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2019/2020

English Prose

Code: 100267 ECTS Credits: 6
Degree Type Year Semester
2500245 English Studies OT 3 0
2500245 English Studies OT 4 0

Contact

Name:
Maria Cristina Pividori Gurgo
Email:
MariaCristina.Pividori@uab.cat

Use of Languages

Principal working language:
english (eng)
Some groups entirely in English:
Yes
Some groups entirely in Catalan:
No
Some groups entirely in Spanish:
No

Prerequisites

  

 

  • A keen interest and enthusiasm for the reading and debate of literary works in English related to the representation and memory of the major war conflicts of the 20th century.
  • Students are advised to have passed all first and second year subjects in the English Studies degree before  taking this subject.
  • The starting level of English is C1 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment, which means that the student is able to understand a wide range of long, complex texts and can recognize implicit meanings. S/he can express him or herself fluently and spontaneously without it being obvious that s/he is searching for the correct word or expression. The student should be able to use the language efficiently and flexibly for social, academic and professional purposes. S/he should be able to produce clear, well structured and detailed texts on complex topics and demonstrate his or her control over organizing structures and connectors.
  • The required level for the final dissertation (TFG) is C2, which requires the student to understand what he or she reads or hears without effort. S/he should be able to summarize information from other sources, both oral and written, build up arguments and present them coherently. S/he should also be able to express him or herself spontaneously, fluently and precisely, and distinguish subtleties in all kinds of situations.

 

Objectives and Contextualisation

The 2019-2020 edition of "Prose in English" will focus on the study of a specific genre: war literature.

Special attention will be paid to issues related to ethics, politics, memory and even the physical experience of war. Specifically, the following topics will be addressed:

  • Men's and Women's Identities at War
  • The Representation of the Enemy
  • The Myths of War
  • The Heroic
  • The traumatic legacy of war

When completing the course, the student will be able to:

  • Recognize the distinctive characteristics that determine the war literature genre.
  • Demonstrate their knowledge of the historical evolution of the genre throughout the 20th century
  • Make basic critical contributions to literary theory, from an informed perspective.
  • Demonstrate their knowledge of the interaction between critical discourse and literature, especially showing the interconnection between the two.

Competences

    English Studies
  • Critically assessing the scientific, literary and cultural production in the English language.
  • Develop critical thinking and reasoning and knowing how to communicate effectively both in your mother tongue and in other languages.
  • Generate innovative and competitive proposals in research and professional activities.
  • Identify the main literary, cultural and historical currents in the English language.
  • Produce clear and well structured and detailed texts in English about complex topics, displaying a correct use of the organisation, connection and cohesion of the text.
  • Rewrite and organize information and arguments coming from several sources in English and presenting them in a coherent and summarised way.
  • Students can apply the knowledge to their own work or vocation in a professional manner and have the powers generally demonstrated by preparing and defending arguments and solving problems within their area of study.
  • Students must be capable of communicating information, ideas, problems and solutions to both specialised and non-specialised audiences.
  • Students must develop the necessary learning skills in order to undertake further training with a high degree of autonomy.
  • Students must have and understand knowledge of an area of study built on the basis of general secondary education, and while it relies on some advanced textbooks it also includes some aspects coming from the forefront of its field of study.
  • Utilising new technologies in order to capture and organise information in English and other languages, and applying it to the personal continued training and to the problem-solving in the professional or research activity.
  • Working in an autonomous and responsible way in a professional or research environment in English or other languages, in order to accomplish the previously set objectives.

Learning Outcomes

  1. Apply the acquired knowledge to the generation of innovative and competitive research on a basic level.
  2. Apply the knowledge and competences acquired in the professional and academic activities related to literature, history and culture.
  3. Applying appropriate secondary academic sources to text comments and argumentative essays about literary genres and literary criticism in English.
  4. Applying the acquired methodologies of work planning to work in an environment in the English language.
  5. Applying the acquired scientific and work planning methodologies to the research in English.
  6. Applying the information in English that is available on the Internet, in databases, etc. to the work and/or research environments.
  7. Carrying out oral presentations about topics related to the genres of English literature and its academic criticism using secondary academic sources.
  8. Communicating in the studied language in oral and written form, properly using vocabulary and grammar.
  9. Demonstrate a master of the specific methods of individual academic work that prepare the student for a postgraduate specialised education in the same or a different field of study.
  10. Demonstrate a sound knowledge about advanced topics related to the study of literature and culture.
  11. Distinguishing the main ideas from the secondary ones and summarising the contents of primary and secondary texts related to the literary genres and literary criticism in English.
  12. Drawing up academic essays of medium length in relation to the genres of the English literature and its academic criticism using secondary academic sources.
  13. Effectively communicating and applying the argumentative and textual processes to formal and scientific texts.
  14. Explaining in an advanced level, the nature and main traits of the literary genres and literary criticism in English.
  15. Localising secondary academic sources in the library or on the Internet related to the literary genres and literary criticism in English.
  16. Locating and organising relevant information in English that is available on the Internet, in databases, etc.
  17. Mastering the advanced knowledge and scientific methodologies related to linguistics, literature, history and culture that prepare the student for a postgraduate specialised education in the same or a different field of study.
  18. Produce new professional initiatives.
  19. Students must be capable of comprehending advanced academic or professional texts in their own language or the another acquired in the degree.
  20. Students must be capable of precisely arguing ideas and opinions in their own language or another acquired in the degree.
  21. Summarising the content of primary and secondary academic sources about literary genres and literary criticism in English.

