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EN3222   Writing Through Crisis: 21st Century Poetry and Prose

Academic year(s): 2025-2026

Key information

SCOTCAT credits : 30

ECTS credits : 15

Level : SCQF level 9

Semester: 1

Planned timetable: Tue 12-2

This module introduces students to a range of 21st Century literature written in English with a focus on crisis in the contemporary moment. It will equip students with critical ideas and theoretical concepts that will help them to understand the literature of their own time. Students will consider examples of a range of genres: poetry, creative non-fiction, the essay, and fiction. Students will be encouraged to read texts in a number of contexts and will consider writers’ responses to, for instance: displacement, environmental change, geopolitical conflict, austerity, Black Lives Matter, the contemporary archive, desire and the overarching issue of crisis. They will also consider a range of aesthetic innovations, for example: the turn to creative non-fiction, the re-emergence of the political essay, the development of the prose poem. Overall, the module will consider how writers are responding to crises of the present period and how, through their writing, they model modes of agency.

Relationship to other modules

Pre-requisite(s): Before taking this module you must pass EN2003 and pass EN2004

Learning and teaching methods and delivery

Weekly contact: 2-hour seminar (x 10 weeks).

Scheduled learning hours: 20

Guided independent study hours: 250

Assessment pattern

As used by St Andrews: Coursework - 100%


Re-assessment: Coursework - 100%

Personnel

Module coordinator: Professor G D Herd
Module teaching staff: Prof David Herd
Module coordinator email D.Herd@st-andrews.ac.uk

Intended learning outcomes

  • Analyse and assess the work of a range of contemporary writers.
  • Demonstrate an understanding of the different forms of writing in this period and a capacity to analyse them critically.
  • Articulate an understanding of the relation between key contemporary literary texts and cultural and political contexts that shape the contemporary period.
  • Reflect upon and utilise key critical ideas and theoretical concepts associated with the literature of the contemporary period.
  • Research, develop and present ideas effectively in written form.
  • Employ a range of relevant practical and presentational skills, both written and oral (oral skills will be practiced in group discussions and informal individual presentations; written skills will be practiced and tested by means of essays).