This module is not currently running in 2024 to 2025.
This module offers students a synoptic perspective on Marxist cultural criticism from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day in Europe, Russia and North America. It begins with an analysis of a selection from Marx's own writings, with the aim of introducing key terms, such as "alienation," “ideology,” and “dialectic.” Students’ understanding of these terms and their critical uses for literary and cultural studies will develop during the course of the module, as they encounter a range of important Marxist thinkers and their writings.
Throughout the module students will be invited to interrogate and transgress the boundaries separating literary from critical texts, and theory from practice. For instance, they will approach C.L.R. James’s Beyond a Boundary as both Marxist cultural criticism and personal memoir, and consider Richard Wright’s Native Son as both novel and social theory. In addition, they will be invited to consider creative practice and Marxist criticism in dialogue with one another at particular historical moments, for example by reading Lenin’s literary theory and criticism alongside Mayakovsky’s poem “Conversation with Comrade Lenin.”
Although anchored in the literary and the textual, the module will also offer opportunities to think critically about the term “culture” itself in its broadest senses, encompassing a range of aesthetic and social practices, such as sport and music. Progressing through the great class conflicts of the early twentieth century, the Frankfurt School, New Left and anti-racist decolonization movements of the postwar period, up to the contemporary neoliberal moment, the module aims finally to offer students a set of tools with which to understand their own cultural encounters in the present as well as to reconfigure and re-evaluate the cultural knowledge they have accumulated in stages one and two of their degree programmes.
Private Study: 268
Contact Hours: 32
Total: 300
Main assessment methods
Essay 1 3,000 words 40%
Essay 2 3,000 words 40%
Seminar Participation 20%
Reassessment methods
100% coursework (4,500 words)
The University is committed to ensuring that core reading materials are in accessible electronic format in line with the Kent Inclusive Practices.
The most up to date reading list for each module can be found on the university's reading list pages: https://kent.rl.talis.com/index.html
See the library reading list for this module (Canterbury)
The intended subject specific learning outcomes.
On successfully completing the module students will possess:
1 A systematic understanding and detailed knowledge of key texts and issues in Marxist cultural history and theory
2 The ability to deploy the techniques of Marxist thought in approaching cultural phenomena, including literature
3 The ability to evaluate contemporary and historical examples of cultural criticism on their own terms and in comparative relation to other critical approaches
4 A conceptual understanding of Marxist thought that will allow them to devise and maintain coherent arguments about literature and culture
The intended generic learning outcomes.
On successfully completing the module students will possess
1 An ability to use established techniques to initiate and undertake critical analysis of information, and to propose solutions to problems arising from that analysis
2 An Ability to communicate information, arguments, and analysis effectively using a variety of methods
3 An ability to use self-direction and autonomy in approaching and completing a critical task
4 An understanding of critical theory and its applications within a range of contexts
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