English Language and Literature BA

Core language modules:

The Sounds of English

This module is an introduction to the subdisciplines of Linguistics known as Phonetics and Phonology, focusing specifically on the sounds of the English language. It is designed to provide a solid understanding of how speech sounds are made and how they function in use. The lectures will present descriptions of English speech sounds and theories to explain their behaviour in a range of different accents and contexts, and the workshop classes will provide hands-on experience in using and thinking about the sounds of English. The module serves as an essential basis for more advanced linguistic study.

10 credits

The Structures of English

This module is an introduction to the syntax of natural languages, focussing on the syntactic structure of contemporary English. This module is intended as a sister module to the 10-credit 'Sounds of English' module, which runs in parallel. It is designed to provide a firm grounding in the descriptions of English sentence structure(s), and to introduce students to the main theories and methods of syntactic argumentation. The lectures will cover major topics in the formal description of English sentences, while the workshop classes will provide hands-on experience in analysing and thinking about sentence structure. The module serves as an essential basis for more advanced linguistic study.

10 credits

Exploring Literary Language

This module explores the language of literary texts. We will look at how different literary styles create particular effects and describe these styles and effects using linguistics. The course aims to provide students interested in English literature with a practical introduction to language, and to provide students interested in language with experience of applying linguistic analysis to literary texts. The emphasis is on a hands-on approach, and topics covered will include sentence structure, register, narrative structure, conversation analysis (with reference to drama and dialogue) and point of view in narrative fiction. The texts studied will be predominantly literary and twentieth century, and will include extracts from novels, plays, poetry and short stories.

20 credits

Core literature modules:

Contemporary Literature

This module introduces students to a diverse range of texts in English (prose, poetry, and film) with a focus on texts published since 2000. Texts will be chosen to provoke thinking and debate on urgent and controversial topics that might include: globalisation and neoliberalism; ecology and animal lives; artificial intelligence and the posthuman; political activism and social justice; migration and displacement; state violence and armed conflict. We will discuss formally and conceptually challenging works, raise ethical and philosophical questions and begin to discover how current critical and theoretical approaches can help us to engage with contemporary texts.

20 credits

Renaissance to Revolution

This module surveys the poetry and prose from the early modern period in England, i.e., that written between the beginnings of the sixteenth century through the seventeenth century to the late eighteenth century. We will look at different genres, from court complaint to sonnets, prose fiction, erotic verse, restoration drama and the works of writers such as Donne, Herbert, Spenser, Marlowe, Dyrden, Milton and Pope. The texts studied will be related to critical methods that help us understand the relationships between literature and the culture, society, and politics of the period in which it was produced.

40 credits

Optional modules:

Varieties of English

This course explores the extraordinary diversity of the English language today, and is concerned with describing the features, use and status of contemporary varieties of English in Britain and around the world. Extraterritorial varieties are located within histories of expansion, colonialism, and globalisation, and considered in relation to the role of English as an international language. We investigate developments which led to the social and geographic distribution of certain present day varieties in Britain. Students will apply tools of description for all linguistic levels, and develop awareness of sociolinguistic aspects of language such as social indexing, attitudes and standardisation, as well as the relationship between variation and change.

20 credits

Early Englishes

Early Englishes works backward over a whole millennium of English, 1600 to 600. Each week's lectures and seminar focus on one century and one text representative of that century (for example, Beowulf and Piers Plowman). We will use a variety of techniques , literary, linguistic, anthropological, cultural historical, to analyse each text, thereby opening up discussion of the issues that preoccupied the English of the time, from glorious monster-slaying to the slow surrender of pagan belief to terror at the imminent arrival of Antichrist and on to the first expressions of love and desire. Texts will initially be studied in translation so no prior knowledge of Old or Middle English is necessary, but students will also be given the opportunity to examine texts in the original language.

20 credits

Foundations in Literary Study: Biblical and Classical Sources in English Literature

This module provides foundational knowledge about the treatment of Biblical and Classical sources in English Literature. It is an important unit for the study of literature and the Humanities, preparing students for work at higher levels. Typically a Biblical or Classical source and a literary text will be discussed together, to expose a range of meanings and to prepare participants for their own research about both the Bible and Classical material as literature and the treatment of Bible and Classical material in Literature. It will also prepare students for independent research. It is recommended that all students of English take this module.

20 credits

Contemporary Literature

This module introduces students to a diverse range of texts in English (prose, poetry, and film) with a focus on texts published since 2000. Texts will be chosen to provoke thinking and debate on urgent and controversial topics that might include: globalisation and neoliberalism; ecology and animal lives; artificial intelligence and the posthuman; political activism and social justice; migration and displacement; state violence and armed conflict. We will discuss formally and conceptually challenging works, raise ethical and philosophical questions and begin to discover how current critical and theoretical approaches can help us to engage with contemporary texts.

20 credits

Studying Theatre: A History of Dramatic Texts in Performance

Covering classical, contemporary and popular texts, Studying Theatre; A History of Dramatic Text in Performance aims to turn an interest in theatre and theatre-going into a more thorough appreciation of the ways in which playwriting, acting, design and performance have shaped theatre's development. Each week students will study a particular play and the historical context that informed its first performances and its theatrical afterlife. The course emphasis is on theatre as a social practice and practical discipline. Seminars and lectures will focus on the play in performance, and the processes that underlie production. Students do not need previous knowledge or experience, but should be prepared to try some new approaches to texts, for example through practical workshops.

20 credits

Darwin, Marx, Freud

This course is structured around the writings of Darwin, Marx, Freud. We will consider selections from all three philosophers' writings, such as, for example, Darwin's The Origin of Species; cover key concepts from Marx's work—commodity fetishism; alienation—and investigate Freud's philosophy of the subject through selected readings from his writings. We will dismantle cultural prejudice and engage with, and in, revolutionary thinking. This course will prepare you for modules like Critical and Literary Thought but, most importantly, it will help you become critical, potentially revolutionary, thinkers.

20 credits

Hybrid Forms? Comedy and Tragedy

This module gives you the opportunity to study developments in comedy and tragedy from classical antiquity to the present day. This focus on genre enables you to take a broadly comparative approach, setting, for instance, works of classical antiquity alongside those of the early modern, modern, and contemporary worlds. As such, the module equips you to draw connections between periods studied separately at different points of your degree and between disparate forms, e.g. drama and the novel. Over the course of this module we will consider questions such as: what is genre, and why is it important? How does genre reflect or respond to historical change? Is there any such thing as a ‘pure’ genre or is hybridization a defining feature of genre itself? We will answer these questions by reading texts by authors such as Angela Carter, Noel Coward, Plautus, Shakespeare, Sophocles, and Wole Soyinka.

20 credits

Renaissance to Revolution

This module surveys the poetry and prose from the early modern period in England, i.e., that written between the beginnings of the sixteenth century through the seventeenth century to the late eighteenth century. We will look at different genres, from court complaint to sonnets, prose fiction, erotic verse, restoration drama and the works of writers such as Donne, Herbert, Spenser, Marlowe, Dyrden, Milton and Pope. The texts studied will be related to critical methods that help us understand the relationships between literature and the culture, society, and politics of the period in which it was produced.

40 credits

History of English

This module traces the history of the English language of the Fifth century AD through to the present day. Students will learn about the development of English over this period, looking at the factors which have shaped the language, and learning a variety of techniques for studying the language. The module will also introduce students to the range and variety of the English language at all periods, and to the ways in which English influences, and is influenced by, other languages.

