BA (Hons) Creative Writing and Philosophy & Ethics

Creative Non-Fiction: Starting From The Self

This module introduces you to the versatile genre of creative non-fiction, in which writers employ skills transported from fiction to lend dramatic complexity to factual narratives.

Using autobiographical material as a base, you will generate dramatic scenes on a variety of topics and themes.

Faith and Reason

This module explores the relationship between faith and reason. When are beliefs justified? Are some beliefs beyond rational explanation? Why do people hold such beliefs? What cultural assumptions inform the way that we think about belief, reason and God?

Introduction to Writing Short Fiction

This module will build on skills and techniques acquired throughout your first semester, such as:

• concrete imagery
• writerly research
• notebook gatherings
• reflections on developing creative work.

You will encounter a variety of forms and voices in a range of examples from traditional and contemporary sources in both British and international short fiction.

Religion, Ethics and Violence

This module will introduce you to the historical study of religion and ethics and you’ll investigate the important contemporary question of the relationship between religion, ethics and violence.

Source and Exploration

The module will train your observation skills. You will learn to apply the world around you to inform your creative processes. You will also learn the value of the ‘concrete’ as opposed to the ‘abstract’ and discover how the ordinary can become extraordinary.

The Problem of Human Nature

The module investigates different understandings of human nature. What makes humanity distinct? Are we rational animals? Do we have souls? What is the relationship between thinking and our embodied existence? We will explore a range of understandings with particular attention to the wider philosophical implications.

The Quest for Truth

The module investigates the relationship between philosophy and science by examining debates about different conceptions of truth. Is truth something that can be measured? Is there reality beyond the material world? Contemporary society values the explanatory powers of social and natural sciences – is there still a place for a distinctively philosophical approach to questions of truth?

The Writer’s Notebook

This module introduces you to keeping a writer’s notebook and how to use this as a storehouse of ideas, images, research and drafts. You will also learn about the journey from rough idea to finished piece as you examine a selection of case studies of notebook entries, drafts and published work.

Bio-Ethics

This module introduces you to the concept and debates of bio-ethics. You will become acquainted with the major problems in bio-ethics, especially those relating to the beginning and ending of life and discuss them multiple ethical approaches.

Creative Non-Fiction: Writing Lives

This module introduces you to the versatile genre of creative non-fiction, in which writers employ skills transported from fiction to lend dramatic complexity to factual narratives.

Using autobiographical material as a base, you will generate dramatic scenes on a variety of topics and themes.

Creative Writing: Poetry, Form and Freedom

This module will enable you to develop a variety of sophisticated traditional poetic forms and to develop experimental free verse poems within a reflective contemporary poetic practice.

Critique, Suspicion and Revolution

This module traces the development of Western philosophical ideas from the height of modern thought through the deconstructive methods of postmodernism, as you explore the challenges to modern concepts of being, reality, knowledge and subjectivity.

You will investigate questions surrounding the place of philosophy in the modern world as you evaluate the legacy of modern and postmodern philosophy and its ability to address contemporary issues.

Enlightenment Europe: 1688-1789

The ideas of the Enlightenment provided new ways of thinking about science, religion, education, politics and society and the place of ‘mankind’ in the world, but to what extent did the ‘philosophers’ transform society and how enlightened were they?

You will explore these ideas as you engage with the works of Locke, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Diderot, Rousseau, Beccaria and Wollstonecraft.

Fairy Tales: Early Modern to Postmodern

Gain an informed historical and critical perspective on a powerful literary and cultural tradition beginning with the fairy tales written in early modern Italy, continuing through Perrault, D’Aulnoy, Grimm, Andersen to the work of more contemporary authors such as Angela Carter and Margaret Atwood. It also asks where we can turn to for modern fairy tales, through a focus on the use of fairy tale tropes in the work of J.K Rowling and Philip Pullman.

Fascism and Post-Fascism in Europe

By looking at a variety of case studies from across Europe throughout the first half of the 20th century, we will discuss the way in which fascism was both embraced and fought against.

In addition, by using literary and cultural forms of post-fascism you will explore how many of the core messages of ideological fascism survived despite being politically discredited.

Freedom and Justice

The module investigates different philosophical approaches to freedom and justice. What constitutes a free action? Can freedom be granted? What are the key components of a just society? We explore different traditions with careful attention to their historical and cultural context while considering their ability to illuminate contemporary issues and debates.

Kingdom of Heaven: Crusading and the Holy Land: 1095-1291

This module assesses the causes and consequences of crusading to the Holy Land between 1095-1291.

You will examine the motives of the First Crusaders and the subsequent defence of the Holy Land, including leaders such as Richard the Lionheart, as well as the political and economic ramifications for the Latin East and the indigenous populations of the invaded territories.

Philosophy and Theory of Religion

This module allows you to investigate the connections between philosophy and contemporary theories on religion.

Whilst recent philosophical debates have questioned the division between humans and the rest of nature, contemporary theory of religion has moved away from an understanding of religion as only a set of beliefs.

Bringing together these philosophical and theoretical strands can help us re-evaluate the nature of religion and its role in contemporary society.

Poetry: 1300 to the Present

The module aims to develop your understanding of rhythm, rhyme, free verse, diction, particular verbal effects, timbre, tone and voice. It will encourage awareness of the centrality of genre to a wide range of poetic practice from the Renaissance to the present day.

Prose Fiction: The Dynamic of Change

This module will explore the dynamics of change in the contemporary short story.

You will examine model short stories and how they invariably dramatise a significant change in character, and/or situation.

In doing so, you will understand how to analyse the devices writers use to shape narrative, and to create tension and conflict.

