English Literature Courses
The programmes in English Literature include a wide diversity of courses. The foundational course offers a general introduction and the courses at level 2000 focus on reading. Some higher level courses cover historical periods of British literature and others look at American literature and literature from regions like South Asia and Southeast Asia. Others still take a generic or topic approach, with subjects such as film, visual media, critical theory, gender and psychoanalysis.
The range of approaches within courses is also wide. Different courses might emphasise aesthetic, historical, political or theoretical readings.
Unless otherwise stated, all level 1000–6000 courses carry 4 units.
Level 4000HM coded courses carry 5 units each (for Cohort 2020 and before).
For more information on the courses below, please consult Canvas or contact the course lecturer.
Courses offered in AY2025/2026 Semester 1
Tania ROY
Human beings are ‘tale-telling animals’. We all tell stories, and we all listen to them, read them and watch them. This course looks at the ways in which people tell stories, the kinds of stories they tell, and the meanings those stories generate. It focuses, in particular, upon the telling, and gives special attention to questions concerned with that. Texts include a novel, a play, films, short stories, poems and oral tales.
Pre-requisite: Exempted from NUS Qualifying English Test, or passed NUS Qualifying English Test, or exempted from further CELC Remedial English courses.
John WHALEN-BRIDGE
This course introduces students to the world of poetry, which includes both composition (inspiration, methods, forms) and reception (reviewing poetry, statements of poetics, writing for poetry outlets, and public readings). We will study shifting conventions, evaluation, and how poets write about poetry.
Pre-requisite: EN1101E
Advisory pre-requisite: For students who have not read EN1101E – if you have sufficient background knowledge for the course, you may consult the lecturer for permission to take it.
ER Yanbing
What is theory? As literary scholars, how do we think, read, and write, with theory? This course examines the ways in which theory can be used as an interpretive practice in literary criticism. It focuses on how to generate and sustain a dialogue between literary and theoretical texts, and trains the ability to identify the resonances and tensions that exist between these distinct registers of writing. Through the overlapping exigences of race, gender, and ecology, the course explores how theory—as critically engaged with literature—might clarify and fundamentally transform how we make sense of the world.
Advisory pre-requisite: Students wishing to read this course should preferably have a basic grounding in literary studies through the course EN1101E.
Andrew HUI
A deep dive into the celebrated Chinese novel Journey to the West - A story about the dispossessed, marginalized, and demonized, Journey to the West exemplifies a sort of plurilingual, multicultural cosmopolitanism that is deeply resonate with our world today. Drawing on recent movements in literary studies - ecocritism, gender and sexuality, food studies, animal-human interspecies interaction, the bureaucratic turn—we will explore in the text English translation. We will also look at its global reception and why the novel continues to attract readers of all ages.
Preclusion: YHU3400
Andrew HUI
How is knowledge created and destroyed? How did people cope with information overload in the past? This course is a history of the personal and institution library. Our period is Renaissance Europe, a pivotal period of enormous cultural, religious, and technological changes. We will examine some masterworks —Petrarch, Machiavelli, Montaigne, Cervantes, Marlowe, and the visual arts. We will consider other sites of knowledge such as the cabinet of curiosities, museums, anatomy galleries and gardens.
Pre-requisite: (i) EN1101E and (ii) at least one EN level 2000 course
Preclusion: YHU3384
Gilbert YEOH
Drawing from all three genres of fiction, drama and poetry, this course presents a survey of Anglophone literature in the 20th-century. We explore the writing of this century through two of its most important literary paradigms, namely the literary modernism of the early decades and the postmodern era following WWII. Students will encounter a century characterised by extensive aesthetic innovation, active political engagement and the acute registering of social change. Subjects covered include modernism, postmodernism and issues of art, language and representation. Writers we study may include T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Harold Pinter, Jeanette Winterson and Virginia Woolf.
