Department of English Language and Literature NUS ENGLISH LITERATURE MODULES OFFERED IN AY2011/2012: Sem 2 Every effort is made

to ensure that the information, applicable policies, and all other materials contained in this webpage are accurate and current. However, the Department reserves the right to reschedule modules or not to offer certain modules. Unless otherwise stated, all level 1000 3000 modules carry 4 modular credits; and all level 4000 modules carry 5 MCs (except EN4401 which carries 15 MCs). Detailed module descriptions and reading lists are available in the open shelves on Level 6 of Block AS5. EN1101E An Introduction to Literary Studies Pre-requisite(s): Exempted from NUS Qualifying English Test, or passed NUS Qualifying English Test, or exempted from further CELC Remedial English modules. Preclusion(s): EN2101E, GEK1000 Cross-listing(s): GEK1000 Lecturer(s): Dr Gilbert Yeoh Human beings are 'tale-telling animals'. We all tell stories, and we all listen to them, read them and watch them. This module 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. EN2113 Reading Film and Cultural Texts (TS-recognised module) Pre-requisite(s): EN1101E or EN2101E or GEK1000 Preclusion(s): AS2213, EN2111, EN2112 Lecturer(s): A/P Valerie Wee This module introduces the critical terms and methods required for reading and writing about films, performances, advertising, and other related cultural texts. It seeks to develop skills in the close reading of such texts, and in writing considered critical responses to them. EN2271 Introduction to Playwriting (EL- and TS-recognised module) (Writing & Research) Prerequisite(s): EL1101E or EN1101E or EN2101E or TS1101E. This module is selective, and enrolment is by application. Lecturer(s): Mr Huzir Sulaiman This module seeks to introduce the techniques and genres of contemporary playwriting in order to equip students with the skills and resources needed to write for the stage. Students weekly writing exercises will be critiqued by their peers and will culminate in the writing (and rewriting) of their own one-act plays. Students will also analyse one or more contemporary plays each week from a practitioners perspective. Techniques discussed will include creating characters, dialogue, and theatrical action. Genres examined will include the historical play, the political play, the farce, the play of ideas, and the comedy of manners. EN3222 The Eighteenth Century (British Literature - before 1800)

