HI3001 1984: PAST, PRESENT, PROPHECY
Pre-requisite(s): Nil | 3 AUs
During the second half of the twentieth century George Orwell’s 1984 became a staple (if not a cliché) of political, cultural and sociological comment. Heavily promoted by state actors after the Second World War for propaganda purposes, it took on a counter cultural life of its own during the late 1960s and 1970s. Interest in the book was again reinvigorated in the 1980s thanks to the arrival of new computer, media and military technologies. In 2017 sales of the novel reached a new peak. Orwell’s novel only seems to have gained in momentum and relevance; its depictions of “Big Brother,” of telescreens, and of the “forever war” have been uncannily prescient. This course examines in multi-disciplinary detail the long cultural tail of Orwell’s canonical text.
The course work includes an extended, intensive study of a literary text in conversation with the methods, concepts, and practices of contemporary history. Due to its interdisciplinary nature, this course will feature deliberation on and assessment of different disciplinary methods, and the assignments challenge you to express your knowledge in new modes and registers and to different audiences.
HI3002 OPERA AND LITERATURE
Pre-requisite(s): Nil | 3 AUs
You will be exposed from the very outset, to operas identifiable from days of old and yet are still relevant in your lives today. Examples are operas that feature the lives of Julius Caesar and Mary Queen of Scots, and those that transition into musicals such as Schoenberg’s Les Miserables and Lloyd-Webber’s Cats.
This course encourages you to explore the creative impetus within you, and shows you how to compose and integrate sound, music and text deeply embedded in your creative unconscious, so as to produce a unique artwork that is truly yours. In this materialistic world, you will be given the opportunity to explore a higher dimension where imagination and creativity reside.
HL2015 WAR IN LITERATURE AND FILM
Pre-requisite(s): HL1001 | 3 AUs
This course considers the manner in which art responds to war, and the ways in which war and violence are appropriated in both aesthetic and critical discourse. We will examine the centrality of war to human and civilisational experience, and also consider the conditions of inevitability that bind human experience to a deep-seated violent impulse. Issues raised by this course include, but are not confined to: the structural constitution of war the differences and similarities between war and violence the inherent ambivalence of war semantics, rhetorics and discourse of war artistic expression of war experience as ambiguating gesture Just War or just war visual vs textual representations.
HL2020 CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOP
Pre-requisite(s): HL1001 | 3 AUs
This course begins with the assumption that participants have engaged in some aspect of creative writing and seeks to further develop one's understanding of the craft of writing in relation to the topic or genre offered. You will explore various approaches and strategies in creating, researching and developing text, experiment with ideas through practical work, and analyse a range of writing possibilities through critical review, self-reflection, and collaboration.
HL2021 LITERATURE OF EMPIRE
Pre-requisite(s): HL1001 | 3 AUs
In this module we will be focusing on literature produced in response to the historical experience of empire. We will look at the way in which literary narratives have been used to legitimize the imperial project – justifying its ‘civilizing mission,’ reinforcing certain racial stereotypes and hierarchies, and contributing to an archive of knowledge on colonial subjects and territories. However, this complicity between literature and empire is only part of the story. We will also be exploring the ambivalence that so often haunts the peripheries of imperial narratives, and examining the way in which literature has served to critique colonial ideologies and practices. Our discussion will be wide-ranging and eclectic, covering three different centuries and five different empires. Although literature will be our primary focus, the course will include analyses of Hergé’s early Tintin comics and Michael Haneke’s critically acclaimed film Caché.