Pre-requisite: (i) EN1101E and (ii) at least one EN level 2000 course
Tania ROY
Since its articulation at the turn of the twentieth century, psychoanalysis has claimed a privileged relation to literature. Many of its foundational concepts sprang from Freud’s life-long engagement with literature. The ‘application’ of psychoanalytic concepts to the interpretation of literary works will therefore be an important part of our approach. In applying theory to texts, we will identify and explore the plural and contradictory desires that make up literary discourse in particular, and the production of meaning, generally, just as our selections of literary works will help to exemplify key concepts in the psychoanalytic tradition.
Pre-requisite: (i) EN1101E and (ii) at least one EN level 2000 course
Valerie WEE
This course is an introductory survey of the history of the motion picture from its invention up to the present and aims to provide students with a critical perspective on the complex forces that have shaped the motion picture’s evolutionary phases. We will look at how the medium has developed as both an art form and a business, paying particular attention to influential film movements and the significant contributions of notable filmmakers. Lectures and readings will consider film's relationship to society as well as to other cultural forms.
Pre-requisite: EN2203 or EN2204
Susan ANG
The course examines the appeal of s/f as a serious fictional engagement with our consensual sense of reality. It addresses fantasy, speculative fiction, and science fiction as forms of narrative engaged in “world-building” and “word-shaping,” studying such fictional constructs as forms of sociological and anthropological knowledge. It also examines the relation between the “strange” and the “real” in terms of the shared and the antithetical elements that relate s/f to realism.
Pre-requisite: (i) EN1101E and (ii) at least one EN level 2000 course
Valerie WEE
This course aims to reclaim the horror genre from commonly held perceptions that dismiss it as exploitative, “shlocky,” and low-brow, by tracing the wider social, cultural, and political concerns represented and expressed in these films. Students will engage with a range of academic debates around the production, meaning, experience, and consumption of horror texts. This course will explore theories related to the nature of horror and consider how cinematic horror comments powerfully on issues including identity, ideology, gender, and sexuality.
Pre-requisite: EN2203
Preclusion: EN2204
A UROP involves the student working with a supervisor, and usually in a team, on an existing research project. It has relevance to the student’s Major, and involves the application of subject knowledge, methodology and theory in reflection upon the research project. UROPs usually take place within FASS, ARI, and partners within NUS, though a few involve international partners. All are vetted and approved by the Major department. All are assessed. UROPs can be proposed by supervisor or student, and require the approval of the Major department.
Prerequisite: Students must have declared a Major, completed a minimum of 24 units in that Major, and have a GPA of at least 3.20.
For updates on UROP, please refer to the FASS Student Portal.
Anne THELL
This course explores the broader significance and implications of new tendencies that arose in the eighteenth century, and the ways in which they herald the concerns of the modern world. Part one explores the tension between religion, science, and philosophy in the prose and poetry of the early eighteenth century, and the impact that new ways of conceiving the world had on social, cultural, intellectual and religious thinking. Part two explores the tension between tradition and individual expression in the poetry and painting of the second half of the century, and the variety of ways in which they reveal a new sensibility.
Pre-requisite for EN4222: Cohort 2021 onwards: Completed 80 units including 20 units in EN.
Preclusion for EN4222: EN4222HM
Pre-requisite for EN4222HM: Cohort 2020 and before: Completed 80 units including 28 units in EN, with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.
Preclusion for EN4222HM: EN4222
David TEH
This course examines the poetics of information in post-industrial society. The novels of Thomas Pynchon will be read as a critical meta-narrative of the informational turn in Western societies since the 1960s. Besides its obvious technological and economic effects, how has the new informational paradigm affected our psychology, everyday life and work; our understandings of place and community, of history and culture? The seminars will explore key themes of Pynchon’s oeuvre – such as alienation, entropy and paranoia – drawing on a wide range of critical theory, cultural history, and critiques of globalisation and technology.
Pre-requisite for EN4234: Cohort 2021 onwards: Completed 80 units including 20 units in EN.
Preclusion for EN4234: EN4234HM
Pre-requisite for EN4234HM: Cohort 2020 and before: Completed 80 units including 28 units in EN, with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.
