or Programme Leader or
Rachel Martin (contact details for all above). A summary of the formal Regulations regarding
attendance are included in the Appendices to this handbook below. However, as with the
guidelines for submission of assessed work, it is also strongly recommended that you consult
the full Regulations in the separate handbook of University Regulations issued at enrolment.
19
Change of Address
It is extremely important that we have your correct term–time and permanent address. If at
any time throughout the year you change your address, telephone or e–mail address, please
inform Rachel Martin immediately. It is vital that we have correct contact information for all of
our students at all times.
Library and IT Resources
Getting started with MMU Libraries
The Library is here to provide you with a range of services and resources to support your
studies. At each site, you will find thousands of print books and e-books, study spaces, PCs,
printers and photocopiers. All Saints Library is the main site for English material, but other
sites, especially Crewe, may have some of the books that you need. There is no need to join;
your MMU ID card is your Library card too.
Here are a few essential hints and tips to get you started:
 Attend the Library Induction session. Here you’ll learn the basics, such as how to
use the library catalogue and how to access e-resources both on campus and at home.
 Don’t forget your MMU network ID and password! This is the only way to gain
access to all of the e-resources on offer, as well as your Moodle page and your
university e-mail. N.B: Don’t confuse your network ID and password with your Library
PIN; this is a 4 digit number which gives you access to your library account, allowing
you to renew and keep track of your loans.
 Student Portal and Moodle are your friends. Your academic life at MMU will centre
on these resources. Along with important course information, you’ll find your reading
lists, which link to the Library Catalogue making it easier for you to get hold of what you
need.
 Make use of the e-resources. You have access to countless full text e-books, ejournals and newspapers, digitised book chapters and journal articles. You don’t even
have to be on campus to access it, just log-in with your network ID and password and
off you go!
 Ask questions. Librarians and Library staff love solving problems, so if you have any
questions don’t hesitate to ask – you can reach us at the Library helpdesk, by e-mail
and telephone, as well as being able to book one-to-one meetings with your subject
librarian who can provide you handy hints that are specific to your studies.
If you still feel a bit lost, or if you just want to refresh your memory, the Library website
publishes help sheets, library guides, online tutorials and podcasts covering a wide range of
subjects, databases, and facilities. These can be found on the Library website under the Help
and Guidance tab.
20
Subject Librarian Contact Details
Rachel Fell (English Librarian)
Phone: 0161 247 6607
E-mail: humsocsci-lib-eng@mmu.ac.uk
Essential Info:




Library Website: www.library.mmu.ac.uk
Opening Hours: www.library.mmu.ac.uk/keyinfo/opening
Electronic Library: www.library.mmu.ac.uk/electronic
Library Catalogue: http://capitadiscovery.co.uk/mmu
There is a limited number of computers for use in word–processing in the Library. However,
there is also a full suite of pc workstations, scanning and printing facilities available in the
Manton Computer Drop–In Centre (GM 101). This room is open from 9am until around 5pm
Monday to Friday, but up–to–date times are displayed at the entrance. Additional IT access is
available in the New Business School - ask at reception for up-to-date details.
21
APPENDIX 1
Programme Management and Support
Definitive Document)
4.1
(extract from
Programme Committee
4.1.1Membership
The Programme Committee will consist of the following members:
Programme Chair (Programme Leader)
Head of Department of English (ex officio)
Dean of Faculty (ex officio)
Members of full–time and part–time staff teaching on the Programme
1 student representative elected from the full–time route
2 student representatives elected from each stage of the part–time route
Representatives from the Library
Representatives from Student Services
4.1.2
Responsibilities
The Committee shall meet not less than twice per academic year.
It shall be responsible in the first instance to the Head of Department (or
equivalent) for:

the maintenance and enhancement of the academic standards of the Programme;

the monitoring and evaluation of the Programme and in particular evaluating its
operation, its delivery and standard with regard to its: learning, teaching and
assessment methods; aims and learning outcomes; curriculum; the overall quality of its
students’ learning experience (including the systems and processes for student
monitoring, guidance and support; the provision of learning resources and facilities.
These shall be as specified in the programme definitive document, approved at
programme approval and periodic review, and communicated to students through a
hard copy handbook or online programme information);
22

ensuring the Programme operates in accordance with the approved Programme
scheme;

agreeing recommendations for changes to the Programme (content and structure) and
on any matter affecting the operation of the Programme according to the University’s
procedures;

considering and implementing at Programme level such policies as may be determined
by the Academic and Faculty Board in relation to:
programmes, teaching and learning, the content of the curriculum
the assessment and examination of students (in conjunction with Board of
Examiners)
criteria for the admission of students
research, scholarship and Programme–related staff development
the appointment of internal and external examiners
the retention, support and progression of students

advising the Academic Board on such matters as above;

ensuring the academic development of the Programme;

advising the relevant Head of Department (or equivalent) or Dean through the Programme
Leader on the resources needed to support the Programme;

contributing to the formulation of institutional academic policy and considering such other
matters as may be appropriate to the operation of the Programme or as may be referred to
the committee by Faculty or Academic Board.
4.3
Programme Leader
The appointment and duration of office of a Programme Leader shall be determined
by the Head of Department in consultation with the appropriate Dean of Faculty.
Programme committee recommendations shall be addressed through the
Programme Leader to the Head of Department who in turn shall report to the relevant
Dean of Faculty.
The Programme Leader shall be responsible for:

co–ordinating the work, and liaising between members of the course
team;
23
4.5

liaising with administrative staff in the Department of English on matters
concerning the administration of the course;

preparing the annual course programme and programme calendar (to
include reminders to other members of the team of the times to start and
complete aspects of their role);

preparing agenda and chairing Programme Committee Meetings and
expedite its decisions where appropriate;

preparing annual Programme Action Plan for consideration and
amendment by the Programme Committee;

preparing for Quality audit;

preparing for Programme Evaluation and Review;

preparing the Programme Handbooks and the Student Handbooks and
being responsible for their annual updating;

representing the Programme on internal and external committees;

developing the long–term strategy of the Programme and identifying the
resource requirements arising from the operation.
Student Support Strategy
All students are assigned a Personal Tutor who will guide their progress through
the Programme. The role of the Personal Tutor will be to:

provide a point of contact for initial discussion of progress in all aspects
of study;

conduct individual student Personal Development Planning;

where necessary, refer students to appropriate support facilities within
the University;

discuss unit choices with students with a view to ensuring coherence and
appropriateness of learning on an individual basis;

where necessary, refer students to the Programme Leader.
Students can expect their personal tutor to respond to emails within a
reasonable period, and to offer a mutually convenient tutorial appointment as
24
soon as is reasonably practical.
Within the University’s structures, students will have full access to established
support systems. These will include the Unit for Learning Support and the
Counselling Service as well as the Students’ Union.
4.6
Student Participation in Quality Management
A Staff–Student Committee will meet every term and students will be invited to
raise areas of concern relating to the Programme. Questionnaires will be
distributed on a unit by unit basis, and students will be invited to respond
anonymously. Each unit leader will provide a commentary on the feedback, to
include an action statement responding to any specific issues raised by
students. At the end of each academic session, to ensure sharing of best
practice, the Programme Leader will collate and distribute all questionnaire
results and commentaries to the Committee and will table discussion thereof as
an agenda item.
4.7
Programme Student Information

A Staff–Student Committee will meet every term. The student
representatives may bring issues concerning the management of the
programme to the programme team, and provide advice to it regarding
the quality of the learning experience.

