Core Module Information
Module title: Everyday Life in 20th Century Literature and Film

SCQF level: 09:
SCQF credit value: 20.00
ECTS credit value: 10

Module code: CLP09127
Module leader: Tara Thomson
School School of Arts and Creative Industries
Subject area group: Media and Humanities
Prerequisites

There are no pre-requisites for this module to be added

Description of module content:

You will explore representations of everyday life in 20th century literature and film, both in English and in translation. Everyday life seems a fairly obvious concept, but as Maurice Blanchot has argued, ‘the everyday is what is most difficult to discover … the everyday escapes'. While the everyday is a profoundly democratic concept – everyone has an everyday life, after all – the everyday has also been the prime battle ground of ideology in modern times, the space in each our lives most thoroughly infiltrated by the values of those in power, mass media, and commodities. Exploring representations of everyday life in 20th century literature and film will help you gain insight into the production and development of modernity, the diversity of modern experience across cultures, and the ways in which our daily lives have been shaped over time by ideological myths. Throughout this module, you will engage with theories of modernity, aesthetics, and cultural politics to ask how literature and film represent, defamiliarise, and critique everyday life in the modern world. In keeping with the ephemerality of everyday practices and materials, you will also work with digital media and tools on this module. You will explore relevant digital archives, such as the Mass Observation Archive, Woolf Online and the BFI: Britain on Film archive, and learn to use digital platforms for learning, writing, and research. Indicative topics may include: the everyday and the stream-of-consciousness novel, boredom in literature and film, avant-garde aesthetics and the extraordinary, archiving the everyday, war and the suspension of everyday life, gendered everyday practices, forms of protest, and non-western representations of the everyday.You will study a selection of key literary and cinematic works to build a critical understanding of the different ways authors and filmmakers have responded to changes in everyday life across the twentieth century. Henri Lefebvre argues that everyday life as we now know it took shape in the 1910s and 20s, so the module will begin with works from that period. We will then look at how European avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century, such as surrealism, aimed to defamiliarise the everyday, unveiling the extraordinary within the ordinary. We will then explore mid-twentieth century works that deal with the impact of total war on everyday life. The last part of the module move through the later decades of the century to explore everyday life and modernity as global theoretical constructs. Throughout, we will examine how social, political, and technological changes in everyday life underpin modern movements in literature and film. The module does not chart an evolution of everyday life through the twentieth century, but instead focuses on different strategies that authors and filmmakers have used to grapple with the problems and potential of everyday life. Throughout the module, we will put our core texts in dialogue with interdisciplinary readings theorising everyday life, including the works of Henri Lefebvre, Michel de Certeau, and Agnes Heller.

Learning Outcomes for module:

Upon completion of this module you will be able to

LO1: Demonstrate an understanding of everyday life as a theoretical construct emerging from cultural, political and technological modernity.

LO2: Critically reflect on a wide range of 20th century texts and visual media, in written and verbal form.

LO3: Examine the relationship between innovations in literary and visual form and the historico-cultural contexts from which they emerge.

LO4: Develop competencies in applying theoretical concepts to literary and cinematic texts, in written and verbal form.

LO5: Develop competencies in using digital tools for humanities research.

Full Details of Teaching and Assessment
2024/5, Trimester 2, In Person,
VIEW FULL DETAILS
Occurrence: 001
Primary mode of delivery: In Person
Location of delivery: MERCHISTON
Partner:
Member of staff responsible for delivering module: Tara Thomson
Module Organiser:


Student Activity (Notional Equivalent Study Hours (NESH))
Mode of activityLearning & Teaching ActivityNESH (Study Hours)NESH Description
Online Guided independent study 170 Most of the credit-bearing hours for this module are spent in guided independent study. With the support of assigned reading materials, Moodle study resources, a weekly syllabus, and study skills taught during contact hours, you will manage your independent study time to complete assigned readings/viewing for each week in advance of classes, make notes and annotate texts, do additional recommended reading and research, and plan and produce assessments.
Face To Face Tutorial 10 In tutorials, you will have the opportunity to deploy the analytic strategies presented in lecture in a student-centred learning environment. Activities will include small group work, class discussion, and presentation of blog contributions.
Face To Face Lecture 20 Weekly lectures will provide the critical and socio-cultural context for each of the module’s core texts/films, and will model the kinds of analysis required in engaging with the primary texts. Lectures will include interactive elements.
Total Study Hours200
Expected Total Study Hours for Module200


Assessment
Type of Assessment Weighting % LOs covered Week due Length in Hours/Words Description
Portfolio 50 1~2~3~4~5 Week 12 , WORDS= 2000 A blog (total 2,000 words), with rolling deadlines for individual posts from week 3 to week 12. For this assessment, you will form a small group and your group will set up and design a shared blog site on an approved blogging platform. Eachstudent in the group will write three blog posts each throughout the trimester (600 wordsper post or equivalent), and each student will be assessed individually, on your ownwritten contributions. You can choose which three weeks on which you'd like to post, effectively setting your own deadlines throughout the term. Your blog posts will then be collectively assessed as a portfolio, from week 12. Your collaborative activities will not feed into the assessment grade, but you will receive feedback on your blog design and management that may help you to effectively plan future collaborative and online projects.For the individual blog posts, you will be given the option to use a wide range of formats, including close reading, reflective commentary, creative writing, audio and video recordings (such as podcasts or short video essays or films), short exhibition curation and production (with commentary), and more. The range of formats will cater to different learning styles and interests, and give you the opportunity to engage with different methods of cultural analysis and online knowledge production. As part of this assessment, you will also be asked to comment periodically on otherstudent’s blog posts (4 comments of roughly 50 words each), to promote discussion andprovide formative peer feedback. Content from the blog posts may also form the basis of the corresponding week’s tutorial discussion. In these ways, students will receive formative feedback on their developing work throughout the term.
Project - Written 50 1~2~3~4~5 Week 13 , WORDS= 2500 A final project, due in week 13. For the project you will have the opportunity to choose one from a range of formats, including:-a 2,500-word essay, written individually and published on an online platform-a 7-8 minute video essay (with accompanying written critical commentary), produced individually-a 25-30 minute podcast, produced in a small group (max 3)-an online exhibition, produced either individually or in a small group (max 3), featuring a 1,500-word exhibition introduction and critical commentary, and a minimum of 4 exhibition objects per student (with written description and essential metadata for each object).
Component 1 subtotal: 50
Component 2 subtotal: 50
Module subtotal: 100

Indicative References and Reading List - URL:
CLP09127 Everyday Life in 20th Century Literature and Film