Film and Television Studies and English BA

It’s important in the film and television industry to consider whose stories are being told, who is in creative roles behind the camera and how people are being represented. This module will explore identity politics and consider theory such as feminism, queer theory, postcolonialism and disability studies, among others. We will consider how certain identities are portrayed onscreen both historically and now.

This module focuses on the key skills of critical and close reading, as central to the study of literature. Learning the skills necessary to read at a higher level, including the interpretation and analysis of literary texts, is a core competency for students of English literature. The central aim of this module, therefore, is to enhance and develop students’ engagement with primary and secondary texts. Students will learn how to analyse and interpret complex texts in various genres, making use of the established techniques and approaches of the discipline. Students will engage with the idea of critical reading as a practice-based and culturally-informed act that must be learned and developed. Teaching is shaped around the goal of developing students’ “reading resilience”, that is, the ability to read, discuss, and write about, varied and challenging texts with confidence. Through discussion, group workshops, lectures and individual tasks, students will become proficient in working with literary and rhetorical texts, learning skills that are essential throughout the degree. The module forms a foundational aspect of the degree programme, benchmarking skills such as time management, evidence-based analysis, and close reading.

The purpose of this module is to enable Creative Writing and English Literature students to develop a grounding in effective writing practices and core competencies of textual production. Students will develop an understanding of the different stages of textual production, from prewriting, research, planning and outlining, to drafting, feedback and editing, polishing and submission, as well as an understanding of core writing mechanics. This module will enable students to explore and practice the differing conventions of textual production in a variety of areas of academia and the creative industries, from non-fiction modes such as the academic essay, critical and reflective writing, to screenplays and fiction manuscripts.

This module aims to introduce students to the study of World Literature, introducing key critical approaches and engaging with texts from contrasting cultural locations. Students will learn about rich and varied world literary traditions and forms; acquire theoretical perspectives; build a world literary critical vocabulary; engage in debates about the meaning and role of world literature and reflect on creative practice and literary production in world contexts.

This module aims to introduce students to the study of the literature of London, introducing key critical approaches and engaging with texts from a range of cultural backgrounds. Students will learn about London’s rich and varied literary traditions and forms; acquire theoretical perspectives; build a literary critical vocabulary; engage in debates about the meaning and role of London in literature and reflect on creative practice and literary production in relation to London’s diverse past and present.

With the central aim of developing your creative and technical skills, this module will introduce you to the vocabulary, concepts and equipment needed in film production. You will work collaboratively with your peers to train with our technical and academic staff as well as engage in all aspects of storytelling. This is where you begin your journey learning the conventions and practices of filmmaking with our industry standard equipment.

A production-based module, you will be able to explore the process of adaptation from a variety of sources to the screen. Developing your creative skills you will consider many forms of storytelling and character construction as well as developing your production filmmaking skills.

This module examines the shifting status of genre fiction in the late nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries by exploring a range of genres (Detective, Gothic, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and crossovers between these). Besides gaining an understanding of some of the key thematic and formal conventions of these genres, and how these have changed over time and with respect to shifting social and political contexts, you will gain an understanding of the critical public sphere that exists beyond academic institutions. Beyond academia, there is a world of reviews, blogs, conventions, and festivals relating to books. Therefore, while this module will cover the academic study of genre fiction and require you to write a conventionally structured and referenced academic essay, it will also branch out to consider this wider context by looking at some reviews and debates from the public sphere and require you to write a review of your own.

This module looks at a range of twenty-first century fiction originating from Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and the Caribbean, to explore diverse experiences of inequality in an era of globalisation. It interrogates a range of novels, stories, and poetry in light of theoretical concepts drawn from world-literary theory and materialist feminism, asking whether and how socially committed fiction can challenge the overlapping oppressions of contemporary times.

The purpose of this module is to study the interrelation of genre – the novel – and period – the nineteenth century. Through the chronological study of a representative selection of five texts, the module will introduce the key generic elements of the nineteenth-century novel, and chart changes in their deployment over the course of the century. Particular attention will be paid to Realism and Gothic. In addition to narrative form, a range of social and cultural contexts will be suggested as a means of accounting for, and understanding, textual features. Stress will be placed throughout on close textual analysis.

In this module we study the literature of the early twentieth century with particular emphasis on those authors who attempted to break away from received norms of literary style and content. As well as providing an overview of the defining textual features of modernism, the module is concerned with the interrelation of text and context, seeing modernist literature as both of, and self-consciously ahead of, its historical moment. We will take into account transnational and cross-cultural contexts, including discussions of the decline of empire, World War I, trauma, the expatriate experience, the legacies of slavery, changing attitudes to feminism, sexuality, class, and shifting constructions of identity.

