ENG32500 Fiction and Financial Crises

Academic Year 2020/2021

The financial market has long provided a rich source of inspiration to novelists and poets, with writers across the centuries exploring themes of stock-market crashes, gambling and risk taking, debts and bankruptcy, fraudulent currencies, bank failures and the consequences of post-crash austerity. This module will examine the relationship between fiction and financial crises, both real and imagined, from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first century. It will analyse literary representations of various historical bubbles, crises and crashes such as the South Sea Bubble, the ‘panics’ of nineteenth-century Britain, and the crashes that dominated the 20th and 21st century: 1929 Wall Street Crash, and the Global Financial and Eurozone Crises. It will consider how literature uses, adapts and critiques economic theories of rationality and self-interest, economic figures, and financial constructs and institutions, while also exploring the way economic systems rely on myths, stories and fantasies to function.

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Curricular information is subject to change

Learning Outcomes:

At the conclusion of this module students should be able to demonstrate:
• A familiarity with the field of literary and economic criticism
• A knowledge of the impact financial ‘booms and busts’ have had on literary writings from the eighteenth to the twenty-first
century
• An increased understanding of the way literature uses, adapts and critiques economic themes and theories and how economic
systems and theories also depend on literary devices
• An increased understanding of how literature can instruct readers to assess value and make judgments
• An ability to write critically about a range of texts from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century

Indicative Module Content:

Examples of potential authors include: Jonathan Swift, Charles Dickens, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kate Jennings, Don DeLillo, Deirdre Madden, Kate Tempest, Jesmyn Ward.

Topics may include: eighteenth-century speculative bubbles, nineteenth-century gold rushes, the 'Roaring Twenties', the virtual market, the Global Financial Crisis, post-crash austerity, currencies and literary representation.

Student Effort Hours: 
Student Effort Type Hours
Seminar (or Webinar)

22

Specified Learning Activities

78

Autonomous Student Learning

100

Total

200

Approaches to Teaching and Learning:
Interactive classroom-based learning.
Lecturer and student presentations.
Peer and group work.
Seminar discussions.
Close textual reading.
 
Requirements, Exclusions and Recommendations

Not applicable to this module.


Module Requisites and Incompatibles
Not applicable to this module.
 
Assessment Strategy  
Description Timing Open Book Exam Component Scale Must Pass Component % of Final Grade
Assignment: Currency assignment which includes a presentation and written response Varies over the Trimester n/a Graded No

20

Essay: End of term essay Coursework (End of Trimester) n/a Graded No

60

Continuous Assessment: Essay Plan Varies over the Trimester n/a Pass/Fail Grade Scale No

10

Continuous Assessment: Includes in-class participation and discussion/worksheet exercises Throughout the Trimester n/a Pass/Fail Grade Scale No

10


Carry forward of passed components
No
 
Resit In Terminal Exam
Autumn No
Please see Student Jargon Buster for more information about remediation types and timing. 
Feedback Strategy/Strategies

• Feedback individually to students, on an activity or draft prior to summative assessment
• Feedback individually to students, post-assessment
• Group/class feedback, post-assessment

How will my Feedback be Delivered?

Not yet recorded.