I have classes! null

It’s been a small nightmare getting my classes sorted out for this year. Due to the resit, I had to wait for someone to progress me onto the next year, and this was delayed by some major problems with the entire system. Those were finally sorted at the beginning of the week, and mine wasn’t. It took all week, but finally Friday I got my classes sorted. So now it’s time for the annual pre-term what is Heather studying this year’s blog post.

I actually have no idea whether some of these courses are for both semesters or if I need to pick a semester to study them in. Likewise, with the two core English Literature lectures, I’ve no idea whether I need to take both or one per semester. As for whether there are tutorials and assessments for them (just confirmed that they are not assessed) – your guess is as good as mine. So there will probably be another update in a few weeks before classes start.

Let’s start off with the two core lectures – basically, the ones the department forces you to take:

ENGLIT 4060 – LC01   Introducing Forms and Genres
To introduce students entering the Honours English Literature Programme to the key literary genres and forms that they will encounter in a range of course options within the programme: to present and analyse examples of a variety of literary forms and demonstrate how they have evolved within literary history; to introduce students to the critical debates that relate to the study of literary form and genre.
ENGLIT 4061 – Introducing Concepts and Approaches
To introduce students entering the Honours English Literature Programme to a set of key literary concepts and critical approaches to literature that they will encounter in a range of course options within the programme: to present and analyse examples of a variety of concepts and demonstrate how they have evolved within literary history; to introduce students to the critical debates that relate to the study of literature.
Everything else was up to me, and I chose:
ENGLIT 4014 – Literature 1780-1840 (aka Victorian Literature)
This course addresses prose, poetry and drama from the Nineteenth Century.  Students can expect to study the work of major novelists, such as George Eliot, as well as poetry by figures such as Lord Alfred Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Rudyard Kipling.  Students will be encouraged to place their understanding of such literary writings in context with some of the major social, historical and political developments in this period; they will also be encouraged to draw upon the work of authors across the period, from the early novels of Charles Dickens in the 1840 to fin de siècle writings by Oscar Wilde and Robert Louis Stevenson from the 1890’s.
Creative Writing Dissertation
Creative writing, taught through workshops, is a valuable discipline in developing editorial, critical and creative skills. Students facing the demands of genre and the challenges of form become differently aware of the dynamics involved and of the values inherent in different kinds and combinations of creative work. They grow alert to issues of diction, syntax, tone, rhythm, structure and progression in their own and in their fellow students¹ writing, and this experience feeds into their reading and criticism. In seeing how form has been and can be honoured, subverted, developed and disrupted, they come to discriminate between authentic and factitious experiment and to understand by imitation and example.

This dissertation course gives students an opportunity to build up their own work within a strict critical workshop context and to become part of that context in appraising and encouraging the work of fellow writers. Each student, in relation to the writing of others, develops editorial and critical skills, while learning to work to length and to deadline. More than an exploration of self, the course is an exploration of the art of writing and an exploration of its techniques.

COMPLIT 4017 – LC01   The Brothers Grimm and the European Fairy Tale
This course will examine some of the tales written down by the Grimms and others, and students will discuss various interpretations to which they have been subjected. By focusing on various interpretations of tales (for example, psychological, literary, folkloristic, formalistic, feminist, Marxist) students will begin to see how this simplest form of narrative can carry so much importance for informing just how it is that we humans make meaning through telling stories.
COMPLIT 4016 – SM01   Infidelities
This course explores treatments of the theme of adultery and infidelity in some depth and across a wide range of texts and genres. Taking as its starting point representations of adultery in European narrative, the course will encourage students to analyse parallels and contrasts between the texts on thematic and stylistic levels and in relation to socio-cultural contexts, but will also require them to go beyond a mere thematic
reading to consider questions of gender, class, identity.
ENGLIT 4052 – LC01   Humanities in the Classroom (with work placement)
This course examines the effects of educational policy and methods on discipline formation in Scotland and Britain, from 1850 to the present.  It encourages all students to reflect critically on their own attributes, skills and experiences in learning and teaching and gives those with an interest in a career in education an opportunity to become more familiar with aspects of professional life.  Working in groups as well as individually, students consider their disciplines from the outside, learning to explain key elements of them to a variety of non-specialists.  The course will include institutional visits to educational institutions.  It gives students an opportunity to apply and adapt their disciplinary knowledge to problems demanding multidisciplinary approaches.  The course’s emphasis on enquiry-based learning and assessment methods aims to improve students’ confidence, teamwork skills and presentation skills.
This version of the course includes a voluntary work placement in an educational institution or other location where education is provided.

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8 Comments

  1. The Brother’s Grimm sounds like it might be a fun class to take!!!

  2. The Brother’s Grimm sounds like it might be a fun class to take!!!

  5. I know how that feel, waiting for you to get progressed. I hate it when you have to come back everyday to college just to follow up on whatever’s going on. Ugh.

    1. Fortunately I was able to do it online via email and support calls, it was just the waiting for the department to get back to be and also my advisor was on leave so he could only email every so often. All done now though 🙂

  6. I know how that feel, waiting for you to get progressed. I hate it when you have to come back everyday to college just to follow up on whatever’s going on. Ugh.

    1. Fortunately I was able to do it online via email and support calls, it was just the waiting for the department to get back to be and also my advisor was on leave so he could only email every so often. All done now though 🙂

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