You will be introduced to some of the most influential contemporary critical and theoretical models currently being applied to the notion of modernity.

English - Modernities: American and British Literature and Film MA, University College Cork

This MA introduces students to the advanced study of American and British literature and film, from the eighteenth century to the present day. Under the guidance of leading scholars in their fields, students will encounter some of the most influential contemporary critical and theoretical models currently being applied to the notions of modernity and modernisation, and apply the ideas raised by these theories to a rich variety of literary and filmic texts from such movements as Romanticism, Modernism, and Postmodernism.

Writers and directors who are studied range from canonical Romantics and modernists, including P.B. and Mary Shelley, Virginia Woolf, and Samuel Beckett, to recent and contemporary novelists and filmmakers such as Thomas Pynchon and Stanley Kubrick.

Among theorists of modernity, students can expect to examine Freud, Nietzsche, de Beauvoir, Habermas, and Jameson, and to explore the relevance of their ideas to a deeper understating and greater appreciation of the literature and film in this period.