The political events of the late eighteenth century – the American War of Independence, French Revolution, and Napoleonic wars – dramatically changed the lives, ideas, and aesthetics of the Romantic Britain. Evolving from the mid 1770s to the mid 1820s, the period we now call Romanticism signalled a profound change in the form and content of literature, breaking away from the neo-classical conventions of the Augustans which had dominated much of the eighteenth century, and turning to the regional, folkloric, and numinous traditions of British and European literatures. Working in a range of genres, including the novel, pamphlets, poetry, and philosophical, satirical, and travel writing, Romantic writers responded to a set of urgent, ethical, aesthetic, and environmental changes. In the module we consider the ‘first generation’ (Wordsworth, Coleridge, William Blake) and ‘second generation’ Romantics (Shelley, Byron, and Keats), and important political writers such as Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, and William Godwin. Alongside these now-canonical names we read a diverse range of women and Black writers who contributed just as significantly to key Romantic debates: Anna Aikin, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Ottobah Cugoano, Ouladah Equiano, Hannah More, Ann Radcliffe, Mary Robinson, Ignatius Sancho, Mary Shelley, Helen Maria Williams, Dorothy Wordsworth, Phillis Wheatley, and Anne Yearsley.

The aims of this module are:

• To introduce the study of Shakespeare at an advanced level, in greater depth, with an emphasis upon the types of study skills required for advanced critical work in the fields of ‘book history’ and ‘performance studies’
• To introduce and define both ‘book history’ and ‘performance studies’
• To introduce advanced methods of analysis of early modern texts, both in their original context and in their subsequent manifestations in print
• To introduce textual scholarship about language, performance and the visual layout of text – both in Shakespeare’s time and in the present day
• The course will enable students to gain an understanding and experience of the concept of the Shakespearean text as an artefact and art form, one constantly evolving through criticism, editorial intervention and performance

This module introduces students to a range of contemporary British and Irish fiction, developing knowledge of the variety and complexity of contemporary writing and its relation to social and cultural context. The module examines texts which employ a range of themes, forms, and styles. It asks what we mean by the term ‘contemporary’ and encourages analysis of the relationship between texts and the historical moments in which they are produced and consumed.

Postcolonial writing often comes out of difficult circumstances. Writers studied on this module sometimes risked everything to publish what they needed to say. These are the new pioneers of Literature in English whose works would inspire and define the writings of the future. A central focus of the module is to get to grips with the key concepts encountered in postcolonial studies, which have been developed to investigate the phenomena of colonialism and resistance, multiculturalism and globalization, racism, and Islamophobia. Using these, we will be exploring the works of a series of important and fascinating writers. The texts which we will be studying show a variety of different perspectives on colonialism and its legacies, including those of imperialists and the peoples they tried to suppress.

Genre is integral to mainstream filmmaking and beyond, and this module allows you to engage with critical frameworks and theory for understanding genre in an industrial, historical, and cultural context. A range of case studies are explored in detail allowing students to fully develop an understanding of genre film and television.

Interested in exploring the dynamic relationships that exist between different cinemas from different places? Then this option is for you. We will consider a range of world cinemas from the Global South, Asia and beyond. We will consider global art and alternative cinemas as well as more mainstream practices, considering films in terms of globalisation and the transnational, as well as the regional and the national.

Theoretical perspectives are at the core of this module, giving you the frameworks you will need to read and make meaning from film and television. We will consider feminism, structuralism and post-structuralism, Marxism among many other approaches we might take to understanding film and television.

Students will explore the role that film plays in advocacy, activism and social justice. The purpose of this module is to provide opportunities for students to create a portfolio of moving image work that has been developed to address social injustice. Students will explore the role of corporate, NGO, commercial and independent filmmaking, as well as looking at campaigns and distribution strategies. Students will work in a team and contribute to decision making processes.

Firstly, this module will allow you to explore the medium specificity of animation, the range of techniques available, as well as different industries and their development. We will then go on to teach you a range of animation production skills which will allow you to create your own short form animation in a style and medium of your choosing.

This module is largely led by feminist theory and queer theory where we examine a range of identities onscreen in relation to gender and sexuality. A number of case studies are examined across the module from historical examples to more contemporary work.

This module provides students with an in-depth examination of the horror genre across both film and television. Critical frameworks and theories relevant to the study of horror will be explored in depth across a range of case studies from historical and more contemporary contexts, as well as from a range of global contexts.

As part of our employability strand this module will give you a large range of guest talks from people that work across many different parts of the creative industries. Many of the guest speakers are Film@Brunel alumni. You will also have the opportunity to undertake your own work placement as part of this module allowing you to develop both your employability and networking skills.

