Module |
Credits |
Compulsory/optional |
Tell It Slant: Writing and Reality
|
15 Credits |
Compulsory |
Emily Dickinson wrote ‘Tell all the truth, but tell it slant’. This module examines many aspects of writing from reality – the methods and reasons for doing so, the ethics involved, and whether or not it forms a ‘fourth genre’ of writing as has been posited by theorists such as Robert Root and Lee Gutkind. Degrees of ‘truth’ will be questioned: how much fiction can or should be introduced? Where does one draw the line between fiction and reality? Who has the right to draw this line? Does writing about a community, or writing with a community, alter the obligations of the writer? Authors studied may include James Frey, David Sedaris, Louisa May Alcott, Geraldine Brooks, Sei Shonagan, James Baldwin, Megan Abbott and Robin Soans. |
Year Abroad
|
0 Credits |
Compulsory |
A Study Abroad year is an optional additional year that increases the length of the Honours degree award to a four-year full-time degree. The additional year comprises an agreed programme of study in a partner institution abroad with whom the University of Hertfordshire has an institutional agreement. The programme of study will support, supplement and extend the more usual three-year programme. Success in the third year will be recognised in the title of the award, but does not carry additional credit towards the Honours programme. A student would normally confirm the intention to study abroad during the first ten weeks of study at Level 5. This will enable a place to be negotiated at a host institution and the Study Programme and learning contract to be arranged and agreed. |
Graduate Skills
|
0 Credits |
Compulsory |
You will be able to access employability and enterprise resources including workshops, online materials and books in order to help you formulate a career or post-graduate study plan.
You will have the opportunity to hear speakers from a variety of areas give advice and guidance as to how to enter those fields.
You will be required to undertake a certain number of activities chosen by you from a career "menu" and to reflect on what they have learnt in order to complete the module successfully. |
The Humanities Placement Year
|
0 Credits |
Compulsory |
The Placement Year provides you with the opportunity to set your academic studies in a broader context and to utilise the intellectual skills you have gained through your degree in the work place. You will also strengthen your time management, organisational and communication skills as well as develop employability skills.
You will gain experience of applying for jobs and of working within a commercial, business or professional environment prior to graduating thus increasing employability skills such as teamwork, communication skills and commercial awareness.
You will gain experience in a field that is often a destination for Humanities students such as PR, marketing, management and research. You will have developed valuable industry skills and experience as well as being able to apply many of the intellectual skills you have learnt through your degree to a real world situation. |
Placement with Study Abroad
|
0 Credits |
Compulsory |
Students on this unique module will have the opportunity to undertake both a semester at a partner university and to undertake a semester of placement, thus both improving their cultural awareness and employability. Students who have been on the Placement Year and Study Abroad Year, both normally undertaken after level 5 and before entering the final year, have reported high levels of satisfaction with both and many have said the Placement or Study Abroad year was one of the highlights of their university career. The Placement Year is offered by only a handful of universities offering Humanities subjects, so this module is a fantastic opportunity for students to explore both aspects of Study Abroad and Placement both here and abroad. |
Writing Serial Drama
|
15 Credits |
Compulsory |
This is an intensive 12 week module created to enable you to create and write your own pitch and pilot episode for a serial drama. You will learn the craft skills required to create compelling serial drama or comedy and create a pitch document suitable to send to production companies. You will watch episodes and read screenplays from current successful serials, analysing the technique required to create a successful drama series. You will workshop your ideas and pilot scripts under the guidance your module leader. You may write anything from a Netflix serial, continuing BBC Drama or online comedy series for your final submission. |
Writing for Popular Fiction Markets
|
15 Credits |
Compulsory |
The module will explore a selection of different popular fiction genres (for example romance, historical, crime, fantasy, horror) looking at examples which illustrate the development of their specific market. The examples will be taken from book texts but also film and television in the various genres covered.
