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Literature and Conflict, 1900-present

Module description

This module will provide you with an introduction to literary depictions and enactments of conflict and change across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. You will consider how a diverse range of conflicts in this period have impacted on modes of literary representation: from total war to climate change, from violent clashes over social and racial injustice, to challenges to conceptions of gender and sexuality. Traversing canonical and neglected works from a variety of literary genres, artistic forms and old/new media (e.g. painting, music, film, radio or television) this module will investigate the shifting, often volatile relationship between art and society in a period of seismic historical change. 

Module aims - intentions of the module

This module will introduce you to modern literature from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that confronts experiences of psychological, political, historical and artistic conflict. Through a range of genres and mediums, it will examine both the effects of specific social conflicts and the politics of literary representation more generally. The module will enable you to situate your readings of conflict within formal, historical, and theoretical contexts, through a mixture of lectures, seminars, and practical/critical workshops. 

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Analyse a range of genres which confront the experience of conflict in the twentieth- and twenty-first-century
• 2. Describe the relationship between literary works and the historical and critical contexts that surround them

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 3. Analyse modern and contemporary literature and relate its concerns and its modes of expression to its historical context
• 4. Interrelate texts and discourses specific to their own discipline with issues in the wider context of cultural and intellectual history

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 5. Through seminar work, demonstrate communication skills, and work both individually and in groups
• 6. Through essay-writing, demonstrate appropriate research and bibliographic skills, construct a coherent, substantiated argument, and write clear and correct prose

Syllabus plan

Whilst the content may vary from year to year, it is envisioned that it will cover some or all of the following topics:

• Modernism and Imperialism (e.g. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness and Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
• Harlem Renaissance: Conflict and Identity Politics (e.g. Nella Larsen, Passing)
• Conflict and/as War (e.g. Elizabeth Bowen, The Heat of the Day)
• Poetry and Postcolonial Politics (selections from e.g. Derek Walcott, Kamau Braithwaite)
• Place and Geopolitics: Conflict and Contemporary Literature (e.g. Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist)

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to redo the assessment(s) as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Ann L. Ardis, Modernism and Cultural Conflict  (2002)
• Tim Armstrong, Modernism: A Cultural History (2005)
• Tim Armstrong, Modernism, Technology and the Body (1998)
• Peter Howarth, The Cambridge Introduction to Modernist Poetry (2011)
• Andreas Huyssen, After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism (1988)
• Jessica Gildersleeve, Aart Jan Bergshoeff, Elizabeth Bowen and the writing of Trauma: The Ethics of Survival (2014)
• Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991)
• Sebastian Knowles, Modernists at Odds: Reconsidering Joyce and Lawrence (2015)
• Michael Levenson, ed.The Cambridge Companion to Modernism (Cambridge University Press, 1999)
• Nels Pierson, Irish Cosmopolitanism: Location and Dislocation in James Joyce, Elizabeth Bowen, and Samuel Beckett (2015)
• Rachel Potter, Modernist Literature (2012)
• Morag Shiach, ed.The Cambridge Companion to the Modernist Novel (2007).

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• ELE page: https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=7665

Key words search

Modernism, postmodernism, contemporary literature