Glossary of Terms

Year 1 (90 Credits)

RequiredEN529: Dissertation

EN529: Dissertation

15 months long | Credits: 30

Learning Outcomes

1. To be confirmed

Assessments

• Research (100%)

Teachers & Administrators

Click a name to search for their researcher profile. Note: Only teachers publish research profiles.

•  DEARBHLA MOONEY 🖂
  
•  IRENE OMALLEY 🖂
  
•  DERMOT BURNS 🖂
  

RequiredEN6116: Writing and Research

EN6116: Writing and Research

Semester 1 and Semester 2 | Credits: 10

This module will run over the academic year (in both semesters) and will enable students on the MA in English to make the transition from undergraduate-level scholarship to a postgraduate expertise in research and writing.
(Language of instruction: English)

Learning Outcomes

1. Make efficient use of libraries, electronic resources, special collections and archives to find, evaluate, and classify sources for the purposes of their research project.
2. Be capable users of an efficient note-taking system.
3. Write bibliographies and use a reference system in their writing successfully and with ease.
4. Produce a feasible research proposal and plan a substantial research project.

Assessments

• Continuous Assessment (100%)

Teachers & Administrators

Click a name to search for their researcher profile. Note: Only teachers publish research profiles.

•  DEARBHLA MOONEY 🖂
  
•  DERMOT BURNS 🖂
  

OptionalEN601: Writing Workshop: Poetry

EN601: Writing Workshop: Poetry

Semester 1 | Credits: 10

The primary aim of this workshop is the generation of new work in poetry by students. This will be the result of readings in poetry in a wide variety of forms from various traditions, weekly exercises and projects.
(Language of instruction: English)

Learning Outcomes

1. To be confirmed

Assessments

• Continuous Assessment (100%)

Teachers & Administrators

Click a name to search for their researcher profile. Note: Only teachers publish research profiles.

•  JOHN KENNY 🖂
  
•  DEARBHLA MOONEY 🖂
  
•  IRENE OMALLEY 🖂
  
•  Elaine Feeney 🖂
  

OptionalFR6101: Language, Gender and Power

FR6101: Language, Gender and Power

Semester 1 | Credits: 10

Over the last number of decades, there has been a strong interest in the relationship between language, gender and power both as an academic and a popular topic. This module provides students firstly with an understanding of how language as a social entity intersects with gender and sexuality, and subsequently how power can be disseminated through language. It addresses the use of language to categorise the gender/ sexuality world and to create and display gender/sexual identities. It includes discussions on the constructions and representations of femininity/masculinity, non-binary gender identities, sexual violence, sexual harassment and motherhood/ fatherhood in a range of discourse types. Students explore a selection of texts and examples from a variety of sources including print media, advertising, health promotion and internet media and are introduced to key theoretical frameworks for the analysis of language, gender and power including traditional sociolinguistic approaches, discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics.
(Language of instruction: English)

Learning Outcomes

1. Think critically about the relationship between language, gender and sexuality
2. Reflect on how power relations can be disseminated through language
3. Apply the different theoretical and methodological frameworks used for the analysis of language, gender and power in a range of different contexts
4. Engage in the process of investigation of language, gender and power related issues through their own selection and analysis of texts

Assessments

• Department-based Assessment (100%)

Teachers & Administrators

Click a name to search for their researcher profile. Note: Only teachers publish research profiles.

•  ORNAITH RODGERS 🖂
  

Reading List

1. "Language and Gender" by Penelope Eckert,Sally McConnell-Ginet
   ISBN: 9781107029057.
   Publisher: Cambridge University Press
2. "Language, Society and Power" by Annabelle Mooney,Betsy Evans
   ISBN: 9780415786249.
   Publisher: Routledge
3. "Language and Gender" by Mary Talbot
   ISBN: 9781509530090.
   Publisher: Polity
4. "Researching Language, Gender and Sexuality" by Helen Sauntson
   ISBN: 9781138637368.
   Publisher: Routledge

OptionalEN527: Literature Of North America

EN527: Literature Of North America

Semester 1 | Credits: 10

This course examines current trends in contemporary North American writing of the past ten years within a cultural and theoretical context .
(Language of instruction: English)

Learning Outcomes

1. identify the themes and concerns in contemporary North American literature
2. discuss how North American novelists engage with historical events and their own lived experience to provide a critique of their society, with reference to issues such as gender, race, and class.
3. relate these contemporary novels to the tradition of writing from which they came and consider them in the historical context of the American novel.
4. present close readings of the novels and describe them in terms of writing style, narrative voice, genre, use of language, and intertextuality.

