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Faculties & Departments
Department of English
Postgraduate Information
HANDBOOKS 2009-10
The Department of English, NUI Maynooth offers two Masters programmes: the MA in Twentieth Century Irish Writing and also the MA in Culture, Empire and Postcolonialism. These programmes reflect the research interests of the academic staff and current developments more broadly in the fields of postcolonial, Irish and also cultural studies.
MA in Culture, Empire, Postcolonialism
The expansion and contraction of the great European land and overseas empires has been a decisive shaping force in modern world history. The incremental construction of those empires, across a span stretching from the early modern period through to the latter half of the twentieth century, has impacted in complex and enduring ways on nearly all of the peoples of the globe, whether in the imperial metropolitan "motherlands" or in the colonies and protectorates. And, just as the creation of these empires was key to the emergence of the modern world system, so too the struggles of the colonized peoples against imperial rule has also materially altered the world we live in today. The rise and fall of the European empires were never exclusively military, political or economic matters. Empire-building also required complex processes of intellectual and cultural legitimization and depended on a wide variety of assumptions about Western civilizational superiority, about what constituted progress, about how and by whom Western enlightenment should be extended to the "dark" or more "effeminate" places of the globe.
Thus, the history of empire is also a history of writers and intellectuals, of geographers and historians, of anthropologists, explorers and travel writers, who wrote to defend empire or who wrestled with the many dilemmas and antinomies of imperial rule. Similarly, the history of anti-imperial struggle must also include the works of intellectuals, writers, and artists of all kinds who contested the assumptions on which empire was founded, who helped to develop local or national literatures to compete with those of the European metropoles, and who struggled to imagine and to articulate what it might mean to live in a post-imperial age and in a postcolonial world. Today, the old European empires may be no more, but in a world dominated by new superpowers, the issue of empire still remains a live one, and in Europe, America and the "postcolonial world" a great deal of artistic work and scholarly debate still wrestles with the tormented historical legacies of empire and with whether or not empire in one form or another will remain a reality in the centuries ahead. The purpose of this MA is to develop a strong and theoretical understanding of the texts of colonialism and postcolonialism and to engage students in the lively debates about understandings of colonial and postcolonial histories and identities.
Teaching Team: Dr Conrad Brunstrom; Professor Joe Cleary; Dr Ide Corley; Dr Colin Graham; Professor Luke Gibbons; Dr Conor McCarthy; Dr Stephen O’Neill.
Course Content:
The programme comprises of modules that address theoretical trends within the field of postcolonial studies, consider the literatures of empire since the Enlightenment, and examine the aesthetics and politics of postcolonial and also African writing in the Twentieth century. In addition, the programme familiarizes students with best practice in research methods and writing at postgraduate level.
The MA is assessed by continuous assessment and each seminar requires a written essay. In addition, students complete a mini-dissertation (c. 12,000 words) on a research topic agreed with their thesis advisor. Students are expected to work on their thesis full-time throughout the summer from the end of May until the submission date in early August.
Modules Offered may include:
EN600 Postgraduate Research Skills (5 ECTS)
This module will familiarise students with best practice in research, methodology and writing at postgraduate level. Individual seminars may also focus on developments in digital humanities. All students on the M.A. programme will be allocated a member of faculty with whom they will meet three times per semester in relation to assignments set as part of this module.
EN601 Modern Cultural Theory (10 ECTS)
This module will typically examine three key areas of modern cultural theory, discussing the origins and ideas associated with each area and reading the criticism of major thinkers. Areas to be discussed might include structuralism and post-structuralism, feminism and Marxism.
EN624 Enlightenment and Empire (10 ECTS)
Empire raised two main questions for Enlightenment thinkers. The first: was empire compatible with the forms of rational freedom that the enlightenment promoted internally in Europe? The second: was enlightenment a global enterprise which had the freedom of humankind as its goal and was empire not therefore a speedy means of bringing to that world all the benefits of ‘civilization’—secular rationality, economic development, increasingly democratic government, primary among them?This course will consider how key writers such as Gibbon, Burke and de Tocqueville responded to these questions.
EN625 Narratives of Imperial Decline (10 ECTS)
The breakup of the European empires was a decisive development in twentieth-century history. This course will investigate literary, intellectual and cinematic responses from various European imperial centres and colonial outposts to this extended history of decline. The seminars will discuss European representations of anti-imperial struggles; sexual, racial and class politics of imperial decline; "old Europe's" responses to American and Soviet hegemony; varieties of post-imperial melancholia; anti-colonial and post-colonial responses to imperial decline.
