Modern Languages BA Hons

This module will provide an introduction to the study of German. It will cover the main fields of German studies (literature, culture, history, linguistics, media) as well as the study skills required for academic study (critical and analytic skills, reading skills, presentation skills, writing skills).

This module will provide an introduction to the range of topics and study skills you will need and further develop in the course of your study of French and Francophone studies.

It will cover the main fields of the discipline, including linguistics, politics, history, thought, French and Francophone literature, media, visual culture and cinema. These topics will be covered in four thematic units over the course of the year and the material studied ranges from different types of texts to images and film.

Dedicated research skills sessions will address core study skills, such as reading skills, awareness of register, close reading, essay writing, commentary writing, bibliographical and referencing skills and visual analysis. 

This module is designed as a foundation for all later modules covering Spanish and Portuguese literatures.

Its main aims are to:

• give students a general introduction to literature and to the study of literature
• provide students with a partial overview of literary writing in the Spanish language
• introduce students to some of the key theoretical issues of literary study
• inculcate good reading and critical habits.

The main skills tested on this module are:

• close reading
• textual analysis
• seminar participation
• the ability to write cogent and convincing commentaries and essays.

This module uses the study of cinema, writing, and popular culture – music, sport, and TV – to provide students with a knowledge of modern cultural currents in Brazil, Portugal and Portuguese-speaking Asia and Africa.

It also aims to build an awareness of the main social and political contexts in which these cultures emerged, and an understanding of the complexities and challenges they face.

Students will develop skills in critical and comparative analysis, research methods, presentation and essay writing.

This module brings together the histories and cultures of key regions of the world in which Portugal establishes varying degrees of colonial rule between the 16th and 20th centuries. In this module you will examine the historical background to the age of Discoveries against which Portugal emerged as a leader in maritime exploration and European Imperialism. You will also examine the historical and political events of Portuguese colonialism and imperialism in Africa and Brazil, with an emphasis on understanding the political and social significance of cultural production in developing countries.

Focusing on texts ranging from the novels of Jules Verne through to Élisabeth Vonarburg, this module will engage with key themes in French science fiction writing. Whether it deals with the discoveries of new worlds or the confrontation with new technologies, science fiction as a genre expresses the anxieties and hopes specific to the contemporary era. Science fiction is political in that it deals with questions of power, ecology and science. It is also philosophical, since it calls into question boundaries between cultures, times, genres and species. Drawing on these political and philosophical dimensions, the module will look in particular at how science fiction explores the ways in which identity is constructed and reconfigured by material and technological forces.

This module investigates social developments in GDR society over four decades of communist rule and social changes in Eastern Germany after the demise of the GDR. You will be introduced to the ideological principles which that the Socialist Unity Party attempted to legitimize in the GDR as the only viable alternative to fascism for a modern society. You will then look at how this ideology was enforced through state authority in every domain of society. Based on contemporary texts (e.g. GDR propaganda, GDR writers and other intellectuals) you will further examine how people negotiated their lives within these officially imposed ideological structures, exploring a range of individual responses from conformism to non-conformism and opposition. Finally you will look at a new kind of “public authority” during the Wende period in the GDR, which triggered the disintegration of communist power structures, and the subsequent changes in East German society. 

You’ll explore the different kinds of linguistic variation in France including those across time periods, geographical variation, social groups, class, and disparity between oral and written forms. You’ll also be introduced to the history of the French language and its recent developments, spending around two hours per week in lectures and seminars. 

The relationship between the state and the intellectual in Russia has traditionally been a problematic one, marked by repression, persecution, forced and voluntary exile and censorship. Political concern and resistance to an authoritarian state are central themes in the Russian cultural and literary tradition as well as a defining feature in the lives and works of numerous Russian writers and intellectuals.

We will explore the cultural tradition and identity of the literary intelligentsia in Russian and Soviet history. We'll also examine different responses to the experience of state persecution in the work of writers and artists.

Covering an extensive period of Russian history we will look at examples of writers and artists who have defied the state.

Wider questions which will be discussed include the role of the artist and the intellectual in Russian culture, the myth of the persecuted writer and the complex relationship between the intellectual and the masses.

