Short written assessed exercise (500 words) 10%
Seminar Presentation 20%
2000 word Essay 70%
[Learning Outcomes 1-5]

The module focuses on modernity and modernisation in relation to literary and cultural developments in Britain, Ireland and the United States during the first half of the twentieth century. It will look at the changing ways in which notions of modernity and modernisation shaped, and were shaped by, literary and cultural production during this period, from high modernism to popular culture and notions of the postmodern. The course will focus on a variety of different literary genres, as well as film and theoretical readings.


Texts may include the following:
Kate Chopin, 'The Awakening'
Virginia Woolf, 'Mrs. Dalloway'
Charlie Chaplin, 'Modern Times'
George Orwell, 'Coming up for Air'
Raymond Chandler, 'The Big Sleep'

Lectures; seminars
Preparation of written work
Presentations

Library holdings; internet; video playback facilities

Marshall Berman, All that is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982.
Howard Booth and Nigel Rigby, Modernism and Empire, Manchester, Manchester UP, 2000.
Malcolm Bradbury & James McFarlane, eds. Modernism. 1890-1930. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976.
John Carey, The Intellectuals and the Masses, London: Faber, 1992.
Chamberlain, J. Edward & Sander L. Gilman, Degeneration: The Dark Side of Progress, New York: Columbia Up, 1985.
Rita Felski, The Gender of Modernity. Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard UP, 1995.
Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno,Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944)
F.R. Leavis, 'Mass Culture and Minority Civilisation' (1930)
F.T. Marinetti, 'Manifesto of futurism' (1909)

1. UNDERSTAND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CULTURAL CONCEPTS OF MODERNITY AND MODERNISATION IN THE CONTEXT OF EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY CULTURE AND LITERATURE Cultural Enquiry
[Knowledge and Understanding]

2. APPLY YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK OF MODERNITY/MODERNISATION IN ORDER TO READ SPECIFIC LITERARY TEXTS
[Application]

3. CRITICALLY ANALYSE KEY ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERARY TEXTS OF THE PERIOD, INCLUDING THE APPLICATION OF CLOSE READING SKILLS.
[Analysis]

4. PRESENT AN ARGUMENT AND ARTICULATE IDEAS BOTH ORALLY AND IN WRITING, BOTH THROUGH ESSAY-WRITING AND IN GROUP PRESENTATIONS.
[Communication]
[Reflection]

5. UNDERTAKE AN INDEPENDENT RESEARCH EXERCISE RELATED TO ONE OF THE TEXTS STUDIED ON THE MODULE
[Learning]