Europe 1900-45

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 1

This module focuses on the development of essential study skills such as textual analysis, note-taking, the planning and writing of essays and summaries. You will normally work with texts written in (one of) your foreign language(s).

Film Analysis: Hollywood Narrative and Style

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 1

Film Analysis 1 explores the diverse uses to which filmmakers put such key techniques of cinematic expression as narrative, cinematography, mise-en-scene, editing, sound, performance and special effects. You will explore not simply how such techniques are accomplished (ie the creative choices available to filmmakers) but also the potential they have for generating meaning and pleasure when combined together to produce filmic texts. The module is based around a series of reading assignments, which will be discussed in seminars along with the week's set film and extracts from other films. In particular, Film Analysis 1 examines one of the most influential and most pervasive models of cinema: the classical narrative film produced during the era of the Hollywood studio system (from approximately 1915 to 1960). You will consider several films from this era, as well as films produced subsequently, in the light of influential propositions by David Bordwell and other film scholars regarding the systematic organisation of stylistic and narrative norms within classical Hollywood storytelling.

France 1900-45

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 1

This module develops and extends the ideas and themes introduced in the module History and Culture in the 20th Century. Relevant works of literature, film, theatre and the press are studied in the target language, wherever possible. Written and oral material is drawn from a wide range of sources to make you aware of the context in which the country whose language you study has progressed towards its current situation. You will develop essential skills of note-taking, discussing, summarising, analysing and essay writing (including documentation).

Issues in Film Studies 1B: European Film Cultures

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 1

This module is an introduction to the history and study of film and cinema. Through lectures, seminars and screenings, you will explore silent and sound cinema, the concept of mass culture, developing cinematic practices in different countries, and the aesthetic and institutional procedures of various film industries.

Issues in Film Studies 2: Global Film Cultures

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 1

Building on Issues in Film Studies 2, this module continues to examine modes of film making and cinematic contexts from a range of national settings and historical moments. You will both expand your knowledge of different cinematic practices, and deepen your skills of textual and contextual analysis.

 

French 1A

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 1

You will consolidate and progress your knowledge of grammar. Improved grammatical accuracy, oral and written fluency, lexis, and listening and reading comprehension are achieved through the study of a variety of topics and integrated grammar. You will also gain insight into the culture and society of your chosen country.

French 1B

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 1

You will acquire advanced knowledge of grammar and improve grammatical accuracy, oral and written fluency, lexis, and listening and reading comprehension through the study of a variety of topics and integrated grammar. There is an emphasis on the summarising and handling of authentic texts. You will also study the literature, culture, society and politics of France.

French For Bilinguals A

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 1

This is an entry-level module in translation theory and practice. You will submit a fortnightly translation. Weekly, you will work with a tutor on a pre-distributed text and derive a translation in class. Focused attention is given to the problematics of translation, eg basic theories and strategies available, difficulties of untranslatability, cultural/linguistic matters, and the register/genre/style demands of translation. Working is in both directions, eg theme and version. In addition to exploring the relationships between, eg accuracy, fluency and appropriacy in translation, the teaching prepares you for more comparative translation, oral-aural working, and commentary activities in French Translation Theory and Practice 1B.

French For Bilinguals B

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 1

You submit a fortnightly translation prepared at home during the spring term. Weekly, you work with a tutor on a pre-distributed text and derive a translation in class. Focused attention is given to the problems of translation, eg basic theories and strategies available, the difficulties of untranslatability, cultural/linguistic matters, and the register/genre/style demands of translation. Working is in both directions, ie theme and version. In addition to exploring the relationships between accuracy, fluency and appropriacy in translation, the teaching focuses particularly on comparative translation, oral-aural working (ie basic interpreting), and commentary activities.

Film Theory

30 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 2

This module examines a range of different approaches to film studies including semiotics, narratology,psychoanalysis, reception studies in debate with spectatorship theory, post-modern theory and postcolonial theory.

France 1945-date

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

Relevant works of literature, film, theatre and the press are studied in French, wherever possible. Written and oral material is drawn from a wide range of sources to make you aware of the context in which France has progressed towards its current situation. You will develop essential skills of note-taking, discussing, summarising, analysing and essay writing (including documentation). The module will allow you to progress towards independent study.

French 2A

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 2

Your knowledge of syntax will be revised and progressed and active knowledge of lexis increased. Speaking, listening, reading and written skills will be raised to a higher level through the study of authentic texts taken from a variety of media. The study of relevant current affairs will be an important element of the module.

French 2B

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

Your knowledge of syntax and lexis will continue to be enhanced alongside the skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing. Practical aspects of living, studying and working abroad will be covered, including history, geography, politics, society, culture and literature.