Preclusion for EN4234HM: EN4234
Anne THELL
This course focuses on the work of one of most celebrated Anglo-Irish writers of the eighteenth century: Jonathan Swift. By tracking Swift’s dazzling literary output from 1690 to 1740, we will bring into better focus both the eighteenth century as a historical period and the ideas of historicity and modernity themselves. We will investigate a variety of literary modes, from satire to pamphlet polemics to the early novel, while we will also learn about the development of our own discipline by tracing Swift criticism from its inception to the present day and by entertaining a variety of critical perspectives.
Pre-requisite for EN4251: Cohort 2021 onwards: Completed 80 units including 20 units in EN.
Preclusion for EN4251: EN4251HM
Pre-requisite for EN4251HM: Cohort 2020 and before: Completed 80 units including 28 units in EN, with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.
Preclusion for EN4251HM: EN4251
Susan ANG
This course will look at the work of modern poets (Modernism and after) focusing mainly on their poetry, but, where relevant, on their critical essays and work in other genres (e.g. drama) which adds to an understanding of their poetic work. The major topics covered will include: the modern condition, the relation to history and myth, modern poetics, the urban and natural worlds and war. Other topics may be considered, depending on the selection of poets in any particular academic year.
Pre-requisite for EN4264: Cohort 2021 onwards: Completed 80 units including 20 units in EN.
Preclusion for EN4264: EN4264HM
Pre-requisite for EN4264HM: Cohort 2020 and before: Completed 80 units including 28 units in EN or 28 units in EU/LA (French/German/Spanish)/recognised courses, with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.
Preclusion for EN4264HM: EN4264
EN4401 (8 units)
EN4401HM (15 units)
The Honours Thesis is usually done in the final semester of a student’s pursuing an Honours degree.
Pre-requisite for EN4401: Cohort 2021 onwards: Completed 110 units including 40 units of EN major requirements with a minimum SJAP of 4.00 and GPA of 3.50, or with recommendation by the programme committee.
Preclusion for EN4401: EN4660, EN4401HM, EN4660HM
Pre-requisite for EN4401HM: Cohort 2016 to Cohort 2020: Completed 110 units including 44 units of EN major requirements with a minimum SJAP of 4.00 and GPA of 3.50, or with recommendation by the programme committee.
Preclusion for EN4401HM: EN4660, EN4401, EN4660HM
Note: Please register for the Honours Thesis manually with the Department.
Documents containing important information on EN4401 should be downloaded from “Documents and Forms.”
The Independent Study course is designed to enable the student to explore an approved topic within the discipline in depth. The student should approach a lecturer to work out an agreed topic, readings, and assignments for the course. A formal, written agreement is to be drawn up, giving a clear account of the topic, programme of study, assignments, evaluation, and other pertinent details. Head’s and/or Honours Coordinator’s approval of the written agreement is required. Regular meetings and reports are expected. Evaluation is based on 100% Continuous Assessment and must be worked out between the student and the lecturer prior to seeking departmental approval.
Pre-requisite for EN4660: Cohort 2021 onwards: Completed 100 units, including 40 units in EN, with a minimum GPA of 3.20.
Preclusion for EN4660: EN4401, EN4660HM, EN4401HM
Pre-requisite for EN4660HM: Cohort 2016 to Cohort 2020: Completed 100 units, including 44 units in EN, with a minimum GPA of 3.20.
Preclusion for EN4660HM: EN4401, EN4401HM, EN4660
Note: Please register for the Independent Study course manually with the Department.
Documents containing important information on the Independent Study course should be downloaded from “Documents and Forms.”
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
Gilbert YEOH
The course introduces issues, challenges and questions raised by advanced study in literature and culture. Students approach the study of texts by developing a working understanding of appropriate questions and methods. The course covers the nature of scholarship in literary studies and explores the importance of literary history when approaching a given author or text. It introduces the connections between formal study and historical approaches and the relations between textual and cultural experience. Students pursue their choice of approach from a broad base of critical theory. The course also addresses the role of literature within the intersectional and environmental humanities.
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.
