Dissertation in Cultures and Languages

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 6
• Convenor: Dr Damian Catani
• Assessment: a 7500-word dissertation (100%)

This module will allow you to:

• develop a topic that has particularly interested you in your studies so far
• define your own research question
• write an extended essay on this subject.

Your topic must be related to a module or modules you have already taken so that you have enough background to undertake the project successfully. You will develop research and time-management skills, and much of your preparation and writing will be completed independently. However, you will also receive guidance on choosing a topic either in the summer term before your final year, or in the first term of your final year of study.

You will attend five workshops in Term 1 of your final year (with other students taking this module), focusing on how to plan and write a final-year dissertation.  Following these sessions, you will prepare a portfolio of materials for formative feedback. You will have three meetings with your supervisor to discuss your topic and get feedback on the various aspects of your portfolio, including the first section of the draft of your dissertation (up to the first 2000 words).

This module allows you to bring together what you have learned over the course of your studies by producing a developed and extended piece of writing that represents a culminating moment of your intellectual journey.

By the end of this module, you will:

• show awareness of the theoretical and critical frameworks for thinking about study of cultures and languages, and/or comparative literatures, and be able to use such frameworks in the formulation of research questions
• be able to identify new areas for research, to situate a project within the existing critical context, and to engage with this critical context
• demonstrate relevant factual knowledge about the chosen texts, images and/or other cultural artefacts or historical phenomena, their contexts, and the issues under discussion
• be able to analyse the chosen texts, images and/or other cultural artefacts at a thematic, linguistic and stylistic level
• be able to work within historical and theoretical frameworks in the interpretation of the chosen texts, images and other cultural artefacts or historical phenomena.