Admission requirements
Admission to the MA in Literary Studies, the research MA in Arts, Literature and Media or the ICLON two-year educational master in English
Description
Class is a key reality in the modern-day world. In many societies, there are significant variations in wealth, material possessions, power, authority and prestige, as well as in access to education, healthcare and leisure. Class has also been a prominent and abiding theme in (English) literature, as well as in cinema. This course examines the ways in which work of literature and films have explored issues of social class, from the early nineteenth century (when debates about class in the modern meanings of the term began) to the present day.
Our main emphasis is on prose fiction, though we will also make substantial excursions into film when we come to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. How do writers and directors use the formal languages of fiction and film to examine the meaning of class? Does a particular work of literature or film confirm or undermine class ideologies? Or is its treatment of class more elusive? How do issues of social class interact with gender and race, and with the history of colonialism? The first two seminars offer a conceptual and theoretical framework for analysing social class, both as a phenomenon in the real world and as a topic in works of literature and film. Seminars 3 to 12 turn to specific literary and cinematic case studies, building on the theoretical concepts introduced in seminar one.
Course objectives
At the end of the course students will:
Be able to reflect analytically and theoretically on issues of social class, both in its real-world manifestation and its representation in literature;
Be able to offer detailed and sophisticated analysis of representations of social class in specific works of literature;
Have deepened their ability to engage in informed academic dialogue and debate with others;
Have further developed their academic presentation skills;
Have further developed their academic writing skills by means of a substantial research essay.
Timetable
The timetables are available through My Timetable.
Mode of instruction
Weekly 2-hour seminar
Research – and writing
Assessment method
• Classroom Presentation (25%)
• Research essay (4,500 words) (75%)
The deadline for submitting the research essay is 20.00 on Tuesday 7 January. The essay should be presented in accordance with the MLA Stylesheet and must be uploaded to BrightSpace.
The essay will be assessed according to the following criteria: your ability to come up with a ‘thesis statement’ in relation to the topic in question, one that your essay / assignment will coherently and insightfully develop; the quality and sophistication of the central argument; the depth and appropriateness of your research; the scholarliness of your referencing and presentation; the deployment of structure; the quality of the writing; and the originality and depth of your analysis. Any student who plagiarises their work will be in trouble for doing so. Plagiarism includes writing your essay using an AI large-language model-based chatbot, such as ChatGPT.
All essays will be expected by Tuesday 7th January at 20.00. The date for resit essays is 3rd February.
Students who are studying for the Research Master are expected to write an essay of 4500-5000 words that includes additional methodological reflection and scholarly research.
Students who are studying for the MA in Education should focus their essay on the ways in which you could apply what you have learnt in the course to the teaching of short stories in the classroom.
Classroom presentations
Classroom presentations will begin in week 2 of the course. Students sign up for the classroom presentations no later than week 1. Instructions on how to sign up will be posted on BrightSpace before the start of the course. Students should initially sign up for two weeks. The course convenor will finalize the presentation schedule, accommodating everyone’s preferences as much as possible.
For the presentations, students will work in pairs. Approximately 10 minutes in length, presentations should offer a starting point for the seminar as a whole. In general, the two presenters introduce a small set of reading questions (most likely two to four), to be discussed during the seminar. The presenters themselves offer a first response to these questions by analysing a few important details, passages, scenes or moments in the primary sources. The aim of this analysis is not, of course, to be definitive or exhaustive but to illustrate how the reading questions can help us explore and understand the primary sources.
THE GRADING CRITERIA for the presentations: The tutor present in the class will grade the presentations on the following criteria:
Usefulness and sophistication of the reading questions (as thematic starting points for the seminar).
Usefulness and sophistication of the presenters' own first response to these questions (which should involve some degree of close reading).
Use of relevant secondary and/or theoretical literature
Structure and clarity (both in terms of content and presentation/delivery)
Team work (if applicable): division of tasks, coherence between the individual presenters' contributions (this overlaps in part with structure and clarity).
The presentations should also draw on ideas and concepts from relevant secondary or theoretical literature and show how these are useful in analysing the primary sources.
Please note that for some weeks, the instructions for the presentation will be a bit more specific; this will be communicated in time by the instructors.
Assessment and Weighing
The final mark for the course is established by determining the weighted average. To pass the course, the weighted average of the partial grades must be 5.5 or higher.
Resit
The date for the essay resit is 3rd February. For students, who miss their presentation due to illness, there will be an opportunity provided to ‘resit’ this.
Inspection and feedback
How and when an exam review will take place will be disclosed together with the publication of the exam results at the latest. If a student requests a review within 30 days after publication of the exam results, an exam review will have to be organized.
Reading list
Books:
Jane Austen, *Mansfield Park *(1814) (Penguin Classics, ed. Kathryn Sutherland)
Charles Dickens, Hard Times (1854) (Penguin Classics, ed. Kate Flint).
Jean Rhys, ‘Let Them Call It Jazz’ (1962) in Collected Short Stories (Penguin, 1987 – most recent edition reprinted in 2017).
E. R. Braithwaite, To Sir, With Love (1959) (Vintage Books, 2005)
Katherine Mansfield, ‘The Garden Party’, ‘The Daughters of the Late Colonel’, and ‘The Life of Ma Parker’ in The Garden Party, and Other Stories (1922) (Penguin Classics, 1997 – reprinted many times since).
D. H. Lawrence, ‘Odour of Chrysanthemums’ and ‘The Prussian Officer’ (1914) from Selected Stories (Penguin Classics, 2007 – reprinted since).
D. H. Lawrence, ‘Autobiographical Sketch’ (1929) from Assorted Articles Martin Secker, 1930). This may be hard to obtain, though if doable this may be provided in photocopy form (it is long out of copyright) – though the Mansfield and Lawrence stories, and this article will also be made available via Brightspace via links to archive.org
Films (to be watched on DVD, Blu-Ray, on archive.org or YouTube, or via a legal streaming service):
(many of the films are available for screening on DVD in the library)
James Clavell, To Sir, With Love (1967)*
Robert Altman, Gosford Park (2001)
Spike Lee, Do The Right Thing (1989)
Whit Stillman, *Metropolitan *(1990)
There will be in addition three other texts, which will be announced closer to the time on the course’s Brightspace site.
In addition to this primary reading, there will be critical reading assigned for some weeks that will be made available via Brightspace.
Registration
Enrolment through MyStudyMap is mandatory.
General information about course and exam enrolment is available on the website
Contact
For substantive questions, contact the lecturer listed in the right information bar.
For questions about enrolment, admission, etc, contact the Education Administration Office: Arsenaal.
Remarks
Please make sure that you have read the set reading (to be outlined on Brightspace) before the first class.