20 credits

Linguistic Theory

This module explores how language is structured by examining central issues in linguistic theory, building upon the concepts introduced in EL112 Sounds of English and ELL113 Structure of English. Students will be instructed in (1) foundational theories and concepts in areas such as phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics, (2) the linguistic evidence that informs these approaches, (3) the analytical techniques required to apply these theories to language data, and (4) the relevance of such theoretical models for the wider study of language. The module will develop analytical tools in using linguistic theory, training students to rigorously interpret language data within theoretical frameworks

20 credits

Introduction to Creative Writing

The aim of this unit is to help students to develop their expressive and technical skills in writing poetry and prose and to improve their abilities as an editor and critic of their own and other people's writing. Students will be guided in the production of new work and encouraged to develop an analytical awareness of both the craft elements and the wider cultural and theoretical contexts of writing. This module explores poetic techniques for creating new poems and narrative techniques for generating some prose work through the critical study of published examples, imaginative exercises, discussion and feedback on students' own writing. This exploration will help students to develop their own creative work while sharpening critical appreciation of published poetry and modern and contemporary fiction. The course is designed to give students the expereince of being workshopped as well as to establish basic creative writing techniques on Level 1 to preparing students for the challenges of Creative Writing Level 2.

20 credits

Introduction to Cinema

This module aims to study a cross-section of the most important American films up to the present day and to develop both a formalist and an institutional analysis of these works. Its intention is to study the growth of the classical Hollywood style, a matter of a sophisticated range of technical stratagems as well as of a genre-based cinema, and of the institution of Hollywood itself, the most significant force in cinema to-day.

20 credits

Renaissance to Revolution

This module surveys the poetry and prose from the early modern period in England, i.e., that written between the beginnings of the sixteenth century through the seventeenth century to the late eighteenth century. We will look at different genres, from court complaint to sonnets, prose fiction, erotic verse, restoration drama and the works of writers such as Donne, Herbert, Spenser, Marlowe, Dyrden, Milton and Pope. The texts studied will be related to critical methods that help us understand the relationships between literature and the culture, society, and politics of the period in which it was produced.

40 credits

Try a new subject:

The flexible structure of your first year at Sheffield means that you also have the chance to experience modules from outside of English - you can choose up to 40 credits of modules from a list approved by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. A final guided module list is made available to new students when you select your modules as part of registration.

Core modules:

The History of Persuasion

This module focuses on why some written texts seem more persuasive (or authoritative) than others. To answer this question we will look at non-literary writing from a range of different contexts: journalism, advertising, political speaking, science writing, and religious communication. You'll look closely at the language used in each context, think about what constitutes persuasive writing in each, and talk about why this differs from context to context. You'll also have a chance to look at the histories of these different kinds of text. Examples from earlier periods look different from what we are used to in the 21st century and it is fascinating to explore how journalism, for example, has come to look as it does today. All these types of writing are associated with powerful institutions: journalism with the national press, advertising with big corporations, political speaking with the major political parties. But we will also explore how people with more marginalised identities use them, resist them, and are represented through them. The overall aim is help you become more critical in your response to the different kinds of written communication that surround us and this is valuable in many of the careers that English graduates go into.

20 credits

Writing the Real

In both fiction and drama, there is an approach to writing called 'realism' (or, in the case of theatre, 'naturalism'). Realist writers make a commitment to telling their readers about the world as it actually is and this means avoiding supernatural or speculative material and instead focusing on the experiences of ordinary people in a world that is recognisably like our own. The hey-day of realism was the nineteenth century but, since then, virtually all writers have had to take up a position in relation to it and decide whether to write about a world in which people have guardian angels and animals can talk or focus instead on 'real life' in contemporary London or New York City or Lagos. The module examines how realist and non-realist styles work linguistically and you will learn to analyse both kinds of text in a fine-grained way. You will read examples by British authors from different backgrounds as well as writers from other parts of the world. Narrative is central to how we define ourselves and understand the world around us, so the module looks beyond the strictly academic and helps you understand more about how we respond to the world through story-telling.

20 credits

Optional modules:

Literature and Critical Thought (b)

This course introduces writers, concepts and approaches fundamental to contemporary literary theory, and explores their application to diverse relevant texts. You will engage in a transhistorical study of the formal, literary and cultural functions of genre (e.g. in the forms of comedy and tragedy). You will also encounter theorists such as Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Ferdinand de Saussure, Mikhail Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, Michael Foucault, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan and Jean Baudrillard. Lectures will introduce and explain this material, and seminars will discuss and apply it to the study of literature. This module helps you develop your academic writing, critical thinking and research skills while studying the work of major theorists.

20 credits

Romanticism to Modernism (b)

This module focuses on a diverse range of texts (including poetry, prose, drama and film) produced between the late eighteenth to the late twentieth century. It pays detailed attention to the varied styles, issues, and movements produced by the rapid technological, political and cultural shifts that characterise these two centuries. Drawing on the expertise of the teaching team, the module introduces cutting-edge research carried out within the department in areas such as romanticism, the Gothic and science fiction, experimental literature, colonial and postcolonial contexts, war studies, and animal studies.

20 credits

Crime Writing: from the fin de siècle to the Golden Age

How did the genre of crime writing become so influential? This module will examine the cultural history of crime writing from 1890-1950, in a range of genres including detective novels, short stories, plays and films, and true crime writing or reportage. By focusing on a number of narratives of crime, the module will invite an analysis of how this genre is engaged with and subverted by writers wrestling with a modernity that included developments including two World Wars, imperialism and anticolonial movements, women's suffrage and presence in the workplace and a hugely increased use of technology, alongside the rise of criminology and psychoanalysis.

20 credits

Phonetics

This module aims to provide a detailed understanding of speech sounds, how they are produced, how perceived, how they vary from one language to another, and how they are analysed. Lectures will deal with the three core areas of phonetics: articulation, acoustics and audition. The course has a practical as well as a theoretical component. There will be weekly classes in which students will learn to recognise, produce and transcribe the sounds of the International Phonetic Alphabet. The application and history of phonetics will also be covered.

20 credits

Syntax

This module builds on what students have learnt in ELL113 Structure of English at Level 1, providing a more in-depth look at the structure and organising principles of sentences. We develop the tree structures students learn in first year, and see how these structures form a system of representation that can be used for any language. This involves thinking about the universal constraints on the grouping of words into phrases, and consideration of various operations that move elements around inside sentences to generate the word orders we see written or hear spoken, while at the same time ensuring that sentences satisfy formal constraints. In other words, the module provides an opportunity for students to think in more depth about why sentences are structured the way that they are.

20 credits

Exiles and Monsters: An Introduction to Old English

This module explores the language and literature of Anglo-Saxon England, enabling you to read and understand the earliest English literature. You will learn how to read Old English, developing a good understanding of Old English grammar and gaining familiarity with the language and literature through translating a range of texts. We will examine the historical background and cultural contexts of these texts, introducing you to the breadth and variety of Old English texts, and to differing critical approaches to them.

20 credits

Language and Cognition

This module introduces students to the key theories and frameworks at the core of cognitive linguistics. The module explores the relationships between language and the human mind and considers how recent advances in the study of human cognition can enhance our understanding of the conceptual processes that underpin the production and reception of discourse. The module introduces students to such concepts as embodiment, prototypes, situated simulation, profiling, mental representation, conceptual mapping, and conceptual integration. The module equips students with the necessary knowledge and analytical skills to design and carry out their own investigations into language and cognition.