Student representatives participate in the Annual Monitoring Exercise as
members of the Programme Committee (see 4.1.1 above).

Questionnaires will be distributed on a unit by unit basis, and students
will be invited to respond anonymously. Each unit leader will provide a
commentary on the feedback, to include an action statement responding
to any specific issues raised by students. At the end of each academic
session, the Chair of the Programme Committee will collate and distribute
all questionnaire results and commentaries to the Committee and will
table discussion thereof as an agenda item.

In addition to the committee structures outlines above, a personal tutor
system will be in place, facilitating one–to–one dialogue between
students and members of the teaching team.

All students will receive a hard copy of the Student Handbook
Attendance Regulations
Attendance is compulsory for all taught Units of the MA. In exceptional circumstances, a
25
student may request permission from the Programme Leader to be temporarily absent from
taught classes for good and valid reasons acceptable to the Programme Leader. In such
cases where permission is granted, the student shall not be penalized but may be required to
undertake and/or complete any or all work, assignments and assessments affected by the
absence.
Where a student is persistently and/or substantially absent from compulsory attendance
requirements without good cause and/or without permission, he/she may be recommended
for expulsion for academic reasons.
Where a student is absent without permission from compulsory attendance requirements
he/she shall notify the Programme Leader of the absence without undue delay and the
reason(s) for it. Any absence due to illness shall be reported in accordance with the
University’s procedure for student sickness certification. Please note that it is particularly
important for students to observe the sickness certification procedure if their absence is to be
taken into consideration as a factor affecting performance in assessment. For details of the
Sickness Certification Procedure, you are advised to consult Appendix 1 of the Regulations
for Undergraduate and Taught Postgraduate Programmes of Study.
Assessment and Progression Regulations
Penalties for Late Submission of Coursework
Students who submit coursework late shall receive a maximum mark of 50% providing it is of
a pass standard.
Students may submit evidence of exceptional circumstances which they consider to have
caused them to submit assessments late and for which they do not wish to attract any
penalty. Such evidence would normally be submitted to the Programme Leader, Head of
Department or Chairperson of the Board of Examiners (or nominee).
In cases where the students’ reasons for late or non–submission are accepted, then late work
shall be assessed without penalty or the student be given an opportunity to make good the
missed assessment.
Progression
A student who achieves or exceeds the pass mark for a Unit within the Programme shall be
deemed to have achieved the learning outcomes specified for that Unit and shall gain the
associated credits. Students failing to satisfy the award assessment requirements in Units
other than the Master’s Degree Dissertation at their first attempt shall be given two
opportunities to redeem the initial Unit failure(s). Students who fail more than 40 taught
credits shall be deemed to have failed the Programme and shall be ineligible for
reassessment.
Throughout the Programme, individual student performance is regularly reviewed in
consultation with the personal tutor, and students are counselled at each stage of assessment
26
as to their progress.
Progression to the Master’s Degree Dissertation is conditional upon satisfactory completion of
award assessment requirements for all taught Units (see below). Students whose overall
performance in award assessment requirements for taught Units is weak will also be
counselled regarding progression to the Dissertation at this stage.
Regulations for Progressing to the Dissertation:
The ‘Dissertation Preparation’ Unit includes an MA Day where students give an oral
presentation of the project they are working on. Students are supported in the process of
preparing this oral presentation through plenary lectures in the unit as well as one–to–one
supervision by a designated tutor. The oral presentation forms part of the summative
assessment for the unit. The ‘Dissertation Preparation unit is also assessed by the
production of a ‘dissertation outline’ which delineates the research context, aims/objectives,
methodology, time line and intended outcomes of the project. This assessment also serves to
inform the development of the dissertation itself, and a clear pass mark (i.e. not a condonable
fail) MUST be achieved in the Dissertation Preparation Unit before students progress to the
dissertation. Students must ALSO have achieved pass marks (or condonable fails) in
ANOTHER 100 credits on the course before they progress to the Dissertation.
Note:
 Dissertation (60 credits): the dissertation topic must be on a subject relevant to the student’s
chosen pathway in order to produce a final award which names that Pathway.
 Students are not permitted to progress to the Dissertation until they have:
o a pass mark (not a condoned fail) in the ‘Dissertation Preparation’ unit, AND
o achieved passes (or condonable fails) in ANOTHER 100 credits.
Working with the ideas of others is an essential part of research and the production of work at
the MA level. However, an appropriate use of sources will always acknowledge and fully cite
the work of others. Plagiarism is the representation of another person’s work, without
acknowledgement of the source, as one’s own, or the unacknowledged incorporation in a
student’s work of material derived from the work (published or otherwise) of another,
examples of which are: a) the unacknowledged inclusion of another person’s work; b) the
unacknowledged summarising of another person’s work; c) the unacknowledged and/or
unauthorised use of the ideas of another; d) copying the work of another person with or
without that person’s knowledge or agreement and presenting it as one’s own.
The University’s regulations give Boards of Examiners the authority to impose penalties
against students who are found to have cheated, plagiarised, colluded, attempted to gain an
unfair advantage or found to be guilty of misconduct in any form of assessment, or in breach
of assessment regulations. The penalties available to a Board include failing the student in
part or all of his/her assessments and determining whether or not the student shall be
permitted to be reassessed. Additionally, such a student may be recommended for expulsion
under the regulations for the expulsion of students for academic reasons.
27
The Manchester Metropolitan University Fire Regulations
IF YOU DISCOVER A FIRE, OR SUSPECT THE PRESENCE OF FIRE
1) SOUND THE ALARM BY OPERATING THE NEAREST BREAK GLASS POINT
2) SUMMON THE FIRE BRIGADE BY DIALLING 999
3) ATTACK THE FIRE WITH THE NEAREST SUITABLE EQUIPMENT ONLY
IF IT IS SAFE TO DO SO.
IF YOU HEAR THE FIRE ALARM
1) LEAVE THE BUILDING BY THE NEAREST AVAILABLE EXIT
DO NOT USE THE LIFTS
2) PROCEED TO THE ASSEMBLY POINT OUTSIDE THAT BUILDING.
3) DO NOT RE–ENTER THE BUILDING UNTIL OFFICIALLY INFORMED
THAT IT IS SAFE TO DO SO.
28
APPENDIX 2
Indicative Unit Outlines
