The Master’s Programme in English Language and Literature aims to offer students advanced competency in the analysis of literary texts in the context of larger cultural processes. The focus of the M.A. Program is firmly on the development of the critical and interpretive skills fundamental to textual analysis. The program introduces students to alternative theoretical and methodological approaches to literary and cultural studies, with offerings in literary and critical theory, feminist theory and gender studies, and postcolonial literature and theory. The program also attempts to foster an awareness of connections between the study of literature and other disciplines within the humanities and social sciences. Alongside works from the canon of British literature, students have the opportunity to study a broader array of Anglophone cultures and to develop a comparative perspective on literature and culture.
The M.A. Program is primarily designed for those who wish to pursue a career in teaching and research. Graduates from the program may work as Instructors in academic institutions. The linguistic, analytic and interpretive skills acquired in the study of English Language and Literature also open up many other career options, especially in the worlds of media and publishing.
English Language and Literature M.A. Program (With Thesis)
Course Descriptions 2017-2018
FALL SEMESTER
COMPULSORY COURSES
ENGY 519 LITERARY CRITICISM AND THEORY I
This course is an introduction to some of the main currents that have contributed to contemporary, broadly “poststructuralist” theory and criticism. Starting from the roots of contemporary critical theory in the critiques offered by Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx and Ferdinand de Saussure, students will understand the significance of the structuralist reworkings of elements of Marxism and psychoanalysis and consider the significance of Derridean deconstruction within such contemporary critical movements as feminism and postcolonial theory.
ENGY 521 ADVANCED COMPOSITION FOR LITERARY STUDIES
This class will expose students to a range of rhetorical and argumentative possibilities in producing advanced academic writing in the field of English literature. The course will circulate around a given text, and students will work through the writing process (including prewriting, drafting, reviewing and editing) in regard to that text. Additionally, the course will introduce students to academic research and building arguments from and around research.
ELECTIVES
ENGY 551 AMERICAN CULTURE I
This course focuses on a number of historical and critical issues within the period from Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the “New World” to the American War of Independence and subsequent efforts to articulate the “United States of America” as a political and cultural project. Texts may be from a mixture of genres, including poetry, prose fiction and non-fictional prose. Students will learn to analyse the ideological function of cultural texts and to take a critical view of the construction of identity.
ENGY 553 POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE AND MULTICULTURALISM I
This course directly addresses central, if often unspoken, problems in the study of “English literature”: it addresses the problematic relationship of “Englishness” to its “Others” through an exploration of the culture associated with empire. Students will become familiar with texts that directly address questions of empire, race and colonialism, but they will also gain a new critical perspective on “English” literature through an introduction to elements of postcolonial criticism.
ENGY 555 FILM STUDIES I
This course introduces students to the analysis of cinematic works from a variety of critical approaches which may include authorial, formal, realist, feminist, cultural, psychoanalytic and ideological criticisms. Students will familiarize themselves with significant works and movements in film history, and have an opportunity to critically evaluate theories concerning cinematic narrative and genre. The class may also explore the relationships between film and literature and address questions of translation and adaptation. Students will develop a critical understanding of the similarities and differences that hold between word and image, literary and cinematic narrative.
ENGY 557 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE I
In this course, students will learn about significant debates related to the much contested notion of “comparative literature,” such as the ambiguity of the adjective “comparative,” the simultaneous rise of comparative literature and “theory” and the emerging tension between “Cultural Studies” and comparative literature. Attention will be paid to the widening of the comparative field with the inclusion of visual media, as well as increasing challenges to the conventionally Eurocentric understanding of the limits of comparability with the inclusion of “minority” literatures and traditionally neglected cultural contexts.
ENGY 561 STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE I
This course aims to provide an introduction to key movements within the development of English and Anglophone literatures. Students will sharpen the fundamental skills involved in literary analysis, with particular emphasis on close reading and an understanding of the connections between text and cultural and historical context. Students will also develop sensitivity to genre and acquire an awareness of the methodological questions associated with the analysis of different kinds of text.