You will learn how an analysis of the features and narratives used in these can be used to inform writing practice. Practice at writing for popular genres will be central to the module’s syllabus which will practice and consider self and peer review within the delimited markets and genre tropes. Each genre discussed will be given a designated two week block with the block providing a combination of knowledge presentation, practice, reflection and work-shopping.
You will be encouraged to contextualise your own work within the popular genres that we consider and gain awareness of its commercial positioning and opportunity.
Authors whose work we explore typically may include Agatha Christie, Margaret Atwood, HG Wells, Audrey Niffeneger and Bram Stoker, TV shows may include Dexter, Game of Thrones and Poldark, and Films may include Doctor Zhivago, The Prestige, Blade Runner and Let the Right One In. Please note that all of these titles are indicative and subject to regular updating. |
Between the Acts: Late Victorian and Edwardian Literature 1890-1920
|
15 Credits |
Optional |
This module studies texts written between 1890 and 1920 in order to consider the period of transition between the end of the Victorian age and the end of the First World War. Students will be invited to consider ways in which the set texts challenge 'Victorian' ideas of stability and respectability as well as their engagement with such concepts as heroism, the `monstrous', suburbia, marriage and sexuality, trauma, class and nationhood. The texts studied will include a range of different genres and styles, from the so-called `problem play' of the 1890s and 1900s, to the horror story; from the best-selling exotic romance to the literature of World War One. Authors studied may include Bram Stoker, Oscar Wilde, Elizabeth Robbins, E.M. Forster, Ford Madox Ford, Rebecca West, Henry James, Elinor Glyn and Rudyard Kipling. |
Texts and Screens: Studies in Literary Adaptation
|
15 Credits |
Optional |
Literature and film have had a close and complex relationship since the beginning of the twentieth century when silent cinema adopted the novel as a fruitful source for its own stories. The cinema is still one of the most frequent ways by which we first encounter literary texts. By using a number of case studies this module aims to introduce you to some of the key issues involved in adapting literary texts for the cinema, including questions of narrative technique, concepts of genre, questions of representation and notions of 'fidelity' and 'authorship'.
As well as close readings of the set texts (both written and cinematic) the module will also engage with recent theoretical approaches to film and literary studies. The texts chosen for study will vary from year to year but might include such notable examples as Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare; Zeffirelli; Lurhmann); Goldfinger (Flemming/Hamilton) and Trainspotting (Welsh/Boyle). |
African-American Literature
|
15 Credits |
Optional |
This module will introduce you to some key works of African-American literature, from the late nineteenth century to the present day. You will study a range of genres, such as fiction, poetry, drama, autobiography, and nonfiction. We will trace how a unique African-American literary voice relates to a number of important modes of expression: oral culture, ‘signifying’, folklore, the visual arts, and music (such as spirituals, blues, jazz, work songs, gospel, and hip hop). We will identify several key themes and preoccupations in the work of African-American writers: freedom, identity, mobility (both geographical and social), and self-expression, amongst others. These will be mapped against historical events and developments, including slavery and abolition, segregation and the Jim Crow laws, the Great Migration, the Harlem Renaissance, the Civil Rights movement, the feminist movement, and the election of Barack Obama as President. We will also explore how issues of gender, sexuality, and class specifically inform these works. |
Generation Dead: Young Adult Fiction and the Gothic
|
15 Credits |
Optional |
All over the country in the world of young adult fiction teenagers who die aren’t staying dead. This module will interrogate the new high school gothic, exploring the representation of the undead or living dead (werewolves, vampires and zombies) in dark or paranormal romance. Texts range from Twilight, Vampire Diaries and Daniel Waters’s zombie trilogy to Isaac Marion’s Warm Bodies and Eden Maguire’s The Beautiful Dead. We’ll also look at examples of werewolf fiction (Shiver) and at the folklore inspired novels of Marcus Sedgwick.