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Pre-requisite(s): EN1101E or EN2101E or GEK1000 Lecturer(s): A/P Daphne Pan This module looks at the emergence of the novel, at its experiments with form, and at its characteristic modes of representation. It concentrates, in particular, on such matters as the restrictions and opportunities of the genre: on the practicalities of sustaining a long fiction in prose; how different writers meet the various challenges of plot, episode, characterisation and style; and on the emergence of a distinct sense of the individual. EN3224 The Twentieth Century (British Literature after 1800) Pre-requisite(s): EN1101E or EN2101E or GEK1000 Lecturer(s): Dr Gilbert Yeoh This module surveys the achievements of literature in Britain during the last century or so to present a perspective on the defining features of British literary culture. All three genres fiction, drama, and poetry - are covered through representative examples selected to illustrate the development of these genres, particularly through comic techniques, the theme of art and the artist, and innovation in literary form, during a period through which the function of the literary, and the society itself, underwent great change. EN3229 Shakespeare in His Time and Ours (British Literature - before 1800) Pre-requisite(s): EN1101E or EN2101E or GEK1000 Lecturer(s): A/P Walter Lim Shakespeare occupies an iconic position in English literature and acquaintance with his plays is expected of the informed reader. This module offers an introduction to a representative range of Shakespeare's works. It approaches them through genre and the informing background of English Renaissance history, culture, and politics. By the end of the module, students will have a good understanding of the major themes of Shakespeares plays and the milieu within which he wrote and performed. EN3241 Literature and Psychoanalysis (Film and Cultural Studies) Pre-requisite(s): EN1101E or EN2101E or GEK1000 Lecturer(s): Dr 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 lifelong 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. EN3244 Gender and Literature (Film and Cultural Studies) Pre-requisite(s): EN1101E or EN2101E or GEK1000 Lecturer(s): Dr James Stone Much of the most memorable literature is concerned with gender-related issues, including religion and gender, social perceptions of gender, the definition and construction of gender roles and, crucially, gender and the formation, nature and expression of identity. This module explores some of the different ways in which literature written by both men and women writers not only explores the dilemmas that come with relationship, but also problematises
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notions of gender. It focuses on the variety of ways in which gender-related issues determine not only the motivation and course of personal interaction, but also narrative structure and concerns. EN3246 Literature and the Other Arts (Film and Cultural Studies) Pre-requisite(s): EN1101E or EN2101E or GEK1000 Lecturer(s): A/P Rajeev Patke The module will focus specifically on the relation between contemporary poetry and painting. It will provide students an opportunity to develop a systematic understanding of the relation between poetic language and the visual medium of painting. The general component will provide a methodology for the analysis of the relation between the two arts, and the practical component will entail a detailed study of representative poems directly inspired by specific paintings. Examples of poetry will be confined to the contemporary period and the English language. The module will provide opportunity for students to undertake a small research project which will explore the relation between poetry and painting in non-Anglophone cultures, using translated texts. EN3249 Introduction to Visual Culture: Art, Film and Media (Film and Cultural Studies) Pre-requisite(s): EN1101E or EN2101E or GEK1000 Lecturer(s): Dr David Teh This module offers an introduction to the study of art, film and media culture. It explores the changing role of visual media across the centuries, from pre-modern societies through to todays digital, networked cultures. How have technological and economic changes generated new visual media? How have these media in turn shaped social and economic life? A range of case studies will be drawn from art history, film, popular culture and online media. What are the differences between art, film and other visual culture, and are these differences still relevant in the convergent world of digital media culture? EN3265 South Asian Literatures in English (World Literatures) Pre-requisite(s): EN1101E or EN2101E or GEK1000 Lecturer(s): A/P Chitra Sankaran This module introduces students to the conceptual study of texts by leading writers from South Asia from countries as diverse as Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The course will encourage students to study these texts (i) as reflections of the varied and rich cultural heritages that have given rise to them. (ii) as reflective of issues such as conflicts of colonialism; the complications of modernisms, such as cosmopolitanism and diaspora; (iii) as exploring issues relating to globalisation and its effects on diverse cultures and peoples. The course will also, where relevant, explore issues relating to cultural, gendered, racialised identities. Students will be exposed to a range of relevant theoretical perspectives, which will help them in the analysis of these texts. EN3274 Critical Reading (Writing & Research) Pre-requisite(s): EN1101E. English literature Majors. Lecturer(s): Dr Susan Ang This module, devoted to poetry, combines theory and practice. Theory will cover the elements of poetry, its craft, function and relationship with other genres. The linguistic and literary
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implications of writing in a Singapore context will be among the subjects discussed. Practice will consist mainly of analysing poems (read through various drafts) by members of the class. The link and interaction between theory and practice will be the major guiding principle. EN4223 Topics in the Nineteenth Century (British Literature after 1800) Pre-requisite(s): Cohort 2006 and before: Completed at least 80 MCs including a minimum of 28 MCs in English Literature. Cohort 2007 onwards: Completed 80 MCs including 28 MCs in English Literature, with a minimum CAP of 3.5 or be on the Honours track. Lecturer(s): A/P Robbie Goh The module aims at training students in the reading and analysis of nineteenth-century geopolitical narratives. Students will learn the context of geopolitics in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and will learn to analyse select fiction as symbolic cultural articulations of British geopolitical anxieties. Major tropes to be covered include the symbolism of space; boundaries and liminal landscapes; the geopolitics of sexuality and desire; race and power; schizophrenia and the geopolitical unconscious; and related terms and issues. The module is targeted at all students with pertinent interests who have completed at least 28 MCs of literature modules. EN4226 English Women Novelists 1800 - 1900 (British Literature after 1800) Pre-requisite(s): Cohort 2006 and before: Completed at least 80 MCs including a minimum of 28 MCs in English Literature. Cohort 2007 onwards: Completed 80 MCs including 28 MCs in English Literature, with a minimum CAP of 3.5 or be on the Honours track. Lecturer(s): Dr Jane Nardin In this module, we will read seven lively novels by major nineteenth-century women writers and discuss how women writers contributed to the development of the classic realist novel and the gothic novel. Thematic foci include contemporary views of gender, especially the ideologies of separate spheres and the angel in the house; colonialism and industrialization; social class; and religious agitation and religious doubt. The class will also read and evaluate a few important critical articles concerning the womens tradition in the English novel. EN4241 Utopias and Dystopias (Film and Cultural Studies) Pre-requisite(s): Cohort 2006 and before: Completed at least 80 MCs including a minimum of 28 MCs in English Literature. Cohort 2007 onwards: Completed 80 MCs including 28 MCs in English Literature, with a minimum CAP of 3.5 or be on the Honours track. Lecturer(s): A/P Rajeev Patke This module will examine the s/f sub-genre of utopias and dystopias in fictional literature. It will address the following questions: What is the appeal of imaginative utopias and dystopias? What is the relation of these fictions to the world of contemporary reality? To alternative ways of conceiving life, experience, or reality? To traditional history? To alternative futures? To projections of, and apprehensions about human society? How does the imaginative construction of dystopias, in particular, address the constantly changing relation of science and technology to human life as we know it, to the human individual, to human society, and to the many institutions and notions, from gender and sexuality to race, family, nation, religion and species through which the relation of the individual to the group is mediated in time and place? Dystopian and Utopian fiction will be studied as imaginative constructions of extrapolations from current technology and science, or as possible worlds with alternative selves, life-forms, ecosystems, or histories.