The following information is indicative and is subject
to change.
Please check with unit leaders for final reading lists.
Please check your MMU email and Moodle pages
regularly for up-to-date information about any
changes to schedules, reading lists, etc.
ALL ROOMS ARE IN THE NEW BUSINESS SCHOOL
(NBS)
29
CORE UNITS: Autumn Term
Please note that where indicated (in pink) these unit outlines are PROVISIONAL and
subject to change. Check with unit tutors for final reading lists and schedules.
Representing Contemporary Cultures 1
Unit Tutors: Dr. Sarah MacLachlan (s.maclachlan@mmu.ac.uk) and Prof. Antony
Rowland (a.rowland@mmu.ac.uk).
Critical / contextual material will be provided in advance of the relevant seminars.
TOPIC 1: Postmodernism (AR)
Critical/Contextual
Peter Boxall, ‘Introduction’ to Twenty-first Century Fiction (Cambridge University
Press, 2013), pp.1-18.
Don Paterson, ‘Introduction’ in New British Poetry, ed. Don Paterson and George
Simic (Graywolf Press, 2004), pp.xxiii-xxi.
Poetry
Poems from Identity Parade: New British and Irish Poets, ed. Roddy Lumsden
(Bloodaxe, 2010): Ahren Warner’s poems (pp.348-50), Zoe Skoulding poems
(pp.311-14), Luke Kennard poems (pp.192-96), Matt Welton poems (pp.355-58),
Antony Rowland, ‘Pie’ (p.304).
Film
Quentin Tarantino (dir.), Pulp Fiction (1994).
TOPIC 2: September 11th and the ‘Post-Postmodern’? (SM)
Critical/Contextual
Martin Amis, ‘Fear and Loathing’ (The Guardian, September 18th 2001).
Jean Baudrillard, The Spirit of Terrorism (London: Verso, 2003).
Don DeLillo, ‘In the Ruins of the Future’ (The Guardian, December 22nd 2001).
Jenny Edkins, Trauma and the Memory of Politics (Cambridge University Press,
2003) - ‘Preface’ (pp. xiii-xvii) and ‘Conclusion: the return of the political – the
memory of politics’ (pp. 215-233).
30
Susannah Radstone, ‘The War of the Fathers: Fantasy, Trauma and September
11th’, Signs (Vol. 28.1, 2002) pp. 457-459.
Paul Virilio, Ground Zero (London: Verso, 2002).
Slavoj Zizek, Welcome to the Desert of the Real: Five Essays on September 11 and
Related Dates (London: Verso, 2002).
Recommended Further Reading:
Martin Amis, The Second Plane (London: Vintage, 2008).
Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London: Verso,
2004) and Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? (London: Verso, 2010).
Susan Faludi, The Terror Dream: What 9/11 Revealed About America (2007;
London: Atlantic, 2008).
Richard Gray, After the Fall: American Literature Since 9/11 (London: WileyBlackwell, 2011).
David Holloway, 9/11 and the War on Terror (EUP, 2008).
Austin Sarat (ed.), Dissent in Dangerous Times (Ann Arbor, U of Michigan P, 2005).
Film
Oliver Stone (dir.), World Trade Center (2006).
Highly Recommended:
Samira Makhmalbaf et al (dir.), 11’09”01, September 11 (2002).
Novel
Don DeLillo, Falling Man (London: Picador, 2007).
Highly Recommended:
Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2007).
TOPIC 3: Moral Panics (SM)
Critical/Contextual
Lauren Berlant, extracts from Compassion (London: Routledge, 2004) and “The
Epistemology of State Emotion”, in Austin Sarat (ed.), Dissent in Dangerous Times
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005).
31
Frank Furedi, extracts from Culture of Fear (Continuum, 2002) and extracts from
Paranoid Parenting (Allen Lane, 2001).
Susannah Radstone, ‘Social Bonds and Psychical Order: Testimonies’, Cultural
Values (Volume 5.1, 2001) pp. 59-78.
Mark Seltzer, extracts from Serial Killers: Death and Life in America’s Wound Culture
(London: Routledge, 1998).
Film
Todd Field (dir.), Little Children (2006).
Novel
Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2005).
The Rise of the Gothic (43104074)
(The Gothic Core) (NBS 3.15)
Unit tutors: Dr Sonja Lawrenson and Dr Emma Liggins
Wednesdays, 5.30-7.30
The unit provides an historical background to the rise of Gothic literature and
an introduction to current debates in Gothic studies, around the uncanny,
female Gothic, queer Gothic and psychoanalysis. It looks at a range of
different genres, from Jacobean revenge tragedy through Romantic ballads,
eighteenth-century novels, nineteenth-century novels and Victorian ghost
stories.
Content includes:
Walpole and the late eighteenth century (Radcliffe and Lewis)
Female Gothic (Radcliffe, Shelley, the Brontës)
Doppelgangers and doubles (Shelley, Hogg and Stevenson)
The Victorian ghost story (Dickens, Gaskell, Vernon Lee)
Reading List
Indicative Primary Texts
Bronte, Charlotte, Jane Eyre (1847, any edition)
Bronte, Emily, Wuthering Heights (1847, any edition)
Hogg, James, Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824, any edition)
Lewis, Matthew The Monk (1796, any edition)
Thomas Middleton, The Changeling (1616)
Radcliffe, Ann The Italian (1797, any edition)
Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein (1818, any edition)
Stevenson, Robert Louis, Jekyll and Hyde (1885)
32
Walpole, Horace, The Castle of Otranto (1764, any edition)
Indicative Secondary Texts
Castle, Terry, The Female Thermometer: Eighteenth-Century Culture and the
Invention of the Uncanny (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 1988)
Clery, E.J. and Robert Miles, Gothic Documents: A Sourcebook (Manchester;
Manchester University Press, 2000).
Day, William Patrick, In the Circles of Fear and Desire: A Study of Gothic
Fantasy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985).
Ellis, Kate Ferguson, The Contested Castle: Gothic Novels and the
Subversion of Domestic Ideology (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989).
Hoeveler, Diane Long, Gothic Feminism: The Professionalisation of Gender
from Charlotte Smith to the Brontës (Pennsylvania State University Press;
1998).
Horner, Avril and Sue Zlosnik, Gothic and the Comic Turn (Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
For more information on this unit, please contact Dr Emma Liggins on
e.liggins@mmu.ac.uk.
Due dates: Critical Review, 21 November 2014, and Critical Essay 16 January.
Research Skills (43104073) on-line unit
(Skills Core for all full-time and year 1 part-time students)
Tutor: Dr HUW JONES (H.Jones@mmu.ac.uk)
Tuesdays, 7.30-8.30
Week 1: Tuesday 23 Sept
INDUCTION
Week 2: Tuesday 1 October (7.30-8.30).
Initial meeting to introduce the unit, its aims and objectives, and assessment.
Introducing annotated bibliographies and review essays: their purpose, function,
academic value, and importance in individual study and research.
Week 3: Tuesday 8 October
No session. Students should be deciding which secondary texts to read for
annotation in their bibliographies.
Week 4: Tuesday 15 October (7.30-8.30)
The Annotated Bibliography. Specimen examples of this element will be provided for
discussion and students should begin to produce at least two specimen annotations
for informal feedback.
Week 5: Tuesday 22 October
No session. Revise and read for annotated bibliography.
Week 6: Tuesday 29 October
The Annotated Bibliography. Further discussion of this element and feedback from
the initial submission.
33
Week 7: Tuesday 5 November
Progression Week.
Week 8: Tuesday 12 November
No session: tutor available online for consultation.
Annotated Bibliography due Friday 15 November.
Week 9: Tuesday 19 November
Academic Book Reviews. Examples of this element will be provided and students
should begin preparing an introduction for the exercise.
Week 10: Tuesday 26 November
No session.
Week 11: Tuesday 3 December
