The Victorians and Us Course Descriptor

Course Overview

The Victorians and Us equips students to understand and draw connections between the Victorian period and the present, as well as to identify key changes, through studying a range of texts from 1830-1900. London is used as a resource, and students are encouraged to think themselves into the period through site visits as well as through the general experiences of living and studying in London. The ‘Us’ of the title is designed to be understood as global. Throughout, an understanding of Victorian social and cultural contexts, and the interpretative skills necessary to give sophisticated descriptions of them, are provided. The extent of the validity of generalising about ‘the Victorians’ will be considered throughout the course.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

Knowledge and Understanding

Subject Specific Skills

Transferable and Employability Skills

Teaching and Learning

This course has a dedicated Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) page with a syllabus and range of additional resources (e.g. readings, question prompts, tasks, assignment briefs, discussion boards) to orientate and engage students in their studies The scheduled teaching and learning activities for this course are:

Lectures/seminars/labs/studios/workshops

40 scheduled hours – typically including induction, consolidation or revision, and assessment activity hours.

• Version 1: all sessions in the same sized group

OR

• Version 2: most of the sessions in larger groups; some of the sessions in smaller groups

Faculty hold regular ‘office hours’, which are opportunities for students to drop in or sign up to explore ideas, raise questions, or seek targeted guidance or feedback, individually or in small groups. 

Students are to attend and participate in all the scheduled teaching and learning activities for this course and to manage their directed learning and independent study.

Indicative total learning hours for this course: 150

Assessment

Both formative and summative assessment are used as part of this course, with purely formative opportunities typically embedded within interactive teaching sessions, office hours, and/or the VLE.

Summative Assessments

The assessments for this course will require students to critically characterise Victorian cultural productions, and to engage in contemporary critical debates concerning the best modes in which they might be interpreted. Students will also be required to reflect on changes in cultural practices and attitudes between the Victorian period and the present day, including through evaluation of post-Victorian and modern attitudes towards the Victorians.

Feedback

Students will receive formative and summative feedback in a variety of ways, written (e.g. marked up on assignments, through email or the VLE) or oral (e.g. as part of interactive teaching sessions or in office hours).

Indicative Reading

Note: Comprehensive and current reading lists are produced annually in the Course Syllabus or other documentation provided to students; the indicative reading list provided below is for a general guide and part of the approval/modification process only.

•  Bristow, Joseph, The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Poetry (Cambridge: CUP, 2005)
• Gilmour, Robin, The Victorian Period: The Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature, 1830–1890 (London: Longman, 1994)
• O’Gorman, Francis, ed., The Victorian Novel (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002)
• Eliot, George, Middlemarch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019)
• Tennyson, Alfred, Tennyson: A Selected Edition, ed. Christopher Ricks (London: Routledge, 2007)

Indicative Topics

Note: Comprehensive and current topics for courses are produced annually in the Course Syllabus or other documentation provided to students; the indicative topics provided below are used as a general guide and part of the approval/modification process only.

• Topics related to identity e.g. gender and empire
• Topics related to intellectual life e.g. science and history
• Topics related to social life e.g. poverty and class
• Topics related to cultural comparison e.g. the science-religion debate in the Victorian period and today
• Topics related to trans-historical cultural interpretation e.g. recent film adaptations of Victorian literature