Module Catalogue 2024/25

Pre Requisite Comment

N/A

Co Requisite Comment

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Aims

Travelling is something we all do, on different scales, and in different ways. Travel writing is one of the most socially important of all forms of literature, and writing 'elsewhere' very often reveals how we define ourselves and how we identify others. This module equips students to analyse these definitions and modes of othering, by exposing them to a variety of travel accounts written in French by an array of writers from around the world.

The module aims:
1. to engage students in critical reflection on what is means to travel, and what is at stake in different forms of travel writing across a range of geographical locations and time periods.
2. to provide students with the analytical skills to examine the ethics, politics and aesthetics at work in travel and travel writing.
3. to give students the opportunity to explore themes related to contemporary global challenges, namely:
a)the links between travel, writing and power, and the construction of knowledges about elsewhere;
b)the construction of difference and travel writing's centrality in modes of othering and operations of sense around 'us' and 'them', 'here' and 'there', 'near' and 'far';
c)understandings of belonging and displacement, and travel writing as a source for understanding processes of rooting, uprooting, migration and settlement;
d)travel writing's role in the circulation of ideas and concerns about nature, environmental destruction and idigenous knowledges;
e)travel writers' accounts of technology in place-making in the 20th and 21st centuries, and its role in enabling and controlling mobility.
4. to enrich students' linguistic capacity in French through reading and assessments, as well as close critical analysis.

Outline Of Syllabus

Travelling is something we all do, on different scales, and in different ways. Given the shared nature of movement, travel writing is one of the most socially important of all forms of literature, and writing 'elsewhere' very often reveals how we define ourselves and how we identify others. In this module, you will explore travel writing by writers from the French-speaking world and whose work ranges across diverse geographical locations and different historical periods.

In this course, we place the emphasis on texts that narrate real rather than imagined journeys, and on examining not only *what* travel writers see, but *how* they see, or the frames through which they make the world meaningful. Among the questions guiding our explorations are: What is the difference between a tourist and a colonialist, or an explorer and an ethnographer for instance? And what do their different vantage points on elsewhere tell us about the home culture?; By what means does a tourist construct their vision of 'abroad'?; What motivates the extreme explorer? Why and how does the encounter with alternative worldviews unsettle western definitions of rational and irrational, sane and insane?; What can travel writing tell us about attitudes to other cultures, other lands, and other beings? How does it reveal changes in ethical and aesthetic perspectives on the world, and the various modes of othering at stake across time and space?


Course Content:
The opening sessions of the module invite students to consider critically what is meant by 'travel', and to explore travel writing's genre bending tendencies. We will pay attention to the heterogeneity of this kind of writing and think about ways (methodologies) to engage with it. The following weeks will consist of paired sessions covering certain essential themes. These may include the relationship between travel writing and imperialism; travel writing and nature; travel, knowledge, and power; othering and otherness; exoticism and endoticism; placemaking and memory; and the traffic between travel writing and other media such as fiction, film and photography.
Each session will see students engage with extracts from a specific travel text. Lectures will provide historical context to the text, author, and historical situation, and introduce students to a variety of theoretical frameworks so as to enable their development of critical insight. Seminars will be student-centred and focus on enabling students to discuss their ideas and share their insights in peer-to-peer exercises in class. This discussion will be facilitated with questions and secondary sources. In addition to discussion, seminar sessions will also involve students exploring ethnographic techniques such as peer-to-peer interviews, walk-based research, photographic storytelling, and journal writing.

Intended Knowledge Outcomes

Students talking FRE4020 will work towards the following Knowledge Outcomes (KO) through lectures, seminar preparation and participation as well as the module's assessment activities.

By the module's close students will:

KO 1: Gain a critical awareness of the heterogeneity of the travel writing genre. They will have engaged with travel writing by male and female explorers, journalists, ethnographers, artists, novelists, cultural theorists and environmental activists.

KO2: Have developed a critical understanding of key theoretical concepts such as 'otherness'; 'othering'; 'entropy'; 'exotic'; 'endotic'; 'imaginative geography'; 'nomadism'. Students will have engaged critically with issues related to travel and the formation and/or deconstruction of identity discourses and examined the various binaries — self/Other; real/fiction; here/elsewhere; home/abroad — which travel writing enacts.

KO3: Have become experienced in formal analysis of travel writing in French through engagement with a range of genres, literary styles and media — autobiography, anthropology, political treatise, cultural satire, poetry, photography and film.

KO4: Have encountered a range of critical perspectives on travel writing from across the fields of postcolonial studies, tourism studies, visual studies and literary criticism, semiotics, psychology, cultural theory and mobility studies.

KO5: Have enhanced their linguistic capacity in French through development of comprehension and aural skills.

Intended Skill Outcomes

The skills gained in FRE4020 build on those taught in previous years of the degree programme at the School of Modern Languages. Specifically this module is designed to provide students the opportunity to practice and enhance the following skills:

IS1. Communication—Verbal
Students will analyse, debate and present on a range of French travel texts in seminar sessions, before structuring their ideas and arguments in formal assessments. In reading closely core texts in French, they will have demonstrated explicit knowledge of the language with relation to the structures, registers, and varieties of French and will apply linguistic principles required to analyse the language.

