Critical Reflections explores a number of key interdisciplinary philosophical and cultural concepts which will enable you to analyse, engage with, and reflect upon artworks in your own discipline. It also allows you to establish a common set of concepts which can be shared by students from all LICA subjects.

The structure of the module consists of six three-week blocks as follows:

1. Aesthetics
2. Experience
3. Post-structuralism
4. Marx and Post-Marx
5. Waves of Feminism
6. Thinking with the Earth (new materialism)

Regular plenary lectures make connections across the arts, and are supplemented by seminars/workshops which allow students to work in their subject groups (art, film, theatre, design) on ideas and examples specifically tailored towards these disciplines.

This year-long module is the gate-way to the second and third year experience of Creative Writing. You will be able to write in any literary genre, drawing on the accompanying half-units or exploring new areas of creative work. You will develop a portfolio of creative writing, supported by peer and tutor feedback. A lecture series will increase the professionalisation of your writing.

This module enables you to explore topics, techniques, and methods involved in memoir and life writing, as well as the risks and opportunities – technical, ethical and personal – inherent in this form. Through a series of seminars and workshops we will explore set texts, generative writing prompts, and give and receive feedback on works in progress. You will work towards the creation of your own memoir text – either a short stand-alone work or works, or a chapter / section from a proposed longer work. In addition, you will be supported in developing independent research to set your own work in its context in your reflective essay.

This module combines theoretical and practical approaches to provide an introduction to American and German modern dance pioneers of the twentieth century. It compares their systems of technical training, choreographic methods, signature dance works, and considers the relationship of those systems, methods and works to the social context and philosophical ideas of their time. Assessment is through the choreography and performance of a short trio, and an essay. The module prepares students for more advanced dance and physical theatre projects in later modules.

This practical module provides a comprehensive understanding of compositional strategies and methodologies used in making theatre and performance, whether as a performer or as a director, writer or designer. Particular emphasis will be placed on investigating notions of form and structure and on how performance material can be generated through creative strategies of sourcing, developing and editing material towards a completed work. Assessment is through the production of a performance score and a group practical project.

This module will equip students with a critical understanding of twentieth and twenty-first century performance practices that respond to anthropogenic climate change. Students will explore a range of theories and practices relating to ecocriticism and environmentalism.

In this module students will interrogate and critically respond to discourses of national identity in Britain, with an emphasis on de-centring and questioning who frames British identities and shared histories. By engaging with a range of plays and performances staged in the British Isles between 1980 and the present, alongside key postcolonial theory and readings on nationalism and globalization, students will develop an understanding of the different ways in which theatre has played a part in the national conversation about place and identity.

This module develops analytical and practical skills in performing texts, particularly in dramaturgy and composition and vocal and physical performance techniques. Taking into account the respective political, social and aesthetic contexts from which the works emerged, it focuses on modern and contemporary European play texts that are marked by their formal experimentations associated with two major theoretical paradigms: The Theatre of the Absurd and Postdramatic Theatre.

The module explores the playwrights’ formal experimentations with time and space; plot, story and narration; character, persona and ‘text bearer’; language and breakdown of language; rhythm and musicality; as well as the relationship between performer and audience.

Assessment is by group practical project and an essay.

How does our lived experience translate into poetry? And how does poetry crystallize or transform experience through language and form? These and many other questions are explored in this module as we read as well as write poetry; for the writing of poetry is dependent not only your experience but also your abilities as a reader and interpreter of poems. We will look at the base structures of poetry – from the line-ending to more complex forms like sonnets and sestinas; and you will be encouraged to seek out new reading as a result of seminar discussion. Finally, you are expected to keep a journal of your poems and thoughts throughout the course, the contents of which will be used to create the reflective essay for your portfolio.

What is short fiction as a literary form? The module approaches this question by exploring its unique opportunities and challenges. We will look at examples of modern and contemporary short stories from around the world (including work by Katherine Mansfield, Herve le Tellier and Walter Mosely) to see how the form can be manifested, pushed, pulled, and made malleable.

