Masters Degrees (Narratology)

Design and carry out your own visual projects, exploring the relationships between word and image, as you prepare for a career as a visual artist in a growing creative industry.

Overview

Whatever your artistic background, our Master's course will develop your visual practice in areas that are important for illustrators and book artists, such as visual sequencing and visual text. It will challenge you to cross the divide between fine art and applied art found on many undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, making it a unique course for the UK.

Studying in our purpose-built studios at Cambridge School of Art, much of your work will be practice-based. You’ll propose and undertake self-directed projects, attending group critiques and tutorials that will help you develop your creative skills.

You'll also attend a series of integrated lectures and seminars. These serve two purposes. You’ll explore aspects of illustration and book art, such as the relationships between word and image, narratology and visual language. And you'll receive guidance on research methods and critical writing - which you'll put to immediate use on the course, as well as in your future career.

Throughout the course, you’ll collaborate and discuss your work with staff, visiting professionals and fellow students, giving you an invaluable opportunity to see how others respond to it. All of our teaching team are practising artists, so you’ll hear about the latest news and issues in the industry, and have access to sound careers advice.

Teaching times: 9am-5pm Tuesdays and Wednesdays (full-time); 9am-5pm Wednesdays in Year 1, Tuesdays in Year 2 (part-time).

Careers

Our course will prepare you for a career as a freelance illustrator or freelance book artist. In recent years these roles have been increasingly in demand thanks to the growth of interest in artists' books, graphic novels, self-publishing, e-books and an awareness of small, batch publishing. You’ll also gain skills that will be useful in many other fields, such as bookbinding or teaching. You might even find a way to combine it with your current career, as did Dr Katy Shorttle, whose artwork on health issues was recently featured by The Guardian (http://www.theguardian.com/healthcare-network/gallery/2015/sep/25/ebola-mumps-old-age-inspire-doctors-artwork-in-pictures).

Modules

Process and Practice as Research
Visual Text
Sequence and Series
Master's Dissertation Art and Design
Master's Project: Art and Design

Assessment

You’ll show your progress through your self-directed visual projects, which will include written project proposals, developmental and final visual work, and a reflective commentary. On the Master's Dissertation module, you’ll submit a 6,000-word essay. Finally, the Master's Project will allow you to build on all previous modules to design a visual project which shows mastery of your subject.

Specialist facilities

You’ll work in purpose-built art and design studios, with open access to our printmaking, bookbinding, letterpress and laser cutting facilities, and training from dedicated technicians. We also have many digital imaging resources that you’ll be able to use, including Macs, scanners, and A3/large-format printers, as well as photography darkrooms, animation and moving image studios and 3D workshops. Our University’s Media Services Unit stocks photographic and recording equipment that you can borrow.

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Guided by a team of internationally recognised experts, you will investigate the key texts and concepts which shape our understanding of literature and culture across a period of radical change from 1900 to the present. You will relate the literary texts you study to developments in other cultural practices, such as film, theatre and the visual arts.

Why this programme

◾The MLitt in Modernities at Glasgow has an international reputation for delivering outstanding research-led teaching, with a particular focus on interdisciplinary and theoretically informed approaches to this literary period.
◾You will have access to world class libraries and museums, as well as the extraordinary diversity of cultural, literary and artistic events that make Glasgow such an enriching place for postgraduate study.
◾The Modernities MLitt includes tailored workshops with the University’s archives and Special Collections as well as a bespoke field trip to the archives of the National Library of Scotland and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.

Programme structure

Full-time students

Semester 1 - September to December
◾School of Critical Studies Research Training Course
◾Modernities 1: 1880-1945
◾Option 1

Semester 2 - January to March
◾Modernities 2: 1945 to the present
◾Option 2
◾Option 3

Summer - April to September
◾Dissertation in a topic falling within the Modernities period (1880 to the present day)

Part-time students

First year
◾School of Critical Studies Research Training Course
◾Both compulsory Modernities courses
◾Option 1

Second year
◾Option 2
◾Option 3
◾Dissertation

Delivery

All taught courses are 20 credits and are delivered in weekly 2 hour seminars or similar.

Seminars are taught to the extent that the student members meet regularly with a tutor and proceed through a planned sequence of reading and discussion. The working style however is exploratory rather than didactic; students are expected to engage fully with primary sources, to develop, express and take responsibility for their own opinions and to work towards independent argument and expression in their resulting coursework and dissertation.

Content

The two compulsory Modernities courses are complementary.

