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FIRST YEAR ENGLISH - 2012/13

Welcome to First Year English

The Head of Year is:  Dr Rebecca Barr

• Dr. Rebecca Barr, English, Room 301, Floor 1, Tower 1.

Email: rebecca.barrnuigalway.ie  _________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Download FIRST YEAR HANDBOOK here

FIRST YEAR TIMETABLE

Tuesdays 1-2

Thursdays 5-6

Fridays 1-2

Semester 1 2012-13:

STUDENTS WITH SURNAMES A-M GO TO THE O'FLAHERTY THEATRE.

STUDENTS WITH SURNAMES N-Z GO TO THE D'ARCY THOMPSON ON TUESDAYS AND FRIDAYS AND TO IT125 ON THURSDAYS.  

Semester 2 2012-13:

STUDENTS WITH SURNAMES A-M GO TO THE O'FLAHERTY THEATRE.

STUDENTS WITH SURNAMES N-Z GO TO:

THE TYNDALL THEATRE ON TUESDAYS 

UC102 ARAS UI CHATHAIL THEATRE ON THURSDAYS 

AM150 ON FRIDAYS

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Welcome to First Year English at the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG). What is English as a university subject? It is the study, for its own sake, of the best literature written in English from its origins (c. 6^th century) to the present. All forms and genres are considered: students read poems, plays, novels, short stories, etc., They read romances, lyrics, tragedies, comedies, sonnets, Gothic literature, Romantic literature, melodramas, epics, etc. And, as they read, they write. From your first to your last week in the English department, you will be writing about what you are reading and what you are thinking about what you are reading. The study of English leads to the enrichment of your knowledge, your skills as a thinker, writer and reader, and your whole personality.

English in First Year comprises two different kinds of teaching – lectures and tutorials. The role of both student and teacher is different in each. In a lecture (the word comes from the Latin ’lectura’ which means a ’reading’) an individual lecturer discusses particular books and ideas. Lectures are valuable because they are given by experts on the subject, and provide students with concise access to this expertise. The student’s role is to listen actively, and to make notes, again, actively (we will talk more about the active nature of listening and making notes at the introductory lectures).

Tutorials are smaller gatherings of students with a teacher. They are more practically focused than the lectures on the doing of a particular task (e.g. reading a poem, learning a skill, practicing writing), and sometimes in their concentration on a particular topic. But the most important difference between lectures and tutorials is that the students do most of the talking in the tutorials – to each other, and to the teacher. Students do the work of the tutorials.

There is a third aspect to the First Year program that has not yet been mentioned, and that is the library, and more important, what it contains – the books themselves. As we saw above, the word ’lecture’ comes from the word for ’a reading’. Reading, and writing about what you read, is the very heart of an arts degree, and of a degree in English in particular.

The Head of First Year is Dr. Rebecca Barr. Her office is in Tower One in the Arts Block.

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The Layout of the English Course

Tutorials:

At the beginning of the year you will join a tutorial (the code for this course is EN126). This tutorial meets once a week through the academic year, and you will be in the same group for the whole year. The tutorial is a small group of students and a lecturer.  In your tutorial you will practice your reading and understanding of literature and you will develop your abilities as a writer (and thinker) about literature. The tutorial also provides an opportunity for discussion with your fellow-students. You will write regularly in these tutorials and you will submit four longer essays for grading by your lecturer. Your tutorial is worth one third of your overall marks for First Year English.

Lectures:

In Semester One you will take a lecture course (EN124) which will provide an introduction to poetry and drama. EN124 is worth one third of the overall marks for First Year English and is examined by means of a written exam at the end of Semester One.

In Semester Two you will take another lecture course (EN125).  EN125 is worth one third of the overall marks for First Year English and is examined by means of a written exam at the end of Semester Two.

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EN124: Introduction to English 1

Description to follow

EN125: Introduction to English 2
STUDENTS TAKE BOTH SECTIONS

Section 1, Drama
Dr Charlotte McIvor and Dr Lionel Pilkington

This module provides an introduction to the study of drama and theatre. In the first part of the course, we consider the development of drama from Ancient Greece to seventeenth-century England; and in the second, we read and analyse four twentieth-century Irish plays. Throughout the semester, students will be asked to consider many important questions. What is the relationship between literature and performance? How does theatre speak to and for its society? How (if at all) can we benefit from watching tragic or violent plays? What is the relationship between religious ritual and theatre? How should an audience behave? How does the history of theatre inform its present? And how do contemporary dramatists draw from the past to find new ways of representing their ideas?

Students must read the following six plays:

➢ Sophocles, Oedipus the King (Nick Hern)
➢ Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (Nick Hern)
➢ John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi (Nick Hern)
➢ W.B. Yeats, At the Hawk’s Well*
➢ Sean O’Casey, Juno and the Paycock*
➢ Marina Carr, By the Bog of Cats *

* These three plays are included in John Harrington’s Modern and Contemporary Irish Drama (Norton). All texts are available in the campus bookstore and there are also copies for loan in the library.

Section 2, Early English Literature
Dr. Cliodhna Carney and Dr. Frances McCormack

We are going to look at the earliest literature written in English. Where did it come from? What forms did it take? What were the influences on it? What did it mean (and to whom did it mean things) at the time it was written? What does it mean to us now?That’s the first point of this introductory course – to examine the varieties and origins of Old and Middle English literature, and to raise the question of its value in its own time and in ours.
The second strand of the course is about the very biggest questions that face humanity – about love, death, sex, violence, self, virtue, society, God – and to see whether the people who produced this literature (from 700 A.D. – 1400 A.D.) shared our ideas or had distinctive ones of their own.  In other words, it is a history of sentiments and ideas.
In your reading for this course you will encounter many terms and ideas about the ’Middle Ages’ and you will have to think about their validity. ’Medieval’, ’Middle Ages’, ’Dark Ages’: what do these terms say about our conception of the period? Is the idea of a ’literary period’ even a useful one?
Each lecture will be organized around a particular idea (e.g. ’love’) and will focus on a selection of writings from this period. Students should have read the set readings for each lecture BEFORE the lecture takes place, and should bring the set readings to class.

READING FOR THE COURSE:
You need to buy two books for this course:

Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. A, ninth edition, ed. Alfred David and James Simpson (New York and London: Norton, 2012).

Dante, Inferno, trans. Robin Kirkpatrick (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2006).

Our readings for the course will be drawn from these two books AND from the selections provided on Blackboard. Students should download the latter (i.e. the readings from Blackboard), print them, and bring them to class with the class books. The other readings will include the following:

Chrétien de Troyes, Lancelot (excerpts).
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy (excerpts).

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Full information about the First Year English course is available on blackboard at https://nuigalway.blackboard.com/

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Interactive Campus Map: http://www.nuigalway.ie/campus_map/

Contact: The Secretary, Department of English, NUI, Galway. Tel. 353 (0)91 492567 Fax: 353 (0)91 524102 email: englishnuigalway.ie

    

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