Teaching Responsibility
LJMU Schools involved in Delivery:
Humanities and Social Science
Learning Methods
Lecture
Seminar
Tutorial
Workshop
Module Offerings
5112ENGL-SEP-MTP
Aims
1. To analyse a wide variety of short writing, both Anglophone and translated works, from the post-Second World War era, such as short stories, fragments, aphorisms, prose poetry, diary entries, letters and essays;
2. To use this short writing to develop students’ skills of close reading and textual analysis;
3. To explore the relationship between short writing and modernity/contemporary culture.
Learning Outcomes
1.
Critically review key issues and debates around the study of short writing;
2.
Relate these types of writing, from a wide geographical and cultural context, to their broader historical moment;
3.
Apply skills of close reading and contextual analysis in order to interpret these texts.
Module Content
Outline Syllabus:The key texts studied will vary from year from year and will be subject to staff expertise, but they might include: the New Yorker short story (e.g. John Updike, John Cheever); Raymond Carver, Short Cuts [and the Robert Altman film]; ‘Dirty realism’ (Bobbie Ann Mason, Jayne Anne Phillips); the ‘lyric essay’ (Joan Didion, Annie Dillard, John D’Agata, Eula Biss, Maggie Nelson); short writing from Britain and the Commonwealth (Janet Frame, J.G. Ballard, John Berger, Julian Barnes); fragmentary cultural theory by, for example, Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, Maurice Blanchot; short works in translation by Tove Jansson, Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Haruki Murakami.
Learning Activities
Module Overview:
The aim of this module is to analyse a wide variety of short writing from the post-Second World War era to develop skills of close reading and textual analysis. You will also explore the relationship between short writing and modernity/contemporary culture.
The aim of this module is to analyse a wide variety of short writing from the post-Second World War era to develop skills of close reading and textual analysis. You will also explore the relationship between short writing and modernity/contemporary culture.
Additional Information:Short Cuts will analyse a wide variety of short writing, both Anglophone and translated works, from the post-Second World War era to the present day. The short-form writing it will explore will range from short stories to essays, prose poems to aphorisms, and it will be particularly interested in literature that marries these forms and evades conventional categories. It aims to introduce students to a wide variety of intellectually exciting, playful and inventive work within a short space; and, in the process, to hone students’ skills of close and creative reading.