20 credits

Good Books: Intertextual Approaches to Literature and the Bible

Literature, film and television constantly return to the Bible as a source of narrative, character and image. Biblical texts are translated, rewritten, transposed and radically challenged by literature from the medieval period to the present day and so intertextual readings of the Bible and literature provide insight into the ways authors engage with politics, philosophy, and tradition. Our module explores a range of intertextual relationships, from medieval dream poetry through to contemporary writing and cultural representation, including a range of genres and approaches. We will analyse film, TV and visual media as well as literary forms, to explore the ways in which creative writers interpret and re-imagine biblical narratives and tropes.

20 credits

Creative Writing Prose Fiction 2

The aim of this unit is to help students to develop their expressive and technical skills in writing prose fiction at Level 2 and to improve their abilities as an editor and critic of their own and other people's writing. Students will be guided in the production of new work and encouraged to develop an analytical awareness of both the craft elements and the wider cultural and theoretical contexts of writing. The emphasis throughout will be on reading as a writer and writing as a reader.

20 credits

Satire and Print in the Eighteenth Century

Against a background of political, religious and cultural ferment, new ideas of the individual's relationship to the state emerged in the early-eighteenth century. New kinds of readers, authors, and an increasingly powerful book trade reshaped the literary map of Britain. Those fraught relationships are captured in the prose and poetry of the satirists upon this course. The political, religious and economic satires of writers including Defoe, Pope, Swift, Ramsay, Finch, Gay, Leapor, Montagu, Addison and Steele will be read as a new and troubled relationship between the individual and the state emerged alongside a vigorously contested idea of 'Britain' in literature.

20 credits

The Novella and the Uncanny

This course will explore novellas from across the last 150 years which represent uncanny experiences of haunting, madness, obsession, and psychological and political disorientation, with these intense experiences often refracted through the consciousness of a central character. We will consider whether the particularities of this literary form lend themselves to representing experiences at the 'limits of reason'. Texts will include works by Kafka, Camus, George Eliot, Ayn Rand, Pynchon and others. The course will encompass the study of some relevant theory, including Freud's essay 'The Uncanny' - which itself contains an analysis of Hoffman's bizarre short story 'The Sandman'.

20 credits

Shakespeare: Page, Stage, Screen

This module focuses on the poetry and plays of William Shakespeare. You will read a wide range of his works and analyse them in the context of the cultural and historical energies of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, as well as exploring how they have been reinvented and reimagined through performance and as texts which have been refashioned through editorial intervention or adaptation. The module considers the range of dramatic styles and genres that Shakespeare uses, alongside the conditions of performance, kinds of publication, and the characteristics of the language in which he worked. It also relates the texts to critical methods that help illuminate the relationships between drama and the culture, politics, and religion of the period and the ways in which Shakespeare's works have been remade for different times and contexts.

20 credits

Introduction to Interactive Digital Narrative

Interactive digital narratives are stories designed (a) to be read on screen and (b) to give the reader choice about how to navigate them. For example, you might have come across digital adventure stories that read like this: 'You are walking through the woods and hear a horrible noise coming from up ahead. Do you run forward to investigate or do you hide in the bushes?' Here both 'run forward' and 'hide' will be links so that you can choose what you want to do and find out what happens when you do it. The module includes both critical and creative work. You will read digital narratives - not just adventures but explorations of a wider range of experience - and think about how they are structured, how they evoke virtual spaces, and their relationship with games and gaming. You will also make a narrative of your own, using the creative process to learn more about the nature of digital stories. You don't need any special knowledge of computers or coding - everything necessary is taught in the module. Students from previous years have found it extremely helpful to be able to talk about their projects in interviews for jobs involving digital communication and content creation.

20 credits

Black Lyric: Poetics and Politics of Hip Hop

This module introduces students to Hip Hop as a musical, cultural and literary phenomenon. Both extremely popular and highly controversial, we will explore the history of Hip Hop from its early developments to the present. The module is organised around two principal ideas. The first is that, largely as a consequence of social, economic and racial oppressions experienced by so many artists working in this mode, Hip Hop is  inherently political.   

The second idea: Hip Hop is poetical. That is, its lyrics are bona fide literary, hiding almost in plain sight. The genre's best MCs are also some of our finest contemporary poets. Rappers' work deserves and actually requires critical attention. Working mainly in a North American context, over the course of the module, we will reflect upon the various ways in which Hip Hop combines aesthetic innovation with radical social commentary.

Each week, we will focus on a specific artist or group, and attend carefully to 1-2 albums. Expect to study some 'mainstream' work (e.g., Fugees, Cardi B but NOT Vanilla Ice). You will also study underground, 'conscious' and alternative artists. 

Throughout, radical forms (rhetorical, prosodic, intertextual, figurative) collide messily with explicit contents (racism, misogyny, violence, protest). Our aim is to start understanding Hip Hop in its troubling, ingenious complexity.







 

20 credits

Hollywood Cinema

This module introduces you to the study of Hollywood's films, methods, meanings and creative figures, and the history and significance of American filmmaking in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. You will examine key examples of films and filmmakers from the period of silent cinema up to the present day. You will learn about the characteristics of Hollywood style and narrative, the evolution of film genres such as the Western, the Musical and the Horror film, the progression of the cinema's treatment of subjects such as race, gender, politics and war, and developments in business and technology which have underpinned the international dominance of Hollywood film. As well learning to analyse the details of film form, and gaining understanding of aspects such as editing, lighting and shot composition, you will also engage with the political and cultural readings of popular entertainment cinema, and the history of film theory and criticism. Watching and discussing film texts from different eras will equip you with the analytical and communication skills to debate controversial subjects, to understand the contexts of diverse representations, balance and evaluate differing opinions on challenging subjects, and appreciate the importance of popular cinema.

20 credits

Victorian Women Poets: Stressing Sex

This module will introduce you to a range of Victorian women poets and the critical and ideological debates that surround their work. Reading the poetry of canonical writers, such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti alongside less familiar works by, for example Mathilde Blind and Amy Levy, you will engage with questions of gender and genre and to think about how women employed different poetic forms and voices to respond to the political, scientific and religious upheavals of the nineteenth century. We will also also explore the gender politics of the literary canon and consider how a focus on women writers from diverse class, national and ethnic backgrounds might resist powerful narratives about Victorian literature and culture.

20 credits

Sociolinguistics

This module explores the workings of language in its rich social setting. It includes an investigation of accent and dialect, register and style in relation to social class, gender, age, ethinicity, region and social networks. The module also examines sociolinguistic situations around the world, such as multilingualism and diglossia, pidgins and creoles, new Englishes and other globalised forms of language. The module is intended to be enabling and offers an opportunity for students to develop a sense of their own ethical responsibilities as language users and analysts. Students will be provided with the methodological tools necessary to carry out independent fieldwork and will be encouraged to undertake their own exploration of sociolinguistics.

20 credits

First Language Acquisition

This second-year module is aimed at students who have already taken Introduction to Linguistics at Level 1. In this course, we focus specifically on the first language acquisition of syntactic (and semantic) knowledge. Addressing both theoretical and methodological issues, the course explores the relationship between the logical problem of language acquisition -- how very young children manage to acquire quite abstract and subtle properties of their target grammars in the absence of clear positive evidence -- and the developmental problem of acquisition -- how children recover from systematic errors, and acquire subtle language-specific properties. We also explore the related tension between nativist vs. emergentist explanations for language acquisition and development.

20 credits

Phonology

This module aims to examine phonological theories and the data on which they are constructed, exploring phonological organisation and processes in different languages. Segmental and prosodic (e.g. syllable-based) phenomena will be investigated, using rule- and constraint-based frameworks. As well as being a core part of theoretical linguistics, an understanding of phonology is essential to the studies of historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, speech pathologies, language acquisition, and computerised speech synthesis and recognition technologies.

