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. Students are encouraged to check course descriptions on CANVAS or talk to course chairs, if they are uncertain.
Unless otherwise stated, all level 1000–6000 courses carry 4 units.
Level 4000HM coded courses carry 5 units each (for Cohort 2020 and before).
Courses offered in AY2024/2025 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.
Susan ANG
Critical reading is the essential skill of literary studies. It involves close attention to individual words and phrases, to figures of speech, to the structures of sentences and texts, to literary form and genre, and to historical context. It gives attention to the implicit connotations of language, as well as to its explicit denotations. This course sets out to inculcate in students the skills of critical reading and help them pay attention to and evaluate textual detail. It will be organised as a series of seminars in which students develop and practice skills by reading short texts and extracts.
ER Yanbing
This course offers an introduction to some of the key concepts and theoretical perspectives in gender, sexuality, and feminist studies. We will examine literature and theory as major sources of feminist knowledge production. The course focuses on developing analytical skills for examining the politics of gender and feminism as expressed in the formal, structural, and thematic elements of both critical and creative texts. With an emphasis on cultivating strong writing practices, it also aims to foster effective strategies for academic research and writing that demonstrate an informed awareness of the wider contextual debates and methodologies in feminist and literary studies.
Advisory pre-requisite: Students wishing to read this course should preferably have a basic grounding in literary studies through the course EN1101E.
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.
Tania ROY
As stories are told at a dinner-party, Socrates claims, the “only thing I know is the art of love”. How are the arts of knowledge, erôs, and story-telling related? From Plato to Freud, love inspires creative thought while putting at risk rational argumentation, conscious will, and the orderly relation of body, self, and society. Dispersed into another’s life-story or incorporated into the body as loss or pain, erotic yearning requires a style of reflection; in turn, reflection is not only disturbed but aroused by feeling. Students will read for the convergence, differences and traffic between literary, philosophical and critical texts.
Pre-requisite: EN1101E
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
Susan ANG
This course will look at ‘Romanticism’ as it manifests in English and European literature. The set of texts and supplementary readings are intended to provide the student with an introduction to the socio-historical background to the Romantic period and to some of the tropes and ideas that may be said to form the nucleus of the term ‘Romanticism’; for example, feeling, liberty, the inner life, the overreacher, revolution, the relationship to the past, the relationship between the city and the country, etc. To complement the texts being taught, the contributions of the other arts (painting, music), will also be discussed.
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
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
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
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
Chitra SANKARAN
This course will introduce a selection of texts across genres from South Asia along with a complementary set of Critical Readings that students will need to apply to the reading of primary texts. The texts will be approached as reflecting conflicts of neo/colonialisms and the complications of modernities, as grappling with issues of gendered and racialized identities; as explorations of issues relating to the underside of globalisation. Students should gain a fairly in-depth knowledge of leading literary works from South Asia. They will also need to produce a final term paper that will potentially be expandable to an Honours thesis.
Pre-requisite for EN4266: Cohort 2021 onwards: Completed 80 units including 20 units in EN or 20 units in SN.
Preclusion for EN4266: EN3265, EN4266HM
Pre-requisite for EN4266HM: Cohort 2019 and before: Completed 80 units including 28 units in EN or 28 units in SN or 28 units in GL/GL recognised non-language modules, with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track. Cohort 2020: Completed 80 units including 28 units in EN or 28 units in SN, with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.
Preclusion for EN4266HM: EN3265, EN4266
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
Virginia LANGUM
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.
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
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
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
(i) the emergence of a colonial and imperial consciousness;
(ii) the apprehension of cultural difference;
(iii) 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: ENC5241
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 AY2024/2025 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.
Gilbert YEOH
The Greek and Roman classics and the Bible are recognized as having exerted profound influence on the development of Western literature and culture. Familiarity with the classical and Judeo-Christian traditions helps tremendously in enabling appreciation of Western literature and culture. This course introduces students to selected works from these two traditions such as Homer’s Odyssey, Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, and the Book of Genesis and the Gospel of John from the Bible. Through close readings, students become acquainted with the worldview, ideas and motifs in these key works. Some attention will be given to developing writing skills through essay assignments.
Advisory pre-requisite: Students wishing to read this course should preferably have a basic grounding in literary studies; this grounding can be through the course EN1101E or prior years of studying literature. Students can consult the lecturer if they have questions.
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.
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.
