Students will participate in interactive sessions introducing them to English studies at university level. These sessions will give students a taster of the specialised module options available at degree level. Workshops include:
Threshold Concepts in English: Text, Meaning, Context, Form, Reading (Joseph Anderton)
Threshold concepts are fundamental ideas or core principles that, once understood, transform a learner’s understanding of a particular subject or field of study. This introduction starts the process of moving from common sense understandings of these key terms to the deeper specialist meanings needed for university-level English.
Romantic Poetry, History and Criticism
‘Romantic Poetry’ and ‘Romanticism’ are difficult concepts because of their complex relation to history. Sometimes they leave students all at sea. Much of what we call ‘Romantic Poetry’ is poetry written in the Romantic Period (of English Literature), by which we mean, roughly, 1780-1830. But ‘Romanticism’ is not tied to literature, to English, or to any narrowly defined range of dates. To study English Literature at university level, and to be good at critical thinking more generally, we need to be able to navigate complex concepts of this kind. This talk will offer a map of sorts.
Corpus Linguistics: Data-Driven Text Analysis
Learn how digital collections of text are used to discover new facts about language. This session will introduce the types of textual data and analysis methods (e.g. search tools, frequency and collocation) now used in many areas of language study, exploring them through practical tasks using online software.
Theatre and Space
In this interactive workshop you will learn about different historical conventions relating to the use of space in performance. You will explore performing in promenade, in-the round, and using the thrust and proscenium arch stages and consider the impact of decisions around staging on other aspects of performance, like acting style and the use of costumes and props.