20 credits

Creative Writing: Poetry, Experimentation, De/Construction

This module offers a practical and theoretical workshop which is designed to look at current methods of creative writing exploring a wide range of forms of poetry and poetics, prose poetry, poetic prose and hybrid writing. During the term our core readings and discussions (critical and creative) will be focusing on producing new work, new texts while we will be revisiting, reconfiguring and deconstructing concepts of poetry, contemporary poetry and its various new, experimental formations, poetics of fusion and the hybrid while discovering themes and concepts of self and selves, borders and boundaries of both psyche and language, the liminal, memory, as creative source of self invention, concepts of I as Non-I, Anti-I, gender, history, identity and culture as complex components of identity, identity as construction, identity as self-theory, as text(s). During the module you will be given the opportunity to develop your writing in various contemporary formations of more established and currently forming conventions/experimentations; your critical thinking through a wide range of creative samples by currently published authors of both poetry and prose and other speculative genres of fusion; and through the weekly workshops to sharpen your editorial skills.

20 credits

Representing the Holocaust

This course will examine fictional and non-fictional, literary and filmic, representations of the Holocaust, and considers the use and extension of conventional textual forms to do so, including documentary film, memoir, short story and cartoon. Texts covered will include Elie Wiesel's 'Night', Claude Lanzmann's film 'Shoah', Martin Sherman's 'Bent', Martin Amis's 'Time's Arrow' and Ida Fink's stories in 'A Scrap of Time'.

20 credits

Road Journeys in American Culture: 1930-2000

This module analyses the development of road narratives from the 1930s to the present, looking at the ways in which this narrative trope tells the story of American culture and society throughout the twentieth-century. The module aims to address some or all of the following questions. Do road journeys reflect or run away from political realities 'at home'? To what extent is the road journey a gendered space predominantly occupied by men? Are certain groups of people allowed to travel and other groups not? Is the road journey a metaphor for American colonization and expansion, or something else more ambiguous? Texts to be studied include films such as 'The Wizard of Oz', 'Bonnie and Clyde', The Straight Strory', and 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?' novels such as 'On the Road' by Jack Kerouac, 'Lolita' by Vladimir Nabokov, and 'The Music of Chance' by Paul Auster, and poems by Elizabeth Bishop and Amy Clampitt.

20 credits

Radical Theory

The premise of this course is the necessity to re-interpret the university as a site for philosophical speculation and theory-based intervention. Run collectively, the course will address, to use Walter Benjamin's terms, the catastrophe of the status quo, and is structured around three aims, which are: 1) to address 'moments' of crisis such as, for example, climate change; the neoliberal, market-driven higher education system; the state of exception; the myth of the human; 2) to theorise these crises, and 3) to explore the relationship between theory and practice: in particular to explore theorised agency as enabling political activism.

20 credits

Advanced Syntax

This module builds on the material covered in the module Syntax, focusing on both the universal and language-specific rules that govern syntactic structure in human language. The topics covered will expand our understanding of areas of structure that could not be explained in Syntax, including further instances of movement, a more nuanced understanding of verbal structure, and a greater emphasis on data from languages other than English.

20 credits

Historical Linguistics

Language change is a fact of all living languages, and historical linguistics is as much about the present and future as it is about its past. This module introduces the study of how and why languages change, and how languages are related. Students are encouraged to reflect on the ways in which historical linguistics bears on other areas of linguistics. The subject will be approached by 1) levels of inquiry, e.g. semantic, phonological, morphological, syntactic and pragmatic change; and 2) 'big questions', e.g. language families and linguistic prehistory, the role of acquisition in change, linguistic reconstruction, and historical sociolinguistics.

20 credits

Voice, Body, Power: Forms of Resistance in Contemporary Drama

Focusing on 21st century examples and contemporary debates, this module examines the ways that theatre today tackles highly charged themes like marginality and diversity, homeland and displacement, resources and accessibility, participation and exclusion. You will explore theatre in Britain, but our case studies aim to reflect and promote the diversity that a British context encompasses. Playwrights whose work we look at might include Sabrina Mahfouz, Antoinette Nwandu or Tatenda Shamiso, and companies might include Breach Theatre, Paper Birds or Talawa. By studying a range of plays, companies and contexts, you will develop a complex awareness of the strategies for representation and resistance that theatre can offer. This module will suit you if you want to broaden your knowledge of contemporary drama and you enjoy studying production materials as well as play scripts and critical reading. In addition, you will have the opportunity to practise original dramatic writing of your own, developed with the tutor's guidance and support.

 

20 credits

Try a new subject:

The flexible structure of your second year at Sheffield means that you also have the chance to experience modules from outside of English - you can choose up to 20 credits of modules from a list approved by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. A final guided module list is made available to new students when you select your modules as part of registration.

Core language and literature modules (Group 1):

Researching Readers

Your studies so far will have given you many opportunities to think about how you interpret texts and how texts are discussed by professional critics. This module encourages you to engage with the responses of readers outside of University too, in the wider reading public. Academic discussions regularly make claims about the effects of a text on its 'readers' or 'audience', but these readers are often theoretical constructs rather than actual people. This module is a practical introduction to methods that can be used to collect data so that you can investigate the responses of real readers in a variety of contexts. Methods that we study might include experimental tasks, questionnaires, focus groups and internet resources. We focus on qualitative, verbal data: the things which people say or write about their reading experiences. You will learn how to use that data to test and develop your own textual analyses. For instance, we might use data to explore how readers engage with fictional characters, how they make sense of metaphors, or how they respond emotionally to patterns in language. You will be supported in designing, conducting and reflecting upon your own study of real readers, with free choice of the text you study and the method you use, so there is lots of scope for pursuing what interests you.

20 credits

Language and the Environment

This module will introduce students to a range of research focused on language and the natural environment. We will begin by exploring the discipline of Ecolinguistics and the concept of an 'ecosophy', the ecological philosophy underpinning environmental linguistic research. Students will have an opportunity to define their own key ethical principles and design a small-scale research project around their personal ecosophy. We will examine a range of different linguistic theories and their application in the rigorous and systematic analyses of language and the natural environment. We will also explore different linguistic methodologies which might enable these analyses, drawn from disciplines including discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, and empirical stylistics. We will investigate a variety of different discourse types in our lectures and seminars, including political speeches, the language of environmental documentaries, literary texts, social media, marketing and advertising, and everyday conversation. Students will have the opportunity at the end of the module to use their knowledge and skills to execute their own research project, investigating the relationships between language and the natural world in a discourse of their choice.

20 credits

Core language and literature modules (Group 2):

Narrative Style in the Contemporary Novel

On this module you will consider how the contemporary novel experiments with narrative style and technique, and the effects of this on you as a reader. We will be looking at writing in English from all over the world, and from a wide variety of backgrounds and perspectives. We will be looking at key narrative concepts, such as point of view, in order to enable appreciation of the ways in which contemporary writers play with traditional styles. Some of the experimental features we will look at include: disruptions to chronological sequence; the use of second-person ('you') narration; the use of multiple narrators. We will look at how such techniques increase or hinder such experiences as empathy and identification with characters. You will get a chance to work extensively on a contemporary novel of your choice and deepen your enjoyment of it by looking at how it is written.

