Teaching and assessment for English and History MA (Hons)

In this module you will view films hailing from the birth of cinema to the present day, exploring key techniques and issues in Film Studies.

This module explores the strengths and weaknesses of differing theories of literary interpretation. You will read poems, plays, and novels from a variety of historical periods together with works of literary theory while exploring weekly topics e.g. Beginnings, Character, Satire, Love and Desire, Secrets, The Body, and Fear and Terror.

This module centres on Memory as a key concept in Humanities. Recent thinking has focussed on the nature of personal, collective, and cultural memory as shapers of individuals and society.

Rather than a stable repository, Memory is understood to be unreliable, conflicted, contested, transitory, and political

Revolutions is a key concept in modern political and intellectual history. But why do we refer to particular political event as 'revolutions'? How does the label 'revolution' affect how political ideologists and historians have interpreted the significance, the causes and consequences of highly complex and turbulent events in modern history.

This module studies the exchange of goods, people, and ideas that tied together Europe, Africa, and the Americas.

It explores the origins of globalization and provides a comparative understanding of the development of European empires in Africa and the Americas.

You will develop basic linguistic knowledge. You will learn cultural awareness and transferable communication skills. These will be of use to you in your personal and professional life.

You will work within the level of A1 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).

This is a dynamic course on modern philosophy that explores the realms of thought and reality. It uncovers the minds that shape today's philosophical discussions, as it dives into the rich tapestry of contemporary philosophy.

This module will provide work experience alongside university study to further enhance employability and help you plan for your future.

It will suit students who can bring a professional attitude to their internship and are keen to take practical steps towards developing transferable skills for their future.

This module examines the 'Golden Age' of Hollywood Cinema (roughly 1920-1960), looking at the role of the studio system and the impact of relevant social, political and historical contexts on a wide range of Hollywood genres, including screwball comedy, westerns, crime, war films, and science-fiction.

Learn about the development of literature from the Victorian period to the contemporary era.

We study key texts that exemplify how writers respond to the accelerating social, political, and cultural changes of their time, by either regenerating established literary modes or pioneering new ones.

This module emphasises the ways in which literature emerges from and responds to key social movements and changes.

You will study a range of poetry, prose, and drama which cover issues arising from religious reformation, rising empires, slavery, industrialisation, as well as the changing roles of class, race, and gender.

This module seeks to expand your appreciation of the medium of cinema by making you familiar with a variety of national cinematic movements. We will study historical contexts in film, and the language of film criticism and analysis more broadly.

This module introduces important concepts about gender and sexuality and shows how these concepts have changed over time.

Lecturers from English Literature, Philosophy, History, Creative Writing, Film, and Languages offer influential ideas from their disciplines, and help you recognise how sex-gender systems have real and physical consequences in individuals' lives.

Covering the period 1603-c.1939, this module explores Scotland's interactions with the outside world.

Organised around cross-cutting themes like emigration, empire, trade, warfare, religion, and identity, the module's primary aim is to understand how Scotland fitted into the broader British, European, imperial, and global contexts.

This module explores important issues in contemporary America by examining its historical and cultural background. It also places the United States within a broader global context by making specific comparisons with the history of South Africa. This module focuses particularly on issues such as race, gender, violence, and colonialism.

This module illuminates the transformative impact of 20th-century philosophical movements on our understanding of existence and reality.

From existential angst to the exploration of Dasein, you will critically engage with pivotal writings that have shaped modern philosophy and continue to influence our understanding of life and existence.

In this module, we delve into the fascinating world of art and aesthetics, exploring why some philosophers have sought to defend the value of beauty in the modern world, and why some argue good art without being beautiful is in fact one of the great achievements of 20th century art.

This module explores the relationship between literature and comics, with an emphasis on adaptations of literature into comics and graphic novels. It considers theoretical and formal questions about how comics work, and the relationship between comics and literary forms such as prose, poetry and drama.

This module will introduce you to some of the most important and influential African novelists. Genres to be studied include: colonial romance, epic, folk tale, the political novel, Utopian and dystopian narratives, the Gothic novel, metafiction and modernism, the bildungsroman, the historical or war novel, science fiction, and fantasy.

In this module we will study the major writers of 19th-century America, and how they responded to rapid social and political change. We will examine key issues of the time using these authors' greatest works. In some cases these writings changed the national political debate in America.

This is a creative writing course focussing on the craft of writing poetry, and the art of writing about this craft as a poet.

You will explore what we mean when by words like ‘culture’ and ‘creativity’. You will look into what industries, institutions and infrastructures support creative work today. You will also explore the histories underlying them.

In this module, you'll explore these questions and apply them to your own creative writing practice.

A hands-on, interactive module about analysing and interpreting historical evidence, using sources from seventeenth-century Scotland, both in print and as digitised images of original manuscripts. It's about learning how to be a historian by thinking directly about how historians approach the challenges of interpretation presented by original sources.

Explore the Dutch Golden Age including the Dutch War of Independence, Anglo-Dutch naval conflict, and Rembrandt and Dutch art and culture.

This module will cover how History is studied and applied in current times. It explores the nature of History as a subject, as well as current trends and themes in historical studies.

The module will also give you a greater awareness of different approaches to communicating and consuming historical information.

This module explores the experiences and treatment of individuals or groups perceived as different or outside the mainstream in early modern Scotland (c.1550-c.1750). We will look at a series of case studies of discrete marginal groups.

In this module you will learn about the way public history and historical information is used and abused in contemporary everyday life in the province of Ulster on both sides of the border dividing Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.

This module covers the social, political, and cultural history of America during the 1960s, paying particular attention to the various social movements that emerged during that time.

This includes opposition to the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, and feminism.

This module focuses on major innovations in literary style and ambition in the Modernist period through the study of both British and American writers.

This module surveys gothic fiction (novels, novellas, and short stories) produced before 1900 in England, Scotland, Ireland, America, and other countries.

This is a practitioner-taught creative writing module.

In this module we ask what it means to write creatively about the environment, realising how creative writing (poetry, prose, dramatic, and innovative/hybrid forms) might relate to current debates about the environment.

Your history research dissertation represents the culmination of your undergraduate studies. It is your chance to do historical research using primary sources and saying something new about the past.

In this Module you will begin to appreciate how film directors represent and construct the past and how this differs from the work and ambitions of academic historians.