Modernities 1: 1880-1945

In the first you will examine some of the foundational modernist movements and manifestos, and investigate some of the ways in which Modernism and modernity were theorised in the period 1880-1945.

Modernities 2: 1945 to the present

In the second core course you will examine the 'fallout' of these movements over the last half century or so. Primary reading consists of seminal texts from the modernist and post-modernist periods, as well as of theoretical formulations of early twentieth-century modernity and its continuities. Secondary reading serves as an introduction to recent critical approaches drawing on fields such as narratology, psychoanalysis, feminism, post-colonialism, and cultural theory.

Option courses

Option courses will usually be taken from among the 20 credit courses listed under the general pathway. Not all options will be available in any given year, depending on staff availability. A number of option courses have been devised with the needs of the Modernities programme particularly in mind; these are:
◾The American Counterculture, 1945-75
◾American Fiction of the 1930s
◾Decadence and the Modern
◾F Scott Fitzgerald, Edith Wharton and Dialogues of American Literary Modernism
◾The Mind of the Contemporary American Novel
◾The Modern Everyday
◾Modernist Sexualities
◾The Novel Now
◾Proust in Theory
◾Virginia Woolf Writes Modernity

With the convenor’s permission, you may also take option courses from elsewhere in the College of Arts and beyond, e.g. Comparative Literature, History of Art, Music, History, and many more.

Career prospects

Modernities has been producing successful graduates for over ten years and provides excellent preparation for PhD studies and an academic career, as well as developing key skills valued by employers in journalism, the heritage and creative industries, and other related educational and vocational careers.

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About the course

You’ll study the sociocultural, historical and structural complexities of the English language with the possibility to study other modern languages as well, if you choose.

There are four pathways to choose from: Literary Linguistics, Social and Historical Approaches, Structural and Theoretical Linguistics, and Modern Languages (co-run with the School of Modern Languages and Cultures). You can follow one exclusively or combine the four.

The Literary Linguistics pathway examines a range of approaches to literary linguistic study including cognitive poetics, corpus stylistics and narratology; Social and Historical Approaches investigates complex real-world language problems in different social and historical contexts; Structural and Theoretical Linguistics explores the foundational mental structures and processes underlying language; and Modern Languages offers students the opportunity to study similar aspects of Slavic, Germanic and/or Romance languages.

As your understanding of theory develops, you’ll learn how to analyse language and how to carry out research projects. If you choose a work placement, you might also develop skills in marketing, archiving, teaching or publishing.

Your career

Our graduates are working in teaching (primary, secondary, FE, HE and TESOL), publishing, marketing, libraries, fundraising, charities and the public sector. A masters from Sheffield is a sound basis for a PhD at any leading university.

How we teach

Our expertise covers all aspects of the subject, so whatever you’re interested in you’ll get the best possible advice and support. We provide training in research methods and you can choose to go on a work placement as part of your course.

You’ll be taught by academics whose work is published internationally. Their specialisms include language acquisition, historical language studies, applied linguistics, literary linguistics, discourse analysis and sociolinguistics.

We have a lively research culture. Through lectures and weekly seminars we’ll introduce you to the latest ideas. You’ll have the opportunity to explore these ideas in your own research.

With the School of Languages and Cultures, we established the new University Centre for Linguistic Research to gather and support postgraduate linguistics research across the University.

Our resources

We have specialist recording equipment for fieldwork and experimental work. Interactive computer-based workshops will introduce you to corpus-linguistic technology.

The University library subscribes to several electronic databases including JStor, Early English Texts online and Eighteenth-century Collections online. For more advanced reading, there’s a regular free minibus service to the British Library at Boston Spa.

Core module

Research Methods.

Examples of optional modules

Linguistics in Context; Linguistics in Practice; Research Practice; Literary Language: narrative and cognition; Literary Language: history and culture; Work Placement with Research Project.

Teaching and assessment

The MA offers world-leading expertise in all areas of English language and linguistics, and is therefore capable of offering the best possible support for students’ interests on any topic. You’ll benefit from our expertise in many fields, from language variation and change, psycholinguistics and syntax to conversation analysis, dialectology and the language–literature interface. Our enthusiastic staff publish internationally. Within the School of English, we hold weekly research seminars which give you the chance to hear about the latest developments.

You’ll be taught through seminars and workshops. There are also work placement opportunities in schools, museums, libraries or local businesses. Assessment varies by module, but includes essays and presentations.

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