20 credits

Experiments in Interactive Digital Narrative

This module offers the chance to learn about and experiment with the possibilities of interactive digital narratives. What are interactive digital narratives? In brief, they are stories designed (a) to be read on screen and (b) to give the reader choice about how to navigate them. For example, you might have come across digital adventure stories that read like this: 'You walk up to the house but the door is locked. Do you search for a hidden key or do you break the door down?' Here both 'search' and 'break' will be links so you can choose what you want to do and find out what happens when you do it. Stories like this are widely available online but writers and artists have used the same approach to explore a wider range of human experience than fantasy adventures. Early in the semester we will think about various issues relating to digital narrative: the relationship between material and virtual worlds, the relationship between author and reader, our fears about Artificial Intelligence. Then you'll create an experimental narrative of your own inspired by your critical reading. You don't need any special knowledge of computers or coding - all that will be taught in the module. The learning you experience as you develop your project will be invaluable if you go on to work in any field where you need to make digital content.

20 credits

Dissertation

This module provides third year students with an opportunity to develop work done in Approved Modules and Core units, or study a relevant topic not included in these courses. Students are expected to show a capacity for research and for organising a long essay. The Dissertation is an essay between 8,000 and 10,000 words, the result of a sustained period of independent study at Level 3. The Dissertation takes the place of a second semester Approved Module. Disertation topics must be approved by the Dissertation convenor, Cathy Shrank. She will take into account appropriate courses that have been taken. She may advise against taking the Dissertation. It is exected that students will formulate a topic with the help of a potential supervisor chosen from the full-time academic staff and after discussion with their Personal Tutor. Registration for the Dissertation depends on availability of supervisors. Dissertation students have a preliminary meeting with their supervisors early in Semester 1 and then meet supervisors at least three times during Semester 2. Normally supervisors read one near-complete draft of the Dissertation not later than the first week after the Easter vacation. The Dissertation is due at the end of Semester 2 and normal assessment submission regulations apply to it.

20 credits

Optional modules:

Research Practice

Research Practice' is normally taken in combination with the 'Dissertation' module. Taken together these two units give students the opportunity to spend a whole year researching a topic of particular interest to them, engaging with new data or primary sources, and working on material that is typically more advanced than that covered in taught modules. 'Research Practice' focuses on the planning of the larger project. Students receive support and training through whole-group workshops and one-to-one support from a supervisor. By the end of the module, students will have designed an appropriate programme of research and begun to implement it. Although support will be provided by supervisors and the module convenor, students will be expected to drive their projects forward themselves and be proactive in seeking guidance and help when they need it. The module is not suitable for students who do not enjoy independent research and reading. In preparation for the module, students will be required to submit a research proposal towards the end of Level 2. Students will receive guidance on this and may seek help with this part of the process from members of academic staff. Registration for this module depends on both the coherence of the research proposal and the availability of suitable supervisors.

20 credits

Exiles and Monsters: Reading Old English

This module explores the language and literature of early medieval England (500-1066), enabling you to read, translate, and understand the earliest English literature. You will learn Old English, developing a good understanding of Old English grammar and applying that knowledge as you translate Old English texts. You will also gain familiarity with Old English literature through translating a range of diverse texts. We normally start translating Old English prose in Week 2 and move on to poetry after a few weeks. Texts studied on this module might include Wulfstan's famous sermon to the English (in which he goes on about how sinful the English are), The Battle of Maldon (about a real battle in 991 in which the Vikings defeated the English), Judith (about a woman who chops off the head of the general whose army is besieging her city), and Beowulf (about a hero and several monsters). The module will briefly examine the historical background, cultural contexts, and stylistic features of these texts, introducing you to the breadth and variety of Old English texts and to differing critical approaches to them. No prior knowledge of Old English language or literature is required.

20 credits

Constructed Languages

This module builds on theories learned in Level 1 and 2 ELL and Language and Literature modules, applying them to the constructed languages ('conlangs') created specifically for books, television, and film. Topics covered will include the grammatical patterns underlying the sound and structural systems of conlangs, the similarities and differences between conlangs and 'natural' human languages, the representation of historical change in conlangs, and the textual use and representation of conlangs in literature.

20 credits

Narrative Style in the Contemporary Novel

On this module you will consider how the contemporary novel experiments with narrative style and technique, and the effects of this on you as a reader. We will be looking at writing in English from all over the world, and from a wide variety of backgrounds and perspectives. We will be looking at key narrative concepts, such as point of view, in order to enable appreciation of the ways in which contemporary writers play with traditional styles. Some of the experimental features we will look at include: disruptions to chronological sequence; the use of second-person ('you') narration; the use of multiple narrators. We will look at how such techniques increase or hinder such experiences as empathy and identification with characters. You will get a chance to work extensively on a contemporary novel of your choice and deepen your enjoyment of it by looking at how it is written.

20 credits

Theolinguistics

This module examines the ways in which people talk about what they hold sacred, both in overtly religious and 'secular' contexts. This module takes a functional approach to language, first asking, what does religious language do for us? Among the topics that will be covered are definitions of religion and religious language, a functional approach to religious language, linguistic features of religious language (for example, religious vocabulary, archaic language, intertextuality, and metaphor), and the use of religious language in a wide range of contexts (contexts could include overtly religious contexts as well as politics, news media, advertising, sport, pop culture). There will be opportunities each week to examine religious language in a variety of contexts, using specific analytic tools. In the assessments, you will have the freedom to develop these skills further by analysing texts of your choice, taken from contexts that suit your interests. The tutor will provide support in finding and selecting these texts. Overall, this module aims to examine the porous boundaries between the sacred and the secular. In so doing, we will consider the language not just of those looking to a sacred supernatural but those who articulate ultimate significance to values and priorities without adherence to organized religion.

20 credits

Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages

The module introduces and reviews the principles that underlie, and the methodology employed in the teaching of English to speakers of other languages. Among the topics discussed are the teaching of the four main language skills - reading, writing, listening, speaking - and the teaching of the language system - grammar and vocabulary. There are also sessions on the language learning process and the characteristics of communicative language teaching.

20 credits

Language and Gender

This module will explore the relationship between language use and gender identity. We will consider how gender has been defined in social and linguistic research and examine a variety of theoretical perspectives, methodologies and findings (incorporating both quantitiative and qualitative linguistic work). The approach is interdisciplinary (drawing upon sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology and discourse analysis) and will address the issues of power, status, socialisation and ideology.

20 credits

Approaches to Discourse

The course aims to introduce students to the critical analysis of spoken and written discourse in contemporary social contexts. It provides a range of resources and techniques for analysing texts and dialogue, enabling students to apply them to real life data drawn from a wide variety of contexts. Instruction will cover classical theoretical approaches to the analysis of discourse and genre, including functional grammatical analysis of clauses and sentences, the generic structure of texts, conversational and pragmatic analysis of spoken discourse, and intertextual and interdiscursive analysis. Throughout the topics covered, the students will be encouraged to reflect upon the role of discourse in the structuring of social practices and power relations.

20 credits

Second Language Acquisition

This module will introduce students to major theoretical notions and assumptions in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) - a theory that investigates how language speakers acquire a second language both in adulthood and childhood. The module focuses on the second language knowledge that is by formal linguistic constraints, as well as on how it interplays with language differencs, language input and classroom teaching. It provides a historical overview of how SLA theories have evolved and examines influential concepts to explore how different arguments have been developed and how they have been investigated empirically. At the same time, the module offers students hands-on training in analyzing second language learner data. This will help students relate data to theories they learn and learn how to extend the data with a follow-up study.