Assessments

• Continuous Assessment (100%)

Teachers & Administrators

Click a name to search for their researcher profile. Note: Only teachers publish research profiles.

•  FIONA BATEMAN 🖂
  
•  DEARBHLA MOONEY 🖂
  
•  IRENE OMALLEY 🖂
  

Reading List

1. "The Sellout" by Paul Beatty
2. "The Things they Carried" by Tim O'Brien
3. "The Virgin Suicides" by Jeffrey Eugenides
4. "The Ice Storm" by Rick Moody
5. "The Submission" by Amy Waldman
6. "My Year of Meats" by Ruth Ozeki
7. "Station Eleven" by Emily St John Mandel
8. "A Complicated Kindness" by Miriam Toews
9. "Winter's Bone" by Daniel Woodrell

OptionalFM6101: Ireland on Screen

FM6101: Ireland on Screen

Semester 1 | Credits: 10

This module provides students with an overview of Irish cinema from the early twentieth century to the present. It includes an analysis of the major films produced and the discourses concerning cinema in Ireland over the past one hundred years. Among the questions the module examines are: what are the major traditions of representing Ireland in cinema? How have indigenous filmmakers responded to these representations? What are the distinctive characteristics of contemporary Irish film culture?
(Language of instruction: English)

Learning Outcomes

1. Comprehend the major issues and debates surrounding ‘national cinema’.
2. Recognise patterns in the representation of Ireland in international cinema.
3. Recall the major developments in the history of cinema in Ireland and examine key texts.
4. Analyse the major themes apparent in contemporary Irish cinema.
5. Evaluate the challenges and advantages of film-making in Ireland today.

Assessments

• Department-based Assessment (100%)

Teachers & Administrators

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•  SEÁN CROSSON 🖂
  
•  DEIRDRE QUINN 🖂
  

Reading List

1. "Irish national cinema" by Ruth Barton
   Publisher: Routledge
2. "Contemporary Irish Film: New Perspectives on a National Cinema." by Werner Huber & Sean Crosson
   Publisher: Braumüller

OptionalEN672: Environmental Literature: Nature and Narration

EN672: Environmental Literature: Nature and Narration

Semester 1 | Credits: 10

This module examines how literary texts, with their emphasis on storytelling, narrative, and style, help shape and communicate environmental awareness to global audiences. Drawing from the expanding field of ecocriticism, which has gained prominence in literary criticism since the early 1990s, the course will explore the historical significance of global ecological concerns and their influence on literature. It will focus on works that incorporate the natural environment as a fundamental element of textuality, while addressing emerging conceptual resources that offer new ways to re-think the field. The course adopts a key-word approach, examining concepts such as the Anthropocene and Technoscene, Petroculture and Energy Humanities, Blue Humanities and Hydrofiction, Waste/Trash Culture, Transcorporeality, Multinaturalism and indigenous ecologies, Extinction and Animalism, as well as activism and ecological hope. The module will explore how language and narrative style function in the literary representation of the ongoing planetary crisis.
(Language of instruction: English)

Learning Outcomes

1. Demonstrate an understanding of how literary texts address global environmental issues.
2. Engage with Environmental Humanities theories, such as the Anthropocene, Energy Humanities, and Indigenous Ecologies, to interpret a range of literary works.
3. Show understanding of the ways in which literary language and style are adopted in addressing the current planetary crisis.

Assessments

• Continuous Assessment (100%)

Teachers & Administrators

Click a name to search for their researcher profile. Note: Only teachers publish research profiles.

•  Henry Obi Ajumeze 🖂
  

Reading List

1. "The Shock of the Anthropocene" by Christophe Bonneuil,Jean-Baptiste Fressoz
   ISBN: 9781784785031.
   Publisher: Verso Books
2. "The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness" by Donna J. Haraway
   ISBN: 9780971757585.
   Publisher: Prickly Paradigm Press
3. "Extraction Ecologies and the Literature of the Long Exhaustion" by Elizabeth Carolyn Miller
   ISBN: 9780691205267.
   Publisher: Princeton University Press
4. "Literature for a Changing Planet" by Martin Puchner
   ISBN: 9780691213750.
   Publisher: Princeton University Press
5. "Animal's People" by Indra Sinha
   ISBN: 9780743259200.
   Publisher: Simon & Schuster (UK)
6. "Why the moon travels" by Oein DeBhairduin
   ISBN: 9781916493506.
   Publisher: SKEIN PRESS
7. ""They Saw a Thylacine" in Endangered: Three Plays." by Sarah Hamilton and Justine Campbell
   ISBN: 978192500587.
   Publisher: Currency House Inc
8. "Three Short Plays" by Wole Soyinka
   ISBN: 9780199110865.
   Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
9. "Origins of the Syma Species" by Tares Oburumu
   ISBN: 9781496237026.
   Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
10. "Hum" by Jamaal May
    ISBN: 9781938584022.
    Publisher: Alice James Books