HL2036 VIRGINS AND VIXENS
Pre-requisite(s): HL1001 OR HQ8010 | 3 AUs
We will be examining the representation of women during the Restoration and 18th century (1660-1800), roughly the span of the Enlightenment in England. With the scientific discoveries of Isaac Newton and others in the late 17th century, Western civilisation experienced an epistemological shift from an adherence to traditional structures of authority (church, crown, patriarchal family) to the age of empiricism and a privileging of reason, evidence, and experientially acquired knowledge espoused by such philosophers as John Locke. This crisis of authority (reason versus revelation, evidence versus faith), exacerbated by the political upheavals and constitutional debates in the wake of England's Civil Wars and the Glorious Revolution, sent shock waves through all levels of society, including the domestic. How did women-having few political rights, little financial independence, and existing as legal nonentities when married-respond to this new age of discovery? The title of the course is meant to indicate the binary opposition of "good" and "bad" women with which real, complex women had to work in order to survive in society. The course itself will problematise that opposition in an effort to understand how women in an uncertain but exciting age could form and articulate their voices-as images of God, as rational beings, as rejects and misfits, as companions, wives, mothers, and citizens-in an effort to contribute to the public and private spheres and establish their own dignity as members of society.
HL2040 ADAPTING GREEK MYTHOLOGY
Pre-requisite(s): HL1001 | 3 AUs
Ancient stories from classical literature have inspired many later authors to reconsider and revisit the power of the mythological narrative. Through selected readings of classical works and a careful examination of their adaptations, this course will examine how themes in the classical literary tradition are used in a variety of adaptations that responds to different historical and cultural contexts. We will examine the use of language and imagery in adaptations of classical works. Students will be encouraged to explore the subject in depth and acquire a sense of contexts in terms of the intellectual landscapes that shape the study of literature and culture.
HL2042 CHILDREN'S LITERATURE
Pre-requisite(s): HL1001 | 3 AUs
From Lewis Carroll's Alice books, which heralded a new "Golden Age" of children's literature, to Cold¬ War era fantasy, comic songs, and Japanese anime, we will consider a variety of different texts and the notions of childhood they reflect and generate. Using Philip Nel and Lissa Paul's seminal Keywords for Children's Literature (2011), students will develop the critical vocabulary necessary to discuss children's fiction, poetry, and film in its aesthetic, ideological, and intellectual contexts. Students will also cultivate a strong theoretical framework for the study of children's literature by engaging with field-defining scholarship by Jacqueline Rose, Perry Nodelman, and others.
HL2043 FANTASY LITERATURE
Pre-requisite(s): HL1001 | 3 AUs
This course seeks to instill in you an understanding of the development of the genre of modern fantasy literature, and of the generic distinctions and theoretical frameworks commonly applied to it. In addition to the predominantly nineteenth-, twentieth- and twenty-first century texts themselves, the course will explore the modern fantasy genre as a product of histories of ideas stretching from centuries past to the present day. With a syllabus spanning from medievalism to modernity via magic, the course welcomes all students interested in exploring the broad genre of fantasy, and the imaginative processes and ideological traditions thereof. In addition to exploring the farthest reaches of the literary imagination, you will also gain—paradoxical though it may seem—an understanding of how these authors and texts negotiate universal themes relating to the realities of human existence, including myth-making, modernisation and the environment.
HL2044 INTRODUCTION TO PUBLISHING
Pre-requisite(s): HL1001 | 3 AUs
Introduction to Publishing is taught by guest instructors from the field of publishing. It will introduce you to the economic, legal, and social factors that influence which texts are published and how those texts circulate. You will consider publishing from a range of perspectives, including authors, editors, and the publishers themselves, and think about the role of publishing in disseminating culture and information.
This course combines theoretical and practical approaches. You will learn how literary productions are shaped by figures and forces beyond the author. You will also consider how the skills you learn as English students relate to various roles in the field of publishing, whether as an author, an editor, a publicist, or a marketing professional.
Although this course will consider a range of different types of publishing, it will pay specific attention to contemporary Singapore.
HL2090 SPECIAL TOPIC IN LITERATURE I
Pre-requisite(s): HL1001 | 3 AUs
The specific subject-matter for this subject will depend on the coordinating lecturer, in response to student needs and divisional expertise at any given time. Emphasis is likely to be on a very specific thematic study.