ENGY 565 INDEPENDENT STUDY I
The purpose of this class is to offer students the opportunity to develop a course of study that they have undertaken in further depth, and to practice the discipline and skills associated with independent research. In principle this class may be taken as an optional class by any student, although it is particularly intended to offer a supplement to undergraduate coursework for M.A. students who wish to register in an undergraduate class. In any case, the 2 credits will be earned through the completion of an independent research paper on a topic approved by the course instructor and produced under the supervision of the instructor.
ENGY 577 CULTURAL STUDIES I
This course examines the origins and development of the interdisciplinary field that has come to be known as “Cultural Studies.” As such, students will be introduced to a body of theory that has been worked out in the context of the meeting of literature, anthropology, sociology and history, among others. Particular attention may be paid to the role of semiotics and of theories of the commodity as approaches that have played a uniting role in the construction of the field. Other key problematics in Cultural Studies, such as questions of class, gender and globalization may also be addressed.
ENGY 579 FEMINIST AND GENDER THEORY I
This course will provide an introduction to the critical analysis of gender in relation to the study of literature. Feminist criticism has not only indicated the importance of gender as a central theme in literary works but also raised a number of theoretical questions about authorship, poetics and literature as a site of political struggle over representational practices. Students will acquire an overview of the historical development of feminist thought and develop an awareness of the sometimes conflicting multiplicity of feminist thought in its various manifestations, including liberal, socialist and radical threads, as well as the psychoanalytic and poststructuralist turns. Students will explore the implications of these various theoretical models through application to a number of literary texts in the course of the semester.
ENGY 583 ANGLOPHONE DRAMA I
While sketching a historical overview of Anglophone drama, this course may focus on a particular period, genre, theme or theoretical problem in theater. Possible topics might include gender, performativity, adaptation, the challenges raised by performance art and performance studies, the relationship between theatre and other visual media, popular drama. Material to be covered may include not only British, Irish and U.S. drama but any Anglophone performance.
ENGY 587 STUDIES IN ANGLOPHONE POETRY I
This course will introduce students to the art of prosody, namely the science and technique of poetic metre and versification. Students will learn how to identify and comprehend the rhetorical function of metaphor, simile, symbol, caesura, chiasmus, enjambment, and of the sound patterns produced through assonance, alliteration, and consonance. One segment of the course will be devoted to the ornate and ceremonious sonnet form.
ENGY 591 STUDIES IN ANGLOPHONE NOVEL I
This course is designed as a frame in which to investigate historically and ideologically the novel as a discursive and literary form in English. The course may either be taught as an introduction to the emergence of the novel as a discursive form in the eighteenth-century or may assess a variety of experimental or popular genres that emerge in the nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries (such as science-fiction, the migrant novel, sentimental fiction, crime fiction, for example). This course will also evoke multiple and competing theories of the rise of the novel and its forms and students will be expected to evaluate the differing positions regarding the subject within the discipline.
ENGY 593 LITERARY GENRES I
This class, along with ENGY 594, is intended to enable students to understand and analyze the conventions of a particular literary genre. Alternatively, or additionally, it may explore the very concept of genre and its usefulness to literary studies from a theoretical, historical or comparative point of view. The development of a genre may be traced historically, or a particular thematic or period focus may be used in order to conduct a “case study” in genre analysis. The historicity of literary genres and the manner in which a text may diverge from, subvert and parody the genre it is thought to represent will be major concerns of the class.
SPRING SEMESTER
COMPULSORY COURSES
ENGY 570 SEMINAR
The seminar aims to expose the students to a variety of methodological and theoretical questions through the participation of invited guest speakers and by providing graduate students with a forum for the presentation of their own research.
ELECTIVES
ENGY 552 AMERICAN CULTURE II
This course focuses on a number of historical and critical issues within the period starting from the end of the American Revolution. Topics may include the historical project of proclaiming a cultural and philosophical independence to match the newly gained political autonomy of the United States. Attention may also be given to the interconnection between literary and political projects for the contestation of relations of slavery and sexual and racial domination.
