British Studies in the 21st Century

elective courses

Blended learning

“British Studies in the 21st Century” is a unique course on a national scale, intended to offer the most up-to-date knowledge and cutting edge methodology.. Created and conducted in collaboration with academics from the University of Worcester, Kingston University London, the University of Warsaw, and Warsaw School of Economics, the course offers an extensive insight into the key cultural, political and social issues of contemporary Britain.

The course consists of three modules corresponing to three main foci: History and Politics, Arts and Literature, and Media, TV and Film. Each of the three modules will address, in turn, the following clusters of topics that underpin 21st-century British Studies:

• monarchy, class, and education;

• race, colonialism, post colonialism, migration, conflict;

• gender, sexuality and identity

• environment, space and heritage.

“British Studies in the 21st Century” is a unique course created and conducted in collaboration with academics from the University of Worcester, Kingston University London, the University of Warsaw, and Warsaw School of Economics, the course offers an extensive insight into the key cultural, political and social issues of contemporary Britain.

Each module corresponds to three main foci: History and Politics, Arts and Literature, and Media, TV and Film. Each of the three modules will address, in turn, the following clusters of topics that underpin 21st-century British Studies:

• monarchy, class, and education;

• race, colonialism, post colonialism, migration, conflict;

• gender, sexuality and identity

• environment, space and heritage.

The course consists of three modules taught by six scholars.

1. The History and Politics unit taught by assoc. prof. Radu Cinpoes (Kingston University London) and dr Przemysław Biskup (Warsaw School of Economics) will explore issues such as: the UK polity at crossroads; Brexit, sovereignty and constitutional crisis; Party politics, class and representation; Poverty, welfare and education; Britain facing the colonial legacy; Migration and refugees; Gender identity debates and shifting legal frameworks; Green Britain – Environmental issues in the UK.

The examples under consideration will be: The legacy of Elizabeth II and the future of monarchy; Reforms of the UK constitution; Political partisanship and multi-level governance; Gender and Politics in the UK; Same-sex marriage; Rural Governance in the UK

2. The Arts and Literature unit taught by prof. Nicoleta Cinpoes and dr Whitney Standlee (University of Worcester), and dr hab. Katarzyna Kociołek (University of Warsaw) will investigate the following issues such as: Representations of the UK in art and literature; Propaganda and social change; Class and poverty in literature and art; Canon and counternarratives; Gender and race debates in art and literature; Hybrid Identity.

The examples under consideration will be: M. Bartlett’s King Charles III, Albion, J. Butterworth’s The Ferryman, Ali Smith’s How to be Both, P. Agbabi & G. Chaucer’s Telling Tales, Contemporary poetry (Katy Wareham Morris, Ruth Stacey); arte povera (Eric Bainbridge), Banksy’s graffiti, Grason Perry 21st-century art and social change: Yinka Shonibare, Lubaina Himid; Working Class British Art Network.

3. The Media, TV and Film unit taught by dr Bartosz Lutostański (University of Warsaw) and Katy Wareham Morris (University of Worcester) will include the following issues: Ideology of the internet; Social media activism; Sex and gender issues in the digital world; Internet as a public sphere; Postgender and intersectional feminism; Cyberspace and metaverse; Digital capitalism; AI and the futurism.

The examples under consideration will be: Web 2.0 and 3.0; Steve McQueen’s BBC series; BAFTA Award productions; BLM movement on social media; The beauty business of AI; Influencer culture; Participatory culture; Memes, gifs, and virals; Cyborg identity; Windrush backlash and anti-racism sentiment.

History and Politics:

Attorp, A., Heron, S. and McAreavery, R (eds.) 2023. Rural Governance in the UK, Taylor & Francis.

Clancy, L. 2021. ‘The Corporate Power of the British Monarchy: Capital(ism), Wealth and Power in Contemporary Britain.’ The Sociological Review, 69:2, 330–347.