John WHALEN-BRIDGE
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
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
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
Independent research plays an important role in graduate education. The Independent Study course is designed to enable the student to explore an approved topic in English Literature in depth. The student should approach a lecturer to work out an agreed topic, readings, and assignments for the course. A formal, written agreement is to be drawn up, giving a clear account of the topic, programme of study, assignments, evaluation, and other pertinent details. The Head’s and/or Graduate Coordinator’s approval of the written agreement is required. Regular meetings and reports are expected. Evaluation is based on 100% Continuous Assessment and must be worked out between the student and the lecturer prior to seeking departmental approval.
Note: (1) Word limit: 5,000 – 6,000 words. (2) Workload: Minimum 10 hours per week. The precise breakdown of contact hours, assignment and preparation is to be worked out between the lecturer and the student, subject to Departmental approval.
Independent research plays an important role in graduate education. The Independent Study Course is designed to enable the student to explore an approved topic in English Literature in depth. The student should approach a lecturer to work out an agreed topic, readings, and assignments for the course. A formal, written agreement is to be drawn up, giving a clear account of the topic, programme of study, assignments, evaluation, and other pertinent details. The Head’s and/or Graduate Coordinator’s approval of the written agreement is required. Regular meetings and reports are expected. Evaluation is based on 100% Continuous Assessment and must be worked out between the student and the lecturer prior to seeking departmental approval.
Note: (1) Word limit: 7,000 – 8,000 words. (2) Workload: Minimum 10 hours per week. The precise breakdown of contact hours, assignment and preparation is to be worked out between the lecturer and the student, subject to Departmental approval.
Courses offered in AY2025/2026 Semester 2
Gilbert YEOH
Human beings are ‘tale-telling animals’. We all tell stories, and we all listen to them, read them and watch them. This course looks at the ways in which people tell stories, the kinds of stories they tell, and the meanings those stories generate. It focuses, in particular, upon the telling, and gives special attention to questions concerned with that. Texts include a novel, a play, films, short stories, poems and oral tales.
Pre-requisite: Exempted from NUS Qualifying English Test, or passed NUS Qualifying English Test, or exempted from further CELC Remedial English courses.
Valerie WEE
This course focuses on two fundamental questions: How do films work? And what is film’s socio-cultural impact? This course trains students to critically engage with and analyse popular film texts by examining how films utilize the different elements of cinema to create meaning, to tell stories, and to shape ideological perspectives. Students will also gain a better appreciation for how the business of entertainment has shaped the film product and better appreciate the role film plays in society.
Heather BRINK-ROBY
What is the role of the arts in the quest for a just society? How has this role been re-imagined in response to 1) radical transformations in ideas about what it means for a society to be just and 2) radical transformations in ideas about what the arts distinctively are? And how have artistic ideals and ideals of justice themselves influenced each other? Texts include plays, short stories, photographs, sculptures, and films by artists including Bong Joon-ho, Zadie Smith, Henrik Ibsen, Doris Salcedo, Bertolt Brecht, Steven Spielberg, and Claudia Rankine.
Steven GREEN
Ancient Rome boasts a wide range of literary genres, spanning from 3rd century BC to 5th century AD. This introductory course, which assumes no prior knowledge of the ancient world, offers a taster of this diversity: from the publicly performed comedies of Plautus and Terence, to the sophisticated and emotional short poetry of the rich urban socialite, Catullus, to the enchanting mythical epic poem of Ovid (Metamorphoses). In the process, students will become familiar with various aspects of ancient Roman culture, such as class and gender power dynamics, slavery, attitudes to foreigners, and literary life.
Geoffrey BAKER
As a certain idea of what is “natural”—or possible in the natural world as we generally know it—becomes increasingly codified and culturally widespread, the idea of a “supernatural” emerges. Authors addressing themselves to this problem will go on to use the tension between natural and supernatural, real and unreal, in a variety of ways: for the readerly pleasures of terror and suspense; as allegories of personal or political trauma; as articulations of religious belief, as a means of containing or marginalizing various “others”; and even as a site from which oppressed and marginalized communities can resist.
