Multiple choice class test 10% (Learning Outcomes 1 & 4)

Portfolio 90% to include
An e-learning exercise (500-word essay and bibliography [Learning Outcomes 3 & 4])
Coursework essay, 1500 words (Learning Outcomes 1, 2, 4 & 5)

Key Information Set Data:
10% written exam
90% coursework

This module introduces students to a wide range of British writing and cultural forms (including fiction, poetry, drama and television/ film) from 1945 to the present. The module will introduce students to a broad range of themes in their cultural contexts (such as the Windrush Generation, Thatcherism, multi-culturalism, urban culture and postcolonialism). It will equip students with a strong historical basis and will also raise key questions about how to define the contemporary. Authors might include: Hanif Kureishi, Salman Rushdie, Monica Ali and Will Self.

There will be a programme of lectures/workshops and seminars related to the texts selected for study, the programme will be illustrated, where appropriate, by film and music extracts. It will be the intention to engage students with recent and current political and cultural concerns related to the literature of the module, and to that end, discussion will be guided partly by student-led investigation into (for example) the debate about multiculturalism and ethnic identity.

Key Information Set Data:
16% scheduled learning and teaching activities
84% guided independent learning

Library
Internet
VTR and DVD playback

The Blackboard virtual learning environment will be available (where relevant) to support this module. Details will be supplied in the module handbook.

Richard J. Lane, Rod Mengham and Philip Tew (eds.), Contemporary British Fiction (Polity, 2002)
James English (ed.), A Concise Companion to British Fiction (Blackwell, 2005)
Lynne Wells, Allegories of Telling: Self-Referential Narrative in Contemporary British Fiction (Rodopi, 2003)