Writing the Book Review.
Week 12: Tuesday 10 December
Individual tutorials / online consultation.
Week 13: Tuesday 17 December
Individual tutorials / online consultation.
ELECTIVE UNITS: Autumn Term
AMERICAN GOTHIC LITERATURE (43104061) (NBS 3.18)
Unit tutor: Dr Liz Nolan – e.nolan@mmu.ac.uk, GM404
The unit examines the nature and use of the Gothic genre in American culture.
Taking as a starting point the translation of the European tradition to the American
scene, it will explore the particular anxieties which inform the genre’s articulation of
American experience. Issues under discussion will include the Puritan inheritance,
the frontier experience, race and the legacy of slavery, gender and sexuality. There
will also be a focus on American Gothic locations: the landscape, the urban
environment and the significance of region. Considering the development of the
genre in an American context, the unit will examine literary texts from the C18th
Romance to C21st narratives of the vampire and the serial killer in relation to a
range of critical and theoretical debates.
On successful completion of this unit students will be able to:
34
1. demonstrate a detailed and advanced knowledge and understanding of key
concepts and debates relevant to American Gothic literature;
2. critically evaluate those concepts and debates;
3. apply those concepts in the rigorous analysis of selected literary texts;
4. construct an argument demonstrating advanced research skills, advanced skills
of close reading and critical analysis of selected texts.
Indicative Topics:
Origins of American Gothic; American Romanticism; The Puritan Inheritance; Frontier
Gothic; Southern Gothic; Suburban Gothic; African American Gothic; Race, Gender
and Sexuality; Postmodern Gothic; The Vampire in American Culture; the Serial Killer
and the American Gothic Imagination.
Primary Confirmed Reading list
1. Nathaniel Hawthorne, ‘Alice Doane’s Appeal’ and ‘Young Goodman Brown’
2. Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Man of the Crowd’, ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’
and ‘The Black Cat’
3. Henry James, ‘The Jolly Corner’ and Edgar Allan Poe, ‘William Wilson’
4. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, ‘The Giant Wistaria’ and ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’;
Edith Wharton, ‘Kerfol’
5. William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! (a long read – make a start on this as
soon as possible)
6. Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
7. Stephen King, The Shining
8. Toni Morrison, Beloved
9. Joyce Carol Oates, Zombie
10. Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves (another long read)
Assessment:
1 x essay of 4,000 words. Due date 23rd January
Primary Texts:
Week 1:
Week 2:
Week 3:
Week 4:
Week 5:
Week 6:
Week 7:
Week 8:
Week 9:
Week 10:
Week 11:
Week 12:
Introduction: Origins of the American Gothic: Nathaniel
Hawthorne, ‘Alice Doane’s Appeal’ and ‘Young Goodman Brown’
Early American Gothic: Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Man of the Crowd’,
‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ and ‘The Black Cat’
The Gothic Double: Henry James, ‘The Jolly Corner’ and Edgar Allan
Poe, ‘William Wilson’
The Female Gothic: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, ‘The Giant Wistaria’
and ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’; Edith Wharton, ‘Kerfol’
Southern Gothic I: William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! (a long read
– make a start on this as soon as possible)
PROGRESSION WEEK – NO CLASS
Southern Gothic II: Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
American Horror: Stephen King, The Shining
African American Gothic: Toni Morrison, Beloved
The Serial Killer: Joyce Carol Oates, Zombie
C21st American Gothic: Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Review and Essay Tutorials: House of Leaves continued
35
Bibliography:
Auerbach, Nina, Our Vampires, Ourselves (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1995)
Benefiel, Candace R., ‘Blood Relations: The Gothic Perversion of the Nuclear Family
in Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire’, The Journal of Popular Culture, Vol 38:2,
pp. 261–273, November 2004
Beville, Maria, Gothic-Postmodernism: Voicing the Terrors of Postmodernity (New
York: Rodopi, 2009)
Botting, Fred, ‘Hypocrite Vampire’, Gothic Studies, Volume 9, Number 1, May 2007,
pp. 16-34
Burns, Sarah, Painting the Dark Side: Art and the Gothic Imagination in NineteenthCentury America (Berkeley: U. of Calif. P, 2004)
Day, William Patrick, Vampire Legends in Contemporary American Culture (What
Becomes a Legend Most) (Lexington: Kentucky University Press, 2002)
Edmundson, Mark, Nightmare on Main Street: Angels, Sadomasochism and the
Culture of the Gothic Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999)
Edwards, Justin D., Gothic Passages: Racial Ambiguity and the American Gothic
(Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 2003)
Fedorko, Kathy A., Gender and the Gothic in the Fiction of Edith Wharton,
(Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 1995)
Garrett, Peter K. Gothic Reflections: Narrative Force in Nineteenth-Century Fiction
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2003)
Gleeson-White, Sarah, Strange Bodies: Gender and Identity in the Novels of Carson
McCullers (Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 2003)
Goddu, Teresa A., Gothic America: Narrative, History and Nation (New York:
Columbia UP, 1997)
Goldstein, Philip. "Black Feminism and the Canon: Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!
and Morrison's Beloved as Gothic Romances". Faulkner Journal: 20.1-2 (2004 Fall2005 Spring), pp. 133-147.
Gordon, Joan and Veronica Hollinger, Blood Read: The Vampire as Metaphor in
Contemporary Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997)
Goodwyn Jones, Anne, Susan Van D'Elden Donaldson, Haunted Bodies: Gender
and Southern Texts (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1997)
Gordon, Sarah, Flannery O’Connor: The Obedient Imagination (Athens: University of
Georgia Press, 2001)
Gray, Richard, ed., A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American South
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2007)
Greenberg, Louis, "Sins of the blood: rewriting the family in two postmodern vampire
novels." Journal of Literary Studies 26.1 (2010)
Gross, Louis S., Redefining the American Gothic: from Wieland to Days of the Dead
(Ann Arbor: U. M. I. Research P, 1989)
Haggerty, George E, Queer Gothic (Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2006)
Hayes, Kevin, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe, (Cambridge:
CUP, 2002)
Hoeveler, Diane, ‘Postgothic Fiction: Joyce Carol Oates turns the screw on Henry
James’ Studies in Short Fiction, 35, 1998
Hogle, Jerrold E. ed., The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 2002)
Kafer, Peter, Charles Brockden Brown's Revolution and the Birth of American Gothic
(Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2004)
Kennedy, J. Gerald, Romancing the Shadow: Poe and Race (Oxford: OUP, 2001)
Kerr, Elizabeth, William Faulkner's Gothic Domain (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat
Press, 1978)
36
Lloyd Smith, Allan, American Gothic Fiction: An Introduction (New York: Continuum,
2004)
Martin, Robert K. and Eric Savoy. eds., American Gothic: New Inventions in a