EN602 Ireland and Postcolonial Studies (10 ECTS)
Modern Ireland's relationship to the British Empire and to the wider Postcolonial World has been one of the more controversial issues in Irish Studies for several decades. This course will examine some of the scholarly debates that have emerged around these issues, and will consider some of the different ways in which postcolonialist scholarship has been taken up or disputed in Irish Studies. Key issues to be discussed will include: whether Ireland can usefully be regarded as a postcolonial country; historical revisionism; theories of ‘modernization’; ‘Irishness’ and racisialisation; sexuality; immigration and multiculturalism.
EN621 Postcolonial Literatures (10 ECTS)
This course examines a series of texts from a variety of 20th century postcolonial contexts, seeking to consider the themes of memory (both personal and cultural/ collective) and migrancy. In postcolonial contexts, how does memory of the (colonial) past function, and how does it impact the sense of individual and / or national identity? How does migration and movement away from the homeland further impact upon memory? Does a tendency to fetishize the pre-colonial past override the social concerns of the present?
EN630 African Writing (10 ECTS)
For many of the writers and visual artists whose work we will consider, “Africa” is less a daily reality than a contested idea (with an ambivalent history) which mediates between vernacular and statist cultural forms. It is an idea in constant need of testing and refreshment against the threats to African peoples and their cultures posed by neo-imperialism and the ongoing, rampant privatization of social and natural resources on the continent. We will consider a number of contemporary texts in the contexts of imperial history and globalization reflecting, in particular, on the relationships between “global” and “local” genres and themes. While pursuing a careful close analysis of each prescribed text, we will also consider African verbal and visual practices comparatively and in relation to such critical topics as: the language of African literatures; orality, orature and textual authority; the adaptation and transformation of “oral” genres within “written” traditions and the consequences of these procedures for ethnic and gender regimes; “race”, visibility and the gendered body; transnational audiences and the Pan-African ideal. Among the writers and visual artists whose work we will consider may be Abani, Achebe, Adichie, Head, Ngugi, Sembène, Soyinka, Sumegne. Critical readings may include texts by Irele, Jeyifo, Julien, Oyewùmí and Quayson.
EN631 Mini-Dissertation (25 ECTS)
Students formulate a thesis topic by March and will be assigned a supervisor, with whom they will meet over the summer. The mini-dissertation (12,000 words) is usually due in early August.
MA in Twentieth-Century Irish Writing and Cultural Theory
Twentieth-century Ireland produced one of the world’s most remarkable literatures, a body of workdefined by extravagant ambition and experiment and also by a profound sense of exasperation and at times despair. That literature is charged by the turbulent history out of which it emerged. The century began with the high idealism of the Irish Revival but Irish society was then shaken by world war, insurrection, and a war of independence. Later, the island was divided by partition, embittered by civil war, and suffered through decades of economic depression. In the latter half of the century, the eruption of the Northern Troubles, the emergence of the women’s movement and the campaign for gender equality, and the drive to integrate Ireland into the European Union all combined in complex ways to unsettle established notions of Irishness and cultural value and to generate new literary and cultural debates agitated by a deep sense of self-questioning.
The purpose of this MA is to develop a strong scholarly appreciation of the history and texture of twentieth-century Irish writing in all its aesthetic and political complexity. The programme will deal with a wide variety of works ranging from the avant-garde modernism of Joyce, Yeats and Beckett to the achievements of Irish women writers and to the pleasures and dilemmas of popular culture. Students will be encouraged to immerse themselves in several of the different traditions and forms of Irish writing in this period, and to develop their own research projects to contribute to the scholarly understanding of those traditions and their contemporary legacies.
Teaching Team: Professor Joe Cleary; Dr Denis Condon; Dr Michael Cronin; Dr Colin Graham; Professor Luke Gibbons; Dr Jim Kelly; Professor Chris Morash; Dr Conor McCarthy; Dr Stephen O’Neill; Dr Moynagh Sullivan.
Modules Offered may include:
EN600 Postgraduate Research Skills (5 ECTS)
This module will familiarise students with best practice in research, methodology and writing at postgraduate level. Individual seminars may also focus on developments in digital humanities. All students on the M.A. programme will be allocated a member of faculty with whom they will meet three times per semester in relation to assignments set as part of this module.
EN601 Modern Cultural Theory (10 ECTS)
This module will typically examine three key areas of modern cultural theory, discussing the origins and ideas associated with each area and reading the criticism of major thinkers. Areas to be discussed might include structuralism and post-structuralism, feminism and Marxism.
EN607 Modern Irish Drama and Cinema (10 ECTS)
Details to follow
EN609 Special Topic Seminar (10 ECTS)
Students will have the opportunity to focus in detail on various aspects of modern Irish fiction and/ or poetry.