HL3011 SCIENCE FICTION: ORIGINS TO PARODY
Pre-requisite(s): HL1001 | 3 AUs
Tracing its origins from 19th-century writing on the possibilities and threats both of technology and the newly established sciences to its generic reconstruction and intertextual revisiting over the centuries, the analysis of its most prominent as well as of recently rediscovered works aims to illustrate how science fiction has transformed literature and film. In this, it also seeks to map the genre's most defining topoi: travel through space, time, and parallel universes; experimental technology; alien life; testing the boundaries of the mind and manipulating the body (cloning). Science fiction has always been experimental in its technique as well as in its critique of social, psychological, and scientific definitions of selfhood, and its study taps into encompassing explorations of epistemological as well as ontological anxieties.
HL3012 THE DISCOURSE OF LOVE
Pre-requisite(s): HL1001 OR HQ8010 | 3 AUs
We will begin with Plato's Symposium, and move on to recent theorisations and philosophies of love. More than simply addressing thematic concerns, this course will approach love as a philosophy and a discursive practice, as well as address the issues of subjectivity, the Self-Other relation and difference, all of which are central to love. Our final aim is to evaluate the potential for love to serve as a discourse of alterity. We will be covering a variety of discourses and texts: philosophy, psychoanalysis, feminism and literary theory; film and literary works by both male and female authors and poets.
HL3017 THE RISE OF THE NOVEL
Pre-requisite(s): HL1001 | 3 AUs
18th-century English readers recognised the "novel" as a new literary form that borrowed from previous narrative traditions such as the spiritual autobiography, romance, the picaresque tale, criminal biography, and travel literature. As a genre the "novel" raises questions of authority, tradition, convention, and innovation: What distinguishes creation from bastardisation? What types of "mixing" are acceptable and which are not? How is something recognized as genuinely new and how is it incorporated into an existing tradition? The issue of identity is central to the "novel" as a literary form and is reflected in its subject matter. The genre enabled authors and readers to explore the subjectivity of the individual self, the constitution of identity within a specific environment, and the relationship between "self" and "other." From the new worlds made available by technological innovations such as the microscope and telescope to Robinson Crusoe's disorientation at seeing a mysterious footprint in the sand, encountering the strange, the foreign, and the shocking broadened the perspectives and possibilities of literature in novel ways. The course will cover the development of the 18th- century English novel as a narrative form while analyzing the different literary choices and innovations used to represent identity and its response to novelty. We will study how novelists used and adapted their narrative form to negotiate conflicts of class, nation, gender, family, religion, and literary tradition. By the end of the course, students will have a sound familiarity with the history and development of the 18th-century English novel and will have acquired the vocabulary and analytical tools to think critically about the form and function of the novel.
HL3024 CONTEMPORARY WOMEN'S WRITING
Pre-requisite(s): HL1001 OR HQ8010 | 3 AUs
This course will explore a range of contemporary women's writing. Two seminars will be devoted to the study of each text; one seminar will focus primarily on the text as a exemplary of "women's writing", thus dealing with the politics of gender identity, female desire and sexuality, while the next will address the text as exemplary of contemporary writing, dealing with narrative language, postmodern reality and questions of historical representation, as well as the construction of the shattered/ split postmodern subject.
HL3030 MAJOR AUTHOR STUDY: SHAKESPEARE
Pre-requisite(s): HL1001 | 3 AUs
This course introduces students to Shakespeare Studies by exploring developments in literature, history, and culture in the early modern period. In addition to learning about stage and book printing practices in 16th century England, students will also be introduced to the challenges that Shakespeare and his contemporaries faced in the production and circulation of literary works. We will study a range of Shakespeare’s works, from his early sonnets to his late history play and analyze selected filmic aspects of the plays; in doing so, we will consider how and why modern adaptations of the Shakespeare’s plays appeal to audiences in various parts of the world. In the course of examining the literary and historical impact of Shakespeare’s works, students will also learn about to major theoretical frameworks that have influenced the development of Shakespeare Studies over the last few decades.
HL3036 THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK
Pre-requisite(s): HL1001 | 3 AUs
This course explores the influence of the book as a force in history and literature from the medieval period to the present. It will include hans-on examination of books and manuscript fragments as well as discussion of books as objects, social forces and vehicles for text.