Dean, J. 2018. Publicity's Secret. How Technoculture Capitalizes on Democracy. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

Hyam, R. 2010. Understanding the British Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Institute for Government. 2022. ‘The UK constitution: reform, reject or reinvigorate?’. Available at: https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/event/online-event/uk-constitution-reform-reject-or-reinvigorate. Accessed: 6 February 2023.

Jones, B., Norton, P. and Hertner, I.l (eds.). 2021. Politics UK, 10th ed., Abingdon, Oxon; Routledge.

Kenny, M. 2017. ‘Who Runs the World? Gender and Politics in the UK and Beyond.’ Political insight (Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom) 8.2: 30–33.

Nadig, S. 2022. ‘To ban or not to ban: UK fracking in the last three years’. Offshore Technology. Available at: https://www.offshore-technology.com/analysis/to-ban-or-not-ban-uk-fracking-in-the-last-three-years/. Accessed: 6 February 2023.

Slaven, M. 2022. ‘The Windrush Scandal and the Individualization of Postcolonial Immigration Control in Britain. Ethnic and racial studies 45.16: 49–71.

Sutton Trust and Social Mobility Commission. 2019. ‘Elitist Britain. The Educational backgrounds of Britain’s leading people’. Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/811045/Elitist_Britain_2019.pdf. Accessed: 6 February 2023.

Arts and Literature:

Barrington, C. and Hsy, J. (2015) ‘Remediated verse: Chaucer”s Tale of Melibee and Patience Agbabi”s “Unfinished Business’, Postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies, 6(2), pp. 136–145.

Barnard, M. 2007. Fashion Theory. A Reader. London: New York, Routledge.

Bernier, C.-M., A. Rice, L. Himid, H. Durkin. 2019. Inside the invisible: Memorialising Slavery and Freedom in the Life and Works of Lubaina Himid. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

Blurton, H. 2021. ‘Retelling the Prioress's Tale: Antisemitism, Racism, and Patience Agbabi's Telling Tales’, The Chaucer Review, 56(4), pp. 397–412.

Bull, M. 2009. BANKSY locations & tours a collection of graffiti locations and photographs in London: PM Press.

Foster, A. 2004.Tate Women Artists. London: Tate Publishing.

Germanà, M., & Horton, E. (2013). Ali Smith: Contemporary Critical Perspectives. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Gray, M. 2020. ‘Making Her Time (and Time Again): Feminist Phenomenology and Form in Recent British and Irish Fiction Written by Women’, Contemporary Women's Writing, 14(1), pp. 66–83.

Hsy, J. 2021. ‘Chaucer's Brown Faces: Race, Interpretation, Adaptation’, The Chaucer Review, 56(4), pp. 378–396.

Lea, D. 2016. Twenty-first-century Fiction: Contemporary British Voices. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Lewis, C. L. 2019. ‘Beholding: Visuality and Postcritical Reading in Ali Smith's How to be Both’, Journal of Modern Literature, 42(3), pp. 129–150.

McRobbie, Angela. 2005. “Good Girls, Bad Girls? Female Success and the New Meritocracy,” in British Cultural Studies. Ed. D. Morley and K. Robins. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Powell, R. J. 2002. Black Art. A Cultural History. London: Thames&Hudson.

Price, Dorothy. “‘Dreaming Has a Share in History’: Biding Time in the Work of Lubaina Himid.” In Art. History 44 (3), 2021, pp. 650-675.

Osborne, D. (Ed.) 2016. The Cambridge Companion to British Black and Asian Literature (1945-2010). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rabey, D.I. 2015. The theatre and films of Jez Butterworth. Bloomsbury.

Tronike, M. 2020. Imperial pasts, dystopian futures, and the theatre of Brexit. In Journal of Postcolonial Writing. 56:662-675.

Wheatley, D. 2014. Contemporary British Poetry. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Young, T. 2018. ‘Invisibility and power in the digital age: issues for feminist and queer narratology’, Textual Practice 32(6): 991–1006.