National Narrative (Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1998)
Meindl, Dieter, American Fiction and the Metaphysics of the Grotesque (Columbia:
University of Missouri Press, 1996)
Meyers, Helene, Femicidal Fears: Narratives of the Female Gothic Experience
(Albany: State U of New York P, 2001)
Mogen, David, Scott P. Sanders, and Joanne B. eds., Frontier Gothic: Terror and
Wonder at the Frontier in American Literature (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson
UP, 1993)
Monnet, Agnieszka Soltysik, The Poetics and Politics of the American Gothic: Gender
and Slavery in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (Ashgate, 2010)
Morrison, Toni, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992)
Ringe, Donald, A., American Gothic: Imagination and Reason in Nineteenth-Century
Fiction (University Press of Kentucky, 1982)
Sage, Victor & Alan Lloyd Smith, Modern Gothic: A Reader (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1996)
Savoy, Eric, ‘The Queer Subject of The Jolly Corner’ Henry James Review 20:1 1999
1-21
Smith, Andrew and Jeff Wallace (eds), Gothic Modernisms (Basingstoke: Palgrave,
2001)
Spaulding, A. Timothy, Re-Forming the Past: History, the Fantastic, and the
Postmodern Slave Narrative, (Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2005)
Spooner, Catherine, Contemporary Gothic (London: Reaktion Books, 2006)
Contemporary Queer Cultures (43104050)
This unit analyses the ways in which same-sex desire is expressed, represented and
received in contemporary cultures. The last two decades saw a shift away from the
recently consolidated concept of gay ‘identity politics’ to a more material concept of
‘queerness’, and ‘queerly negotiated’ reading practices gained academic
respectability. The politics of same-sex desires stretched to include transsexuality,
bisexuality, and a range of other non-normative activities. A politics of assimilation
was, in part, replaced by a politics of the margins. The ‘gay movement’ was also
radicalised through the recognition of AIDS. Arguably we are now entering the era of
the ‘post-gay’. This unit addresses these issues, and texts may be selected from film,
television, literature or culture more broadly. Areas for study include: the impact and
representation of AIDS; Queer politics vs Gay Identity politics; the development of
New Queer Cinema; ‘queer spectatorship’; the commodification of same-sex desire;
the concept of the ‘Post-Gay’.
Set Texts to be studied on The Unit:
The majority of primary texts on this unit are films. Aim to own all of the films on
DVD. If you rely on downloading them, do so well in advance. Some may exist in
butchered form (Taxi Zum Klo for example) and you certainly cannot rely on
Youtube, or similar sites, for ‘full versions’ of the films. The primary texts are:
Films:
Taxi Zum Klo (1980, Frank Ripploh, West Germany)
My Own Private Idaho (1991, Gus Van Sant, USA)
The Last of England (1988, Derek Jarman, UK)
37
The Crying Game (1992, Neil Jordan, UK)
Boys Don't Cry (1999, Kimberley Pierce, USA)
The Watermelon Woman (1996, Cheryl Dunye, USA)
Weekend (2011, Andrew Haigh, UK)
Novels / Journals:
Alan Hollinghurst, The Swimming Pool Library (1988)
Derek Jarman, Modern Nature (1992)
Recommended Background Reading:
There are two good slim-line books which serve as good primers to LGBTQ history
and theory. Reading either or both would be brilliant preparation for the unit. They
are:
Annamarie Jagose, Queer Theory: An Introduction
Nikki Sullivan, A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory
Additional Suggested Reading:
Aaron, Michele. (ed) (2004), New Queer Cinema: A Critical Reader (Edinburgh U.P.)
Benshoff, Harry & Griffin, Sean (2001), Queer Cinema: A Film Reader
Michael Charlesworth, Derek Jarman (Critical Lives)
Steven Dillon, Derek Jarman and Lyric Film
Doty, Alexander, (1993), Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture
(Univ. of Minnesota Press),
Griffiths, Robin (ed.) (2006), British Queer Cinema (Routledge, London)
Hanson, Ellis. (1999), Out Takes: Essays on Queer Theory and Film (Duke U.P.,
London)
Niall Richardson, The Queer Cinema of Derek Jarman
Sinfield, Alan (1998), Gay and After: gender, culture and consumption
Warner, Michael (ed) (1993), Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social
Theory
Boffin, Tessa (ed.) Ecstatic antibodies: resisting the AIDS mythology
Crimp, Douglas (ed.) AIDS: Cultural Analysis / Cultural Activism
Additional Suggested Viewing:
Go Fish (Rose Troche); Paris is Burning (Jennie Livingston); Poison, Swoon
(Haynes), Edward II (Jarman), Mysterious Skin (Araki), Brokeback Mountain (Lee),
Zero Patience and Lilies (John Greyson), Queer as Folk.
INDEPENDENT STUDY (Autumn) (43104070)
Students produce a written essay of 4000 words based on a topic of their own
interest (suited to their particular pathway and a unit subject that may not be
running that year) in the subject areas covered by ‘English Studies’. Students
are advised on the research, writing and presentation of their work by a
supervisor with expertise in their field of study or a related field. This unit is
taught via individual tutorials with a designated member of the teaching team.
CORE UNITS: SPRING TERM
38
Representing Contemporary Cultures 2
Wednesdays 5.30-7.30
Unit tutors: Dr. Ginette Carpenter, GM 419 (g.carpenter@mmu.ac.uk); Dr. David
Miller, GM 110 (david.miller@mmu.ac.uk), Prof. Antony Rowland
(a.rowland@mmu.ac.uk)
Critical / contextual reading material will be provided in advance of the relevant
seminars.
More detailed bibliographies will be uploaded to Moodle in advance.
TOPIC 1: The Contemporary Metropolis; Space, Place, Text – GC
(A bibliography, including further recommended primary texts, for this section is
available on Moodle)
14th Jan., Week 1: Critical/Contextual
Michel de Certeau, ‘Walking in the City’, in The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1998).
Michel Foucault, Of Other Spaces, Heterotopias
<http://foucault.info/documents/heterotopia/foucault.heterotopia.en.html>
Henri Lefebvre, ‘The Specificity of the City’, in Writings on Cities, (Oxford: Blackwell,
1996).
Leonie Sandercock, ‘Home, Nation, and Stranger: Fear in the City’, in Cosmopolis II:
Mongrel Cities of the 21st Century (London: Continuum, 2003).
21st Jan., Week 2: Core Film
Sofia Coppola (dir.) Lost in Translation (Focus Features, 2003).
[Recommended: Wong Kar-Wei (dir.) Chungking Express (Artificial Eye, 1994);
Stephen Frears (dir.) Dirty Pretty Things (BBC/Celador, 2002).]
Critical reading specific to this week
Steven Miles and Malcolm Miles, ‘Consuming Places – Cities and Cultural Tourism’,
in Consuming Cities (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004). (for week 3)
Douglas Tallack, ‘”Waiting, waiting”: The Hotel Lobby in the Modern City’, in Leach,
2002.
Elizabeth Wilson, ‘The Invisible Flâneur’, in Postmodern Cities and Spaces, eds by
Sophie Watson and Katherine Gibson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995).
28th Jan., Week 3: Core Novel
Teju Cole, Open City (London: Faber and Faber, 2011)
[Recommended: Joseph O’Neill, Netherland, (London: Harper Perennial, 2009);
Haruki Murakami, After Dark (London: Vintage, 2008).]
Critical reading specific to this week
Jacques Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism, in On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness
