ENGL3931: Modern Literature and the British Secret State

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• To analyse the numerous and often highly controversial interactions Britains secret services (such as MI5 and MI6) have had with literature and culture since the early twentieth century.
• To look at how the espionage novel has portrayed British intelligence agencies and their engagement with major political events, how key espionage incidents have been depicted in literary works, and how ex-intelligence officers have launched careers as writers or memoirists.
• To examine elements such as the actual surveillance records kept on authors, how authors worked as secret propagandists, and how the secret state subsidised or supported certain events in literary history.

• Primary texts covered in this course may include works such as John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps, Ian Fleming, Casino Royale, Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana, John le Carr, The Spy who Came in from the Cold, Stella Rimington, Open Secret, and George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty Four. We will also consider the film adaptations of many of these works, as well as other screen narratives that engage with the British secret state.
• Other material drawn on will include the recent authorised histories of MI5 and MI6, various memoirs by intelligence officers and agents, extracts from MI5 archival documents, and propaganda artifacts.

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• A close knowledge of a range of literary and film works that depict the covert arms of the British government.
• Insight into the functions of secret services, and the many political and ethical issues that surround them.
• An understanding of some of the forces that have monitored, censored, and subsidised important elements of modern literature and culture.

Subject-specific Skills:

• Students studying this module will develop:
• critical skills in the close reading and analysis of texts
• an ability to demonstrate knowledge of a range of texts and critical approaches
• informed awareness of formal and aesthetic dimensions of literature and ability to offer cogent analysis of their workings in specific texts
• sensitivity to generic conventions and to the shaping effects on communication of historical circumstances, and to the affective power of language
• an ability to articulate and substantiate an imaginative response to literature
• an ability to articulate knowledge and understanding of concepts and theories relating to literary studies
• skills of effective communication and argument
• awareness of conventions of scholarly presentation, and bibliographic skills including accurate citation of sources and consistent use of scholarly conventions of presentation
• command of a broad range of vocabulary and an appropriate critical terminology
• awareness of literature as a medium through which values are affirmed and debated

Key Skills:

• Students studying this module will develop:
• a capacity to analyse critically
• an ability to acquire complex information of diverse kinds in a structured and systematic way involving the use of distinctive interpretative skills derived from the subject
• competence in the planning and execution of assessed work
• a capacity for independent thought and judgement, and ability to assess the critical ideas of others
• skills in critical reasoning
• an ability to handle information and argument in a critical manner
• information-technology skills such as word-processing and electronic data access information
• organisation and time-management skills

• Seminars: encourage peer-group discussion, enable students to develop critical skills in the close reading and analysis of texts, and skills of effective communication and presentation; promote awareness of diversity of interpretation and methodology
• Consultation session: encourages students to reflect critically and independently on their work
• Independent but directed reading in preparation for seminars provides opportunity for students to enrich subject-specific knowledge and enhances their ability to develop appropriate subject-specific skills.
• 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.
• Coursework: tests the student's ability to argue, respond and interpret, and to demonstrate subject-specific knowledge and skills such as appreciation of the power of imagination in literary creation and the close reading and analysis of texts; they also test the ability to present word-processed work, observing scholarly conventions. In individual Special Topics, the assessment may, where appropriate to the subject, take an alternative form, such as 'creative criticism'.
• Feedback: The written feedback that is provided after the first assessment allows students to reflect on examiners' comments, giving students the opportunity to improve their work for the second assessment.

Before Assessment 1, students have an individual 15 minute consultation session in which they are entitled to show their seminar leader a sheet of points relevant to the assessment and to receive oral comment on these points. Students may also if they wish, discuss their ideas for Assessment 2 at this meeting.

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