Content

  • UNIT 1 The Pity of War (The First World War): The Return of the Soldier (Rebecca West, 1918); "The Mark on the Wall" (Virginia Woolf, 1921); Regeneration (Pat Barker, 1991)
  • UNIT 2 The Good War Revisited (The Second World War): Slaughterhouse Five (Kurt Vonnegut, 1969); The Dark Room (Rachel Seiffert, 2001)
  • UNIT 3 Writing a True Story that Never Happened (The Vietnam War): The Things They Carried (Tim O'Brien, 1990)
  • UNIT 4 Women's War Stories (The Iraq War): Love My Rifle More than You (Kayla Williams, 2005)

 

Methodology

1 ECTS credit = 25 hores; 6 credits = 150 hores
Guided activities (30%, 1.8 cr)
Supevised activities (15%, 0.9 cr)
Autonomous activities (50%, 3 cr)
Assessment activities (5%, 0.3 cr)

Activities

Title Hours ECTS Learning Outcomes
Type: Directed      
Class Debate 20 0.8 4, 6, 20, 16
Lectures 25 1 19
Type: Supervised      
Writing tasks and activities assessed in class 15 0.6 4, 5, 1, 19, 16
Type: Autonomous      
Reading and study 65 2.6 4, 6, 19, 18, 16

Assessment

  • Academic essay = 40% - Date: 5 November
  • Exam = 40% - Date: 20 December
  • Class Participation = 10%
  • Forum Contribution= 10% (There will be a specific deadline for each forum contribution required)

 Please, note:

  • All the subjects in this degree follow continous assessment.
  • All the exercises are COMPULSORY.
  • The submission of either the paper or the exam invalidates the student to get a final mark of "No avaluable."
  • The student's command of English will be taken into account when makring all exercises and for the final mark. It will count as 25% of this mark for all the exercises.

 

RE-ASSESSMENT CONDITIONS:

  • Students whose final average mark of the two exercises is 3,5 to 4,9 (without counting the class participation mark and the forum contribution mark) and who have completed Continuous Assessment may take re-assessment.
  • If the final average mark of the two exercises is inferior to 3,5 or if the student has failed both exercises, they will miss the opportunity of reassessment and will be granted a Fail.
  • The reassessment consists of a two-hour written exam on matters related to the subject. The exam is awarded a Pass/Fail mark and the maximum possible final mark is a 5. In case students cannot do the exercises (essay - exam) on the date set up by the teacherfor justified medical reasons, they may do the exercise(s) on a different date agreed by the teacher.

 

VERY IMPORTANT : Partial or total plagiarising will immediately result in a FAIL (0) for the plagiarised exercise (first-year students) or the WHOLE subject (second-, third-and fourth-year students). PLAGIARISING consists of copying text from unacknowledged sources -whether this is part of a sentence or a whole text - with the intention of passing it off as the student's own production. It includes cutting and pasting from internet sources, presented unmodified in the student's own text. Plagiarising is a SERIOUS OFFENCE. Students must respect authors' intellectual property, always identifying the sources they may use; they must also be responsible for the originality and authenticity of their own texts.

Assessment Activities

Title Weighting Hours ECTS Learning Outcomes
Participation 20% 21 0.84 20, 7, 14, 13, 8, 18, 15
Writing Tasks 80% 4 0.16 4, 5, 1, 2, 6, 3, 20, 19, 10, 17, 9, 11, 13, 8, 16, 12, 21

Bibliography

 

Fussell, Paul. The Great War and Modern Memory. 1975. London: Oxford UP, 2013. Print.

Gupta, Suman. Imagining Iraq: Literature in English and the Iraq Invasion. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Print.

Hutcheon, Linda. “Historiographic Metafiction. Parody and the Intertextuality of History.” Intertextuality and Contemporary American Fiction. Ed. O’Donnell. P, and Robert Con Davis. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1989. 3-32. Print.

--- A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. 1988. New York: Routledge, 2004.Print.

McLoughlin, Kate. Authoring War: The Literary Representation of War from the Iliad to Iraq. Leiden: Cambridge University Press, 2011.Print.

Melling, Philip H. Vietnam in American Literature. Boston: Mass, 1990. Print.

Mosse, G. 1996. The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity. New York: Oxford UP.

---. 1990. Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars. New York: Oxford UP.

Owen, David and Cristina Pividori. Writings of Persuasion and Dissonance in the Great War: That Better Whiles May Follow Worse. Leiden: BrillRodopi, 2016. Print.

Pividori, Cristina. "Eros and Thanatos Revisited: the Poetics of Trauma in Rebecca West's "The Return of the Soldier" Atlantis. 32.2 (2010): 89-104. Print.

---. "Out of the Dark Room: Photography and Memory in Rachel Seiffert's Holocaust Tales." Atlantis. 30.2 (2008): 79-94. Print.

Rawlinson, Mark. British Writing of the Second World War. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000.Print.

Sharpe, Jim. “History from Below.” New Perspectives on Historical Writing. Ed. Peter Burke. 1991. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001. Print

Tylee, Claire M. The Great War and Women’s Consciousness. Images of Militarism and Womanhood in Women’s Writings, 1914-64. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1990. Print.

Vickroy, L. Trauma and Survival in Contemporary Fiction. Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 2002. P.

Winter, Jay. Remembering War: The Great War between Memory and History in the Twentieth Century. New Haven & London: Yale UP, 2006. Print