20 credits

Writing Fiction 3

This module explores techniques and strategies for creating fiction through the critical study of short excerpts from a wide range of novels and short stories, imaginative exercises, discussion and feedback on students own writing. This exploration will help students develop their own creative work while sharpening critical appreciation of both classic and contemporary fiction. Subjects covered will include: narrative voice, character, dialogue, plot, mood, pace and style. Examples will include work by Laurence Sterne, Dickens, Joyce and Anthony Burgess, JG Ballard, Martin Amis, Irvine Welsh, Chuck Palahniuk and Michael Houellebecq.

20 credits

Crime and Transgression in Romantic Literature

This module explores the themes of crime and transgression in the literature of the Romantic period across a range of Romantic texts, including fiction, drama, poetry and short essays. We will explore why, precisely, the literature of the Romantic period reflects crime and transgression so persistently, investigating that through a variety of texts. We will look, for example, at marriage laws through Mary Wollstonecraft's posthumously published The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria, at transgressive forms of literature through Charlotte Dacre's sexually-charged Gothic romance Zofloya, or the Moor, at the depiction of hatred and vengeance in Joanna Baillie's drama De Monfort, and at the themes of sexual transgression in Coleridge's ballad Christabel, and in John Keats's The Eve of St Agnes. In addition to these exciting texts, we'll also look at Thomas De Quincey's superbly disturbing essay 'On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts', before concluding the module by looking at Scottish author James Hogg's Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. The course will be assessed through means of a portfolio of three shorter pieces, responses of 500 words apiece on individual texts (1500 words in total) and by a final summative comparative essay. Through developing your portfolio in consultation with the tutor and seminar discussions, you will emerge with a stronger contextual and literary understanding of the Romantic period across different literary forms.

20 credits

Fin de siècle Gothic

The module examines a range of Gothic texts and their fin de siècle contexts. Writers explored include R.L. Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, Vernon Lee, Oscar Wilde, M.R. James, Bram Stoker, and H.G. Wells. Students will explore a diverse range of contemporary contexts which will enable them to see how theories of degeneration, images of Empire, models of medicine, notions of decadence, and ideas about history can be applied to the fin de siècle Gothic. The focus on ghosts, vampires, and aliens will help identify how a language of 'otherness' articulated the culturally specific anxieties of fin de siècle Britain. Teaching involves a mixture of lectures and seminars.

20 credits

Contemporary Black British Writing

This module explores contemporary Black British culture, focusing on narratives representing Black British experiences since the arrival of the Windrush in 1948. You will read novels by writers such as Andrea Levy, Bernardine Evaristo, Zadie Smith and Caleb Azumah Nelson alongside films and/or plays that might include work by Isaac Julien and debbie tucker green. Poetry by writers such as Kei Miller and Elizabeth Jane Burnett will offer insights into experimental and interdisciplinary artistic practice. The module includes sessions delivered by guest writers who discuss their own work and their key influences; for instance, the poet and hip hop artist Otis Mensah. The aim of the module is to appreciate the fluid 'canon' of Black British literature and to interrogate what 'Britishness' and 'B/blackness' mean, whether labels such as BAME / POC are helpful and how we can engage critically with race in the classroom without assuming that Black writers 'should' always be talking race. You will be guided in theoretical discussions by critics who might include Akala, bell hooks, Reni Eddo-Lodge, Patricia Hill Collins and Stuart Hall and you will approach texts in relation to colonial history and current socio-political concerns, including migration, white privilege and ecological activism.

20 credits

The Brontës

'Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, nor ought it to be.' So advised Robert Southey, Poet Laureate, to a young Charlotte Bronte in 1837. Just ten years later she and her sisters, Emily and Anne, caused a sensation: their first novels, published under pseudonyms just weeks apart, were read and reviewed with astonishment, praise and censure. Now some 200 years since their births, the Bronte siblings (including their brother, Branwell) sustain a thriving industry of literary tourism and their works can be read and enjoyed via a multitude of editions and adaptations. This module will explore the art of the Brontës, their writings, drawings and paintings from collaborative juvenilia through to Charlotte's final novel, Villette. These works shed light upon the socio-cultural trends and political upheavals of the 1840s and 1850s, from the plight of the governess to machine breaking in the industrial North. This module will also ask how and why the Brontës have enjoyed such a varied and long-lasting cultural afterlife.

20 credits

Language and the Environment

This module will introduce students to a range of research focused on language and the natural environment. We will begin by exploring the discipline of Ecolinguistics and the concept of an 'ecosophy', the ecological philosophy underpinning environmental linguistic research. Students will have an opportunity to define their own key ethical principles and design a small-scale research project around their personal ecosophy. We will examine a range of different linguistic theories and their application in the rigorous and systematic analyses of language and the natural environment. We will also explore different linguistic methodologies which might enable these analyses, drawn from disciplines including discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, and empirical stylistics. We will investigate a variety of different discourse types in our lectures and seminars, including political speeches, the language of environmental documentaries, literary texts, social media, marketing and advertising, and everyday conversation. Students will have the opportunity at the end of the module to use their knowledge and skills to execute their own research project, investigating the relationships between language and the natural world in a discourse of their choice.

20 credits

Beckett and Late Modernist Experimental Fiction

The module will be looking at Beckett's short fiction and novellas alongside Caribbean, British and Irish experimental fiction of the 1960s and 1970s, and will be exploring the motivations and rationale for the experiments in narrative style and expression, looking at the techniques of experiment used by the writers, and at a range of topics the experiments shape and respond to, including gender, Global North/South relations, Cold War technology and systems theory, psychoanalysis, decolonization, radical and collective subject positions. The writers considered alongside Beckett may include Ann Quin, B.S. Johnson, Beryl Gilroy, Christine Brooke-Rose, Anna Kavan, Shelagh Delaney, Brigid Brophy, J.G. Ballard, Muriel Spark, Maureen Duffy, Wilson Harris

20 credits

Fear of the 'Other': Representation of Identity in Horror Cinema

This module will explore the history of representation of identity in horror cinema, including analysis of gender identity, sexual identity, ethnic/racial identity and national identity among other potential topics.We will first establish the origins, history and formative elements of the genre, considering shared themes, stylistic and narrative traits, aspects of representation and trends within the history of horror cinema. You will then explore the issue of 'othering' through the medium of horror, analysing the representation of women through the predominantly male gaze as either monstrous, victim or 'final girl'; queer representation in horror in which the non-heteronormative has frequently been used as shorthand to imply deviancy/monstrosity; and the representation of people of colour in horror cinema - or rather their lack of representation/stereotyping (see the poster for 2023's The Blackening which showcases an all-black cast with the tagline 'We can't all die first!') Some key theorists that we might study include Laura Mulvey, Linda Williams, Carol Clover, Barbara Creed, Alison Peirse, Harry Benshoff, Tananarive Due, Ashlee Blackwell and Robin Wood. Films we might watch include Get Out, Slumber Party Massacre, The Blackening, Dressed To Kill, Psycho, Halloween, Black Christmas, Night of the Living Dead and I Walked With A Zombie 

20 credits

Dissertation

This module provides third year students with an opportunity to develop work done in Approved Modules and Core units, or study a relevant topic not included in these courses. Students are expected to show a capacity for research and for organising a long essay. The Dissertation is an essay between 8,000 and 10,000 words, the result of a sustained period of independent study at Level 3. The Dissertation takes the place of a second semester Approved Module. Disertation topics must be approved by the Dissertation convenor, Cathy Shrank. She will take into account appropriate courses that have been taken. She may advise against taking the Dissertation. It is exected that students will formulate a topic with the help of a potential supervisor chosen from the full-time academic staff and after discussion with their Personal Tutor. Registration for the Dissertation depends on availability of supervisors. Dissertation students have a preliminary meeting with their supervisors early in Semester 1 and then meet supervisors at least three times during Semester 2. Normally supervisors read one near-complete draft of the Dissertation not later than the first week after the Easter vacation. The Dissertation is due at the end of Semester 2 and normal assessment submission regulations apply to it.

