- UCAS course code
- QV31
- UCAS institution code
- M20
Bachelor of Arts (BA)
BA English Literature and History
- Typical A-level offer: A*AA including specific subjects
- Typical contextual A-level offer: AAB including specific subjects
- Refugee/care-experienced offer: AAC including specific subjects
- Typical International Baccalaureate offer: 37 points overall with 7,6,6 at HL including specific subjects
Fees and funding
Fees
Tuition fees for home students commencing their studies in September 2025 will be £9,535 per annum (subject to Parliamentary approval). Tuition fees for international students will be £26,500 per annum. For general information please see the undergraduate finance pages.
Policy on additional costs
All students should normally be able to complete their programme of study without incurring additional study costs over and above the tuition fee for that programme. Any unavoidable additional compulsory costs totalling more than 1% of the annual home undergraduate fee per annum, regardless of whether the programme in question is undergraduate or postgraduate taught, will be made clear to you at the point of application. Further information can be found in the University's Policy on additional costs incurred by students on undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes (PDF document, 91KB).
Scholarships/sponsorships
- 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
Course unit details:
Imaginations of the Future: People, Earth and Power
Unit code | ENGL34172 |
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Credit rating | 20 |
Unit level | Level 3 |
Teaching period(s) | Semester 2 |
Available as a free choice unit? | No |
Overview
Lyman Tower Sargent describes utopian thinking as ‘social dreaming’ and Anatole France writes that ‘out of generous dreams come beneficial realities’. This course will consider the rush of utopian (and dystopian texts) produced in Britain at the end of the nineteenth century, examining their imaginings of new kinds of gender relations, power relations within and between classes and nations, and relationships between people, the earth and its plants and animals. The course will bring these into dialogue with key utopian texts from America and, India and Europe, tracing their influences in and from British writings, culture and history. and British culture.
We will read the texts in their cultural and political contexts and draw on key theorists of utopian writing from Ernst Bloch and to Fredric Jameson to Ruth Levitas and Jayna Brown to ask questions such as: what does utopian and dystopian writing do? How does it interact with its own historical and political context, with ideas of past and future, empire and liberation? Does it lead, reflect or challenge social and cultural change? How radical or conservative, liberating or repressive is the form? Drawing on archive material at the Working Class Movement library and the John Rylands, we will also consider rare examples of comic utopias and dystopias, examine the role of niche radical newspapers in the creation and dissemination of utopian and dystopian writings, and identify some of the political uses of key utopian texts in their own time and later.
Aims
- To enable students to make informed arguments about turn-of-the-century utopian and dystopian texts, paying close attention to form, style and context of publication and reception, as well as content
- To equip students to carry out archive work, identifying useful source materials and putting them to use in developing sophisticated analysis and arguments
- To allow students to critically examine representations of class, gender, race and nature in late C19 utopian writings, developing an understanding of the relationships between cultural production and social change, and to bring these texts into dialogue with contemporary texts
- To ensure that students can draw confidently on appropriate theoretical and critical language to make nuanced arguments about utopian writing
- To enable students to examine and discuss in detail the key techniques, styles and approaches that characterise utopian/dystopian writing
- To provide opportunities in seminar groups and through the assessments for students to develop their close reading, analytical writing and public speaking skills
Learning outcomes
Teaching and learning methods
Knowledge and understanding
• Students will have an awareness of the styles, forms and approaches that characterise utopian writing and thinking
• Students will be able to trace the development of utopian thinking and writing across the C19 and make comparisons both within the period and beyond it, within Britain and beyond it
• Students will have a good understanding of a wide range of critical and theoretical writings about utopia
• Students will have an awareness of some of the social uses of utopian texts
• Students will be able to analyse relationships between texts, historical and social movements and power
Intellectual skills
• Students will be able to construct and defend complex arguments through textual evidence, both in writing and in seminars
• Student will be able to draw on a range of critical and theoretical frameworks to discuss utopian and dystopian writing and make sophisticated critical comparisons
Practical skills
• Students will be able to work in groups, in pairs and individually to produce high quality work
• Students will be able to make use of a range of formats to express their idea, including in writing, orally and with the use of visual materials
• Students will develop archive skills through practical hands-on experience.
Transferable skills and personal qualities
- Students will be able to work in a small team to meet set objectives to a given deadline
- Students will be able to use an archive to find materials relevant to their topic of study
- Students will be able to give an effective presentation using visual and textual aids
- Students will be able to work individually and respond creatively to a set brief
- Students will be able to critically analyse written and visual texts in their context
- Students will be able to critically interrogate relationships between written texts and their social and political context
Employability skills
- Analytical skills
- Through seminar work students will demonstrate their ability to analyse complex material and to engage courteously and confidently with the opinions of others. They will develop critical thinking skills and be able to put them into practice in a range of tasks.
- Other
- Students will, through the formative presentation and the group work creative project, develop skills of teamwork and critical and creative thinking as well as demonstrating an ability to produce coherent arguments orally or in a popular, accessible form; for their essay they will need to consult archives, working independently to a brief and a deadline.
Assessment methods
Assessment task | |
Group project: podcast or zine: | 30% |
Essay: | 70% |
Recommended reading
Core Texts:
Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward (1889)* (Please buy OUP 2007 edition, ed. by Matthew Beaumont)
Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett, New Amazonia (1889)
Shoshee Chunder Dutt, ‘The Republic of Orissa’ (1845)
Pauline Hopkins, Of One Blood (1902-3)* (Please buy MIT Press 2022 edition)
Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, ‘Sultana’s Dream’ (1905)
William Hudson, A Crystal Age (1887)
Richard Jefferies, After London (1885) (Edinburgh University Press critical edition, 2018: buy or access online via the UoM library)
William Morris, News from Nowhere (1891)* (Please buy OUP 2008 edition, ed. by David Leopold)
Selected Course Preparatory Reading:
Matthew Beaumont The Spectre of Utopia: Utopian and Science Fictions at the Fin de Siècle (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2012)
Jayna Brown, Black Utopias: Speculative Life and the Music of Other Worlds (Duke University Press, 2021)
Lisa Garforth, Green Utopias: Environmental Hope before and After Nature (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018)
Fredric Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (London: Verso, 2005)
Ruth Levitas, Utopia as Method: The Imaginary Reconstitution of Society (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)
Alex Zamalin, Black Utopia: The History of an Idea from Black Nationalism to AfroFuturism (Columbia University Press, 2019)
Study hours
Scheduled activity hours | |
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External visits | 4 |
Lectures | 11 |
Practical classes & workshops | 2 |
Project supervision | 1 |
Seminars | 22 |
Independent study hours | |
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Independent study | 160 |
Teaching staff
Staff member | Role |
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Ingrid Hanson | Unit coordinator |