OptionalEN6125: WB Yeats and the Cultural Revolution

EN6125: WB Yeats and the Cultural Revolution

Semester 1 | Credits: 10

As the commemorations for Yeats2015 proved, the 1923 Nobel Prize winner for Literature, W.B.Yeats, is known and still read worldwide as a poet. His ability to write ‘like God’, to quote the critic John Carey, is nowhere better exemplified than in the books of poetry through which he built his reputation. A close-reading reconsideration of these monuments are at the heart of this class, and structure the way in which his work is considered. But as central part of Ireland’s most important artistic family, he was also a politician, journalist, editor, printer, a dramatist and director who accepted the Nobel Prize on behalf of a theatre, and an incessant collaborator whose work with musicians, ballet dancers, artists, stage-designers, folklorists, broadcasters (including with prenaturarally talented lovers, family, and friends) proved extraordinarily protean and productive. If even now he remains (especially in Ireland) a divisive figure, it was here he helped created a cultural revolution with worldwide and contempory ramifications. This class encourages students to engage anew with Yeats’s written work and cultural impact, and forge projects of research, drawing on class readings, and NUI Galway’s James Hardiman Library for books and letters, for little magazines and Cuala Press holdings in Special Collections, for Abbey, Gate, and Lyric Theatre archives, and Galway County’s wider cultural resources Thoor Ballylee and Coole Park.
(Language of instruction: English)

Learning Outcomes

1. Practice close readings of selected poetry, plays, essays and criticism.
2. Evaluate the context and production of the arts in modern Ireland.
3. Pursue independent research in library resources and archives.
4. Discuss and respond to the analysis of literary texts and cultural criticism.
5. Plan and compose extensive academic written appraisals synthesizing arguments and producing new ideas.

Assessments

• Research (100%)

Teachers & Administrators

Click a name to search for their researcher profile. Note: Only teachers publish research profiles.

•  DEARBHLA MOONEY 🖂
  
•  ADRIAN PATERSON 🖂
  

Reading List

1. "The Major Works" by W.B.Yeats
   ISBN: 9780199537495.
   Publisher: Oxford
2. "Yeats's Poems" by W.B.Yeats
   ISBN: 0333675185.
   Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
3. "Selected Plays" by W.B.Yeats
   ISBN: 978014018374.
   Publisher: Penguin
4. "Literature, Modernism and Dance" by Susan Jones
   ISBN: 9780199565320.
   Publisher: Oxford University Press
5. "Yeats and the Visual Arts" by Elizabeth Bergman Loiseaux
   ISBN: 0815629958.
   Publisher: Syracuse University Press
6. "Ireland: A Social and Cultural History 1922-2002" by Terence Brown
   ISBN: 0007125761.
   Publisher: Harper
7. "Untwisting the Serpent: Modernism in Music, Literature and the Other Arts" by Daniel Albright
   ISBN: 0226012549.
   Publisher: University of Chicago
8. "Black Riders: The Visible Language of Modernism" by Jerome McGann
   ISBN: 0691015449.
   Publisher: Princeton University Press

OptionalEN6143: Media for Social Change

EN6143: Media for Social Change

Semester 2 | Credits: 10

Through this module students will gain an understanding of the history, ethos, and operation of media for social change. Students will explore a range of forms, from social movement activism, to community media, to innovative online activity.
(Language of instruction: English)

Learning Outcomes

1. Evaluate and critically discuss significant concepts and scholarly work related to media for social change.
2. Apply scholarly work to practical case studies, both from the literature and personal research.
3. Conduct original research, and prepare a scholarly paper based on that research.
4. Reflect critically on the impact of pedagogy on the learning process.
5. Work collaboratively with a team, using both in-person and remote/virtual modalities.

Assessments

• Continuous Assessment (75%)
• Oral, Audio Visual or Practical Assessment (25%)

Teachers & Administrators

Click a name to search for their researcher profile. Note: Only teachers publish research profiles.