Europe 1945-date

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 2

The module provides you with an overview of important historical and cultural developments in the second part of the 20th century, focussing on the period from the 1940s through to the present day. Movements and trends in the political, historical and social area and their impact on the arts and literature are addressed in the lectures. For all these topics, various national settings (France, Germany, Italy and Spain) are examined and discussed. The lecture series seeks to establish a comparative perspective on the relevant issues.

Language and Nation

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 2

Following a short introduction, the module falls into two parts. The first looks at how we discover the links between Language, Thought and Nation, and try to identify and analyse covert as well as overt associations between these. Who are the guardians and gatekeepers of our 'native' languages, and what are the pressures to have English in England, French in France but Castillian in Spain and Post-Florentine in Italy? Are some languages more equal than others, conferring more status to their users? And why do languages still change despite 'Academies'? The second part looks at instances of how expressions of the relationship between a nation and its language emerge as various literary and other genres (with particular reference to the novel), and how these feed back into the collective identity (with particular reference to representations in the cinema of various countries).

Locating Cinema: British Cinema A

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

The module begins by examining critical approaches to a history of British cinema and the dominant ways in which this cinema and its characteristics have been understood. It then moves to an examination of British cinema from the 1920s to 1980, beginning with the factors which shaped it, in particular the debates about the social and cultural importance of a specifically British cinema against the background of the massive influence of Hollywood, and the representations of 'Britishness' that this produced. The later weeks of the module examine in more detail British cinema's attempts to deal with the various forms of 'otherness' that it has sought both to define and to contain in the changing cultural and political climate of the post-war years, and with the different 'British cinemas' that this produced.

Locating Cinema: Cuban Cinema A

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

This module offers a historical, critical, and theoretical survey of Cuban cinema. You will look at the specific political, social, economic, technological, and aesthetic factors that have influenced the shape and character of imaging practices in Cuba since the arrival of cinematography on the island in 1897. Key topics may include: pre-classical (1897-1919) and classical eras (1920-1960) in Cuba, whose imaging practices are often ignored or overshadowed by the cinema of the Cuban Revolution; pre-revolutionary and revolutionary cinema, ; the 'other' island films, created by exiled Cubans; and films articulating the experience of the Cuban diaspora, particularly in terms of Cuban-North American culture. The module also addresses contemporary issues and practices in the shadow of profound technological, economic and political changes, including the co-productions of globalisation/digitalisation.

Locating Cinema: French Cinema A

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

This module will examine a range of films produced in France from World War I to the present day. It will move between popular cinema and the art film and review a number of national styles and genres, such as the moment of the Nouvelle Vague (the New Wave) including Francois Truffaut, Jacques Rivette and Jean-Luc Godard; the lyrical social documentary of Jean Vigo; policier detective dramas such as Pepe le Moko, the musical, including Jacque Demy’s Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, and the horror film Les Diaboliques. A series of directors will be studied, including Claude Chabrol, Rene Clair, Alain Resnais, Roger Vadim, Luis Bunuel, Francois Truffaut, Jacques Rivette and Jean Luc Godard. There will be close readings of specified films, as well as an examination of them in terms of their larger social and cultural meanings.

Europe Mandatory Year Abroad - Modern Languages

120 credits
Autumn & spring teaching, Year 3

French 3A

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 4

The two hours per week classroom contact throughout this 25-week module are devoted, on the one hand, to oral and interpreting work and, on the other, to translation and composition. There is therefore an emphasis upon oral proficiency, both in everyday conversation and in more formal contexts, such as presentations and mediation between speakers of French and English. There is a similar emphasis upon written proficiency, whether writing French 'freely' within the framework of a discursive essay, translating from English into French or, indeed, from French into English. Roughly equal contact time is devoted to these three written skills and the same weighting is accorded to each of them in assessments.

French 3B

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 4

Adaptation: Filming Fiction

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 4

This module examines film adaptations of fiction from the silent period to the present day. A diverse range of film texts will be considered, along with critical and theoretical perspectives on adaptation, authorship and intertextuality. The module focuses on film adaptations of nineteenth-century and twentieth-century novels, short stories and picture books, including works by Lewis Carroll, Edgar Allen Poe, Charlotte Bronte, Thomas Mann, Raymond Carver and Maurice Sendak. We will consider the significance of the idea of fidelity for the reception and theorisation of film adaptation. The module will approach adaptation as both an industrial mode of commercial production and a creative mode of critical interpretation. Cinematic strategies deployed to reproduce literary devices will be analysed in order to think about adaptation's value for theories of medium specificity. The module will also examine the politics of cross-cultural adaptation by looking at Indian and African films based on European source texts. Directors studied during the course include: Roger Corman, David Lean, Max Ophuls, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Claire Denis and Spike Jonze.

