MA Children's Literature

This course emphasises the pleasures of literature and aims to make students knowledgeable and committed readers of literature for children and young people. In the course we aim to address a range of issues in relation to culture and identity through literature for children.

We take a wide definition which includes picture books and graphic novels, media and dramatic texts. We consider historical perspectives and explore children's literature for today, as a distinct form, which is a product of both literary traditions and current ideological contexts.

Sessions will include consideration of the nature of literature for children, poetry and oral texts, picture books, media texts, graphic novels and reader response theory, and an exploration of literature about the refugee experience.

This module provides an introduction to research into children’s literature. It aims to develop a critical understanding of the main methodological debates and knowledge of the key research methods central to the study of issues within children’s literature. It offers opportunities to examine some of the ideas which have been influential in literary theory and some of the approaches used to research literary cultures. It begins with an overview of key methodologies that can be applied to children’s literature studies, and then look specifically at two examples: feminist approaches, critical race theory. It looks in depth at specific research methods for the study of children’s literature such as a focus on genres, themes or authors, reader response and critical pedagogy. Empirical and classroom-based research, close textual analysis, and multimodal approaches are also explored. The module is designed to assist in study for the MA more generally, and support the work for the dissertation.

This Module will enable students to carry out a piece of ‘action research’, investigating a learning environment, in which an intervention based on literature is made by the student.

At the onset of this module students will set up participant-observer, ‘action research’ projects involving themselves and child or young adult readers. Through seminar discussion, students will learn how to adapt and change the project; how to report on ‘work in progress’, how to analyse process within the progression of the project, how to use learning theory, talk analysis, reader-response theory. As the project progresses the students will learn how to analyse and evaluate the data they are collecting in terms of use of language, social interactions around literary texts, psychological indications given by how children speak and behave in relation to literary texts, the importance of the role of intertextuality, social class, race and gender in how or why the children are responding in particular ways.

By the end of their projects, the students will be able to produce lucid accounts of this original research, evaluating both their ‘intervention’ in the learning environment and the children’s progress through the project, showing how the account was informed by theory and by the seminar discussions so that the project may a) be reproduced by others attempting similar projects; b) inform the debates around literacy, oracy and children’s literature; c) affect and improve the students’ own practice in whatever learning environment they work.

This is a two-and-a-half-hour workshop, attended by all full-time and all part-time students in their first year. It runs throughout the two terms. In the first term, students are encouraged to experiment with a variety of genres in creative and life writing, and in the second term to develop their individual interests. Students are asked to consider works by significant writers in relation to their own writing practice.

Presentations of their work to each other, with an account of their aims and approach, forms one important element. The students meet a range of practices, concerns and techniques. The workshop is also the place where the issues raised in the Contemporary Contexts module are further debated in relation to the students’ own practice.

This module introduces the practice of writing fiction for children (Middle Grade, 9-12 years) and young adults. It offers you the opportunity to develop creative work in progress, give and receive feedback in weekly workshops and experiment with new forms, readerships and voices. It also encourages you to discuss the work of established writers for younger readers in relation to your own writing practice and consider the theoretical, social and cultural contexts of contemporary writing for children and young adults. The workshop will aim to allow you to develop your own interests and preferences.

Critical analysis, close reading, workshop exercises and critical evaluation methods will be used to enable you to develop and demonstrate an ability to produce writing in different forms, from a number of different perspectives and to develop informed critical understanding in this field

You will be required to read widely and to follow current debates and research. You will explore a wide variety of fiction for readers to better understand the joys and challenges of writing for young readers. You will be encouraged to experiment with writing for different age ranges and genres to help you hone your individual writing interests, preferences and styles