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Module outline

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