HL3039 MAJOR AUTHOR STUDY: SAMUEL BECKETT
Pre-requisite(s): HL1001 | 3 AUs
One of the most important twentieth century writers, Samuel Beckett’s prose, plays and poems continue to influence writers, readers and audiences all over the world. Although he is well known for the play Waiting for Godot, most of his works remain cryptic to the uninitiated. This module is for those who would like to dive deeper into the Beckettian world. In it, you will discover a poetics of failure, an ethics of non-relation, and perhaps most importantly what it could mean to be at the limit of the human.
HL3043 MODERNIST SOUNDSCAPES
Pre-requisite(s): HL1001 | 3 AUs
While the Western world may not have gotten noisier in the early twentieth century, there is evidence that people perceived the world as noisier. This course explores how modernist writers represented this soundscape. How did they make their narratives sound out? How did the changing soundscape influence and shape their representations of sound and listening?
HL3044 THE LEGENDS OF KING ARTHUR
Pre-requisite(s): HL1001 | 3 AUs
Who was King Arthur, and how did he evolve into the household name that he is today? Where did the legends of his knights originate, and how did they develop over time? How widespread were the Arthurian legends across medieval Europe, and what made them so appealing to authors of English literature in more recent centuries? These are some of the questions to be explored on this module, which surveys the long development of several of the major narratives involving King Arthur and his knights, stretching from their medieval origins to modern literary adaptations. The first half of the module focusses on medieval texts, all of which will be studied in translation. You will gain an understanding of the generic, stylistic and thematic individuality of these medieval texts, as well as an awareness of the ways in which each text reflects the composer’s explorations of the fundamental moral questions underpinning themes such as chivalric heroism and romantic love. The second half of the module turns towards modern reception, and here you will explore the changing significance and reimaginations of the Arthurian tradition in the nearer past. As Arthurian adaptations and reinventions continue to be produced and to occupy the public consciousness in the twenty-first century, this module seeks to offer you a sense of the enduring qualities of the legends of the ‘once and future king’.
HL3045 THE POETRY OF PRECARITYPre-requisite(s): HL1001 | 3 AUs
This course will introduce you to the different aesthetic models and figurative tools poets across different time periods used to come to terms with political, economic, and social insecurity. You will examine poetry from a variety of genres (pastorals, georgics, elegies, sonnets, free-verse) alongside work in other fields, including anthropology, environmental studies, and sociology. In doing so, you will not only consider the experiences of precarity and the structures that enable it from a variety of cultural perspectives, but also experiment with understanding contemporary experiences of precarity from a historical point-of-view.
HL3090 SPECIAL TOPIC IN LITERATURE IIPre-requisite(s): HL1001 | 3 AUs
The specific subject-matter for this subject will depend on the coordinating lecturer, in response to student needs and divisional expertise at any given time. Emphasis is likely to be on a very specific thematic study.
HL4013 ADVANCED STUDIES IN LITERATURE AND CULTURE
Pre-requisite(s): HL1001 | 4 AUs
This module examines some pressing issues in Ecocriticism, a growing field which studies the relationship between literature and the physical environment/non-human order. You will start with two well-known “post-apocalyptic” texts, move on to a provocative use of satire to explore the cultural politics of climate, and close with two “postcolonial” ecocritical texts that raise important social justice considerations. The texts will allow us to appraise some of the tensions and antinomies underpinning contemporary environmental debates and practice.
HL4028 SCIENCE & LITERATURE
Pre-requisite(s): HL1001 OR ST9001 | 4 AUs
This course will investigate various treatments of science by literature according to both traditional and contemporary (postmodern) theories within the philosophy of science. According to Jean Francois Lyotard, scientific knowledge has traditionally been legitimated for being either emancipatory, or according to how it assists in the realisation of a unified scientific whole. Texts by Ibsen and Glaspell provide an opportunity for investigating the poignancy of the first of these legitimation narratives, while texts by Ursula LeGuin and John Banville will help us evaluate the second legitimation narrative. Finally, we will conclude the semester by questioning whether scientific knowledge is, as Foucault suggests, linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which it induces and which extend it. A regime of truth. Rlevant texts to this discussion are Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 and Darren Aronofsky's Pi.