Saints or Sinners: Politics and Religion in the Contemporary Era

This module examines critically the role of religious ideas in contemporary political life, in particular the ways in which a variety of theological perspectives shape and influence contemporary political movements. As such, you will examine the role of religion in politics and its re-emergence as a political force and key influence on identity. The focus will be on the UK and USA with reference made to the place of religious belief in global politics.

Work Placement

This double module provides invaluable experience working as a performance analyst within a sporting organisation. It will enable you to foster an acute understanding of how performance analysis is used within sport, offer insight into organisational culture, develop essential professional knowledge and skills, facilitate reflective practice, and develop a network of professional contacts.

Writing for the Screen

This module introduces you to the craft of writing a short cinematic screenplay.

The module focuses on the building blocks of screenwriting, with a focus on:

• visual storytelling
• plot (using treatments and step outlines)
• scene-building
• research skills
• characterisation
• setting
• sound
• struggle
• movement
• layout.

You will experience the collaborative nature of screenwriting, and explore the role of the screenwriter within the broader institutional framework of the industry.

From ‘Angry Young Men’ to Cool Britannia?: A Historical Analysis of British Cultural Activity After 1945

This module provides you with an opportunity to analyse examples of British cultural activity after 1945 within their artistic, political, and historical contexts.

The module discusses a series of key movements of cultural production, for example, ‘the Angry Young Men’; ‘Cold War fictions’; or ‘Thatcherism/responses to Thatcherism’.

British Culture Wars

This module explores conflict within British culture from the start of the 19th century to the turn of the new millennium.

You will consider the reaction to obscene publications and other literary controversies and moral panics of Victorian Britain, through to the liberal reforms in the 1960s and the self-censorship and the baleful influence of Hollywood on British cinema.

Contemporary Short Fiction: Writing the Here and Now

This module will enable you to explore, as active writers and readers, the strategies, innovations and preoccupations of contemporary writers of the short story. You will read and analyse the craft, technique and rigour of three to four highly regarded short story collections from the last 15 years.

Dictatorship, Conformity and Resistance in Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy and Stalin’s Russia

This module explores the distinctive ideologies of Soviet Communism, Italian Fascism and German National Socialism, and to consider if and how these were in fact new forms of religion. The module will also examine the construction of these ‘totalitarian’ states in practice, and the experiences of individual and institutions caught up within these contexts, with particular reference to the churches and to cultural movements.

Digital Writing: Writing for the Community of Strangers

On this module, you will harness the skills developed in non-fiction modules in year one and year two to engage with new possibilities in digital writing, including:

• blogs
• games
• websites
• online journalism
• Twitter/Tumblr/Facebook
• texts
• podcasts
• comments forums
• campaigns
• hypertext

and the non-linear; e-books; apps; fan fiction; reviews, etc.

Dissertation in Creative Writing

The Dissertation in Creative Writing gives students the opportunity to work independently on an imaginative writing project of their own choosing.

This may take the form of a fiction project, a poetry project, a play or screenwriting project or a creative non-fiction project.

It will include a related essay in which the student-writer investigates a particular artistic, aesthetic or cultural issue of relevance to you as a contemporary writer OR the work of a particular writer who will be influential as you develop your own body of work for the Dissertation project.

Dissertation in Philosophy and Ethics

The dissertation is the culmination of your degree, as you produce a research project on a specific aspect of theology.

The dissertation consists of a study of 9,000 words on a topic agreed between the student and the module coordinator.

Philosophy and the Future

This module investigates different philosophical conceptions of the future. Beginning with religious understandings of eschatology, messianism, millennialism and apocalypticism we will see how these ideas relate to philosophical notions of progress, utopianism and dystopianism. We will ask how we think of the future today, examining a range of philosophical texts as well as film, television, music and visual art.

Political Theology

This module asks how theological and religious concepts shape our understanding of a range of political ideas. Does this mean that Western society is fundamentally religious? Or do theological and religious ideas take on new meaning in secular or post-secular society? We will look at these issue from a variety of theological, sociological and philosophical perspectives.

Revisioning Religion, Gender and Sexuality

The module will begin by examining the development of feminist theologies, theologies and feminist studies of religion in the Jewish and Christian traditions.
This will lead to an exploration of a range of the further developments which have emerged as result of these early developments such as womanist, mujerista, body and queer theologies as well as diverse feminist spiritualties across a range of traditions.

The Cultural History of Death

This module explores how literary representations of the historical and social treatment of the dead presents a vivid insight into the cultural behaviour, ideology and social order of different cultural and historical contexts.

You will explore the beliefs and attitudes towards the dead within literature from the Middles Ages through to more contemporary examples and debates.

Unconscious Desires: Psychoanalysis and Culture From Freud to Žižek

This module explores the notion of unconscious desire and the expression of these desires in literature and culture.

You will trace the emergence of the ideas of psychoanalysis in the work of Freud and how various psychoanalytic thinkers have transformed the notion of unconscious desire and used it to grasp literary and cultural forms.

Writing Flash Fiction

‘Flash Fiction’ is an exciting new way of telling stories. By composing their own portfolio of very short fiction, you will be challenged to see the form from the inside, and to focus upon the creative challenges that are unique to ‘flash fiction’. These challenges will be brought into additional focus by workshops that require critical reflection upon the evolving work.

Writing, Environment and Ecocriticism

This module will offer you the opportunity to explore the ways in which contemporary writers and critics engage with images, issues and concepts of the environment in novels, poetry and non-fiction. You will choose whether you wish to engage with the themes of the module as a critic or a creative writer.