This project is designed as a directed independent study, leading to either a graduate research dissertation or other research driven output. Students will produce either: (1) a scholarly work, such as an original dissertation or scholarly archive, (2) An output targeted at a non-scholarly audience, with an accompanying rationale, literature review, and reflection detailing the research basis of the work and reflecting on the communication of this material in a non-academic form. This might take the form of a creative work or another public-facing non-fiction genre, such as a documentary film or website. With either output this module is intended as a capstone, in which students will have the opportunity to apply all of their knowledge of the creation, production and reception of literary and/or other cultural texts.

Our current climate, politically and ecologically, speaks to a long history of apocalyptic thinking. Ecosystem collapse, global warming and mass-extinction are terms we encounter day to day. Within this context, this module aims to introduce students to the study of Environmental Humanities, a dynamic and exciting developing field that brings together a range of environmental and ecological subdisciplines from within the humanities. The module will explore representations of climate catastrophe with a focus on ecocriticism and green cultural studies, but also introducing students to other disciplines, including postcolonial disaster studies, environmental philosophy, history and anthropology. Students will develop their understanding of the broad field, alongside key subfields in order to engage critically and constructively with the most pressing discourse of our age.

Neoliberalism can be taken as a political economics that aims to remove barriers and restrictions on markets with a particular focus on the international flow of capital in globalised networks of trade and finance. This module aims to introduce students to the cultural impact of this mode of politics and economics, considering its relationship to the production, circulation, and reception of literary and cultural texts. It starts from the assumption that a combination of close and distant reading will produce the most useful and comprehensive surveys of these complex networks.

The module is designed to provide students with the knowledge of digital and cognitive approaches to literary and cultural studies. The module uses artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology and linguistics as the theoretical foundations of literary criticism. It aims to bridge the two academic domains of humanities and sciences and to investigate the relationship between reading, writing and cognition. The module covers the close analysis of literary genres fiction, poetry, and drama through which students will explore the prototypicality and the notion of literature, conceptual structure in human cognition and narrative shaped by frame, schema and script as well as to use AI/digital tools to answer questions of literary studies in the digital age, especially those of quantity, distance, and scale.

The module serves as an introduction to the comparative study of drama as both literature and performance from transcultural perspectives. With a view to enhancing their ability in identifying problems and topics for research, students will be familiarized with the basic techniques and methods of research. This will involve the use of specific original literary and stage texts. Emphasis will be put on giving the students an overview of historical as well as current developments in the field. The concept of comparative drama studies as methodology will be investigated along with the various literary as well as cultural issues involved in the study of drama in the transcultural context. Through this module, students will be equipped with concepts and methodology of comparative and transcultural studies for advanced work in drama and performance studies.

Specific area(s) of investigation cover one or more of the following aspects in the critical study of drama forms: dramatic theories; form and style; theme and period/movement; generic conventions and institution; as well as other topics related to the study of particular genres or sub-genres of drama. Emphasis will be placed on the dialectic between theory and practice. Texts will be analysed in relation to the critical investigation of cultural and historical contexts.

The module will explore how global representations of major dramatists are formed and how variations occur in the processes of globalization. Concepts of universalism and particularism will be studied along lines of the global-local interaction, and the colonial and postcolonial paradigms. Oriental philosophy and concepts of the theatre will also be discussed as alternatives to the Western tradition. Dramatists studied in the module include, for example, Ibsen, Brecht, Beckett, Pinter, Abe Kōbō and Gao Xingjian.

In the module, major performances across the globe and across time, such as those of Shakespeare and Ibsen, will be studied to examine the formation of global theatrical representations and transformations. Changes in performance styles, as well as adaptations, will be examined in relation to new artistic visions and ideological representations.