This module examines the social and cultural processes generating the production of diverse contemporary identities and the decentring of traditional and modern identities. The module aims to critically explore the cultural forms and practices produced and consumed in the expression of these unsettling identities, and the emergent meanings which are contested and transmitted. Seminars will be organised around themes such as postcoloniality, sexual identities, new social movements, the spatial location of identity, corporate identities, identity and material culture, memory, class, consumption, gender and the body, techno-identities, and national and cosmopolitan identities, cyber identities.

Demonstration of informed understanding of key issues covered; appropriate application of relevant theory; evidence of familiarity with important texts; skill in producing critical, coherent and structured arguments.

A Coursework Essay 65% [Learning Outcomes 1 and 3]

A Coursework Review 25% [Learning Outcomes 1, 2 and 3]

Completing work tasks online and interacting with other students online concerning the tasks 10% [Learning Outcomes 1-3]

The course will follow a series of smaller individual modulettes, each of which has a specific specialism and is overseen by an academic specialist. Learning will be accommodated through on-line discussion, reading and assimilation of on-line articles and mandatory readings, visual and aural stimuli, mini lectures and student discussion

Billington R et al (1998) Exploring Self and Society (Macmillan)
Craib I (1998) Experiencing Identity (Sage)
Edensor T(2002) National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life (Berg)
Hall S & Du Gay P (eds.) (1996) Question of Cultural Identity (Sage)
Du Gay P et al (2000) Identity: A Reader (Sage)
Lupton D (1998) The Emotional Self (Sage)
Jenkins R (1996) Social Identity (Routledge)
Giddens A (1990) Modernity and Self-identity (Polity)
Rajchman J (ed) (1995) The Identity in Question (Routledge)
Sarup M (1996) Identity, Culture and the Postmodern World (Edinburgh)
Woodward K (1997) Identity and Difference (Sage)
Du Gay P & Hall S (1996) Cultural Identity (Sage)
Kennedy B.M & Bell D. (2000 & 2007) The Cybercultures Reader (London, Routledge)

On-line blackboard resources
On-line journals
The Blackboard virtual learning environment will be available to support this module. Details will be supplied in the module handbook