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DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2015/2016

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DRPS : Course Catalogue : School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures : English Literature

Undergraduate Course: Modernism and Empire (ENLI10338)

Course Outline
SchoolSchool of Literatures, Languages and Cultures CollegeCollege of Humanities and Social Science
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) AvailabilityAvailable to all students
SCQF Credits20 ECTS Credits10
SummaryThis course explores the relationship between European imperialism and literary modernism, focusing primarily on British colonial contexts and legacies (in South Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific), but also engaging with other European empires (such as the French Caribbean and the Belgian Congo). We will analyse a range of texts published from the 1890s through to 1960, exploring the centrality of empire to various phases of literary modernism.
Course description Week 1: Course introduction; Joseph Conrad, 'An Outpost of Progress' (1897); Rudyard Kipling, 'Regulus' (1917).

Week 2: Miscegenation and degeneration: Rudyard Kipling, 'Kidnapped' (1888); Robert Louis Stevenson, 'The Ebb Tide'; Jack London, 'Goodbye Jack' (1909); W. Somerset Maugham, 'Rain' (1921).

Week 3: Ezra Pound and 'The East': Pound's ideogrammatic poetry and the Chinese Cantos; Rabindranath Tagore's Gitanjali poems (1912).

Week 4: E.M. Forster, A Passage to India (1924).

Week 5: Mulk Raj Anand, Untouchable (1935).

Week 6: Leonard Woolf, 'Pearls and Swine' (1921) and selected letters; George Orwell, 'Shooting an Elephant' (1936).

Week 7: Jean Rhys, Voyage in the Dark (1937); selected stories by Katherine Mansfield.

Week 8: READING WEEK.

Week 9: Aimé Césaire, Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (1939; using the Bloodaxe translation, Notebook of a Return to my Native Land (1995)).

Week 10: Joyce Cary, Mister Johnson (1939) and 'Umaru' (1921).

Week 11: Chinua Achebe, No Longer at Ease (1960).
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Information for Visiting Students
Pre-requisitesA MINIMUM of 4 college/university level literature courses at grade B or above (should include no more than one introductory level literature course). Related courses such as civilisation or other interdisciplinary classes, Freshman Year Seminars or composition/creative writing classes/workshops are not considered for admission to this course. Applicants should also note that, as with other popular courses, meeting the minimum does NOT guarantee admission. In making admissions decisions preference will be given to students who achieve above the minimum requirement with the typical visiting student admitted to this course having 4 literature classes at grade A.

** as numbers are limited, visiting students should contact the Visiting Student Office directly for admission to this course **
High Demand Course? Yes
Course Delivery Information
Academic year 2015/16, Available to all students (SV1) Quota:  15
Course Start Semester 1
Timetable Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) Total Hours: 200 ( Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 196 )
Assessment (Further Info) Written Exam 60 %, Coursework 30 %, Practical Exam 10 %
Additional Information (Assessment) One course essay (worth 30% of overall course mark)
One practical assessment (10%)
and one take home exam essay(worth 60% of overall course mark).
Feedback Not entered
No Exam Information
Academic year 2015/16, Part-year visiting students only (VV1) Quota:  3
Course Start Semester 1
Timetable Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) Total Hours: 200 ( Lecture Hours 20, Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 176 )
Assessment (Further Info) Written Exam 75 %, Coursework 25 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment) One course essay (worth 30% of overall course mark)
One practical assessment (10%)
and one take home exam essay(worth 60% of overall course mark).
Feedback Not entered
No Exam Information
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this course, through contributions to group discussion, independent reading, and assessed and non-assessed work, students will be able to:

-Understand the ways in which empire and its legacies has contributed to certain thematic and stylistic innovations in British (and other) literary modernism(s).

-Develop a critical vocabulary for analysing the thematics and aesthetics of modernist writing, drawing upon a range of theory and criticism (including, inter alia, formalist, Marxist, postmodernist and postcolonial perspectives).

-Analyse the active contribution of writers and cultures on the colonial 'periphery' to developments in (and critiques of) literary modernism.

-Articulate (in written and oral forms) a considered, informed sense of the breadth and range of responses to imperialism in course texts.

-Reflect on good learning practice.
Reading List
Week 1: Joseph Conrad, 'An Outpost of Progress' (1897); Rudyard Kipling, 'Regulus' (1917).

Week 2: Rudyard Kipling, 'Kidnapped' (1888); Robert Louis Stevenson, 'The Ebb Tide'; Jack London, 'Goodbye Jack' (1909); W. Somerset Maugham, 'Rain' (1921).

Week 3: Pound's ideogrammatic poetry and the Chinese Cantos; Rabindranath Tagore's Gitanjali poems (1912).

Week 4: E.M. Forster, A Passage to India (1924).

Week 5: Mulk Raj Anand, Untouchable (1935).

Week 6: Leonard Woolf, 'Pearls and Swine' (1921) and selected letters; George Orwell, 'Shooting an Elephant' (1936).

Week 7: Jean Rhys, Voyage in the Dark (1937); selected stories by Katherine Mansfield.

Week 8: READING WEEK.

Week 9: Aimé Césaire, Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (1939; using the Bloodaxe translation, Notebook of a Return to my Native Land (1995)).

Week 10: Joyce Cary, Mister Johnson (1939) and 'Umaru' (1921).

Week 11: Chinua Achebe, No Longer at Ease (1960).
Additional Information
Course URL http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/literatures-languages-cultures/english-literature/undergraduate/current/honours
Graduate Attributes and Skills Not entered
Study Abroad n/a
Additional Class Delivery Information 1 hour(s) per week for 12 week(s). 1 hour a week attendance at Autonomous Learning Group - times to be arranged
Keywordsmodernism; empire; race; imperialism
Contacts
Course organiserDr Michelle Keown
Tel: (0131 6)50 6856
Email:
Course secretaryMrs Anne Mason
Tel: (0131 6)50 3618
Email:
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