| CODE | ENG5013 | ||||||
| TITLE | Directed Research | ||||||
| UM LEVEL | 05 - Postgraduate Modular Diploma or Degree Course | ||||||
| MQF LEVEL | Not Applicable | ||||||
| ECTS CREDITS | 10 | ||||||
| DEPARTMENT | English | ||||||
| DESCRIPTION | Aim: This study-unit aims to introduce the student to some of the foundational texts and issues involving posthumanism, one of the emergent fields of literary and cultural criticism today. Description: ‘Posthumanism’ - whether it is understood as that which comes after humanism or that which comes, more disturbingly, after the human itself - is a discourse whose unsettling anticipations of the future and timely critiques of the present have already lost some of their novelty and shock. Its insights, idioms, and canons no longer seem as outré as they may have done up to only five years ago. They have become subject to processes of recuperation which have thrust posthumanism and its concerns - typically relating to the impacts of bio- and digital technology on body, mind, culture, and epistemology - into mainstream debate both within the humanities and within interdisciplinary explorations of the integrity of the human. This study-unit reviews some of the main texts and practices within posthumanism and offers scope for a critique of the directions taken by what is fast becoming an unignorable paradigm of our time. It refers to important works in the field by figures like Elaine Graham, N. Katherine Hayles, Cary Wolfe, and others, and suggests that the allure of posthumanism’s ‘futurologies’ should not distract attention from what the course will term a ‘posthumanism without technology’. Reading List: - Francis Fukuyama, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution (London: Picador, 2003). - Elaine Graham, Representations of the Post/Human (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002). - N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1999). - N. Katherine Hayles, My Mother Was a Computer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). - Martin Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, in Being and Time, ed. David Farrell Krell (London: Routledge, 1993) - Cary Wolfe, What Is Posthumanism? (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010). |
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| STUDY-UNIT TYPE | Lecture | ||||||
| METHOD OF ASSESSMENT |
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| LECTURER/S | Norbert Bugeja Ivan Callus James David Corby Maria Frendo Gloria Lauri Lucente Peter Vassallo |
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The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints. Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice. It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2025/6. It may be subject to change in subsequent years. |
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