Order 1422406: identification - solitary reading naturalistic study

LE2109 Literature, Culture and Society 2018-19 Dr Chloe Harrison

Assignment 1 Due Friday 18th January 2019. 3,000 words. (100% weighting). Please submit via Turnitin. The assignment tests your ability to understand and apply ideas, theories and concepts from this module, specifically:

 Your ability to critically analyse how readers read and respond to contemporary texts;

 Your ability to engage with the factors that may influence a text’s reception;

 Your ability to identify and analyse textual, critical and literary information; and specifically to retrieve reader response data from different contexts;

 Your ability to draw on secondary reading and integrate it into your argument.

Assignment focus

For example, you might explore the idea of crossover fiction (e.g. implied readers) through a language analysis (e.g. which metaphors are used by readers) of the top 20 Goodreads reviews of Philip Pullman’s Book of Dust. You should use the ideas and concepts learnt and discussed in lectures and seminars to frame your work. You cannot use all of these so ensure that you think about which are most useful for you and select these carefully.

 Popularity  Censorship (e.g. implied readers)  Solitary reading (e.g. reading and the emotions; projection)  Social reading (e.g. affinity spaces)  E-reading/ digital fiction/ ludonarratives (e.g. text immersion/

interaction)  Re-writing  Re-reading

Select one of the texts and one of the topics (e.g. censorship, popularity, re-reading,

etc.) introduced on the course.

Drawing on reader response data (e.g. literary criticism, online reader reviews, a

reader questionnaire, etc.), develop an analysis of the text alongside a consideration

of its reception.

LE2109 Literature, Culture and Society 2018-19 Dr Chloe Harrison

Ethics approval forms In your assignment you can carry out either a naturalistic study of readers or an empirical study of literature. Regardless of which approach you take, you will need to complete an ethics approval form and send to Chloe Harrison ([email protected]) by Friday 30th November. Guidance on this will be provided during TP1. If you are carrying out a study that involves primary data collection from human participants (e.g. if you are using a reader questionnaire) you will additionally need to send a copy of the consent form and a participant information sheet (examples of these will be uploaded to the Blackboard page) that you plan to use in your study. Copies of these should also be attached to your assignment as an Appendix. A copy of the ethics approval form can be found in the Assignments folder on the Blackboard page.

Assessment criteria (see assessment grid and Lecture 10 slides for more detail)

• Knowledge of subject and topic

• Critical awareness: selection and application of theory and critical thought • Argument and structure • Expression, presentation and referencing

Structure of Assignment Your assignment should have the following: 1. Title page: your candidate number and module code (LE2109). 2. Introduction: a brief overview of your essay, the text studied and its literary

reception (approximately 200 words). 3. Literature Review: this should cover the theoretical ideas that you are going

to explore and any secondary reading on your text (approximately 600 words).

4. Methodology: this should be a brief section outlining how you have collected your reader response data. You should include information about where you collected it from, how you intend to analyse it, plus any ethical considerations that need to be made (approx 200 words).

5. Analysis: this should provide a detailed analysis of the text and its reception, drawing on the reader response data (approx 1900 words).

6. Conclusion: this should briefly sum up your findings (approximately 100 words)

7. References: using the Harvard style. 8. Appendix: include your (anonymised) reader response data here. Dr Chloe Harrison September 2018