IS2. Interpersonal Skills
Students will be required to work together with classmates to achieve an understanding of theory and its application to core texts. Om addition, while structuring and testing out their understanding of set reading through informal debate, seminar sessions will provide a space in which to reflect upon and develop their learning.

IS3. Learning To Learn\Self Development Skills
One of the assessments for this module is a weekly 'travel journal', in which students record their impressions and insights into set reading. This activity is designed to encourage a sense of progression and incremental improvement. Students will regularly be required to reflect on their modes of engagement with the texts/lectures and materials for the course.


IS4. Methodological skills: Students will learn to utilize multiple primary and secondary sources, and will consequently challenge and broaden their understanding of language and textual-visual representation. In addition, they will learn how to conduct and record interviews, how to take field notes and how to compile their findings through seminar activities.

IS5. Cognitive Skills
Analytical skills: Through close readings of primary materials and engagement with theories of travel writing, students will be encouraged to enrich their analytical frameworks. Through weekly journal writing, students will be required to develop their responses and critical attention to texts and frame their own lines of questioning to be discussed in class.

IS6. Subject Specific Skills
Over the course of study, students will gain an understanding of key concepts relating to travel, such as ‘imaginative geography’, ‘transculturation’, ‘the tourist gaze’, ‘exoticism’, ‘endotic travel’ and ‘nomadism’.
Students will develop further their literary analysis skills through engagement with issues of genre, and in particular with the tension between ethnographic and autobiographic forms of travel writing. In studying travel writing in French they will enhance their critical understanding of French culture and its relationship to other cultures, as well as engaging with a variety of critical contexts. They will also enhance their linguistic capabilities in French through readings in the target language.

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

The Module’s primary corpus is to meet all Knowledge Outcomes by enabling students to engage with travel writing that challenges generic categories and which emerges from a number of critical fields - including anthropology, autobiography, politics, poetry, cultural theory. Students will read extracts each week from one travel writer.

Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities:
1) Module talk with orient students and facilitate their awareness of the need for independent learning, self-reflection and introduce them to the module themes and objectives. (KO1)
2) Lecture Materials: Lectures will provide students with contextual information in order to support their independent reading for the themed session. (KO1, KO2, KO6)
3) Weekly 2-hour seminars will provide students with opportunity to discuss their guided research and work with peers to develop their critical thinking and ideas. (KO1-7, IS1-6)
4) Fieldwork: Students will be guided in the use of the dérive to explore the city centre of Newcastle. Working in small groups, they will choose a theme from the course and focus on this aspect as they walk through the city. As a group they will then reflect on this method, and design a presentation based on their experience. This activity is designed to put into practice certain key conceptual tropes around travel and travel writing. (KO2, KO3, IS1, IS2, IS4)
5) Workshops: These will enable students to raise questions and gain skills in relation to essay planning and writing. (KO3, KO5, IS1–5)

Structured Research & Reading Activities:
Students read 1-2 article-length primary materials weekly. Accompanied by guided questions to facilitate student engagement and encourage close reading. Writing: To ensure reading is engaged, students write 200-word response to set material. Either to answer guiding questions or link text from one week to a text from another. Student responses will submitted online via CANVAS in advance of scheduled small group session. ML provides individual feedback and draws on responses to develop student discussion in small group scheduled sessions. (KO1-7, IS3-6)

Student-led Group Activity:
Students will work together in small groups to present their reflections and findings based on the dérive. (IS3, IS4, IS6) (KO1, KO2, LLO3, KO5, KO7)

Guided Independent Study: Students' independent learning will be encouraged through weekly writing tasks, and supported through open questions, a module workbook and bibliographical materials. Students will have the opportunity to share their out-of-class findings with the cohort each week and to integrate their independent research into their assessments. (IS1, IS3, IS4, IS5, IS6) (KO1-7)

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

The assessed components of this module are designed to achieve the knowledge and skills outcomes.

The set essay will test students' level in relation to all Knowledge Outcomes. This essay will be written in response to one of a number of open questions. In the essay workshop, students will be encouraged to appropriate a question and consider which primary sources they will use to address it. The essay will require students to undertake close analysis of the primary source, while framing this analysis in relation to one or more critical approaches and situating the text historically.

The oral presentation is designed to support students in the pre-writing and research phase of the essay assignment. They will present their analysis of the fieldwork as a group, and discuss how they will address their chosen essay topic individually

Formative assessment is designed to support students' success in the summative assignments. The reflective log is designed to facilitate progression in the students' analytical capacity. It will require students to engage closely with a set text and to read the text in correspondence with the background provided by the lecture, and other primary sources. Feedback and class discussion will frame this exercise and therefore enhance students' capacity for engagement with feedback, while building confidence in linguistic comprehension, reading and writing skills. One of the reflective exercises will include writing up field notes from the dérive activity.

General Notes

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