HL4033 MAJOR AUTHOR STUDY: JAMES JOYCE
Pre-requisite(s): HL1001 | 4 AUs
This course will cover the main texts of the key figure of literary Modernism, James Joyce. In addition to studying these texts - Dubliners (1914), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939) - in great detail, Joyce will be considered in the contexts of Irish history, Irish Writing, and European Modernism. The development of Joyce as a writer will be charted and the styles and techniques he used will be examined. Joyce's interpretations of history, literature and philosophy will also be studied.
HL4036 LITERATURE AND MEDICINE
Pre-requisite(s): HL1001 | 4 AUs
Literature and Medicine seeks to present health as a contested term with a continually evolving set of principles and meanings. The nature, causes, and meaning of states of health and sickness is determined not only by physical symptoms but influenced by class, gender, and race, and is perceived differently by patients, practitioners, and policy-makers. Twentieth-century British authors such as Ian McEwan, A.S. Byatt, Ali Smith, James Kelman, David Lodge, and Will Self offer a cultural history of the present that is united by a particular concern with the myths and metaphors that contribute to our un-derstanding of health and sickness. Accordingly Literature and Medicine guides students through a series of literary texts that engage with contemporary issues of health and sickness and signal the inadequacy of any understanding of health that is not culturally, historically, and geographically situated. Literature and Medicine uncovers the ways in which twentieth-century British authors urge us to reclaim the narrative of the individual sick person and reconsider what it means to be healthy and what it means to be sick in the twenty-first century.
HL4037 WRITING THE SELF
Pre-requisite(s): HL1001 OR HZ9101 | 4 AUs
This course will explore the processes involved in writing about the self, integrating analysis of the autobiographical techniques of major writers with a practical understanding of the resources of the writer through workshop exercises and assignments.
HL4039 ADVANCED STUDIES IN CHILDREN'S LITERATURE
Pre-requisite(s): HL1001 | 4 AUs
Identifying a series of critical concepts essential to the conceptualization and production of early children’s literature (among them easiness, gradation, and abridgment), we will consider how eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writers have sought to convey challenging themes to young audiences as comprehensibly, appealingly, and, at times, intensively as possible. How is the threat of child mortality treated in the New-England Primer’s rhyming alphabet (1727) and Christina Rossetti’s verse parable Goblin Market (1862)? How do Isaac Watts and George MacDonald respond differently to the challenge of introducing young readers to Christian theology? What taxonomic comparisons might we locate between John Newbery’s eighteenth-century compendiums and Victorian children’s magazines? This course will also develop students’ skills in using archival databases such as Eighteenth-Century Collections Online and Nineteenth-Century Collections Online.
HL4040 LITERATURE AND ART
Pre-requisite(s): HL1001 (HL3023 and HL4040 are mutually exclusive) | 4 AUs
HL4040 explores connections between literature and painting. It focuses on four major issues: (1) the similarities and differences between works belonging to each of these genres; (2) the manner in which literary text responds to visual texts (3) the principle of literature as an art form (4) art and representation (and it’s opposite non-representation)
HL4041 STUDIES IN ART CRITICISM AND CULTURE
Pre-requisite(s): HL1001 | 4 AUs
It will provide a historical survey of art criticism’s development and introduce different critical approaches to writing about art and culture. The course focuses on (1) historical origins and modern development of art criticism (2) concepts, theories and philosophies underpinning major schools/bodies of thought in art criticism (3) the relationship between text and works of art/film/architecture (4) developing an approach to critical thinking and writing about art and culture.
HL4090 SPECIAL TOPIC IN LITERATURE III
Pre-requisite(s): HL1001 | 4 AUs
The specific subject-matter for this subject will depend on the coordinating lecturer, in response to student needs and divisional expertise at any given time. Emphasis is likely to be on a very specific thematic study.