Critical and creative engagement with these set texts will allow you to see how key techniques of narrative, voice, imagery, and dialogue can be tailored for short fiction. You will put these techniques into practice through a series of writing exercises and in your own submissions for tutor and peer feedback, as you build towards a portfolio of original short fiction; this will be accompanied by a critical reflection where you can explore your strategies for writing in this form.

This module introduces you to community and applied theatre practices that seek to create social, cultural, or political change. You will have the opportunity to explore key theoretical concepts alongside practical skills in facilitation, appropriate to a variety of contexts. You will study examples of applied theatre practice, with an emphasis on techniques that seek to empower marginalised communities and increase political and social dialogue. The syllabus will cover influential practices from around the globe, taking heed of the diversity of approaches and their applicability to contemporary contexts. Core topics may include theatre in education, theatre for development and disability theatre. Assessment is by group practical work and essay.

This practical module is designed to allow you to work collectively to produce an original performance piece informed by material studied in the second year as a whole. Students are supported by a supervisor who will provide feedback on progress throughout the module.

This module introduces practical approaches in visual and image-based theatre and methods of analysing visual theatre and investigating its key histories and models of practice. The module focuses on key approaches to image-based theatre that are central to understanding contemporary visual performance. Each approach interrogates the work of an existing company, which in turn is related to historically important practice from twentieth-century dramatic and/or postdramatic theatre.

The module will practically explore key skills in lighting, sound, digital technologies and scenography with reference to specific practitioners and companies. Assessment of skills and knowledge acquired will be by a practical group project and an essay.

Drawing on tendencies from both visual art and theatrical fields, contemporary performance has generated multiple approaches to the dynamic relation between text, language and performance. Eschewing the conventional dramaturgical structures of literary theatre, ‘text’ in this parallel history is an unruly, generative force – a writing for performance (and writing as performance) that is by turns highly performative, precise, nonsensical, philosophical and playful.

The module aims to explore a variety of contemporary and historical approaches to writing and performance through both key readings and workshop/seminars as well as practical tasks for you as creative writers and performance makers, establishing a conceptual ground, highlighting and developing strategies for your own work.

The module aims to enable you to write for the theatre and develop your awareness of the processes by which a written script makes its way to performance. You will be taught through weekly seminars/workshops in which you will explore the effects that different staging approaches and performance strategies have on your scripts.

The module usually ends with a performance showcase at the Dukes Theatre, Lancaster, in which you will be actively involved; the showcase will allow you to reflect upon your work in the light of audience feedback.

Over the course of the module, you will develop your own writing styles and gain an awareness of the professional requirements of playwriting.

This module seeks to helps you write imaginatively about places and/or landscapes. You will be able to write poetry, prose fiction, or non-fiction as we explore the broad field of nature, environmental, and place-writing. You will study major texts that engage with different kinds of place and landscape – from fields and forests to rivers and urban edgelands – and explore your own emergent interests in place-writing. You will be encouraged to consider your own work as part of a larger, ongoing literary conversation about place, and to explore those places and landscapes that interest and excite you. The module also contains an element of fieldwork, linking the act of physically walking through a landscape to the practice of reading and writing about it.

In your third year you will study at one of our international partner universities. This will help you to develop your global outlook, expand your professional network, and gain cultural and personal skills. It is also an opportunity to gain a different perspective on your major subject through studying the subject in another country.

You will choose specialist modules relating to your degree and also have the opportunity to study other modules from across the host university.

Places at overseas partners vary each year and have historically included Australia, USA, Canada, Europe and Asia.

During your degree you’ll spend a year as a registered student at one of our approved partner universities in North America, Asia, Australia, New Zealand or Europe.

This year-long module forms the core Creative Writing offering in your final year, and allows you to write in any literary genre. You will be encouraged to draw on the other creative writing modules you are taking and to explore new areas of creative work as you develop your portfolio. Throughout, you will be supported by feedback from both your tutor and fellow students.

This module allows you to undertake a major independent research project on a topic of your choice, presented in the form of a dissertation or a practice-based project and an essay. The module is taught through lectures focused on research skills and one-to-one supervision. Upon completion, you will be able to demonstrate your ability to undertake a major project that includes conducting research, engaging in a sustained critical analysis of relevant texts, building an argument and applying this to practice.