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EN4261 Metafictions and the Novel (World Literatures) Pre-requisite(s): Cohort 2006 and before: Completed at least 80 MCs including a minimum of 28 MCs in English Literature. Cohort 2007 onwards: Completed 80 MCs including 28 MCs in English Literature, with a minimum CAP of 3.5 or be on the Honours track. Lecturer(s): Dr Susan Ang This module focuses on the nouveau roman, a term applied to a sub-genre of twentiethcentury fiction, which consciously and self-consciously interrogates, problematises and plays with traditional conventions and premises of the novel. These include characterisation, plot, chronology, narrative authority, author-reader reciprocity and language as agent of meaning and communication. EN4263 Topics in European Literature (World Literatures) Pre-requisite(s): Cohort 2006 and before: Completed at least 80 MCs including a minimum of 28 MCs in English Literature. Cohort 2007 onwards: Completed 80 MCs including 28 MCs in English Literature, with a minimum CAP of 3.5 or be on the Honours track. Preclusion(s): EU4220 Cross-listing(s): EU4220 Lecturer(s): A/P Barnard Turner This module, 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, and, as a module crosslisted with European Studies, to that programme also. EN4880A Usurpation and Authority (British Literature before 1800) Pre-requisite(s): Cohort 2006 and before: Completed at least 80 MCs including a minimum of 28 MCs in English Literature. Cohort 2007 onwards: Completed 80 MCs including 28 MCs in English Literature, with a minimum CAP of 3.5 or be on the Honours track. Lecturer(s): Dr James Stone This course will examine the twinned ideas of usurpation and transgression in English Renaissance literature. It analyzes the attempt to cross boundaries that define the norm in the polity and in moral, religious, and sexual understandings. We will look at how hierarchies established by religion, government, and custom seek to maintain and to justify the status quo. We will consider 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 may be invoked for our analysis of the cultural preoccupation with usurpation and transgression. EN4401 Honours Thesis (equivalent to 15 MCs) (Writing and Research) Pre-requisite(s): Cohort 2006 and before: (1) Completed at least 100 MCs including 56 MCs of EN major requirements, and (2) Obtained one of the following minimum standards at the point of registration (a) minimum CAP of 4.0 or (b) minimum SJAP of 4.0 and CAP of 3.5. Must be EN majors.
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Cohort 2007 onwards: Completed 110 MCs, including 60 MCs of EN major requirements with a minimum CAP of 3.5. Preclusion(s): EN4660 The Honours Thesis is usually done in the final semester of a students pursuing an Honours degree. Please click here to view thesis guidelines. EN4660 Independent Study (Writing and Research) Pre-requisite(s): Cohort 2006 and before: To be offered subject to the agreement of the Supervisor and Department. Completed at least 100 MCs including 56 MCs of major requirements and obtained a minimum CAP of 3.2. Cohort 2007 onwards: To be offered subject to the agreement of the Supervisor and Department. Completed 100 MCs, including 60 MCs in EN, with a minimum CAP of 3.5. Preclusion(s): EN4401 The Independent Study Module 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 module. 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.

EN-recognised module from English Language which can be used to fulfil EN major requirements EL3222 Cinematic Discourse and Language Pre-requisite: EL1101E or GEK1011 Preclusion: EL3880B Lecturer: A/P Ismail Talib This module will introduce students to some of the basic ideas in cinema analysis that have a relationship with some of the concepts of linguistics and discourse analysis. The students will be exposed to a critical assessment of some of the early associations of cinema with linguistics. They will then learn about the approach to cinema as discourse, and of its relationship to the analysis of linguistic discourse. It is hoped that eventually, students will not only attain a better understanding of cinematic discourse, but also, of the concept of discourse in general.

Other EN-recognised modules: (Please confirm the semester that the module is being offered with the relevant department.) PS4220 Rhetoric and Politics

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