History and Textuality explores how history and literary studies operate as distinct fields of intellectual inquiry. It examines some of the chief methods that historians and literary scholars use; the kinds of knowledge or understanding they produce; and particularly the ways in which that knowledge or understanding is shaped by its textuality.

The module comprises five units:

Unit 1 (weeks 1-5): What is history?

Core text: Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

Unit 2 (weeks 7-10): What is literary history?

Core text: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)

Re-cap and introduction to term 2 (week 11)

Unit 3 (weeks 12-15): What is cultural memory?

Core text: Alison Bechdel, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (2006)

Unit 4 (weeks 17-20): Where is history going?

Core text: W.G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn (1995)

Re-cap and introduction to term 3 (week 21)

Unit 5 (weeks 22-23): Angels of history