Media, TV and Film:

van Dijck, J. 2013. The Culture of Connectivity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fuchs, C. 2021. Digital Capitalism Media, Communication and Society. London: Francis and Taylor.

Haraway, D. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century." Contemporary Literary Criticism: Literary and Cultural Studies. Eds. R. Davis and Ronald Schleifer. New York: Longman, 1989: 696-7

Jenkins, H. 2006. Convergence Culture. Where Old and New Media Collide. New York and London: New York University Press.

Kress, G. 2010. Multimodality. A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication. London and New York: Routledge.

O’Reilly, T. What is Web 2.0”. Available at: “https://www.oreilly.com/pub/a/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.htm. Accessed: 10 March 2023.

Page, R. 2013. Stories and Social Media: Identities and Interaction. London and New York: Routledge.

Rosen, J. 2012. “The People Formerly Known as the Audience” in: The Social Media Reader. Ed. M. Mandiberg. New York: New York University Press: 13-16.

Shifman, L. 2014. Memes in Digital Culture. Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press.

White, A. 2014. Digital Media and Society. Houndsmills: Palgrave.

Williams, R. 1960. Culture and Society 1780-1950. New York: Anchor Books.

On completing the course, the students will:

• display good critical understanding of the practical functioning of British political institutions and of current social and political issues and debates;

• have extensive knowledge of new literature, art, media and their role in contemporary culture;

• know how to recognise and analyse today’s literature, art and media in their formal and semiotic context;

• be able to critically approach any new trends on social media and Internet culture and will be able to decipher their past cultural contexts;

• understand the complexity of the influence of new technologies on social communication.

In terms of knowledge, the students will:

• contextualise major historical and political developments and analyse their impact on British power structures and society;

• identify and characterize on an advanced level the place and status of literary and culture studies within the humanities (K_W01)¬;

• describe on an advanced level the current trends in literary and cultural studies research within English studies (K_W02);

• characterize on an advanced level the principles of research design in literary and culture studies with special focus on the application of methods and tools in formulating research problems (K_W04);

• identify the notions and principles pertinent to intellectual property and copyright (K_W05).

In terms of skills, the students:

• apply advanced terminology and notions pertinent to the discipline (linguistics, literary studies, culture and religion studies, and politics) (K_U01);

• apply advanced research methodology within literary and culture studies and English studies, respecting ethical norms and copyright law (K_U02);

• apply knowledge obtained during the course of studies to account for and solve a problem, thereby completing a research task related to the discipline literary studies and/or culture and religion studies (K_U03);

• analyse linguistic, literary and cultural phenomena and draw generalizations on their basis in the context of societal, historical and economic factors on an advanced level (K_U04);

• discern alternative methodological paradigms within a discipline (K_U05);

• find information in various sources and critically assess its usefulness for research related to the topic of the MA project (K_U06).

In terms of social competences, the students will:

• apply knowledge and skills obtained during the course of studies to undertake lifelong learning, as well as personal and professional development (K_K02);

• take responsibility for performing one’s professional duties, with due respect for the work of others, obey and develop the ethical norms in professional and academic settings related to the disciplines included on the curriculum of English studies (K_K03);

• assess critically one’s own knowledge and skills related to the studies (K_K04);

• value cultural heritage and cultural diversity as well as individual opinions (K_K06).

In-class group and individual presentations, attendance, participation, and formal research essay (or report)

Essay/report marking criteria:

• formatting: clear structure, professional presentation

• analysis: critical engagement with the issue discussed

• knowledge: good knowledge of British politics/literature/arts/media and use of appropriate sources for evidence

• written expression and referencing, clear and cohesive writing and appropriate academic standard of referencing

Presentation marking criteria:

• clear structure, professional presentation

• critical engagement with the issue(s) discussed

• good knowledge of British politics/literature/arts/media and use of appropriate sources for evidence