Y.A.F. has attracted some of the most gifted writers who address these themes as a means of confronting death or discrimination or to engage with Christianity or Mormonism and embrace the enduring power of love. We will be theorising folklore, investigating the ethics of writing for young adults, and grappling with undead issues such as the notion of free will, damnation and redemption, the sexualisation of early teens, the effects of prejudice and the politics of difference. |
Everyday Lives: an Intimate History of Twentieth Century Women A
|
15 Credits |
Optional |
This module offers an intimate history of the everyday lives of women in America, Britain and Ireland. Through lectures and a series of case studies in seminars, the lives, roles, experiences and perceptions of ordinary women during the twentieth century will be explored. Students will be introduced to an array of sources – including popular and visual culture, oral testimony and literature (fiction and memoir) – and to what they reveal about the manner in which women were perceived and represented; how women viewed themselves; and how women of different generations experienced, negotiated and reacted to social change. Fashion, consumerism, courtship, sexuality, and advertising are among the areas considered for what they reveal about women and the world around them. Such themes will be analysed within the context of continuity and change across the twentieth century and three geographical perspectives. The module will conclude by questioning the extent to which women’s movements were representative of ordinary women. |
Euro-Crime on Page and Screen
|
15 Credits |
Optional |
The twenty-first century has seen a resurgence of interest in crime fiction, films and television dramas ranging from renewed interest in the “who-dunnits” of Agatha Christie to the more explicit violence of contemporary “Nordic Noir”. This module examines examples of European crime writing beginning with the popularity of detective fiction in the early 1900s before looking at how successive European writers and film/programme makers have modified the form to suit their times, often using the crime at the centre of their narratives as a jumping off point for exploring questions of national and cultural identities. The written and filmed texts studied will take us to different European countries. Typical examples include, but are not limited to, stories from Britain’s “Golden Age” (1920s and 1930s), novels and film adaptations of work by Georges Simenon (Inspector Maigret, France), Arnaldur Indriðason (Detective Erlendur, Iceland), Stieg Larsson (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Sweden), and Andrea Camilleri and Giancarlo de Cataldo (Inspector Montalbano and Romanze Criminale, Italy). Works will be read in translation. |
Creative Writing Project Poetry
|
30 Credits |
Optional |
The Creative Writing Project module is the culmination of your three years of study of the subject. Over two semesters, you will meet in fortnightly intensive three hour workshops to develop and hone your writing. The workshops will, where possible, be genre specific and all workshops will be led by professional writers. Workshops will also cover how to work as a writer professionally, including how to submit your work to competitions, agents, publishers, producers, etc. You will devise, plan and produce an extended piece of creative writing in a genre of particular personal interest.
You will finish the module having a substantial piece of writing you can either submit professionally or continue working on after graduation. The module is also an excellent preparation for pursuing an MA in Creative Writing. |
Creative Writing Project Prose
|
30 Credits |
Optional |
The Creative Writing Project module is the culmination of your three years of study of the subject. Over two semesters, you will meet in fortnightly intensive three hour workshops to develop and hone your writing. The workshops will, where possible, be genre specific and all workshops will be led by professional writers. Workshops will also cover how to work as a writer professionally, including how to submit your work to competitions, agents, publishers, producers, etc. You will devise, plan and produce an extended piece of creative writing in a genre of particular personal interest.
You will finish the module having a substantial piece of writing you can either submit professionally or continue working on after graduation. The module is also an excellent preparation for pursuing an MA in Creative Writing. |
Creative Writing Project Script
|
30 Credits |
Optional |
The Creative Writing Project module is the culmination of your three years of study of the subject. Over two semesters, you will meet in fortnightly intensive three hour workshops to develop and hone your writing. The workshops will, where possible, be genre specific and all workshops will be led by professional writers. Workshops will also cover how to work as a writer professionally, including how to submit your work to competitions, agents, publishers, producers, etc. You will devise, plan and produce an extended piece of creative writing in a genre of particular personal interest. You will finish the module having a substantial piece of writing you can either submit professionally or continue working on after graduation. The module is also an excellent preparation for pursuing an MA in Creative Writing. |