(London: Routledge, 2001)
Andreas Huyssen, ‘The Voids of Berlin’, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 24, No. 1, Autumn, 1997,
pp. 57-81.
39
TOPIC 2: Memory - AR
4th Feb., Week 4: Critical/Contextual
Robert Eaglestone, ‘Not read and consumed in the same way as other books’:
Identification and the Genre of Testimony’ from The Holocaust and the Postmodern
(2004)
11th Feb., Week 5: Core Poetry
Extracts from Geoffrey Hill, Scenes from Comus (2004)
Examples of 9/11 poetry from Poetry After 9/11: An Anthology of New York Poets
(2002)
18th Feb. Week 6 – Independent Study Week
25th Feb., Week 7: Film
Michael Hanneke (dir.), Hidden (Caché) (Artificial Eye, 2005)
TOPIC 3: Trauma – DM
4th March, Week 8: Critical/Contextual
Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, Volume 1, Swann’s Way, the chapter ‘Place
Names: The Name’, pp.416-462.
Rainer Maria Rilke, 1913 Essay “On the Wax Dolls of Lotte Pritzel”
Ludwig Wittgenstein Philosophical Investigations Aphorisms 65-69 on language and
‘family resemblance’.
The two essays, ‘After Epic’ and ‘Relationships to Realism in Holocaust Fiction’ in
The Bloomsbury Companion to Holocaust Literature, edited by Jenni Adams
(Bloomsbury:London, 2014).
11th March, Week 9: Core Novel
Austerlitz, W.G Sebald, translated by Anthea Bell, (Penguin; London, 2001)
18th March Week 10: Core Film
The Films of the Brothers Quay (Kino Video, Zeitgeist Release, 1987)
25th March, Week 11: Course Review and Essay Planning/Discussion
(AR/GC/DM)
After Easter: Essay Tutorials
40
GOTHIC AND MODERNITY (43104068)
(The Gothic Core) (NBS 3.25)
Unit Tutors: Dr Linnie Blake (L.Blake@mmu.ac.uk) and Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes
(X.Reyes@mmu.ac.uk)
Gothic and Modernity moves on from Rise of the Gothic to address a range of key
gothic sub-genres that have emerged in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The
course is structured under a number of sub-headings: The Abhuman, The Weird,
The Necrophiliac Turn in Southern Gothic, The Monster as Metaphor I: Vampires &
II: Zombies, Postcolonial Hauntings, The Grotesque, Techno-gothic, Serial Killers
and Abject Femininities. It involves a lot of reading – both of primary texts and of
secondary texts. By its end, you will have a strong grasp of both modern gothic
literature and theorisations of the gothic mode from a range of theoretical
perspectives. It is not necessary to have taken Rise of the Gothic to opt in to this unit
but you will be expected to grapple with some challenging material – the primary
texts being dark and often disturbing, the secondary material being dense and
intellectually challenging. If you have a scholarly interest in the gothic and want to
work on some of its most wonderful stories, books and films this is most certainly the
course for you.
Primary Reading (organized in order of study)
H.G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896)
Rudyard Kipling ‘The Mark of the Beast’ (1890)
W. W. Jacobs, ‘The Monkey’s Paw’ (1902)
Bram Stoker, Dracula (1898).
Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire (1977).
M.R. James, ‘Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook’ (1904),
Algernon Blackwood, ‘The Willows’ (1907),
Arthur Machen, ‘Out of the Earth’ (1915).
H.P. Lovecraft, ‘Dagon’, Call of Cthulhu’ and ‘The Shadow over Innsmouth’, in Call of
Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories (1926)
William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying (1930)
Cormac McCarthy, Child of God (1973)
Toni Morrison, Beloved (1983)
Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)
Katherine Dunn, Geek Love (1989)
Barbara Gowdy, ‘The Two-Headed Man’ (1992)
J.G. Ballard, High Rise (1975)
Demon Seed (Donald Cammell, 1977)
The Matrix (Andy and Lana Wachowski, 1999)
John Fowles, The Collector (1963)
The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991)
‘Dexter’ (S1 E01), Dexter (2006)
Freaks (Tod Browning, 1932)
Stephen King, Carrie (1974)
The Ring (Gore Verbinski, 2002)
Secondary Reading
This is posted to the Moodle area on a week by week basis. It includes articles by
key figures in Gothic Studies and focuses both on the primary texts and on
theorizations of the gothic as mode.
41
Week One
Week Two
Week Three
Week Four
Week Five
Week Six
Week Seven
Week Eight
Week Nine
Week Ten
Week Eleven
Week Twelve
The Abhuman
H.G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896)
Richard Marsh, The Beatle (1897)
Monster as Metaphor I: Vampires
Bram Stoker, Dracula (1898).
Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire (1977).
The Weird
Algernon Blackwood, ‘The Willows’ (1907), M.R. James,
‘Casting the Runes’ (1911), Lord Dunsany, ‘How Nuth
Would Have Practised His Art against the Gnoles’ (1912)
and Arthur Machen, ‘Out of the Earth’ (1915). Available
on-line.
H.P. Lovecraft, Call of Cthulhu and Other Stories (1926)
American Gothic
William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying (1930)
Cormac McCarthy, Child of God (1973)
Postcolonial Hauntings
Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)
Jean Rhys, The Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)
READING WEEK
The Grotesque
Katherine Dunn, Geek Love (1989)
Patrick McGrath, Grotesque (1989)
Tod Browning, Freaks (1932)
Monster as Metaphor II: Zombies
Richard Matheson, I Am Legend (1954)
George A Romero, Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Andrew Currie, Fido (2006)
Techno-gothic
J.G. Ballard, Crash (1973)
William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984)
Serial Killers
Will Self, Dorian, An Imitation (2002)
Jonathan Demme, The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Abject Femininities
Stephen King, Carrie (1974)
John Wyndham, Consider Her Ways (1970)
Gore Verbinski: The Ring (2002)
Reprise and Tutorials
42
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ELECTIVE UNITS: Spring Term
Border Fictions
(Contemporary Representations of the US-Mexico Border)
Tuesday from 6-00 to 8-00
Unit Tutor: Dr. Sarah MacLachlan (s.maclachlan@mmu.ac.uk)
Border Fictions explores representations of the US–Mexico border in a range of recent US
literature and film, attending to the ways that the border provides a vantage point from which
the possibilities and limitations of US national identity can be assessed (with particular
reference to issues of race, gender and sexuality). The currency of the border as a celebratory
site of fusion (national, racial, cultural) in contemporary US culture will be considered in the
context of its related rise to prominence in literary studies in the US academy in the 1980s and
beyond, but also in relation to an opposing cultural strand – an increasing hostility to the border
crossings made by immigrants from Mexico to the US in ‘mainstream’ discourses (a climate
intensified in the wake of the events of September 11th 2001 which continues to flourish –
witness the frequent 'crackdowns' on illegal aliens and drug smuggling). The unit considers the
ways that the US–Mexico border has been represented in the US in the twentieth century as a
background for the introduction of recent, experimental border fictions of cultural fusion
pioneered by Chicano/a writers. The connection between genre and cultural politics is
considered through the comparison of Chicano/a texts with border fictions which revisit
traditional US literary forms, such as the Western. A range of recent filmic representations of
