BA English Literature and American Studies

• Find out more from student finance
• Eligible UK students can apply for bursaries and scholarships
• Funding for EU and international students is on our country-specific pages
• Many students work part-time or complete a student internship

This module interrogates questions of empire, gender, race and ecology in the nineteenth century. With visits to the John Rylands Library, Manchester Museum and the university’s botanical research station, we take a fresh look at political issues we have inherited from the Victorians and how they shape our world today. Using decolonial methods, we’ll look at how people, objects, cultural artefacts, and animals travelled across the globe, and how these journeys changed understandings of national identity, race, and the environment. The module is assessed by a group podcast (building your employability skills and supported by a lecture from a podcast producer) and an essay. You’ll be introduced to a range of writers, extending out from Britain to include Indian poets, Indigenous writers from North America, Turkish women’s diaries and African American poets to uncover a global picture of the nineteenth century.
We use a range of teaching methods, approaching texts and objects through crafting, object histories, and museum visits, as well as textual analysis. You will have the opportunity to apply critical methods to texts which are less well-known, uncovering archival material that gives you the opportunity to shape original responses to the material. 

The aims of this course are:

- to introduce students to key texts and issues from the Victorian period

- to consider the formal and thematic innovations made by canonical and non-canonical and BAME authors in the Victorian period.

- to consider issues like empire and race as they affect Victorian literature and culture

- to read works in a range of different genres and media, including poetry, fiction, digital archives, maps, government debates.

- to engage with selected critical writings on race and empire
- to develop IT skills through the use of online annotation studios (COVE software developed by North-American Victorian Studies Association) and through creating a podcast. 

- to develop teamwork skills through group projects and collaboration with students at another institution.

- to develop innovation in creative practice through a project engaging with museums and moving beyond essay/exam assessments.

By the end of this course, students should be able to:

- demonstrate a good familiarity with a range of texts from the Victorian period and their contexts;

- demonstrate a critical understanding of how empire and race theory applies to Victorian period texts;

- apply postcolonial theories to Victorian texts across the globe;

- demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of the key themes of empire and race

By the end of this course, students should be able to:

- think critically and make critical judgments about imperial and racial concepts;

- analyse course texts in an critical manner;

- identify and outline key problems and issues in the study of Victorian texts across the globe

- reflect critically on how museum exhibits present imperial history

- develop and articulate a reasoned argument for a particular point of view

- evaluate critical arguments advanced by critics working on race and empire.

- plan and execute independent research on museum exhibits in Manchester

- make good use of library, electronic, and online resources pertaining to the course;

- speak and write clearly about empire and race in Victorian literature

- comment on the performance of a peer, identifying strengths and making constructive suggestions for improvement where appropriate;

- retrieve, sift, organise, synthesise and critically evaluate material from a range of different sources, including library, electronic, and online resources;

- produce written work that collects and integrates evidence to formulate/test a critical argument;

- make good use of the latest annotation software (COVE) and of audio recording software

- demonstrate good networking skills through interaction with students at a different institution and across cultures.

- demonstrate good teamwork skills by acknowledging the views of others and working constructively with others;

- develop and complete an effective research project on the presentation of museum exhibits in Hong Kong and Manchester.

Primary Reading/Viewing for 2025/26 (an asterisk indicates that you should buy this text): 
•    *Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone  
•    Anglophone Poetry in Colonial India ed. Mary Ellis Gibson (available online through library) 
•    T.N. Mukharji, A Visit to Europe (available on archive.org) 
•    D.G. Rossetti ‘The Burden of Nineveh’ (available online)

Selected Course Preparatory Reading: 
•    Elleke Boehmer, Colonial and Postcolonial Literature, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.  
•    Patrick Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830–1914, Cornell University Press, 1988.  
•    Hazel Carby, Imperial Intimacies: A Tale of Two Islands, Verso, 2019. 
•    Deirdre David, ‘Empire, Race and the Victorian Novel’ in A Companion to the Victorian Novel, Blackwell, 2002. 
•    Lisa Lowe, Intimacies of Four Continents, Duke University Press, 2015. 
•    Nathan K. Hensley, Forms of empire: the poetics of Victorian sovereignty, Oxford University Press, 2016.