2023/24 Undergraduate Module Catalogue

ENGL3314 Imagining Posthuman Futures

20 creditsClass Size: 36

School of English

Module manager: Dr Anna McFarlane
Email: a.mcfarlane1@leeds.ac.uk

Taught: Semester 1 (Sep to Jan) View Timetable

Year running 2023/24

Pre-requisite qualifications

Please note: this module is restricted to Level 3 students on BA programmes with English.

This module is not approved as a discovery module

Objectives

The high-level objectives of the module are to provide students with critical skills with which they can discuss the issues surrounding the fictional representation of futures in which an idea of the human has been replaced or modified. The module will seek to analyse how cultural representations imagine such posthuman subjects and societies, with a particular focus on questions of science, technology and ethics.

Learning outcomes
Students will have developed:
- Appreciation of cultural and social debates around questions of technological innovation, body adaptation and genetic modification;
- The ethical considerations surrounding the above as they relate to representing individuals and societies;
- the ability to use written and oral communication effectively;
- the capacity to analyse and critically examine diverse forms of discourse;
- the ability to manage quantities of complex information in a structured and systematic way;
- the capacity for independent thought and judgement;
- critical reasoning;
- research skills, including the retrieval of information, the organisation of material and the evaluation of its importance;

Syllabus

This module will analyse a range of novels and fiction feature films that focus on an idea of the future in which the human has been modified, transgressed or supplanted. It will consider questions of imagining culture in utopian or dystopian forms, and will have specific concentration on questions of scientific/technological innovation and development, body adaptation, genetic modification, and the ideas of the individual and community that result from this. It will stress the worth of the creative imagination and the value of the aesthetic in such processes, asking how we think ‘beyond the human’ to imagine future worlds.

Teaching methods

Delivery type	Number	Length hours	Student hours
Meetings	5	1.00	5.00
Seminar	10	1.00	10.00
Private study hours			185.00
Total Contact hours			15.00
Total hours (100hr per 10 credits)			200.00

Private study

Reading, seminar preparation, essay writing.

Opportunities for Formative Feedback

- Seminar contribution
- Feedback on 1st assessed assignment.

Methods of assessment

Coursework

Assessment type	Notes	% of formal assessment
Essay	2750 words	66.70
Essay	1750 words	33.30
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: 28/04/2023 14:39:51

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