Walter LIM

This course, specifically designed for MA by Coursework students, prepares them for a Masters in Literary Studies through a two-pronged approach: First, to obtain a general overview of the discipline in order to approach the field with a better understanding of its academic demands. Through gradual but consistent exposure to articles on various critical approaches and research methods, students will gain an understanding of broad theoretical perspectives. Next, through extensive practice: working through several short writing assignments, revising and resubmitting these through the course of the semester, students' comprehension about disciplinary practices and about field-specific academic writing, will increase substantially.

Preclusion: EN5249

Gayatri PILLAI

The course introduces students to the emerging field of Global Anglophone Literature, which analyses texts associated with postcolonial and decolonised regions, including Asia, Australia, Canada, Ireland, Jamaica, Kenya, Trinidad, Nigeria, South Africa, as well as Great Britain and North America. The course introduces some foundational material on the history and cultures of Empire, and introduces texts from the greater Anglophone world, asking how these fictional works illuminate the forces that shape the globalized yet unequal world we currently inhabit. Critical contexts include those of race, aboriginality, gender, political economy, migration, cosmopolitanism, technology, and war.

Geoffrey BAKER

This course is a focused examination of the various senses of “political literature”. One may say “all literature is ideological”, but this course raises doubts that “everything is political” in a significant way. This course examines the differences between “ideology” and “politics” in relation to literature. The course considers works that challenge conventional distinctions such as that between “propaganda” and “literature”. Students will test definitions of “the political” on a variety of texts.

Preclusion: EN5235

Anne THELL

From early modern England up into the eighteenth century, English literature registers distinctively a deep fascination with worlds both old and new: Egypt, Africa, China, and India are some examples. In reading critically how different authors in this historical timeline represent old and new worlds in their literary production, this course seeks to analyse the formation of cultural perceptions relating to such topics as

• the emergence of a colonial and imperial consciousness;
• the apprehension of cultural difference;
• the crystallisation of national identity.

It offers opportunity for considering the engagements of literature with certain momentous social, historical, and political realities, such as the slave trade and the activities of the British East India Company.

Preclusion: EN5241

Heather BRINK-ROBY

The course will examine Victorian literature with an emphasis on its historical, political, and cultural context. Topics addressed may include significant literary genres and movements (e.g. The Industrial Novel, Aestheticism and Decadence) major authors (e.g. George Eliot, Oscar Wilde), or broader thematic explorations of the diverse literary productions of nineteenth-century Britain (e.g. Gender and Sexuality in the Nineteenth Century, Imperialism and Victorian Writing). This course will also familiarize students with contemporary critical approaches to the study of Victorian literature and culture.

Preclusion: EN5247

Steven GREEN

Virgil's epic, Aeneid (29–19 BCE), tells the story of Aeneas, who flees Troy and journeys to Italy to establish the first settlement of Rome. The poem quickly established itself as national literature, and was an inspiration for later European writers, including Dante, Shakespeare, and Milton. We will read the poem in depth, in English translation, focusing on topics such as: Virgil’s development of the ancient epic traditions; the poem as part of the cultural and political ideology of the Emperor Augustus; topics such as the nature of heroism, the role of the gods, and the depiction of human struggle.

Gilbert YEOH

This course surveys some major twentieth-century writers. Beginning with selected landmark works of modernist literature in the early twentieth century, we go on to examine authors in the later twentieth century who may be considered postmodern. In the process, we explore a range of issues such as literary experimentation, the literary tradition, literature and gender, magic realism, and literature and historiography. Some attention will go towards understanding modernism and postmodernism, and their characteristics. Writers we will study include J. M. Coetzee, T. S. Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Toni Morrison, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams and Virginia Woolf.

Preclusion: EN5238

Walter LIM

This course analyses literary works written in English by authors associated with the Chinese diaspora. It considers how this literature engages with concepts such as diaspora, exile, transnationalism, and globalization. It discusses the following themes central to this literature: home and identity; assimilation and alienation; representing China; nationalism and populism; the “Pacific Century”; and others. The course offers an opportunity for a comparative analysis of works written by authors from different countries. Examples of authors to be read include Maxine Hong Kingston, Ha Jin, and Tash Aw. Extracts and short stories may also be recommended for reading.

Preclusion: EN5239

Andrew HUI

We will explore European imaginations of China from the medieval to the modern era. Students will journey from Marco Polo’s medieval travelogue to Jesuit missionaries’ letters, diving into Athanasius Kircher's baroque Sinology and Leibniz's philosophical inquiries. Enlightenment ideas emerge in Voltaire’s works, while Borges, Kafka, and Calvino offer modern reflections on the “Oriental Other.” We’ll explore how European writers constructed and mythologized China, revealing patterns of cultural exchange and fantasy.

ER Yanbing

What is feminism? What makes a work feminist? Is ‘women’s writing’ necessarily ‘feminist’ in nature? How might feminist literary criticism be performed? In this course, we will read literary works by and about women to explore how such texts reflect on and represent gendered experience and its intersections with race, class, and sexuality.

Preclusion: EN5242

Beryl PONG

This course examines various philosophies, concepts, and politics of time as they are addressed and represented in modern and contemporary anglophone literature. Attending to narrative, form, and theory, we will scrutinize how writers have rendered different times and temporalities related to modernity, war, colonialism, disability, environmental consciousness, and algorithmic cultures, among other contexts.

Chitra SANKARAN

This course examines the shifting perceptions of the natural world found in a variety of English literary works. Through the study of key literary texts, the evolution of ideas about nature will be traced from the 17th century’s age of scientific discovery to the 21st century’s idea of environmental crisis. A key element of the model will be the use of ecocritical ideas and concepts as a way to approach and understand connections between literature and the environment.

Preclusion: EN5880A

David TEH

What’s distinctive about moving images in Southeast Asia? Are they vehicles of a convergent ‘global’ culture, or a medium for difference, resistance and critique? As video becomes integral to everyday social and economic life, and screen culture reaches beyond the bounds of national cinema, so should theory and criticism. This interdisciplinary course draws on cultural and media theory, art history and anthropology, as well as film studies, exploring a range of fiction and non-fiction material including indie and experimental film, documentaries, video art and installations. Students will engage critically with this region’s screen cultures, via both historical and contemporary perspectives.

Preclusion: EN5883