English - Modernities: Literature, Theory and Culture from the Romantics to the Present

This MA introduces students to the advanced study of American and British literature and other cultural forms, from the eighteenth century to the present day, as well as to a selection of European and American theoretical works pertaining to the concept of ‘modernity’. Under the guidance of leading scholars in their fields, students will encounter some of the most influential contemporary critical and theoretical models currently being applied to the notions of modernity and modernisation, and apply the ideas raised by these theories to a rich variety of works from the Romantic, Victorian, and modernist periods, and the later twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Texts studied range from those of canonical Romantics, including P.B. and Mary Shelley, major Victorian authors such as Charles Dickens, the influential modernists Ezra Pound and Virginia Woolf, to innovative recent and contemporary poets, novelists, dramatists, and filmmakers. Among theorists of modernity, students can expect to explore the thought of significant nineteenth-century thinkers, including Carlyle, Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, and to examine twentieth/twenty-first-century cultural theory in such fields as deconstruction, ecofeminism, and transhumanism. The encounter with these thinkers and movements will aid the student in debating and developing a deeper understanding and appreciation of the broader culture in this era.