20 credits

Conversation Analysis

In this module we will work with recordings of real conversation, analysing aspects of spoken interaction such as turn-taking, overlap, repair, sequence organisation and topic from the perspective of Conversation Analysis (CA). The module provides an opportunity to: deepen your understanding of how conversation is structurally organised; develop analyses of conversation which are inductive and do not rely on reading the minds of participants but are grounded in the observable linguistic-sequential properties of the talk; and explore the relationship between CA and linguistics.

20 credits

Language attitudes, perceptions and regard

This module examines the ways in which non-specialists react to language variation. Students taking the module will learn about why such reactions matter, both for speakers of stigmatised varieties and languages, but also in relation to theories of language variation and change. The module will introduce students to the field of language regard, which moves the study of non-specialists reactions to language beyond the traditional approaches taken in language attitudes research. Students taking the module will consider the theoretical underpinnings of language regard, and examine topics such as real-time reactions to regional speech, manipulating listener reactions, language attitudes findings, perceptual dialectology, and the sociolinguistic monitor.

20 credits

The Beginning of the End of the World

It is impossible to make sense of our world of pandemics, the climate crisis, economic instability, and violent, divisive rhetoric without an understanding of apocalyptic literature. While 20th and 21st century contributions to apocalyptic literature, such as Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, are far ranging in their examination of what the end of the world looks and feels like, they all have their origins in ancient notions of catastrophic ends and the hope for a new beginning. This module will guide you to explore the apocalypse's origins in texts left out of the biblical canon, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as those that are more well known, such as Revelation. You'll learn to engage critically with a range of literature, including contemporary novels dreaming about the end of colonial violence, and cinematic interpretations about climate apocalypse. You will have the opportunity to apply their knowledge about apocalypses to a text and topic that are important to you.

20 credits

Radical Theory

The driving force of this module is to change the world or, no less ambitiously, to re-interpret the university as a site for philosophical speculation and theory-based intervention. The course will address, to use Walter Benjamin's terms, the catastrophe of the status quo, and is structured around three aims, which are: 1) to address 'moments' of crisis such as, for example, the climate crisis; the neoliberal, market-driven higher education system; systems of privilege (whiteness; masculinity; heteronormativity; ableism, etc.) 2) to theorize these crises, and 3) to explore the relationship between critical theory and practice: in particular to explore theorized agency as enabling political activism.

20 credits

The Idea of America

If you are interested in how and why contemporary (1950-present day) American writers revise myths of America, then this module will appeal to you. We explore how foundational ideas of America (such freedom, equality, democracy, self-reliance, the frontier, capitalism and American exceptionalism) are reimagined by its poets, playwrights and prose writers. You might read works by authors such as Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Cormac McCarthy, C Pam Zhang, Charles Yu, Arthur Miller and Ocean Vuong and the module is organised around a series of thematic strands that will help you to make connections between writers and key American mythologies. For example, the themes could include a focus on the ongoing legacies of slavery and settler colonisation and/or a study of the role of religion, region and place in shaping literary perspectives of America. You can expect to read a diverse range of works by Asian-American, Native-American, African-American and Arab-American authors and by the end of this module you will develop valuable leadership and employability skills including improved emotional intelligence and global awareness.

20 credits

Researching Readers

Your studies so far will have given you many opportunities to think about how you interpret texts and how texts are discussed by professional critics. This module encourages you to engage with the responses of readers outside of University too, in the wider reading public. Academic discussions regularly make claims about the effects of a text on its 'readers' or 'audience', but these readers are often theoretical constructs rather than actual people. This module is a practical introduction to methods that can be used to collect data so that you can investigate the responses of real readers in a variety of contexts. Methods that we study might include experimental tasks, questionnaires, focus groups and internet resources. We focus on qualitative, verbal data: the things which people say or write about their reading experiences. You will learn how to use that data to test and develop your own textual analyses. For instance, we might use data to explore how readers engage with fictional characters, how they make sense of metaphors, or how they respond emotionally to patterns in language. You will be supported in designing, conducting and reflecting upon your own study of real readers, with free choice of the text you study and the method you use, so there is lots of scope for pursuing what interests you.

20 credits

Experiments in Interactive Digital Narrative

This module offers the chance to learn about and experiment with the possibilities of interactive digital narratives. What are interactive digital narratives? In brief, they are stories designed (a) to be read on screen and (b) to give the reader choice about how to navigate them. For example, you might have come across digital adventure stories that read like this: 'You walk up to the house but the door is locked. Do you search for a hidden key or do you break the door down?' Here both 'search' and 'break' will be links so you can choose what you want to do and find out what happens when you do it. Stories like this are widely available online but writers and artists have used the same approach to explore a wider range of human experience than fantasy adventures. Early in the semester we will think about various issues relating to digital narrative: the relationship between material and virtual worlds, the relationship between author and reader, our fears about Artificial Intelligence. Then you'll create an experimental narrative of your own inspired by your critical reading. You don't need any special knowledge of computers or coding - all that will be taught in the module. The learning you experience as you develop your project will be invaluable if you go on to work in any field where you need to make digital content.

20 credits

Advanced Phonetics

Students will use specialist computer software to provide robust analysis of a range of different phonetic parameters. This will involve working with waveforms, fundamental frequency traces, spectra and spectrograms. Training will take the form of practical demonstrations and guided workshop exercises, linked to a series of 'lab report' assessments. In the final assessment, students will work on either different varieties of English (reocrdings provide by the student cohort), or on another language selected by the module convenor. This module builds on ELL112 Sounds of English and ELL207 Phonetics; successful completion on these modules is therefore a pre-requisite.

20 credits

Advanced Syntax

This module builds on the material covered in ELL 221 Syntax, focusing on both the universal and language-specific rules that govern syntactic structure in human language. The topics covered will expand our understanding of areas of structure that could not be explained in Syntax, including further instances of movement, a more nuanced understanding of verbal structure, and a greater emphasis on data from languages other than English.

20 credits

Creative Writing Poetry Experiments: (De)Constructing Paper Selves

This module offers a practical and theoretical workshop which is designed to look at current methods of creative writing exploring a wide range of forms of poetry and poetics, prose poetry, poetic prose and hybrid writing. During the term our core readings and discussions (critical and creative) will be focusing on producing new work, new texts while we will be revisiting, reconfiguring and deconstructing concepts of poetry, contemporary poetry and its various new, experimental formations, poetics of fusion and the hybrid while thematically and theoretically we will explore concepts of borders and boundaries of the contemporary poem while looking at complex concepts of identity, self, form and language, inner and outer landscapes, gender and politics, trauma, historicity and phenomenology. We will be focussing on the manifold ways in which language constructs and deconstructs self and selves, breaches old paradigms, looks 'behind' itself (in panic?) and yet audaciously ploughs on towards the 'unforeseeable'. During the module you will be given the opportunity to develop your writing in various contemporary formations of more established and currently forming conventions/experimentations; your critical thinking through a wide range of creative samples by currently published authors of both poetry and prose and other speculative genres of fusion; and through the weekly workshops to sharpen your editorial skills.