This module considers twentieth century and contemporary writing in dialogue with feminist waves and movements as well as relevant theory. It focuses primarily on the Second and Third Waves of feminism, but with a broad recognition of First Wave influences and debates about an emergent Fourth Wave in the contemporary period. Feminism’s relationship to related and other gender/sexual equality movements will be considered along the way, most particularly in connection with LGBT perspectives and masculinity studies. Each week of the module brings theory into dialogue with literature pertaining to feminist perspectives, with an emphasis on women’s writing. The module considers key concepts, such as patriarchy, desire, social and biological claims about gender/sex, and intersectionalism. It pays close attention to the interrelationship between literature and activism, reflecting on the text’s potential to register and remediate the patriarchal order. An indicative reading list might include theorists such as

Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, Patricia Hill Collins, Judith Butler, Susan Faludi, Chandra Talpade Mohanty and Rebecca Walker. Literary texts will address the range and diversity of multiple feminisms as articulated from the 20th century to the present, with attention to the pluralisms and diversification of feminisms.

This module is structured around three ‘case studies’, each focused on a specific aspect of Victorian literature and culture:

1. Class, Conflict, Identity
2. Crime and Sensation: The Newspaper and the Novel
3. Women and Society

The aims of the module are:

• to explore some of the ways in which Victorian literature might encode or challenge particular cultural assumptions
• to analyse some of the relationships between literary forms and genres, ideological values and changing social and aesthetic contexts of the Victorian period
• to consider how the knowledge of the Victorian period may contribute to the interpretation of texts produced during this time

This module will introduce third-year students to the early modern interaction between Christians and Muslims, viewed from the perspective of both. It will introduce students to these interactions via English drama. It will explore how post-Reformation England learned to redefine itself as a Christian nation and how it dealt with increased trade and negotiations with Muslim nations. Main topics of study are:

• Common literary tropes about Muslims in early modern literature
• Christian and Islamic beliefs and fears in literature
• Travel writing – interaction of west and east
• Prose propaganda and multicultural London
• Writings in captivity
• The Muslim world in early modern English Literature

This module aims to develop students’ awareness of the representations of violence within modern culture. We engage with a variety of cultural materials—literary, visual, conceptual and technological—to ask a series of questions as regards the role of violence and coercion in our culture and everyday lives. The module is split into two parts. Part one, Bioviolence and Biopolitics looks at biopolitical theories of power, force, violence, coercion and exclusion. The second, Discourses of Coercion 2015-2020 applies the theory to case studies taken from events on the last five years or so such as #Blacklivesmatter, Grenfell Tower, and Coronavirus.

Focusing on Austen’s work in relation to adaptation, this module explores the forms of fiction she inherited as a young writer – the novels of Frances Burney and Ann Radcliffe – and how she adapted these models to her own work and concerns. It then considers how Austen was adapted in her turn, in a number of extremely popular films and series, to think about how the late eighteenth century ‘courtship’ and marriage plots continue to be reinvented through to the contemporary period. Texts may include: Radcliffe The Italian 1796, Austen Northanger Abbey (1803/ 1818), Frances Burney Evelina, or the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World (1778), Austen Lady Susan (1794/1871), Austen Pride and Prejudice (1813), Robert Z. Leonard d. Pride and Prejudice (1940), Simon Langton d. Pride and Prejudice (1995), Sharon Maguire d. Bridget Jones’ Diary (2001), Chris Van Dusen’s Bridgerton Season 1 (2020).

The module examines Ireland’s rich literary tradition via key historical touchstones including the Easter Rising of 1916, the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the rise and fall of the Celtic Tiger. Theorised discussions of the meaning of Irish identity, intersections with colonialism, the Irish language and the worldwide diaspora will be framed via readings of poetry, novels, short stories, autobiography and drama. The principle aims of Writing Ireland are:

1. To undertake a critical survey of a wide range of Irish writing in the English language including depictions of Ireland in poetry, drama and prose genres
2. To explore the key political events which led to Ireland’s independence and to consider the role of literature in this and beyond
3. To analyse the preconceptions, stereotypes and literary expectations of Irishness through identity debates and close reading

This module aims to develop your critical, cultural and aesthetic awareness of Post-War and Late Twentieth-Century Fiction by examining the work of both established and more experimental writers. The module focuses first on the sensibilities of the postwar period before exploring the emergence of the ‘postmodern’ as a way of understanding later twentieth century experience. It concludes by exploring the experimental fiction of three leading British writers, Ian McEwan, Angela Carter and Jeanette Winterson. Two particularly influential late-twentieth century theorists are encountered in detail, Jean Baudrillard and Judith Butler.