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).

Italian 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.

Italian 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 Italy.

Italy 1900-45

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 1

This module develops and extends the ideas and themes introduced in the lecture series History and Culture in the 20th Century. Relevant works of literature, film, theatre and the press are studied in Italian, 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).

Making Theatre

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 1

The aim of this module is to introduce you to the processes by which theatre or performance may be created. You will participate in and reflect on group-based approaches to making theatre, be they in the field of devising and/or text-based production. Games and exercises will encourage you to work with other students, creatively and productively with a view to generating material for performance. The module aims to develop ways of making theatre that stress interaction, teamwork and the value of focused workshop practice. The module will culminate in a group presentation in which short pieces that have either been devised or directed will be performed.

Reading Theatre Texts

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 1

This module introduces you to ways of reading and thinking critically about theatre texts. You will examine a number of texts in relation to dramatic conventions, as well as issues of theatre production and performance. You will look at how plays from different historical periods vary in form and content, focusing on stylistic and structural differences from a comparative perspective. The module aims to introduce you to analytical approaches to reading plays and to key issues in theatre and performance. Texts to be studied may include plays from different periods of theatre history.

Staging Text

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 1

This module concerns the staging of dramatic text in theatrical space. It will consider the many choices facing the actor or performer when delivering text, and will introduce you to contrasting practitioners' approaches to performing text. In addition, you will encounter approaches to stagecraft, which may include treatment of lighting, design, multimedia or costume, and the ways in which such issues affect the presentation of text.

Theories of Drama

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 1

Theories of Drama will focus on the innovations of major drama theorists relating to the text, the audience, the performer and the performance space. You will study a range of writers that will include Aristotle, Stanislavsky, Brecht, Artaud, Grotowski, Boal, Lecoq and Brook. The module begins with an introductory session on what we understand by drama, theatre and performance. This will be followed by seminars based on the close study of a range of theoretical texts from Aristotle to the present. We focus on the major changes that these theorists have brought to thinking about theatre, as well as exploring their links with other forms of literary and critical theory. Each week, individual students will be asked to give short presentations based on the theme of that week's seminar. The topic will be agreed in consultation with your module tutor.

 

 

Approaches to Contemporary Performance

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 2

This module will familiarise you with approaches to contemporary performance, which acknowledge the opportunities afforded by theatre and theatricality in a profoundly uncertain world. You will engage with issues in contemporary stagecraft on a practical level, although workshops will necessarily be informed by a range of theoretical positions. Work will focus on the treatment of character but there will be opportunities to explore, for example, issues of signification on stage, non-linear plotting, and comprehensibility.

Italian 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.

Italian 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.

Italy 1945-date

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

Relevant works of literature, film, theatre and the press are studied in Italian, wherever possible. Written and oral material is drawn from a wide range of sources to make you aware of the context in which Italy 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.

Modern and Postmodern Drama

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 2

This module will be taught as a series of seminars exploring the shift from naturalism to modernist and postmodernist theatre from the late 19th to the 21st century. It examines a number of plays that address important issues of modernity (and postmodernity), both in their form and content. We will look at the contribution and response of drama to social and cultural debates around the role of art, gender and sexuality, the family, the state and the nation. You will study a different play each week, give a short presentation in one of the seminars and engage fully in the discussion of all the texts.

 

Early Modern Drama and Contemporary Theatre

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

This module is designed to allow you to follow your interest in the play texts and performances of the early modern theatre, studying a single play from this period in detail. This play may be chosen from the many plays that do not have modern editions (plays by Goffe, Brome and Davenant for instance), but might instead be a well-known play from the period (Shakespeare's Hamlet, for instance). A facsimile reproduction of an early edition will be used. This will allow you to encounter the text in its original format, unmediated by modern editorial conventions. 

The module will be divided into two sections. The first will be based on an exploration of the playing conditions of the early modern theatre, the text itself and/or the context in which the play under consideration was both written and initially performed. The teaching and study will be tailored towards the themes of the play under consideration in any given year. You will work in a group towards producing a basic edited version of the play (with notes where necessary), familiarising yourself with the issues involved in editing such a text - for example questions of punctuation, format, spelling conventions, and textual variations. 