•  FIONA BATEMAN 🖂
  
•  DEARBHLA MOONEY 🖂
  
•  ELIZABETH TILLEY 🖂
  
•  MARIE-LOUISE COOLAHAN 🖂
  
•  ANDREW Ó BAOILL 🖂
  
•  Shania Collins 🖂
  

Reading List

1. "Fissures in the Mediascape" by Clemencia Rodríguez
   ISBN: 1572733691.
   Publisher: Hampton Press
2. "Radical Media" by John D. H. Downing
   ISBN: 1452238243.
   Publisher: SAGE
3. "Alternative Media" by Chris Atton
   ISBN: 1849202907.
   Publisher: SAGE

OptionalFM6119: Film, Politics, and Colonialism

FM6119: Film, Politics, and Colonialism

Semester 2 | Credits: 10

This module considers the significance of film as a mode of cultural production, the politics of representation, and the role of ‘national’ cinema. The films viewed and analysed address subjects including colonial history, marginal groups, conflict, resistance, gender, and postcolonial realities. Students will consider aspects of those films including genre, theme, and narrative structure. The political and historical circumstances of their production will also be discussed and analyzed.
(Language of instruction: English)

Learning Outcomes

1. Understand the language of film and be able to deconstruct and read a film critically.
2. Analyse the politics of representation, with reference to the historical and social context of films under discussion, including the effects of colonialism and postcolonialism.
3. Explore ideas about film and politics which provide theoretical and analytical tools that can be deployed in the specific media practices involved in advocacy, for example the application of postcolonial theory to film texts.
4. Demonstrate understanding of the relationship between film and politics, and the difference between propaganda and entertainment.

Assessments

• Department-based Assessment (100%)

Teachers & Administrators

Click a name to search for their researcher profile. Note: Only teachers publish research profiles.

•  FIONA BATEMAN 🖂
  
•  DEIRDRE QUINN 🖂
  

Reading List

1. "Questions of Third Cinema" by Jim Pines
2. "Inventing Vietnam: The War in Film and Television" by Michael Anderegg
   Publisher: Temple UP
3. "Irish Film: The Emergence of a Contemporary Cinema" by Martin McLoone
   Publisher: BFI

OptionalEN547: Literature And Colonialism

EN547: Literature And Colonialism

Semester 2 | Credits: 10

The course analyses literature in relation to colonial power structures and considers the relationship between political power and literary representation. Students will read a wide range of literary texts as well as postcolonial criticism. By the end of the course, students will be encouraged to consider how ideas concerning literary representation relate to present-day debates about representation and power in a modern globalised world.
(Language of instruction: English)

Learning Outcomes

1. By the end of the module, students will be able to demonstrate an in-depth knowledge of a wide geographical range of literature relating to the British Empire and its former colonies.
2. By the end of the module, students will be able to identify characteristics of key literary genres and to place those characteristics in relation to the workings of colonial and postcolonial discourse.
3. By the end of the module, students will be able to make connections between older modes of colonial discourse and more modern debates regarding cultural discourses of race, power and knowledge through close analysis of relevant literature.

Assessments

• Continuous Assessment (100%)

Teachers & Administrators

Click a name to search for their researcher profile. Note: Only teachers publish research profiles.

•  DEARBHLA MOONEY 🖂
  
•  IRENE OMALLEY 🖂
  
•  ELIZABETH TILLEY 🖂
  
•  TIMOTHY KEANE 🖂
  
•  MUIREANN O'CINNEIDE 🖂
  

Reading List

1. "Empire Writing" by Elleke Boehmer
   ISBN: 9780199555598.
   Publisher: OUP Oxford
2. "Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory" by Laura Chrisman,Patrick Williams
   ISBN: 9781315656496.

OptionalEN6141: SERVICE LEARNING: LITERARY STUDIES IN THE COMMUNITY

EN6141: SERVICE LEARNING: LITERARY STUDIES IN THE COMMUNITY

Semester 2 | Credits: 10

Service-learning experiences are about shaping, reshaping, and challenging narratives, whether it is recognizing and challenging our own subjective narratives, or learning about new narratives and synthesizing our own stories as they intersect with others in the community. As such, the pedagogies of service-learning and literary studies overlap in many ways. Reading, writing, and community-engaged practices are profoundly context-dependent activities: As a pedagogy, service learning is education that is grounded in experience as a foundation for learning and on the significance of critical reflection intentionally designed to enable learning to transpire. Moreover, literary studies and writing embrace many transferable skills that are compatible with practices of context-based engagement. In this module, we will explore service-learning from core foundational principles and definitions to specific English Studies approaches. This service learning module offers students the opportunity to develop responsible citizenship skills by addressing issues beyond the classroom and in the local community. Students work within the local community through a one-hour per week, semester-long placement in a local primary school in order to develop practical skills and experience in the field of literary studies and creative writing, during which they learn to apply theoretical information to real life issues. In addition to attending a two-hour reflective seminar per week, students will spend one hour supporting children with their reading and writing in a teacher-supervised classroom at a local primary school. Garda Clearance requirement It is a requirement of this course that all students taking it comply fully with the university's Garda vetting procedures regarding working with children. Full details on how to obtain this clearance will be provided before the seminar begins.
(Language of instruction: English)