Alternative Cinemas

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 4

French Special Subject 1

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 4

This module, delivered in French to all single-honours and joint-major students studying French as part of their degree, will address some key works by two of the most significant writers in 20th-century French literature, namely Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone deBeauvoir. The texts themselves may vary from year to year, but they will normally include at least one notable exemplar of the theatre, prose fiction, biography and/or autobiography, and the discursive or polemical essay (whether literary, political, philosophical or sociological in theme). A prime focus of analysis will be the manner in which this famous existentialist couple transposed their lived experience – and, to an extent, their own relationship – into a plethora of literary forms.

French Special Subject 2

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 4

Genres in European Literature

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 4

This weekly lecture plus fortnightly seminar module, delivered in English to all Single Honours linguists (one or two languages) will consider key genres or styles in 20th-century European prose literature. These will vary from year to year, but will typically include some of the following: the novel and narrative theory, the short story, women's writing, biography, autobiography, fantasy, juvenilia and writing about youth. Equally, the authors and works selected for study (in English translation) will vary, but will normally include at least one prominent writer in each of the four European languages offered at this level, namely French, German, Italian and Spanish.

Hollywood Comedian Comedy

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 4

Comedian-comedy has been one of the most persistent genres of popular Hollywood cinema since the silent era, but until recently it has received little serious critical attention. This module will consider a range of individual performers and the diverse historical, cinematic and extra-cinematic contexts in which they worked. Drawing upon a range of critical and theoretical paradigms, the module will examine the key fictional and extra-fictional features of the genre; the relations between performance, gags and narrative; the shifting relationships between comedy in film and other media (such as vaudeville and television); and the representation of class, gender, ethnicity and race. Films studied may include comedies featuring such performers as Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, Mae West, the Marx Brothers, Jerry Lewis, Jim Carrey and Eddie Murphy.

Hollywood Industry and Imaginary

30 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 4

Modern Languages Dissertation

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 4

This module is available as an option both to single-honours and joint-major modern linguists. It provides the opportunity to conduct a self-assigned piece of research and to write it up in the target language, as an alternative to working in English in "Genres" (R9033). Each student will be allocated a supervisor in the relevant language, with whom s/he will agree the topic of her/his research and the title of the dissertation. However, that research will be essentially self-directed under the light-touch guidance of the supervisor, provided initially through shared workshops and, later on, through one-to-one tutorials. The student will be required to produce two excerpts of work in progress, at mutually agreed points in TB1, so that the supervisor can check that s/he is on the right lines and offer helpful formative feedback. For illustrative purposes, research topics might include: modern French authors, especially Sartre and the existentialists; post-war German literature; cinema adaptations of European literary works; Golden Age Spanish drama.

Race and Ethnicity in Popular Cinema 1

30 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 4

Sexualities and the Cinema

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 4

This module centres on the critical study of sexualities and how they are represented in a range of film texts. Through screenings, seminars and self directed study, you will consider in detail and depth, the ways in which sexualities have been both theorised and represented in film. Debates considered in the module may include: the politics of sexual identification; the idea of sexual 'perversity'; sexual stereotyping (especially of lesbians and gays); and the critical concept of 'queer' in theory, identity politics and cinematic genre (queer cinema).

The Musical

30 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 4

This module will examine the musical, tracing the hegemonic Hollywood genre to its roots in European vaudeville, cabaret culture, stage musicals and operas. It will also explore musicals that may seek to defy or respond to Hollywoodcentric, Eurocentric and heterosexist conceptions of genre. The module is divided into two sections. The first section will analyse the Hollywood musical of the studio era, by examining both the stylistic features and historical context of some of its different sub-genres; the show/backstage musical, the fairy tale musical and the folk musical. It may also explore the diverse ways in which the studio era musical as entertainment may work ideologically in relation to issues of race, ethnicity and sexuality.

The second section of the module will focus on the musical as it has developed beyond Hollywood (and beyond the conceptual framework of Hollywood). Topics may include; the subcultural musical, the animated musical (arguably, the most common form of the contemporary musical in both its mainstream (Disney) and counter mainstream forms (South Park)) and may conclude with a consideration of the future of the musical in terms of gender, age and physicality.

Viewing Women

30 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 4

Early work on the relation of women to film considered woman's 'to-be-looked-at-ness', examining representations of women as objects of the male gaze, constructions 'cut to the measure of [male] desire' (Laura Mulvey). You will consider the female spectator, positioned by particular film and television genres (melodrama, the 'woman's film', and soap opera). More recently, attention has shifted to women as social audiences and producers of meanings, differing from one another and constructing from texts their own meanings and pleasures. This module traces these developing and interacting strands of research, considering questions around the location of meaning, the relationship between text and context, and the usefulness of different strands of feminist research in enabling us to understand film texts and their representations and positioning of women. It considers a range of popular and feminist film texts and their viewers.