EN602 Ireland and Postcolonial Studies (10 ECTS)
Modern Ireland's relationship to the British Empire and to the wider Postcolonial World has been one of the more controversial issues in Irish Studies for several decades. This course will examine some of the scholarly debates that have emerged around these issues, and will consider some of the different ways in which postcolonialist scholarship has been taken up or disputed in Irish Studies. Key issues to be discussed will include: whether Ireland can usefully be regarded as a postcolonial country; historical revisionism; theories of ‘modernization’; ‘Irishness’ and racisialisation; sexuality; immigration and multiculturalism.
EN612 Modernism and Modernity (10 ECTS)
This course will investigate the cultural and political contexts of Irish literary modernism in the early twentieth century, with particular attention to works by such writers as W.B. Yeats, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. Students will also be introduced to the critical debates that have dominated the reception of these texts.
EN616 Postmodernism and Popular Culture (10 ECTS)
This course begins roughly around the beginning of the nineties, a time when Ireland was referred to as a third world country, and looks at how popular culture responded to and was part of what is known as the ‘ Celtic Tiger’, which economists agree ended sometime in the last year. The course will examine the intersection of race, gender and ethnicity in the production of group identities. In addition to primary theoretical readings, students will be asked to choose form a number of suggested texts/practices including: Ken Loach, The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006); Neil Jordan,Breakfast on Pluto (Sony Pictures, 2005); The Butcher Boy (Warner Home Video, 1999); John Crowley, Intermission (Sony Picture, 2003); John Roberts The War of the Buttons (Warner Home Video, 1994); Mike Newell,Into the West (Miramax Family Films, 1993); Alan Parker The Commitments (20thcentury Fox, 1990); Eugene Brady,The Nephew (TVA films, 1998); Jim Sheridan, In the Name of the Father (Universal Studios 1998); The Boxer (Universal Studios 1998); Ken Wardrop, undressing my mother (Venom, 2004); Johnny O’Reilly, The Terms (Film 4, 2001).
EN631 Mini-Dissertation (25 ECTS)
Students formulate a thesis topic by March and will be assigned a supervisor, with whom they will meet over the summer. The mini-dissertation (12,000 words) is usually due in early August.
MA Entry Requirements
Applicants are expected to have obtained at least a Second Class Honours grade (II.1) in English, or equivalent.
Career Opportunities
For many students, the Masters programme is the first step towards a doctoral programme in English. Others continue their postgraduate studies with a higher diploma in education or adult education. Career opportunities for graduates are diverse, including media and journalism, education (including adult and community learning), the arts, and the finance sector.
Closing Date for Applications
Early applications are welcome.
Further Information
Dr Stephen O’Neill, MA Co-ordinator
Office 16 Tel: 7083489
Email: Stephen.oneill@nuim.ie
Applications for Postgraduate Courses:
Applications will only be accepted through our Online PAC System.
MLitt & PhD
Research Areas:
Research Areas in which the department has an interest include: cultural and critical theory; Irish cultural studies; Modernism; literature of migration; Colonial/Post-Colonial theory; modern and contemporary Irish literature; Irish women’s writings; feminist theory; Irish literary and cultural history, including the interaction between Irish and English vernaculars; nineteenth-century Irish literature in English; the literature of the Enlightenment; Renaissance literature; and Medieval Literature.
Recent dissertation/thesis topics include:
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Postmodernism and the crisis in cultural legitimation;
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The philosophy of Bergson and fiction of Proust;
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Irish and Canadian migration narratives;
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A narratological analysis of nineteenth-century Irish fiction;
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Marxism and Modernism;
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The poetry of Derek Mahon;
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The fiction of John Banville;
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The novels of Henry Fielding;
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Literature, sexuality and culture in mid-twentieth century Irish writing;
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A comparative study of Irish and German Romanticism;
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A comparative study of Irish and African orature;
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The writings of Charlotte Bronte;
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The fiction of Henry James.
Department Procedures:
A First Class Honours primary degree in English or in the taught MA is usually required for admission to the PhD programme; and a high 2.1 grade, or above, for the MLitt programme. Applicants for research degrees are requested to contact the Department of English, enclosing relevant academic transcripts, outline of proposed area of research (c. 250 words), and the names of at least two referees. They may subsequently be asked to submit examples of their written work.
Closing Date
Early applications are encouraged.
Further Information
Dr Conor McCarthy
Department of English
Tel: 01 7086326
Email: conor.d.mccarthy@nuim.ie
Applications for Postgraduate Courses:
Applications will only be accepted through our Online PAC System.