The aim of this module is to examine developments in the political, social and diplomatic history of Yugoslavia after 1941 leading towards an understanding of the reasons behind the collapse of the country and subsequent violence in the 1990s. You’ll spend around three hours per week in lectures and seminars studying for this module.

Through a programme of lectures, seminars, film screenings, directed reading, and written work, this course introduces students to Renaissance drama in film. It enables students to place plays by Lope de Vega and Shakespeare in their cultural, social, and historical contexts; and furthers students’ understanding of film adaptations of literary works. On successful completion of the module, students will have demonstrated an ability to discuss the set texts and films critically; a knowledge of the cultural, ideological, and aesthetic features of the period studied; and the ability to compare and contrast plays by two contemporary writers, one Spanish and one English.

This module focuses on the theory and practice of two modes of audio-visual translation: subtitling and dubbing.

The linguistic, technical, and cultural theoretical underpinnings of subtitling and dubbing from French into English will be examined in detail, and students will be able to put the theory into practice using professional dedicated software.

This module aims to provide students with an understanding of the centrality of the history of slavery in the study of Brazil, and of the significance of Brazilian slavery in both the transatlantic slave systems, and slave societies across the Americas. In the process, students will learn to recognise and use the different historical approaches, tools and skills employed in the historiography of slavery studies, and in social history in general, and to incorporate them into their own analyses of aspects of Brazilian slave society.

You’ll examine the range of social, political and philosophical questions raised by mass immigration to France in the post-war period. These questions will be tackled through historical analysis of patterns of migration and changing immigration policies, as well as through the study of relevant films, novels and theoretical texts. You’ll spend two hours each week in lectures and seminars studying this module.

Literature uses ancient mythology as a rich source to describe powerful emotions, cunning politics or psychological drama. This module will explore how selected German writers engage with the myth of Medea, the powerful wife of Jason who – according to the Classical myth - kills the sons she loves to hurt Jason. We will look at how the myth is used, changed and reinvented in texts written between 1926 and 1998. We will consider theoretical writings on mythology and also look at the the Medea myth in paintings, film, theatre and music.

The Weimar Republic (1919-1933) was one of the most fascinating and culturally productive periods of German history, but it was equally ridden by crises and violent conflicts. This module aims to introduce central issues in the literary and social developments of Weimar Germany. You will study a wide range of materials (literary texts, film, aesthetic and political programmes) to analyse key features of the period. Topics will include the impact of the Great War, developments in the press and the cinema, political confrontations, cabaret, and unemployment. 

The traumatic experience of the Second World War left a deep impression on Russian and Soviet society and culture. Even before it ended, the War was already in the process of being commemorated in such dramatic artistic works as Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony, which was performed during the Siege of Leningrad. Compelling stories, myths and legends of a people’s suffering and heroism emerged in artistic representations, official accounts and in personal testimonies.

This module explores the construction of national and collective memory of the Second World War in Soviet and Russian culture and society, focusing on artistic and social responses to the experience of war, as well as examining individual acts of remembering (diaries, reports, letters). The module addresses wider questions relating to the very nature of memory, rituals, and identity formation in twentieth-century Russian and Soviet culture.

This module will look at representations of Spain and Portugal in European literature, travel writing, opera and painting from the late eighteenth-century onwards. It will examine the construction of an "exotic", Romanticised "other" Iberia in works of art, music and literature which are as popular today as they were over a century ago and, to some extent, still inform perceptions of European Hispanic identity among non-specialists. You will be trained to compare and contrast cultural production over a range of genres and disciplines such as opera, painting, literature and to inform your discussion with appropriate elements of cultural and historical context. You will be enabled to analyse the manipulation of cultural stereotypes and offer critical assessments of the impact and derivation of these manipulations.

This module introduces different films produced during and after the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and the ways that these films interacted with their social, political and historical contexts.

Themes for study include memory politics, depictions of social inequalities, cults of personality, and theories of nation building/breaking on film, amongst others

The module offers an in-depth study of the development of popular music in Russia in the 20th and 21st centuries. You will gain knowledge of the popular musical culture of the late tsarist, Soviet and post-Soviet eras, and learn to analyse songs and performances using such concepts as authorship, performance, technology and ideology. You will have one lecture and one two-hour seminar per week on this module.