Learning Outcomes

1. Explain the significance of service learning scholarship, including the importance of public engagement, citizenship, and social justice
2. Integrate the literary and theoretical content of the module with their experiences/activities on service learning placement though reflection in class and individual study time.
3. ‘Read’ both literary and life experiences as part of their textual study and course work, analysing the ways in which literature does and does not reflect their actual experiences, including the ability of literature to imagine possibilities for enriching human lives.
4. Produce reflective, critical, and creative writing and oral discussion that articulates connections and dissonances between the reading of literature and theoretical texts, and service learning experiences.
5. Produce course projects or papers that benefit community partners, for example public writing and research, oral presentations, performances, fundraising letters/videos/social media productions, blogs, websites, etc.

Assessments

• Continuous Assessment (100%)

Teachers & Administrators

Click a name to search for their researcher profile. Note: Only teachers publish research profiles.

•  DEARBHLA MOONEY 🖂
  
•  DERMOT BURNS 🖂
  

Reading List

1. "Teaching English Creative" by Cremin
   Publisher: Routledge
2. "Democracy and Education" by John Dewey
   Publisher: New York, The Free Press
3. "Service-Learning and Literary Studies in English" by Grobman, L
   Publisher: New York: Modern Language Assoc. of America
4. "A Kestrel for a Knave" by Barry Hines
   ISBN: 9780141184982.
   Publisher: ePenguin
5. "Service-Learning Essentials" by Jacoby, B., & Howard,
   Publisher: San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons,

OptionalEN671: Literature for Children and Young Adults in the 21st Century

EN671: Literature for Children and Young Adults in the 21st Century

Semester 2 | Credits: 10

The focus of this course is an in-depth analysis of selected children’s fiction and YA novels written in the 21st century. In this course, the students will appraise each text individually and comparatively. The main issues under scrutiny will include but are not limited to: - The evolution of the literary genres of children’s fiction and YA fiction - Gender politics - Power abuse - Injustice - The representation of oppression
(Language of instruction: English)

Learning Outcomes

1. Demonstrate an understanding of the paradigms of the genre of children’s fiction and YA fiction
2. Engage with the theories related to children’s fiction and YA fiction with a range of selected primary texts.
3. Construct a coherent and well-informed textual analysis of the primary texts.
4. Interpret and exploit secondary sources.

Assessments

• Continuous Assessment (100%)

Teachers & Administrators

Click a name to search for their researcher profile. Note: Only teachers publish research profiles.

•  DEARBHLA MOONEY 🖂
  
•  CORALLINE DUPUY 🖂
  
•  MARIE-LOUISE COOLAHAN 🖂
  
•  Christina Walsh 🖂
  

Reading List

1. "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne COLLINS
   ISBN: 978140713208.
   Publisher: Scholastic
2. "A Very Large Expanse of Sea" by Tahereh MAFI
   ISBN: 9781405292603.
   Publisher: Electric Monkey
3. "The Miseducation of Cameron Post" by Emily DANFORTH
   ISBN: 978014138916.
   Publisher: Penguin
4. "A Land of Permanent Goodbyes" by Atia ABAWI
   ISBN: 978039954683.
   Publisher: Philomel Books
5. "The Girl of Ink & Stars" by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
   ISBN: 9781910002742.
   Publisher: Scholastic Limited
6. "Politics and ideology in children's literature" by Aine McGillicuddy
   ISBN: 978184682526.
   Publisher: Four Courts Press
7. "The Gothic in Children's Literature: Haunting the Borders" by Anna JACKSON
   ISBN: 978041596036.
   Publisher: Routledge
8. "Female Rebellion in Young Adult Dystopian Fiction (Studies in Childhood, 1700 to the Present)" by Sara K. DAY
   ISBN: 978147243149.
   Publisher: Routledge

OptionalEN573: Travel Literature

EN573: Travel Literature

Semester 2 | Credits: 10

Narratives of travel constituted one of the most popular publishing genres of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This course examines the literary conventions, genres, and modes of representing otherness that characterised this disparate body of texts. We will make particular used of Early English Books Online which makes available virtually everything printed from 1475-1700.

Learning Outcomes

1. To be confirmed

Assessments

• Continuous Assessment (100%)

Teachers & Administrators

Click a name to search for their researcher profile. Note: Only teachers publish research profiles.

•  DANIEL CAREY 🖂
  
•  DEARBHLA MOONEY 🖂