Preclusion: YHU3296
Beryl PONG
This course scrutinizes contemporary British literature with all the issues and problems attending these three terms. What counts as “contemporary” and what defines it? What is considered to be “British”, and how might national literature be understood in terms of its transnational and cosmopolitan exchanges? What do we consider “literature” or “literary fiction” today, and what characterizes contemporary style and genre? Through a range of twenty-first century novels and themes, students will have a forum for discussing the most pressing questions occupying contemporary British culture and its political contexts.
Pre-requisite: (i) EN1101E and (ii) at least one EN level 2000 course
Heather BRINK-ROBY
Epic, romance, drama, novel, film, and TV: each symbolizes a specific era in Britain, an era said to be that art form’s own “golden age”. As we examine one major example of each art form, we’ll explore transformations in story from the Medieval period to the present, and we’ll consider the changing roles of genre and medium in the internet and Digital Humanities era.
Pre-requisite: (i) EN1101E and (ii) at least one EN level 2000 course
ER Yanbing
What is “the contemporary”? How has contemporary literature since the turn of the twenty-first century engaged with some of the most pressing social, political, and cultural concerns of the current moment? This course takes the experience and representation of time as its central analytic for examining these questions. Through a range of novels written since the turn of the twenty-first century, the course aims to introduce students to the emergent social, political, and cultural concerns currently occupying the contemporary imagination.
Pre-requisite: (i) EN1101E and (ii) at least one EN level 2000 course
John WHALEN-BRIDGE
This course, which is aimed at upper level English Literature majors and cross-faculty students who have some experience with literary analysis, will focus on American literary orientalism in order to continue to examine questions of race, gender, ethnicity and literary form in the (mainly postwar) American imagination.
Pre-requisite for EN4232: Cohort 2021 onwards: Completed 80 units including 20 units in EN.
Preclusion for EN4232: EN4232HM
Pre-requisite for EN4232HM: Cohort 2020 and before: Completed 80 units including 28 units in EN, with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.
Preclusion for EN4232HM: EN4232
Geoffrey BAKER
This course, whose specific content may change from time to time within the following guidelines, presents an interdisciplinary approach, but one grounded in the literary, to a topic in European literature, especially but not exclusively from the Romantic, Modernist or Contemporary periods. Always comparative (across two nations at least), it considers aspects of a period, a movement, a thematic issue or a combination of all these. Texts are chosen not only for their intrinsic merits but for their complementarity to the English Literature curriculum in general.
Pre-requisite for EN4263: Cohort 2021 onwards: Completed 80 units including 20 units in EN.
Preclusion for EN4263: EN4263HM
Pre-requisite for EN4263HM: Cohort 2020 and before: Completed 80 units including 28 units in EN, with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.
Preclusion for EN4263HM: EN4263, EU4220HM
Tania ROY
The new millennium has witnessed a return to realism in literature, criticism, and popular culture. Our taste for realism extends from the television reality-show, dramas like The Wire, to novels that seek to describe the impact of world markets on lived reality by mapping this system onto the traditional realist narrative. These developments suggest that canonical modernisms of the early twentieth-century prescribed, and so constrained, critical approaches to literatures of the postcolony. Focusing on the resurgent value of postcolonial realism for our current globalist conjuncture, the course entertains theoretical exchanges between World Literature, Postcolonial Studies, and the Frankfurt School’s Marxism.
Pre-requisite for EN4265: Cohort 2021 onwards: Completed 80 units including 20 units in EN.
Preclusion for EN4265: EN4265HM
Pre-requisite for EN4265HM: Cohort 2020 and before: Completed 80 units including 28 units in EN, with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.
Preclusion for EN4265HM: EN4265
EN4401 (8 units)
EN4401HM (15 units)
The Honours Thesis is usually done in the final semester of a student’s pursuing an Honours degree.
Pre-requisite for EN4401: Cohort 2021 onwards: Completed 110 units including 40 units of EN major requirements with a minimum SJAP of 4.00 and GPA of 3.50, or with recommendation by the programme committee.
