Weekly Topics and Suggested Readings
The following list of topics and readings is meant to illustrate the kinds of topics covered and the mode of teaching. Each year the Director of Studies and Coordinator may make some substitutions, within the same basic framework of study and assessment.
| Lectures | Suggested readings | Coursework | Field trips | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Week 1: Romanticism, literature, and landscape | Changing conceptions of Landscape Wordsworth and place Regions and language varieties in England |
Wordsworth, from The Prelude Diaries - Wordsworth, Gray, de Quincey, Ruskin Film: Wordsworth's Sense of Place: Home at Grasmere |
Short essay on the evocation of place in one poem or passage | Dove Cottage and Grasmere Ruskin Library (on campus) |
| Week 2: Industrialisation, political change, and the novel | The cotton industry in Lancashire Literature, art, and science in the mill towns Criticisms of industrial production |
Engels, from Condition of the Working Class Gaskell, Mary Barton Ruskin, from Unto This Last |
Source analysis of descriptions of Lancashire mill towns: group project | Quarry Bank Mill at Styal Walking tour of Lancaster |
| Week 3: The Great War and after | The Great War and the Northwest Memorialising the war in the 1920s and 1930s Reconstructing the war in popular culture |
Poets: Binyon, Owen and Sassoon Fussell, from The Great War and Modern Memory Todman, from The Great War: Myth and Memory Barker, Regeneration |
In-class examination | Imperial War Museum and Manchester Art Gallery, and self-guided tour of Lancaster war memorials |
| Week 4: Post-industrial and Post-colonial Liverpool | Scouse and Liverpool identity Liverpool poets Branding Liverpool |
Films: Letter to Brezhnev Distant Voices, Still Lives Poems: Paul Farley |
Oral presentation on a place and its associations | Liverpool, Albert Dock museums |