Heather BRINK-ROBY
Epic, romance, drama, novel, film, and TV: each symbolizes and defines a specific era in Britain, an era that is that form’s own “golden age.” What is at stake (politically, artistically, and epistemically) in describing, for instance, the 19th century as the “age of the novel” rather than as the “age of drama”? As we examine this epochizing of artforms, we’ll explore transformations in story and pleasure from the Medieval period to the present, and we’ll consider the changing roles of genre and medium in the internet and DH era. Texts include Beowulf, Doctor Faustus, Pride and Prejudice, Great Expectations.
Pre-requisite: (i) EN1101E and (ii) at least one EN level 2000 course
Walter LIM
This course offers an introductory survey of the period referred to as “the English Renaissance” (in traditional usage) and as “early modern English literature” (in more recent usage). It considers the distinctive features of this period by looking at the different genres and literary forms in currency at the time: tragedy, comedy, love lyric, devotional lyric, epic, etc. These genres and forms are then read in relation to their significance for Renaissance/early modern England’s original readership and audience. This is a period of intense conflict, and that conflict is far from over, being still reassessed and played out between differing critical positions.
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
David TEH
This interdisciplinary course explores experimental intersections between visual art and literature, in non-Western contexts. Lectures and readings draw on the history and theory of both fields. Starting from the contested frame of a ‘global modernism’, the course addresses tensions between nationalism and internationalism, modernity and tradition, realism and abstraction, through the progressive and cosmopolitan visions of artists and writers. What is at stake for Asian intellectuals at the boundaries between artforms? A range of case studies encompass both literary treatments of the visual arts, and visual treatments of the written word in, e.g., concretism, conceptualism, translation and adaptation.
Pre-requisite: (i) EN1101E and (ii) at least one EN level 2000 course
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
Steven GREEN
This course offers an opportunity to appreciate the Roman poet Ovid (43 BC – AD 17) via a detailed study of four innovative works: Heroides (‘letters’ from mythical heroines to their absent lovers); Ars Amatoria (instruction on how to find a lover in Rome); Tristia (epistles from the poet in exile); and Fasti (a poetic treatise on the Roman religious calendar). These poems will be studied both in their own right and as a means of assessing Ovid’s skill at manipulating myth, his engagement with literary predecessors, his exilic persona, and his troubled relationship with the Emperor.
Pre-requisite for EN4269: Cohort 2021 onwards: Completed 80 units including 20 units in EN.
Preclusion for EN4269: EN4269HM, EN4263, EN4263HM
Pre-requisite for EN4269HM: 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 EN4269HM: EN4269, EN4263, EN4263HM
Walter LIM
This course explores the twinned ideas of usurpation and transgression in English Renaissance literature, analyzing the attempt to cross boundaries that define the norm in the polity and in moral, religious, and sexual spheres. We will look at how hierarchies established by religion, government, and custom seek to maintain and to justify the status quo. We will ask how literary texts register awareness of, and enter into dialogue with, these hierarchies. Different genres such as the play, the love lyric, the devotional lyric, and the epic will be invoked for our analysis of the cultural preoccupation with usurpation and transgression.
Pre-requisite for EN4880A: Cohort 2021 onwards: Completed 80 units including 20 units in EN.
Preclusion for EN4880A: EN4880AHM
Pre-requisite for EN4880AHM: 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 EN4880AHM: EN4880A
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.”
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
An ideological approach to literature is one that reads not only the primary literature — it also reads the way we read literature. An incisive statement about the necessity of such critical self-consciousness is Fredric Jameson’s “Metacommentary,” and this essay will guide our reflections on the study of the interrelations between primary literature, criticism and reviews, and tertiary critical engagements with the issues that arise when readers become increasingly self-conscious about the values in play during any act of reading. This matter can be approached from a number of angles, and on its first run the course will concern American literary orientalism in the postwar period.
Preclusion: EN5232
ER Yanbing
The objectives of this course are to invite students to reflect on and analyse texts by great women novelists. Topics covered include the choice of genre, the relation between narrative structures and psychological experience and their political implications, the nature of the dilemmas at the heart of each text, and the problems of defining and responding to what is specific to women’s writing.
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
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
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.
Tania ROY
This course is an advanced graduate class in critical reading. In it students develop three main areas of competence: (i) knowledge of different critical traditions; (ii) awareness of the various problems of reading and interpretation; and (iii) close reading of texts informed by the knowledge of (i) and the awareness of (ii). In keeping with the advanced nature of the course, much of the responsibility for the direction of the work falls upon the students. Students will explore the texts of a few key thinkers and learn to understand some of the basic principles of critical theory. They will learn to apply specific reading strategies to selected texts and to raise questions about the reading process and its contexts. The emphasis throughout is on the development of students’ critical awareness of positions, strategies and possibilities of interpretation. The course is a core course for research students.
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.