Preclusion for EN4401: EN4660, EN4401HM, EN4660HM
Pre-requisite for EN4401HM: Cohort 2016 to Cohort 2020: Completed 110 units including 44 units of EN major requirements with a minimum SJAP of 4.00 and GPA of 3.50, or with recommendation by the programme committee.
Preclusion for EN4401HM: EN4660, EN4401, EN4660HM
Note: Please register for the Honours Thesis manually with the Department.
Documents containing important information on EN4401 should be downloaded from “Documents and Forms.”
The Independent Study course is designed to enable the student to explore an approved topic within the discipline in depth. The student should approach a lecturer to work out an agreed topic, readings, and assignments for the course. A formal, written agreement is to be drawn up, giving a clear account of the topic, programme of study, assignments, evaluation, and other pertinent details. Head’s and/or Honours Coordinator’s approval of the written agreement is required. Regular meetings and reports are expected. Evaluation is based on 100% Continuous Assessment and must be worked out between the student and the lecturer prior to seeking departmental approval.
Pre-requisite for EN4660: Cohort 2021 onwards: Completed 100 units, including 40 units in EN, with a minimum GPA of 3.20.
Preclusion for EN4660: EN4401, EN4660HM, EN4401HM
Pre-requisite for EN4660HM: Cohort 2016 to Cohort 2020: Completed 100 units, including 44 units in EN, with a minimum GPA of 3.20.
Preclusion for EN4660HM: EN4401, EN4401HM, EN4660
Note: Please register for the Independent Study course manually with the Department.
Documents containing important information on the Independent Study course should be downloaded from “Documents and Forms.”
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
Tania ROY
The course addresses issues of historical trauma and cultural memory; through a focus on how such memory is manifested in aesthetic (primarily literary) representation. The course assumes a dual approach to the study of selected texts, requiring attention to the topic of violence and memory on the one hand; and the ethics and politics of representation on the other. Literary texts will illuminate problems of narrative agency, responsibility and testimony in the aftermath of a violent past. The conceptual framework of discussions derives from Maurice Blanchot and his influence on post-structuralism, and from contemporary uses of psychoanalysis by literary theorists.
Preclusion: EN5253
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
Independent research plays an important role in graduate education. The Independent Study course is designed to enable the student to explore an approved topic in English Literature in depth. The student should approach a lecturer to work out an agreed topic, readings, and assignments for the course. A formal, written agreement is to be drawn up, giving a clear account of the topic, programme of study, assignments, evaluation, and other pertinent details. The Head’s and/or Graduate Coordinator’s approval of the written agreement is required. Regular meetings and reports are expected. Evaluation is based on 100% Continuous Assessment and must be worked out between the student and the lecturer prior to seeking departmental approval.
Note: (1) Word limit: 5,000 – 6,000 words. (2) Workload: Minimum 10 hours per week. The precise breakdown of contact hours, assignment and preparation is to be worked out between the lecturer and the student, subject to Departmental approval.
Independent research plays an important role in graduate education. The Independent Study course is designed to enable the student to explore an approved topic in English Literature in depth. The student should approach a lecturer to work out an agreed topic, readings, and assignments for the course. A formal, written agreement is to be drawn up, giving a clear account of the topic, programme of study, assignments, evaluation, and other pertinent details. The Head’s and/or Graduate Coordinator’s approval of the written agreement is required. Regular meetings and reports are expected. Evaluation is based on 100% Continuous Assessment and must be worked out between the student and the lecturer prior to seeking departmental approval.
Note: (1) Word limit: 7,000 – 8,000 words. (2) Workload: Minimum 10 hours per week. The precise breakdown of contact hours, assignment and preparation is to be worked out between the lecturer and the student, subject to Departmental approval.
Tania ROY
This is a required course for all research Masters and Ph.D. students admitted from AY2004/05 onwards. The course provides a forum for students and faculty to share their research and to engage one another critically in discussion of their current research projects. The course will include presentations by faculty on research ethics and dissertation writing. Each student is required to present a formal research paper. Active participation in all research presentations is expected. The course may be spread over two semesters and will be graded “Satisfactory/ Unsatisfactory” on the basis of student presentation and participation.