Any SCQF 8 module in literature, film studies, cultural studies, or related discipline (at discretion of module leader)

On ‘C21 Literature’ we will be working in what Amy Hungerford has called ‘the archive of the unfolding present’. You will read contemporary writing that has already garnered substantial amounts of scholarship and literary criticism and some that has had very little. We will explore key questions that have preoccupied scholars of contemporary literature about the nature of ‘the contemporary’ or ‘contemporaneity’ and questions relating to literary value, genre, technology, canonicity and literary production. We will look at the ways writers are responding to our contemporary moment and examine the extents to which we can map out a new phase or period in literary studies in the early twenty-first century. Four key thematic threads will intersect and develop over the course of the module: Power, Identity, Neoliberalism and the Global.
These are the overarching contexts for the module and students will have the opportunity to compare the way key authors have dealt with these themes. The syllabus features thirteen set texts (five novels, three poems and five short stories). It covers a period from 2006 to the present and is global in scope - in the sense that it includes authors from around the world, but also in that it includes texts like ‘The
Embassy of Cambodia’, ‘The Boundary’ or Bleeding Edge that are interested in ‘world-systems’, the ‘world narrative’ and the far-reaching effects of neoliberalism. This module is intensive, demanding, diverse, and should be immensely rewarding for those interested in the roles literature and culture play in the present day.

LO1: Critically reflect on debates about what is ‘contemporary’ in relation to twenty-first century global literatures and cultures.
LO2: Demonstrate a well-informed understanding of theoretical, political, and cultural developments associated with the twenty-first century.
LO3: Identify and examine key literary practices, movements and trends emerging across different literary forms at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
LO4: Undertake close reading and analysis of works that have been written recently, and for which there is not a significant body of critical work.
LO5: Critically evaluate texts in ways that move beyond, strictly, textual analysis and consider production, dissemination and technologies.