Progress and Anxiety, 1789-1859

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 7
• Convenor: Victoria Mills
• Tutors: David McAllister, Victoria Mills, Luisa Calè
• Assessment: a 1500-word critical bibliography (0%) and a 3500-word essay (100%)

This core module provides an introduction to interdisciplinary modes of researching nineteenth-century literature and culture. Starting and ending with the utopian and dystopian revolutionary time captured by representations of the French Revolution, the module discusses the temporal narratives of abolition, women's emancipation, the population debates, technological progress, and the Great Exhibition. Reading against the grain of linear time and anachronistic divisions between 'Romantic' and 'Victorian', we will also focus on breaks, continuities, and historical reinventions and returns in early nineteenth-century culture.

A series of masterclasses and seminars ask you to focus on areas of tension between the apparently relentless forward progression that characterises the nineteenth century and the anxieties that accompanied these rapid social, technological and cultural changes. Seminars on a compelling range of texts are followed by workshops which are designed to help you develop the research skills and methodologies required in your postgraduate work in Romantic Studies or Victorian Studies.