The aim of this seminar is to encourage students to explore and discuss some ways in which leading English language poets, novelists, short story writers and playwrights have engaged the questioning spirit of recent times. The seminar will focus on influential works written, since 1960, by writers such as Martin Amis, Rabih Alameddine, Seamus Heaney, Margaret Atwood, Wole Soyinka, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Salman Rushdie. The course also considers how contemporary literature re­imagines history, genre and identity.

This course is designed to help PhD students develop their research projects and assist them in defining their mode of enquiry. It is constructed to guide them through a general overview of research, its methodologies, its challenges and its organization, including creative practice. Students will be equipped to plan, organize their research and communicate their findings. Thus, students will explore a variety of research tools, methods, ethical and legal questions. They will develop the ability to reflect critically on the processes of research, articulate critical language appropriate to their research aims and interests, develop a supportive research environment, and become familiar with a range of research practices applicable to sciences, humanities, social sciences, literature and art.

The aim of this seminar is to examine a range of syntactic phenomena and evaluate opposing theoretical analyses proposed to account for them. Students will construct theoretical analyses and evaluate their explanatory adequacy for Universal Grammar. Topics include low frequency (LF) phenomena, functional projections, and structural representations. Students will also study the language and explore its syntax and uses within varied contexts.