the US–Mexico border will be studied and here attention will also be directed towards the
extent to which they reinforce or interrupt conventional understandings of national identity.
Week 1
The introductory session maps continuities and discontinuities in the diverse body of texts and
topics covered by Border Fictions: from Orson Welles' Noir classic, Touch of Evil (1958), to the
emergence of the Chicano Movement in the 1960s, the rise of a Chicano/a 'border aesthetic' in
the 1980s, the influence of poststructuralism in the US academy and beyond, recent
environmental concerns along the US–Mexico border, issues of demographic change in the
contemporary US (particularly the Southwest) and a renewed interest in the border in
revisionary Westerns. Above all, Border Fictions interrogates the renewed currency of the
border in US culture in the 1980s (the literal and metaphorical border) and its ongoing
significance in the present.
Reading (provided):
Michel Foucault's 'Of Other Spaces', Diacritics 16.1 (1986), pp. 22–27.
Rolando J. Romero's 'Border of Fear, Border of Desire', Borderlines 1.1 (1993), pp. 36–70.
Week 2
Orson Welles' 'Classic' View of the US–Mexico Border?
Orson Welles (dir.), A Touch of Evil (1958)
[Recommended / Additional: Américo Paredes, With His Pistol in his Hand: A Border Ballad and
its Hero (1958) and Robert M. Young (dir.), Alambrista (1977)]
Week 3
43
Postfeminism and the Transnational
Gloria Anzaldua's Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987)
[Recommended / Additional: Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street (1984)]
Week 4
The Body and Historical Trauma
Edward J. Olmos (dir.), American Me (1992)
[Recommended / Additional: Allison Anders (dir.), Mi Vida Loca (1994)]
Week 5
Transnational Futures?
Guillermo Gómez–Peña, Ethno–Techno: Writings on Performance, Activism and Pedagogy
(2005) and (www.pochanostra.com)
[Recommended / Additional: Gómez–Peña, Warrior for Gringostroika (1993), The New World
Border (1996) and Dangerous Border Crossers (2000)]
Week 6
Transnational Fears
Steven Soderbergh, Traffic (2000)
[Recommended / Additional: Tony Richardson (dir.) The Border (1982), Alejandro González
Iñárritu (dir.), Babel (2006) and Gareth Edwards (dir.), Monsters (2010)]
Week 7
Violence, Mexico and the Allegorical Impulse
Cormac McCarthy, No Country For Old Men (2005)
[Recommended / Additional: Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian (1985), All the Pretty Horses
(1992), The Crossing (1994), Cities of the Plain (1998) and The Road (2006)]
Week 8
The Revisionary Western
John Sayles (dir.), Lone Star (1996)
[Additional / Recommended: Gilbert Sorrentino, Gold Fools (2001)]
Week 9
The Border as Environmental Hazard
T. Coraghessan Boyle, The Tortilla Curtain (1995)
Week 10
Revenge, Repatriation and Redemption
Tommy Lee Jones (dir.), The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005)
General Background Reading:
Aldama, Arturo J. and Quinoñez, Naomi H., Decolonial Voices: Chicana and Chicano Cultural
Studies in the 21st Century (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2002).
Andreas, Peter, Border Games: Policing the US–Mexico Divide (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2000).
Arteaga, Alfred, An Other Tongue: Nation and Ethnicity in the Linguistic Borderlands (Durham:
Duke UP, 1994).
Arteaga, Alfred, Chicano Poetics: Heterotexts and Hybridities (Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
1997).
Bhabha, Homi, ed., Nation and Narration (London: Routledge, 1990).
Calderón, Héctor and Saldívar, José David, Criticism in the Borderlands: Studies in Chicano
Literature, Culture, and Ideology (Durham: Duke UP, 1991).
Campbell, Neil, The Cultures of the American New West (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2000).
Canclini, Néstor Garcia, Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity
(Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1995).
44
Cant, John, Cormac McCarthy and the Myth of American Exceptionalism (London: Routledge,
2007).
Chabram–Dernersesian, Angie, The Chicana/o Cultural Studies Reader (London: Routledge,
2006).
Chacón, Justin Ackers and Davis, Mike, No One Is Illegal: Fighting Violence and State
Repression on the US–Mexico Border (Chicago: Haymarket, 2006).
Davis, Mike, Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the US City (London: Verso, 2000)
Fregoso, Rosa Linda, Mexicana Encounters: The Making of Social Identities on the
Borderlands (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
Hicks, D. Emily, Border Writing: The Multidimensional Text (Minneapolis: U of Minneapolis P,
1991).
Limón, José E., American Encounters: Greater Mexico, the United States and the Erotics of
Culture (Boston: Beacon, 1998) and 'Tex–Sex–Mex: American Identities, Lone Stars, and the
Politics of Racialized Sexuality', in American Literary History 9.3 (1997): pp. 598–616.
McVeigh, Stephen, The American Western (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2007)
Owens, Barclay, Cormac McCarthy’s Western Novels (Tuscon: University of Arizona Press,
2000).
Rieff, David, Los Angeles: Capital of the Third World (New York: Touchstone, 1991).
Saldívar, Ramón, The Borderlands of Culture: Américo Paredes and the Transnational
Imaginary (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006).
Slotkin, Richard, Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth Century America
(New York: Harper Perennial, 1993).
Somerson, Wendy, 'White Men on the Edge: Rewriting the Borderlands in Lone Star', in Men
and Masculinities 6.3 (2004): pp. 215–239.
Spurgeon, Sarah L., ed., Cormac McCarthy: All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men,
The Road (London: Continuum, 2011).
Valle, Victor M. and Torres, Rodolpho D., Latino Metropolis (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P,
2000).
ETHICS IN THEORY (43104086)
Tuesdays 5.30-7.30 (NBS 3.18)
Unit tutor: Dr Lucy Burke L.Burke@mmu.ac.uk
45
This unit explores the relationships between ethics, politics and the aesthetic in relation to three
key areas, bio-politics, terror, and cultural memory. The theoretical texts that we explore are
produced in the wake of the experience and perceived failures of the student uprising in Paris
May 1968 and the so-called ‘red years’ of the 1970s (1966-1976). The aim is to read this theory
reflexively both in relation to its own historical moment of production and in relation to the crises
of contemporary society, in particular current ethical debates around personhood and welfare in
the context of emergent medical technologies, the “war on terror” and the impact of the global
financial crisis.
The first part of the unit will introduce you to some key debates around the intersection of
ethics, biopower and political economy. It will also consider the ways in which art/aesthetics
has been conceptualized in relation to these historical developments. You are strongly
encouraged to familiarize yourself with the ‘ancient quarrel’ between Plato and Aristotle prior to
reading this material because this debate underpins a number of the theoretical texts that we
will read. You should also endeavor to read the secondary material indicated. It is important
that you understand these concepts prior to an engagement with the three main interlinked
case studies that we will explore in the second and third parts of the unit: ethics and the politics
