[ENGL 501] Introduction to English Studies

Course Title: Introduction to English Studies

Course Description

This course offers an engaging introduction to English Studies. It integrates critical thinking, creative writing, and theoretical approaches through discussions, reading, and writing activities. The course examines both global and local dimensions of English, focusing on how language, literature, history, and theory interact.

The course provides tools for understanding texts through various theoretical perspectives, including Formalism, Marxism, Postmodernism, and Postcolonialism, helping students analyze and interpret texts in relation to race, gender, class, ethics, and aesthetics.

Additionally, the course highlights the relevance of English Studies to real-world applications, exploring career opportunities and postgraduate pathways.

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Acquire comprehensive knowledge of English Studies in both local and global contexts.
• Analyze and interpret texts using different theoretical perspectives.
• Situate texts within their historical contexts.
• Explore the relevance of English Studies to career opportunities and postgraduate pathways.

Course Contents

Unit I: Prelude: Changing "English" Now (9 Hours)

1. Crossing borders, establishing boundaries
2. Texts in contexts, literature in history
3. Seeing through theory
4. English Literature and Creative Writing
5. English Language Teaching
6. Technologizing the subject: actual and virtual communities
7. Forewords! Some propositions and provocations
8. Introduction to English Studies
9. Which "Englishes"?
10. "Doing English" – Ten Essential Actions
11. Fields of Study

Unit II: Critical and Creative Strategies for Analysis and Interpretation (9 Hours)

1. Initial analysis: How to approach a text
2. Full interpretation: Informed reading, adventurous writing
3. Longer projects: Sample study patterns and lines of inquiry
4. Overview of textual activities as learning strategies

Unit III: Theoretical Positions, Practical Approaches (12 Hours)

1. Theory in practice: A working model to play with
2. Words on the page – Practical Criticism and (Old) New Criticism
3. Devices and effects – Formalism into Functionalism
4. Mind and person – Psychological Approaches
5. Class and community – Marxism, Cultural Materialism, and New Historicism
6. Gender and Sexuality – Feminism, Masculinity, and Queer Theory
7. Relativities – Poststructuralism and Postmodernism
8. Ethnicities – Postcolonialism and Multiculturalism
9. The New Eclecticism? Ethics, Aesthetics, Ecology

Unit IV: Key Terms, Core Topics (9 Hours)

• Absence and presence, gaps and silences, centers and margins
• Accent and dialect
• Author and authority
• Canon and classic
• Character and characterization
• Comedy and tragedy, carnival and the absurd
• Discourse and discourse analysis
• Drama and theatre, film and TV
• Foreground, background, and point of view
• Genre and kinds of text
• Images, imagery, and imagination
• Narrative in story and history: novel, news, film
• Poetry and word-play
• Realism and representation: fiction, fact, metafiction
• Speech, conversation, and dialogue
• Standards and standardization, varieties and variation
• Text, context, intertextuality
• Translation and literature in translation
• Versification: rhythm, meter, and rhyme
• Writing and reading, response, and rewriting

Unit V: Taking It All Further: English and the Rest of Your Life (9 Hours)

1. Living, learning, earning
2. What now? What next? Why? What if...?
3. English again, afresh, otherwise
4. English and/or as other subjects
5. Further study
6. Postgraduate courses in and around English
7. Into work
8. Transformable skills, transformative knowledges
9. Career pathways for English graduates
10. Toward application and interview
11. Play: Recreation and re-creation
12. Afterwords: A Postlude

Evaluation Scheme

Internal Evaluation (40 Marks)

External Examination (60 Marks)

Prescribed Text

Pope, Rob.
Studying English Literature and Language: An Introduction and Companion.
Routledge, 2012.