Course Catalogue

Humanities and Social Science

1.To examine the impact of World War One and increasing concerns about a second World War on understanding of class, gender, sexual and regional identities during the period 1918-1939. 2. To explore the range of literary forms deployed to represent and challenge emergent conceptualisation of identity, including the novel, popular fiction, middlebrow writing, poetry, autobiography, periodical publishing. 3. To assess the relationship between changing cultural hierarchies and reconfigurations of identity.

Outline Syllabus:1. Introduction 2. Reflecting on World War One: The Return of the Soldier 3. Englishness: Morton, Priestly, Orwell, Muir, Sassoon, Lawrence, Holtby 4. The Comic Mode: Decline and Fall 5. Research task: The Strand Magazine 6. Mystery and the Middlebrow: Murder Must Advertise 7. Sexualities: excerpts 8. Sexualities: The Well of Loneliness 9. Documenting class: poetry and documentary realism 10. Sexualities: Goodbye to Berlin 11. Class and Englishness: Coming Up for Air.

Module Overview:
This module examines shifting identities and the intersections of class, sexuality, gender and regionality in British literature of the interwar years. It moves across popular, middlebrow and experimental fiction and looks at poetry, non-fiction and magazine publishing as a means of examining the changing cultural formations of the period.

Additional Information:This module examines shifting identities and the intersections of class, sexuality, gender and regionality in British literature of the interwar years. It moves across popular, middlebrow and experimental fiction and looks at poetry, non-fiction and magazine publishing as a means of examining the changing cultural formations of the period.