This module develops the key techniques studied in the second-year module, ‘Short Fiction: Genre and Practice.’ It explores endings that use misdirection and ‘the reveal,’ as well various forms/genres of short stories, such as flash fiction, the ghost story, and rewriting fairy tales. As we go, we will be discussing several contemporary short stories, experimenting through writing exercises, and workshopping student drafts. You will thus develop a portfolio of your own original short stories, which is accompanied by a critical reflection on your use of form and technique. The module ends with tips on sending work for publication.

In this practical module you will work in groups on an intensive practical project that will lead to public performances. Groups work is supported by the module convener and with a supervisor.

This module addresses applied performance projects that are co-created in collaboration with community groups. This may include people living within specific geographic areas, but it might also encompass shared identity traits, experiences, or interests. Students will explore a range of practices that facilitate collaboratively-designed theatre as a means of bringing about positive changes within these communities, and their broader social and cultural settings. Through a consideration of contemporary practitioners from a range of global contexts, students will learn techniques to develop effective community-based projects and to ensure equitable participation and accessibility. Practices studied might cover topics such as intergenerational theatre, street theatre, staged readings, puppetry, participatory arts, storytelling, environmental performance and more. Students will engage with the theories and practices of the module through a combination of lectures, seminar discussions and workshops, culminating in a short community performance project.

The module has two aims. Firstly, it aims to explore methods of improvising or choreographing movement from the practice and study of drawing, and, reciprocally, approaches to drawing that emerge from the experience of movement and the analysis of motion. This is assessed through either a staff-supervised, student-led group choreographic project with documentation or, alternatively, a portfolio of drawings presented at the end of the module. Secondly, the module examines twentieth and twenty-first century works in which choreographers have collaborated with visual artists. This part of the module is assessed through an essay. Teaching is through lecture, seminar and practical compositional exercises in movement and drawing.

This module combines theoretical and practical approaches to explore important European writers, directors and companies by studying their innovative dramaturgies, scenographies, uses of ‘no longer dramatic’ text, and new acting/performing styles. These aesthetic forms are also discussed in relation to the performances’ thematic and political concerns with developments such as globalization and late capitalism, increasing mediatisation, (anti-)immigration, terrorism and the war on terror and ecological concerns, as well as with the enduring memories of the Second World War and a European history of colonialism. Teaching is through lecture, seminar and practical workshop and assessment is by practical presentation and by seen examination.

This module addresses a range of 21st century performance practices that respond to climate change. Students will be introduced to a variety of practical and philosophical approaches employed by performance makers to address the relationship between people and the natural world.

Performance examples will range from those that seek to prompt direct intervention in the climate crisis to those that facilitate a shifting sense of being in a more-than-human environment. This might include, for example, plays, performance art, dance, performance activism, or socially engaged practices. Specific topics and practical approaches will reflect teaching staff expertise as well as current issues or events.

In the first half of the module students will be guided by staff to develop their own site-specific practical project, drawing on a specific model of practice. Following this, students will expand their critical understanding of relevant case studies and theoretical frameworks in a series of lectures and seminars. Assessment is by practical and essay.

This module will explore the writing of reviews, essays, and cultural reflection, through the development, in a workshop environment, of your own work, combined with directed reading of a selection of contemporary work. The terms ‘essays’ and ‘reviews’ will be interpreted broadly; you will, then, study the essay as a form that has evolved over the last four hundred years as a commentary on human existence, at both the deepest and most trivial level; and you will study the review as a form which, at its best, sets its subject in a cultural and personal context.

