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2021/22 Taught Postgraduate Module Catalogue

ENGL5760M The Enigmatic Body of Modernism

30 creditsClass Size: 12

Module manager: Dr Richard Brown
Email: r.h.brown@leeds.ac.uk

Taught: Semester 1 (Sep to Jan) View Timetable

Year running 2021/22

Module replaces

ENGL5753M James Joyce 'Ulysses' Modernism and the Body

This module is not approved as an Elective

Objectives

The objective of this module is develop a discussion of Joyce's Ulysses and other works by James Joyce in the context of contemporary Modernist representations of the body.

We intend to explore some of the ways in which Modernist writing can be understood as a profound transitional moment in ideas of the aesthetic and of human being which surfaces in its representations of the body and indeed resurfaces in contested discussions of the body in more recent cultural theory.

Skills outcomes
Masters (Taught), Postgraduate Diploma & Postgraduate Certificate students will have had the opportunity to acquire the following abilities as defined in the modules specified for the programme:
- the skills necessary to undertake a higher research degree and/or for employment in a higher capacity;
- evaluating their own achievement and that of others;
- self direction and effective decision making;
- independent learning and the ability to work in a way which ensures continuing professional development;
- to engage critically in the development of professional/disciplinary boundaries and norms.


Syllabus

This module is a themed approach to early twentieth-century literary modernism. Inspired by James Joyce’s stated intent to write a twentieth-century epic of the body, it explores ways in which this might invite a re-reading of a wide range of modernist literary texts with a special concentration on theories and representations of the body, embodiment and the senses as well as related aspects of culture such as reading, technology, the animal, pathology and everyday life. We’ll begin with a Sherlock Holmes story and some Freud, explore the Futurisms of Marinetti, Mina Loy and Wyndham Lewis, some poetry and essays by T.S.Eliot, a novel by Rebecca West, selections of Joyce, novels by Woolf, Lawrence, Anita Loos, Michael Arlen, Henry Green and Evelyn Waugh drawing on some contemporary and more recent theorising of the body as a site of cultural signification including perspectives from Foucault, Merleau-Ponty, Baudrillard, Rancière and Michel Serres. We will research Modernism in the Little Magazines and encounter the "New Modernist" studies, as well as the cinema as a modernist cultural technology. There’ll be an opportunity for all students to give class presentations. Seminars will be scheduled on material selected from the texts listed below, and some material included in the Modernism anthology listed below, or in some cases available on line or as photocopies.

Teaching methods

Delivery typeNumberLength hoursStudent hours
Seminar102.0020.00
Private study hours280.00
Total Contact hours20.00
Total hours (100hr per 10 credits)300.00

Private study

Reading, research, seminar preparation, preparation of unassessed essay.

Opportunities for Formative Feedback

1 x 1,000 word unassessed essay proposal

Methods of assessment


Coursework
Assessment typeNotes% of formal assessment
Essay or Dissertation1 x 4,000 word essay100.00
Total percentage (Assessment Coursework)100.00

Normally resits will be assessed by the same methodology as the first attempt, unless otherwise stated

Reading list

The reading list is available from the Library website

Last updated: 22/02/2022 12:11:00

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