The second part of the module will take what you have learned from your intensive focus upon the text, and use the edition you have produced as the basis for a performance that you will devise in a workshop environment. This will be done in conjunction with further study of the play and its performance history, and will aim particularly at using performance to elucidate interesting or contentious areas of the play text that can be identified. The final assessed performance that you produce will not necessarily be a simple performance or reading of the play itself, but will use the play as a starting point.

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).

Writing for Theatre

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

This module focuses on writing for the theatre from a critical and creative perspective. You will explore the work of a number of contemporary playwrights, examining the way they approach writing, and the techniques they employ. You will focus on how playwrights have experimented with theatrical form and structure, and investigate the way in which themes and critical issues become manifest in theatrical writing. You will also consider how such writers might provide starting points for your own work. To complement this, a range of creative writing exercises will encourage you to develop your own theatre writing, through the composition of monologues, dialogues and dramatic scenes.

 

Europe Mandatory Year Abroad - Modern Languages

120 credits
Autumn & spring teaching, Year 3

Final Year Performance Project

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 4

The aim of this module is to allow you to engage in depth with processes leading to a full-length production or performance. You will be expected to feed into their work (and into that of the group) the most relevant areas of skill and knowledge which they have gained elsewhere on the programme. In the context of preparing and rehearsing for performance, you will be expected to practice, to extend and to develop the physical, creative, intellectual and practical skills necessary for the work. You will also analyse and reflect on their own and the group's processes. You will be expected to develop their own approaches to researching and studying the text or material which forms the basis for the process and the performance. You will be expected to document and analyse your own work and the group's work effectively, and make suggestions of how it might be developed further.

Italian 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 Italian and English. There is a similar emphasis upon written proficiency, whether writing Italian 'freely' within the framework of a discursive essay, translating from English into Italian or, indeed, from Italian 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.

Italian 3B

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 4

Italian Special Subject

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 4

This module, delivered in Italian to all single-honours and joint-major students studying Italian as part of their degree, will look at women's presence and representation in early modern Italian literature and art. This module will address some distinctive works by Boccaccio, Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna, and will cover a variety of genres such as prose, poetry, philosophical commentary, letter writing and biography.

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.

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.

Performing the Body

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 4

This module considers some of the ways theatre and performance studies documents and theorizes the body in and as performance. In particular, you will focus on the use and representation of the body in performance, from the late 20th century to the present day. We will consider the complex and intriguing ways in which live performance (theatre, dance, performance art, protest marches, exhibitions) positions the body as a fluid and performative site through which historical, cultural and social identities can be located and contested. How do constructions of the body produce hierarchizing and marginalizing effects? How does embodiment both delimit and explode the rhetorics and discourses that frame the body in live performance? You will examine a range of key debates that focus on the body and on notions of subjectivity and identity politics. You will examine specific performance "scenes" and artists in order to develop in-depth discussions that will culminate in a series of performative seminar presentations. The module will foreground some of the critical issues that arise when we consider the body as an event that problematizes the distinction between the live and the mediated, the "real" and the performed, the staged and the everyday.

Postdramatic Theatre

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 4

This course will introduce you to notions of post-dramatic theatre by examining theoretical positions and practical applications. You will consider what might constitute theatre in a post-representation world, and the ways in which the fundamentals of dramatic theatre - character, plot and dialogue - are called into question. You will also examine the aesthetics of the post-dramatic through your own practice and will be invited to develop approaches to performance that seek to bracket or banish representation in the theatre.

Theatre, Performance and Ethics

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 4

This module looks at a series of contemporary plays and theatre productions in relation to the ethics of representation. It will explore the writer's or the director's responsibilities in staging the self and the other in theatre and the strategies they adopt to highlight and problematise this process. By combining theoretical, textual and performance analysis, the module will engage with debates surrounding the representation of violence, trauma, sexuality, alterity and cultural and autobiographical memory in theatre. We will look at concepts such as meta-theatre and the role of the author in the theatre text as well as practices that aim to embody ethical positions in and through performance. In addition to recent thinking about ethics and representation in theatre and performance, the module will cover contemporary British and Irish playwrights and productions by contemporary theatre practitioners from the UK and France.