| Unit name | The Essay: History, Genre, Media |
|---|---|
| Unit code | MODL20030 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | I/5 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
| Unit director | Dr. Paul Earlie |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Units you must take before you take this one (pre-requisite units) |
None |
| Units you must take alongside this one (co-requisite units) |
None |
| Units you may not take alongside this one |
None |
| School/department | School of Modern Languages |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
Why is this unit important?
What does the word ‘essay’ make you think of or feel? About the right or wrong way of putting your ideas down on paper? Concern about whether you have an argument, or about the ‘authority’ of your own academic voice? This unit will work to undo these assumptions by transforming what you believe the essay can be or do. It will open your eyes and ears to the radical potential of this inventive mode of writing and expressing thought. In so doing, the unit will inspire you to think creatively and laterally when working within the bounds of more traditional academic essays.
Moving from its supposed ‘invention’ by the French writer Michel de Montaigne in the sixteenth century to modern-day attempts to reimagine the essay through experiments in photography, filmmaking, and digital technology, this unit will demonstrate the origins, appropriations, and radical afterlives of a genre that is – and has long been – anything but conventional.
How does this unit fit into your programme of study?
In its transnational and intermedial approach to the evolution of the essay, the unit enables you to bridge different components of your degree programme, while providing a rare space to explore the boundaries between academic and creative modes of writing, to integrate scholarship and personal interests, and to think about engaging audiences beyond the academy. The unit’s flexible assessment design allows you to choose and work with a cultural object that is suited to your particular skill sets and interests.
Overview of Content
The unit offers you the chance to engage with primary cultural objects and theoretical sources from different geographical, linguistic, and cultural contexts. Pushing beyond canonical frameworks, you will consider how essayistic modes of thinking can work to resist dominant practices of cultural and artistic production by, for example, combining aspects of different genres and styles in unexpected and innovative ways. The result of such experimentation is not the conventional essay we are familiar with today but ambiguous experimental forms that defy definition or categorisation and open up new ways of thinking.
How will students, personally, be different as a result of the unit
This unit will enable you to develop skills in critical thinking in a creative manner that fosters a self-aware approach. You will be encouraged to reflect critically on your own thought processes and to apply theory to practice in innovative ways. In developing your voice, you will experiment with individualist modes of expression which cannot be adequately reproduced by any form of artificial intelligence. A central aim of the unit is to help you become questioning, independent, and adaptive thinkers and communicators, traits that are vital for success in future employment opportunities.
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this unit, students will be able to:
1. Analyse, conceptualize, and compare forms of essay of diverse historical periods, genres, and media;
2. Creatively respond to primary texts and scholarship in the field of study and articulate a critical position in written or audiovisual formats by producing material as appropriate to level I/5;
3. Demonstrate team-working skills in devising a collaborative creative portfolio;
4. Design and implement research in an independent way as appropriate to this level of study.
The unit will be taught through a mixture of lectures and in-person seminars and writing workshops. The weekly lectures will provide history, context, and close readings of the particular cultural objects under study that week and will introduce you to key theoretical works.
The seminars and workshops will be interactive and student-centred in order to build a supportive community for the experimental, essayistic work being undertaken. True to the meaning of the word essay — ‘trial’, ‘sounding’, ‘attempt’ — the seminars and workshops will be spaces for discussion and exploration, and the mode of teaching will be interactive and Socratic, the better to allow you to develop your voices orally and extempore as well as on paper or in audio-visual form.
Tasks which help you learn and prepare you for summative tasks (formative):
Tasks which count towards your unit mark (summative):
When assessment does not go to plan
When required by the Board of Examiners, you will normally complete reassessments in the same formats as those outlined above. However, the Board reserves the right to modify the form or number of reassessments required. Details of reassessments are normally confirmed by the School shortly after the notification of your results at the end of the academic year.
If this unit has a Resource List, you will normally find a link to it in the Blackboard area for the unit. Sometimes there will be a separate link for each weekly topic.
If you are unable to access a list through Blackboard, you can also find it via the Resource Lists homepage. Search for the list by the unit name or code (e.g. MODL20030).
How much time the unit requires
Each credit equates to 10 hours of total student input. For example a 20 credit unit will take you 200 hours
of study to complete. Your total learning time is made up of contact time, directed learning tasks,
independent learning and assessment activity.
See the University Workload statement relating to this unit for more information.
Assessment
The assessment methods listed in this unit specification are designed to enable students to demonstrate the named learning outcomes (LOs). Where a disability prevents a student from undertaking a specific method of assessment, schools will make reasonable adjustments to support a student to demonstrate the LO by an alternative method or with additional resources.
The Board of Examiners will consider all cases where students have failed or not completed the assessments required for credit.
The Board considers each student's outcomes across all the units which contribute to each year's programme of study. For appropriate assessments, if you have self-certificated your absence, you will normally be required to complete it the next time it runs (for assessments at the end of TB1 and TB2 this is usually in the next re-assessment period).
The Board of Examiners will take into account any exceptional circumstances and operates
within the Regulations and Code of Practice for Taught Programmes.