ENGY 554 POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE AND MULTICULTURALISM II
If ENGL 553 traces the significance of empire in the production of British literature, this course focuses on the ways in which anti- and postcolonial projects have shaken assumptions about race and nation, often in association with a larger set of social relations, including those of gender and class. Students will acquire knowledge about the history of decolonization and the historical legacy of empire. They will consider the significance of postcolonial theory for the very concept of a “national literature,” and will learn to evaluate the ways in which the sophisticated works of postcolonial fiction take on the status of theoretical texts.
ENGY 556 FILM STUDIES II
This course is a continuation of ENGL 555, and as such include the analysis of selected cinematic works that belong to particular directors, periods, traditions and/or national settings. Students will have the opportunity to apply critical approaches learned in the previous semester while also exploring alternative methodologies and theoretical approaches. Students may also pursue interdisciplinary projects that investigate the intersections between visual and written media.
ENGY 558 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE II
This course is a continuation of ENGL 557.
ENGY 562 STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE II
This course continues the introduction to key movements within the development of English and Anglophone literatures begun in ENGY 517. Students will sharpen the fundamental skills involved in literary analysis, with particular emphasis on close reading and an understanding of the connections between text and cultural and historical context. Students will also develop sensitivity to genre and acquire an awareness of the methodological questions associated with the analysis of different kinds of text.
ENGY 564 LITERARY CRITICISM AND THEORY II
This course continues the introduction to the main currents within contemporary literary and critical theory begun in ENGY 515. In this semester the emphasis will fall more heavily on applications of contemporary theory within particular fields of literary and cultural criticism. Students will acquire sensitivity to the implications of different theoretical and methodological approaches within a particular field. In analyzing a piece of contemporary criticism, students should be able to identify its theoretical assumptions.
ENGY 566 INDEPENDENT STUDY II
The purpose of this class is to offer students the opportunity to develop a course of study that they have undertaken in further depth, and to practice the discipline and skills associated with independent research. In principle this class may be taken as an optional class by any student, although it is particularly intended to offer a supplement to undergraduate coursework for M.A. students who wish to register in an undergraduate class. In any case, the 2 credits will be earned through the completion of an independent research paper on a topic approved by the course instructor and produced under the supervision of the instructor.
ENGY 580 FEMINIST AND GENDER THEORY II
This course is a continuation of ENGL 579.
ENGY 584 ANGLOPHONE DRAMA II
This course is a continuation of ENGL 583.
ENGY 578 CULTURAL STUDIES II
This course is a continuation of ENGL 577.
ENGY 588 STUDIES IN ANGLOPHONE POETRY II
This course explores the principal preoccupations of the Romantic period and critiques the Romantics’ oppositional stance in the spheres of politics, ethics, and aesthetics. Specific areas covered are the Romantics’ outspoken demand for political reform, their exposure of the extreme rural and urban poverty in England, their implicit condemnation of empire and the deleterious effects of the industrial revolution, their belief in and construction of a Neoplatonist Weltseele, and the ethical underpinning of their celebration of the sublime and of the innocence of childhood.
ENGY 592 STUDIES IN ANGLOPHONE NOVEL II
This course is designed as an extension and development of the first course and will continue, either as a historical evaluation of the novel in the nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries or will cover specific generic formations of the novel throughout its history in English. Contemporary movements or experimental fiction may be the subject of the course. Likewise, forms of popular fiction, romance, fan fiction, or other emerging trends in the novel may be the subject if the course. Alternately, a single complex novel may be used as a source from which students may produce multiple critical narratological responses.
ENGY 594 LITERARY GENRES II
This class, along with ENGY 593 is intended to enable students to understand and analyse the conventions of a particular literary genre. Alternatively, or additionally, it may explore the very concept of genre and its usefulness to literary studies from a theoretical, historical or comparative point of view. The development of a genre may be traced historically, or a particular thematic or period focus may be used in order to conduct a “case study” in genre analysis. The historicity of literary genres and the manner in which a text may diverge from, subvert and parody the genre it is thought to represent will be major concerns of the class.