20 credits

Dissertation

The 'Dissertation' module is always taken in combination with the 'Research Practice' module and, together, these two units give students the opportunity to spend a whole year researching a topic of particular interest to them, engaging with new data or primary sources, and working on material that is typically more advanced than that covered in taught modules. The final result is a dissertation of up to 7,000 words. Students receive support through whole-group workshops and one-to-one support from a supervisor. In the process, they develop research and communication skills valuable in academic and professional contexts. Although support will be provided by supervisors and the module convenor, students will be expected to drive their projects forward themselves and be proactive in seeking guidance and help when they need it. The module is not suitable for students who do not enjoy independent research and reading

20 credits

Historical Linguistics

Language change is a fact of all living languages, and historical linguistics is as much about the present and future as it is about its past. This module introduces the study of how and why languages change, and how languages are related. You are encouraged to reflect on the ways in which historical linguistics bears on other areas of linguistics. The subject will be approached by 1) levels of inquiry, e.g. semantic, phonological, morphological, syntactic and pragmatic change; and 2) 'big questions', e.g. language families and linguistic prehistory, the role of acquisition in change, linguistic reconstruction, and historical sociolinguistics.

20 credits

Reading, Writing and Playing with the Creative Essay

This is the essay - but not as you know it. It is, more specifically, the creative essay: a space of play, experiment, criticality, creativity, risk, and sometimes failure. Through lectures delivered by staff from across the Department, you will engage with key examples of the form from different time periods and backgrounds, ranging from Michel de Montaigne to Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin to Teju Cole, Billy-Rae Belcourt and Rebecca Solnit, amongst others. In seminars, you will analyse the techniques writers use to produce essays which are at once personal and critical, giving insights both into the writing 'I' and the object at hand; you will also exchange constructive feedback on your own essays with your peers. Across the module and in the assessment, you will be encouraged to experiment, using this uniquely flexible (and fun!) form to creatively explore the topics, experiences and ideas that really matter to you.

20 credits

Reading Animals

Contemporary literature is filled with stories about animals, and told by animals, which provide astonishing perspectives on animals' experiences—their ideas and feelings, needs and desires; their sense of place, of past and future; their sense of community, loneliness, freedom or danger, or solidarity with humans. In literature, animals tell us what it is like to live in family homes or factories; to go on adventures or to go extinct; to be wild or captive, domestic or feral; to lose their home; to be owned, watched, admired, hunted, worshipped, medically treated, and more. This module looks at literary texts in which nonhuman animals' lives are the central concern. We will study works by writers such as NoViolet Bulawayo, George Saunders, Sabrina Imbler, George Orwell, Yoko Tawada, and Ceridwen Dovey. We will ask: in what ways have authors given voice to animals' experience? What are the most effective literary strategies for representing animals (both portraying and speaking for them)? How have writers re-imagined the fable and other genres in which animals conventionally appear? How are portrayals altered in authors of different race, nation, or gender? And, perhaps most topically, how does literary writing help us rethink animals' importance in an age of extinction and industrial-scale consumption?

20 credits

Privilege and Subversion in Early Modern Drama, 1580-1700

This module surveys the theatre of early modern England, a cultural phenomenon that ranged from the scandalous and iconoclastic drama of Christopher Marlowe to the bawdy, urbane comedy of William Wycherley. We will interrogate the manifold ways in which the privileges and hierarchies of the period (relating, for example, to knowledge, power, gender, politics, sexuality and social class) were interrogated, subverted or upheld by dramatists such as Aphra Behn, John Dryden, Thomas Middleton and John Ford. We will read plays in a variety of genres and will analyse them in the context of landmark cultural and historical changes of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, such as religious conflict, colonial expansion, and the growth of London as a centre of pleasure and consumption.The module considers the changing conditions of performance in pre- and post-civil-war theatre, the kinds of publication that dramatists used, and the characteristics of the language with which dramatists worked. It also relates the texts to critical methods that help illuminate the relationships between theatre and the explosive cultural, political, and religious differences of the period.

20 credits

The Invention of Romanticism

This module is about the birth and legacy of romantic-era writing. It studies famous figures such as William Wordsworth, John Keats and Emily Bronte alongside lesser-known writers such as Charlotte Smith, Charles Waterton and John Clare. It is taught by a team who use their research interests in fields such as environmental criticism, gender studies or colonial writing to think about how such authors inform our thinking about the world today. Over the year you'll write two essays and develop a proposal for an end-of-year module conference where, supported by your tutors, you can present your ideas and findings to the class. As well as helping you find your own critical voice and developing your academic writing and research skills, this module believes that the modern world and how we think of it was born and shaped by the literature of the Romantics and it encourages you to think critically about that legacy.

40 credits

Renaissance Literature, Modern Crisis

This module considers early modern and Renaissance literature in relation to some of the pressing concerns of the modern world, e.g. the climate emergency, decolonisation, and gender identity (topics may vary from year to year depending on staff expertise and current events). It will combine historicism (looking at texts in historical contexts) with presentism (thinking about how we read texts in our own historical context). You'll write a critical essay relating early modern literature to a modern priority, and then work on a project whose nature and scope you'll decide in dialogue with your tutor(s): for example, an edited collection of texts based around a shared theme; teaching materials; or a magazine-style article. As well as helping you hone your academic writing and your research and critical thinking skills, this module encourages you to think about how literary texts can speak to problems in the wider world.

40 credits

Research Topics in Theatre and Film

This module introduces you to significant research topics that cut across theatre and film studies, opening up the synergies and divergence between these art forms. Key themes such as Bodies, Identities, Memory, Site and Migration will focus our analysis of diverse historical and contemporary examples, positioned critically alongside notable remakings and sometimes radical adaptations. Research into these case studies will uncover important contexts of creation, production and reception that serve to deepen and problematise their meanings. You will also explore current approaches in theory and criticism that reframe theatre and film in exciting and challenging ways. The module's year-long structure allows substantial time to pursue individual research interests, guided by your tutors and inspired by and extending beyond work we undertake as a group. Reflecting the creative mediums we focus on, this module includes supported assessment options for video essays and project pitches, building skills in editing and audiovisual presentation, as alternatives to the traditional essay. Whether or not you choose to experiment with these formats, you will acquire sophisticated knowledge of film and theatre, deepen your understanding of cinematic and performance languages, and gain valuable skills in creative thinking and expression beyond the written word.

40 credits

Mod Cons: Exploring the Long 20th Century

This module introduces you to current research in the study of literary and related forms of cultural text and practice, focusing on the modern and contemporary periods from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present. With a curriculum adapted each year in response to the current research interests of academic staff, the module focuses on the ways in which literary and related works can be understood in terms of important aesthetic, cultural and socio-political concerns in the period. During this module you will be given the opportunity to develop your critical thinking and your writing and analytical skills through an indepth engagement with a variety of text from the modern and contemporary periods.

40 credits

Dissertation

The Dissertation is a long essay of between 8-10,000 words, the result of a sustained period of independent study across both semesters where you work closely with an academic specialist in your area of interest. This module provides final year undergraduate students with an opportunity to build on work done in previous modules, or study a topic that has not been included in the degree. Students taking this module are expected to demonstrate a capacity both for independent research and for organising a long piece of work. In addition to writing a critical dissertation, you also have the option to work on a piece of creative writing that could include a collection of poetry, a piece of short fiction or theatre, or a video-essay.

40 credits

Try a new subject:

The flexible structure of your third year at Sheffield means that you also have the chance to experience modules from outside of English - you can choose up to 20 credits of modules from a list approved by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. A final guided module list is made available to new students when you select your modules as part of registration.