British Literature, Theatre and Cultures

Core Modules

• British Literature, Theatre and Cultures

  Taught by a team of academics, British Literature, Theatre, Cultures offers a broad interdisciplinary discussion of different cultural forms and institutions and their significance to conceptions of British culture. Each week will focus on a particular case study, which will be curated to build into a cumulatively coherent narrative offering you an overview of different elements of cultural practice. Case studies may include the discussion of specific institutions (e.g., the Royal Court as a centre for new writing in theatre, the BBC, the Victoria and Albert Museum), individual writers and performers, films and television programmes, specific authors and texts, or performances currently on showing on in London. Representatives from, or with connections to, institutions will be brought into the module where possible to provide an understanding of the mechanics of the cultural industry and facilitate networking connections with practitioners.

• Contemporary British Theatre

  This module explores the work of a wide range of contemporary British dramatists and directors including, indicatively, debbie tucker green, Lucy Prebble, Bola Agbaje, Lucy Kirkwood, Caryl Churchill, Moira Buffini, Tanika Gupta, Roy Williams, Nick Payne, Simon Stephens, Mike Bartlett, Rob Drummond, and Anders Lustgarten. Specifically, it enables you to situate playwriting and performance as powerful modes of intervention in the public sphere. The aim of the module is to widen and deepen your understanding of theatre as a material and meaningful intervention in the contemporary world, to enable you to identify key developments in recent British theatre, and to utilise interdisciplinary modes of research.

• Concept and Dramaturgy

  Dramaturgy is the process of creative research that facilitates a successful transfer of source material to the stage. In this module, you will develop the multi-dimensional skills of the dramaturge in order to then propose and construct a directorial concept. You will be introduced to a broad range of contemporary directors working in Europe and beyond with a specific focus on their dramaturgical approaches and the shaping of an overriding concept. Case studies will include directors who adapt canonical 19th century plays, such as Yana Ross, or Shakespeare texts, such as Thomas Ostermeier, or adapt films or novels for the stage, such as Ivo van Hove. In addition, you will analyse the complex dramaturgical strategy of adapting multiple texts for a single performance in works by directors such as Krzysztof Warlikowski, or those who use real-life scenarios and documented histories, such as Lola Arias and Oliver Frljić. You will then have the chance to adapt a text for performance through a dramaturgical portfolio and propose an original concept.

• Dissertation or Creative Dissertation

Optional Modules

There are a number of optional course modules available during your degree studies. The following is a selection of optional course modules that are likely to be available. Please note that although the College will keep changes to a minimum, new modules may be offered or existing modules may be withdrawn, for example, in response to a change in staff. Applicants will be informed if any significant changes need to be made.

• Cultural Keywords

  This module investigates some of the common keywords used regularly and perhaps often unconsciously in literary and cultural studies and around which whole discourses have emerged. This module explores how the meaning of chosen keywords evolves over time, place, language, and culture, using a cultural studies approach. It aims to build students’ methodological skills by developing a reflexive and critical understanding of what words ‘do’ and how we use them. Materials used to explore the keywords will be drawn from a transnational corpus of literary, historical, philosophical and creative works and will make connections across languages, cultures, times, and geographic regions, developing skills in comparative analysis and cross-cultural awareness. 

• Victorian London

  This module will introduce you to the theories and methods of a variety of humanities disciplines through an in-depth study of the literature, history, geography, and visual culture of nineteenth-century London. You will be asked to reflect critically on your own approach to the material studied, through engagement with both primary materials and a variety of recent secondary sources.

• The Nineteenth-Century Novel - Contexts, Theories and Readers
  This module aims to equip you with a systematic understanding of the scope and range of the mid nineteenth-century novel in the context of Victorian publishing, reading and critical practices. We study a range of novels in depth, and discuss recent critical approaches to each text in order to provide you with a comprehensive understanding of the critical techniques and discourses that will be applicable to your own advanced scholarship in the assessed essay and final dissertation.

   

• Shakespeare and Dramaturgy

  This module will divide into two halves: the first half will explore Shakespeare in relation to dramaturiges of the past. The second half will examine dramaturgies of the present and look to possible dramaturgies for the future. There will be opportunities for archival research; for analysing performance history; and for creative practice, which might take the form, for example, of editing a play for performance, designing for a production, constructing a research packet for a production, creating a programme for a production. The second half of the module will be based on, and respond to, the plays by Shakespeare on in London during the term. The dramaturgies of mainstream and fringe, professional and amateur Shakespeare productions will be investigated.