Master of Arts [M.A] [English Studies: Writing in the Modern Age] From Queen Mary, University of London

This pathway offers a historically wide-ranging, theoretically rigorous, and generically diverse grounding in twentieth-century literary culture. It examines modernism alongside non- and post-modernist writing, and situates all three in relation to politics, philosophy, and other artistic media of the twentieth century.

The pathway has a global outlook, asking how modernism may look from Cape Town, Dublin, or Kingstown, Jamaica, as well as from London, Paris or New York. It stresses the diversity of modern experience, and of literature striving to express the nature of ÔmodernityÕ itself.

The compulsory module, ÔModernism and AfterÕ, tracks the central debates that run through modern writing and criticism. What is ÔmodernÕ and what comes after it? What counts as ÔartÕ? How have relations between ÔhighÕ and ÔlowÕ altered over time? How does writing relate to racial or gendered ÔothernessÕ? How has writing rethought the politics of freedom and containment? How does literature change with new recording and distribution formats? How can criticism deal with creativity? These questions open up the last 120 years or so of literary and cultural innovation, and frame the other modules you choose to take.