ENGL45430: Divergence, Deviance, and Disability in Nineteenth-Century Literature

• Students must hold a good BA degree in English or a related subject to be eligible for entry onto the MA programmes in the Department of English Studies

• None

• None

• Develop critical and close reading skills for engaging with constructions of illness, disability, neurodivergence, and queerness in nineteenth-century literary texts.
• Examine a range of ways in which nineteenth-century literary, medical and scientific discourses produced categories of the abnormal, and consider ways in which such categories were contested.
• Introduce critical and theoretical frameworks from disability studies, the history of sexuality, and the medical humanities.
• Explore the manner in which abnormality is represented and narrativized in a variety of nineteenth-century forms and genres (the novel, autobiography, short stories, the case study), and compare their respective representational strategies.
• Develop an awareness of how nineteenth-century representations relate to contemporary cultural and medical understandings of illness, disability and divergence.
• Pursue topics of students personal intellectual interest, through contribution to and planning of seminar discussion, and through essay topic selection.

• The course will be structured around a number of detailed case studies of forms of abnormality in the nineteenth-century, allowing students to develop a close understanding of the complexity of literary, scientific and medical discourses that developed around (and produced) specific medical and social categories in the period. In each case study, students will examine literary texts alongside a related medical or scientific text, and be introduced to an appropriate critical framework for engaging with these materials. Case studies will be directed by the interests of students and might include (but are not limited to): sensory disability, such as blindness and deafness; intellectual disability; drug addiction and alcoholism; the science of sexuality (sexology) and sexual deviance; neurodivergence. As well as developing students historical understanding, the module will encourage students to consider the ways in which nineteenth-century literary texts remain an important site at which identities are formed and contested today. Our approach to these texts will include, wherever possible, the perspectives of those engaged with activism and advocacy, and those with lived experience of disability, neurodivergence or queerness. Reading lists will vary from year to year and accommodate some response to the developing interests of the group, but will normally include a selection from the works of such authors as Wilkie Collins, Helen Keller, Thomas De Quincey, James Hogg, John Addington Symonds, George Eliot, William Wordsworth, Hermann Melville, Walter Pater, Joseph Conrad, and George Gissing.

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• an extensive and detailed knowledge of the literary texts covered on the module;
• an understanding of scientific and medical discourses from the nineteenth-century relating to (as appropriate) disability, sexuality, addiction, and neurodivergence;
• a sound grasp of relevant theoretical frameworks relating to (for example) disability, illness or queer identities.

Subject-specific Skills:

• advanced critical skills in the close reading and analysis of literary texts;
• an ability to demonstrate advanced knowledge of a chosen field of literary studies;
• an ability to offer advanced analysis of formal and aesthetic dimensions of literature;
• an ability to articulate and substantiate at a high level a critical and imaginative response to literature;
• an ability to demonstrate an advanced understanding of appropriate cultural, intellectual, socio-political and linguistic contexts of literature;
• an ability to articulate an advanced knowledge and understanding of conceptual or theoretical material, and to apply this sensitively to literary texts;
• an advanced command of a broad range of vocabulary and critical terminology.

Key Skills:

• Students studying this module will develop:
• an advanced ability to analyse critically;
• an advanced ability to acquire complex information of diverse kinds in structured and systematic ways;
• an advanced ability to interpret complex information of diverse kinds through the distinctive skills derived from the subject;
• expertise in conventions of scholarly presentation and bibliographical skills;
• an independence of thought and judgement, and ability to assess acutely the critical ideas of others;
• sophisticated skills in critical reasoning;
• an advanced ability to handle information and argument critically;
• a competence in information-technology skills such as word-processing and electronic data access;
• professional organisation and time-management skills.

• Students are encouraged to develop advanced conceptual abilities and analytical skills as well as the ability to communicate an advanced knowledge and conceptual understanding within seminars; the capacity for advanced independent study is demonstrated through the completion of two assessed pieces of work.
• Typically, directed learning may include assigning student(s) an issue, theme or topic that can be independently or collectively explored within a framework and/or with additional materials provided by the tutor. This may function as preparatory work for presenting their ideas or findings (sometimes electronically) to their peers and tutor in the context of a seminar.

If you have a question about Durham's modular degree programmes, please visit our Help page. If you have a question about modular programmes that is not covered by the Help page, or a query about the on-line Postgraduate Module Handbook, please contact us.

Prospective Students: If you have a query about a specific module or degree programme, please Ask Us.

Current Students: Please contact your department.