Culture, Class, and Emotion

Overview

This module engages with social class as it is manifested in behaviour on stage, screen, and in everyday life over the course of the 18th, 19th and 20th Centuries, and into the early 21st Century.

We will look at how class has changed over time in terms of social evolution and the relationships between people of different classes and their respective lifestyles. Special attention will be paid to the issue of emotion as a sociological phenomenon, for example how resentment is manifest by social groups variously in terms of violence, insurrection, voting tendencies, and cultural expression such as music, theatre, and film. We will consider how class can be understood not merely as an economic category as it is traditionally conceived, but as material performance – as something we do – rather than as an abstract identity.

Learning Objectives

On completion of this module, students should be able to:

demonstrate an informed awareness of class as performance on stage, screen, and in everyday life, by engaging with the tasks set by the convenor for presentation and discussion in seminars, and by submitting an essay that answers one of the questions set by the convenor for written assessment;

deliver presentations in seminars that meet the requirements of the respective tasks set each week by the module convenor by working with fellow students in their assigned groups to research, rehearse and prepare ahead of the related seminar;

prepare questions ahead of seminars to ask students whose group is presenting in the respective week;

research, write and submit by the deadline an essay that answers one of the questions set by the convenor for written assessment.

Skills

Subject-specific skills:

On completion of this module, students should be able to:



• engage creatively and critically in appropriate independent research, whether investigating past or present performances or as part of the process of creating new performance;

• identify and interpret the cultural frameworks that surround performance events and their specific relation to social and historical contexts.



Generic and graduate skills:

On completion of this module, students should be able to:



• have critical and analytical skills in developing ideas and constructing arguments and the capacity to evaluate and present them in a range of ways;

• work productively, creatively and imaginatively as part of a group and have the creative skills needed for the realisation of practice-based work;

• manage personal workloads efficiently and effectively, meet deadlines, and negotiate and successfully pursue goals with others.

Assessment

None