EL7055 - Literature and Social Justice

If you choose to study on campus delivery will be primarily via student-led seminar discussion, facilitated by a tutor. If you choose to study by distance learning you can complete the module via a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), populated with on-line learning materials. Whether you are on-site or distance learning you will study the same texts and have access to the same materials. On-site students are encouraged to take part in online discussion boards to help constitute a constructive and supportive cohort with distance learning students. The assessment for both on-site and distance learning students is the same combination of non-assessed and assessed e-tivities (on-line tasks). You will be expected to undertake both directed and independent learning. Directed learning generally will take the form of preparation for seminars for on-site students and weekly reading guidance for the distance learning students, where you will be expected to contribute to discussion whether this is in the seminar or through the VLE. Independent learning generally will take the form of further reading and investigation, and revision/preparation for the assessment of the module. Assessments for all students taking this module will include a portfolio of e-tivities that have two roles. First, e-tivities will include non-assessed (formative) assessments that ensure you have the technological capacity in terms of hardware and digital literacy to complete the module. Second, e-tivities will include the assessed (summative) assessments that test your aptitude in relation to the learning outcomes.

Seminars and on-line material will enable you to interrogate the overarching themes of the module and will develop your academic skills as you engage with primary, secondary, theoretical and contextual materials to allow you to attain the module learning outcomes. The module handbook provides details of weekly reading and focus, and reading lists and assessment criteria and all material are made available on the VLE. The module tutor is available in the seminars and by appointment for on-site students, and accessible to all via email to discuss any queries or concerns you have about how to excel academically on the module. Moreover, feedback on non-assessed work and the first assessed piece of work will also serve as ‘feed forward’, giving guidance on how to improve during the module. In addition, you have a designated Guidance Tutor throughout the entire duration of your programme. The academic side of the Guidance Tutor’s role includes:
• monitoring your ongoing academic progress
• helping you to develop self-reflection skills necessary for continuous academic development
• directing you to further available services which can help them with their academic skills (e.g. Library’s Skills Plus)

You are advised to see or contact your Guidance Tutor at least twice each semester to review your academic progress. Distance learning students will also be supported by the on-site cohort, who will engage with the discussion forums and e-tivities, the module tutor who will moderate (rather than facilitate) the online discussions.

All modules at Northumbria include a range of reading materials that students are expected to engage with. The reading list for this module can be found at: http://readinglists.northumbria.ac.uk
(Reading List service online guide for academic staff this containing contact details for the Reading List team – http://library.northumbria.ac.uk/readinglists)

After completing this module students should be able to:

Knowledge & Understanding:
1. critically appraise models of social justice
2. investigate some of the key theories that can help us evaluate the relationship between literature and the concepts and practice of social justice
3. recognise the presence of commitments to and debates about social justice in diverse literary forms and socio-cultural contexts

Intellectual / Professional skills & abilities:
4. communicate the value of situating cultural production and reception in contexts beyond academia

Personal Values Attributes (Global / Cultural awareness, Ethics, Curiosity) (PVA):
5. evidence skills commensurate with postgraduate studies, building on those acquired at undergraduate level, conforming to relevant standards of good academic conduct in the expression of an informed argument in written and oral forms through completing the various activities prescribed.

Formative:

1. Formative assessment will comprise of students’ written contributions to the VLE, in the form of weekly topics of discussion, prompted by the module leader. Your tutor will provide ongoing verbal and written feedback on your writing, critical awareness/engagement, and creativity as the semester progresses.
2. Proposal Plan (500 words) OR Blog Post Plan (500 words). To support the completion of your second summative assessment, you will produce a plan for your proposal. Your tutor will provide written feedback on this, prior to you moving to complete the summative piece.

Summative
1. Essay (60%; 3000 words) Following discussion and agreement with your tutor, identify a cultural text in any medium but not set on the module and discuss how it registers a commitment to social justice, paying attention to the text’s formal qualities as well as the contexts of its production and reception (the when, how and why of the text).
MLOs: 1, 2, 3, 5

2. Proposal (40%; 2000 words) Following discussion and agreement with your tutor, identify a charity, political organisation, campaign or pressure group or similar, with a commitment to social justice, and produce a proposal for a 1-2 hour workshop in which you facilitate sharing ideas about how to involve cultural production to achieve their aims.
OR
4 x 500-word blogposts (40%; 2000 words) offering critically-informed commentary on current instances of interactions between culture and social justice.
MLOs: 3, 4, 5

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Can writing – or reading – change the world? How might what we and others do with texts help or hinder the progress of social justice? And what is social justice, anyway? This module helps you understand and address such questions by guiding you through a range of amazing, provocative, and influential cultural texts from Ancient Greek plays to contemporary poetry and films, classic novels to polemical political manifestos. As you progress through the module you will appreciate the ways a diverse range of texts promote, celebrate, or inhibit and ‘contain’ the drive for social justice, and how ‘political’ works employ writerly techniques to effect social change. In turn, you will explore ways to ensure how we make and understand culture is impactful and effective in the world beyond academia, and be encouraged to develop how you write to do so. This will involve considering a model of social justice through reading across and within periods, literary forms, genres and socio-cultural contexts, and enhancing your abilities to share your knowledge about the literatures of social justice in non-academic settings.