In this module you will examine, through both set reading and writing prompts, the unique features of long fiction. Through tutor presentations and discussion of set texts, the workshopping of creative writing in progress, and the writing of synopses and other planning documents, you will develop competence in approaching a long fiction project. You will thus learn to: find strategies for planning and structuring; choose point of view and tense; develop plot; work with setting; address themes and characterisation; experiment with form; and write an ending. You may work in any adult genre you wish, but we will focus on literary, historical and science fiction, as well as both speculative and crime genres

This module combines theoretical and practical approaches to explore new scenographic approaches to contemporary performance. The module is structured to introduce you to the theories and histories of scenography and then progresses to locate scenography through the theatre, through technology and finally in relation to site. The module is focused around four cutting edge contemporary theatre companies (previous examples include The Wooster Group, Need Company, Imitating the Dog) used as paradigms to introduce you to the ways in which text, the body, light, visual/spatial organization, technology and choreography are used as scenographic tools to create specific and unique instances of contemporary performance. Teaching is through lecture, seminar and practical workshop and assessment is by practical workshop and seen exam.

This module aims to challenge received structures of poetic language through a close reading of poets who opened up new frontiers of 20th/21st century literature through their approaches to language. In each seminar, there will first be a close reading of work by a published poet, from Alice Oswald to Ezra Pound, looking at how they stretch or break the lyric formula; and then your own poetic experiments are workshopped.

In week two, there is a basic introduction to Ludwig Wittgenstein's famous theory of language games, with each subsequent poet examined in the light of how they try to break the rules of the game. Your own experiments will be very much encouraged, as either continuations of the radical departures first implemented by the poets in question, or your own attempts to break from comfortable notions of confessional or lyric poetry.

This module enables you to write drama for radio, developing your own scriptwriting style and gaining an awareness of the professional requirements of the genre. We will study exemplar radio dramas and use them to contextualise the creative choices in your own work whilst also exploring the effects of different structural and stylistic approaches. For the purposes of concision, 'radio' in this context also refers to other formats for audio drama such as podcasts.

Peer and tutor feedback will guide the development of your creative portfolio as you work towards a single radio drama script. Reflective practice will help you to master the art of redrafting and editing and you will pen a short essay placing your experience of this in the context of radio drama.

Resources for this module includes the wonderful Box of Broadcasts, just one of the many electronic archives to which the you will have free access via the University Library.

What are the constraints and opportunities of writing for children and young adults? By reading, analysing, and responding creatively to a range of texts, you will become more familiar with: contemporary practitioners of writing for young people; the expectations of the audience; and the opportunities for innovation.

The module begins with picture-books, and concludes with young adult novels. You will come to appreciate the complexities of writing fiction for young people, exploring everything from the constraints of paper engineering to the opportunities of a multi-modal narrative in picture books; and from the constraints of coming-of-age tropes to the opportunities for fresh, inventive language in YA fiction.

You will be asked to engage in a close reading of the texts studied and to respond creatively to them.

This module will introduce students to writing for games of all kinds, both digital and pen-and-paper. We will explore the basic principles of collaborative narrative experience as we seek to engage both critically and creatively with this new and extremely popular branch of contemporary writing. text currently is as follows could you kindly adapt new text please The weekly workshops are currently supplemented by a weekly, evening Games Study Night in the University Library to explore existing games, play-test your own, and enjoy the Library’s rich collection of board games.

This module enables you to both explore and learn to write graphic novels, including digital forms such as web comics.

You will investigate the graphic novel from the point of view of the writer, looking at the very many considerations required to create stories for this specific medium. Particular attention will be paid to writing a script for a graphic novel, and how words work with both images and the space(s) of the page. Through regular workshops, you will be introduced to a wide array of genres, which could include:

• the realism of Craig Thompson
• the space opera of Brian K. Vaughan
• the investigative journalism of Joe Sacco
• the surreal horror of Emily Carroll
• the queer science fiction of Tillie Walden

You will also encounter works such as those by Alison Bechdel, Daria Bogdanska, Maia Kobabe, and Una and Mariko Tamaki.

We employ diverse assessment methods designed to develop your skills further; so, for example, this could include a graphic-novel script, and/or a short critical reflection

This module will build on the second-year module ‘Writing Poetry,’ thus deepening your engagement with both writing and reading process. We will explore poetic form through a wide-ranging selection of poems, and consider form as a tradition that has been questioned, adapted, subverted, upcycled, reaffirmed. We will focus, in particular, on forms regularly employed or reimagined in the twentieth century and more recently.