of life itself, ethics and terror, and ethics and memory. The unit is designed in such a way that
all the material studied in parts 2&3 refer back to the theoretical debates introduced in the first
part of the unit. The aim is to provide you with a thorough grounding in theory that explores the
relationships between ethics and politics; for you to be equipped to use this theory in the
analysis of cultural products and, crucially; for you to do so with an understanding of the
concepts of mediation and articulation and the relative autonomy and specificity of particular
aesthetic forms.
Theoretical material will be provided in PDF form on Moodle:
Reading will include extracts from
Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality: Volume 1 [1976/1978] translated by Robert Hurley
(London: Vintage,1990);
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison [1975/1977] translated by Alan Sheridan,
(London: Vintage, 1995)
Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France [2004], translated Graham
Burchell, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)
Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, translated by Daniel Heller-
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Roazen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998);
The Open: Man and Animal, translated by Kevin Attell (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
2004);
Thomas Lemke ‘“A Zone of Indistinction”: A Critique of Giorgio Agamben’s Concept of
Biopolitics’ in Outlines, No.1, (2005)
Alan Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil (London: Verso, 2002) and,
Logic of Worlds: Being and Event II (London: Continuum, 2009)
Louis Althusser, ‘A Letter on Art in Reply to André Daspré’ in Lenin and Philosophy and Other
Essays (U.S: Monthly Review Press, 2001)
Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension (Michigan: Beacon Press, 1979)
Theodor Adorno, ‘Commitment’ in NLR, 1976
Peter Singer, Practical Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1993)
Slavoj Žižek, Welcome to the Desert of the Real, 2nd revised edition (London: Verso, 2013)
And, First as Tragedy, then as Farce (London: Verso, 2009)
Maud Ellmann, The Hunger Artists: Starving, Writing and Imprisonment (Boston: Harvard
University Press, 1993)
David Beresford, Ten Men Dead: Story of the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike (London: Harper Collins,
1987)
You must get hold of copies of the following novels and films:
Ninni Holmqvist, The Unit, Translated by Marlaine Delargy, (London: Other Press, 2009) ISBN
1590513339, 9781590513330.
Bernard Schlink, The Weekend (London: Pheonix, 2011) ISBN -10: 0753828480, ISBN-13:
978-0753828489
Baader Meinhof Complex dir.Uli Edel, 2008 (DVD)
Eoin McNamee, The Ultras (London: Faber and Faber, 2004)
Hunger dir.Steve McQueen, 2008
Glenn Patterson, That Which Was (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2004)
Unit Syllabus
Seminar One:
Michel Foucault, Biopolitics and Biopower
extract from Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality: Volume 1 [1976/1978] translated by Robert
Hurley (London: Vintage,1990);
extract from Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison [1975/1977] translated by Alan
Sheridan, (London: Vintage, 1995)
extract from Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France [2004], translated
Graham Burchell, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)
Seminar Two:
The Production of Bare Life
extract from Giorgio Agamben from Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, translated by
Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998);
extract from The Open: Man and Animal, translated by Kevin Attell (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2004);
Thomas Lemke ‘“A Zone of Indistinction”: A Critique of Giorgio Agamben’s Concept of
Biopolitics’ in Outlines, No.1, (2005)
Seminar Three:
Ethics and Politics
extract from Alan Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil (London: Verso, 2002)
and,
extract from Logic of Worlds: Being and Event II (London: Continuum, 2009)
Seminar Four:
Aesthetics, Ethics and Politics
Louis Althusser, ‘A Letter on Art in Reply to André Daspré’ in Lenin and Philosophy and Other
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Essays (U.S: Monthly Review Press, 2001)
extract from Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension (Michigan: Beacon Press, 1979)
extract from Martha Nussbaum, Introduction to Love's Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and
Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990)
Seminar Five:
Rationalisation, Utility, Bare Life.
Ninni Holmqvist, The Unit Translated by Marlaine Delargy, (London: Other Press, 2009) ISBN
1590513339, 9781590513330.
extract from Peter Singer, Practical Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1993)
extract from Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share Vol. II, new edition, translated by Robert
Hurley (London: Zone Books, 1993)
Seminar Six: Ethics and Terror
extract from Slavoj Žižek, Welcome to the Desert of the Real, 2nd revised edition (London:
Verso, 2013)
extract from Slavoj Žižek, First as Tragedy, then as Farce (London: Verso, 2009)
Film: Baader Meinhof Complex dir.Uli Edel, 2008
extracts from Ulrike Meinhof and Karin Bauer, Everyone Talks about the Weather, We Don’t …
The Writings of Ulrike Meinhof (London: Seven Stories Press, 2008)
extract from Stefan Aust, The Baader Meinhof Complex (London: Bodley Head, 2008)
Seminar Seven: Ethics, Trauma and Memory
Bernard Schlink, The Weekend (London: Phoenix, 2011)
Lucy Burke and Simon Faulkner, ‘Memory is Ordinary’ in The Politics of Cultural Memory
(Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press
Seminar Eight: Ethics, Politics, Violence
Eoin McNamee, The Ultras (London: Faber and Faber, 2004)
extract from Allen Feldman, Formations of Violence: The Narrative of the Body and Political
Terror in Northern Ireland (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991)
Seminar Nine: The Politics and ethics of hunger
extract from Maud Ellmann, The Hunger Artists: Starving, Writing and Imprisonment (Boston:
Harvard University Press, 1993)
extract from David Beresford, Ten Men Dead: Story of the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike (London:
Harper Collins, 1987)
Film: Hunger dir.Steve McQueen, 2008
Seminar Ten: The politics and ethics of memory
Glenn Patterson, That which Was (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2004)
extract from Graham Dawson, Making Peace with the Past, Memory, Trauma and the Irish
Troubles (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007)
DISSERTATION PREPARATION 43104065 (NBS 3.24)
Wednesdays, 7.30-8.30
Unit tutor: Dr Huw Jones (GM 431, H.Jones@mmu.ac.uk)
Unit schedule to be confirmed.
Independent Study (Spring) 43104070
Students produce a written essay of 4000 words based on a topic of their own
interest (suited to their particular pathway and a unit subject that may not be
running that year) in the subject areas covered by ‘English Studies’. Students are
advised on the research, writing and presentation of their work by a supervisor with
expertise in their field of study or a related field. This unit is taught via individual
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tutorials with a designated member of the teaching team.
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