Reading in Practice Masters Degree

7/30/2019 Reading in Practice Masters Degree

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M.A. Degree: Reading in PracticeCentre for Research into Reading Information and Linguistic Systems (CRILS)

University of Liverpool

Investigations into the Role of Literature in Bibliotherapy and HealthTwo-years (part-time)

The Course

If literature takes life as its subject-matter, what practical relation do books have to the livesof those who read them? What help does reading really offer to people?

These are the questions raised by what is now often called Bibliotherapy: the attempt to

use books in the effort towards personal development and discovery. This Masters degreein Reading in Practice is not a course which concentrates upon narrowly targeted self-help

books how to overcome depression; how to survive divorce or bereavement orredundancy. It is concerned, instead, with the wider and deeper ways in which seriouscreative literature finds people, emotionally and imaginatively, by offering living models and

visions of human troubles and human possibilities. The first Masters degree of its kind in thecountry, it invites open-minded investigation into the role of reading in relation to health -in the broadest sense of that word.

Books of all kindsnovels, poetry, drama, essays in philosophy and theology; books from allperiods from Shakespeare to the present: you will be helped to develop the ability, theconfidence and the enthusiasm to use all literature as a form of personal time-travel andmeditation.

You will also learn how, in turn, you may re-create this process for others, through theformation of equivalent reading-groups based on the innovative and successful Get IntoReading a reader-development project run in various locations across the country(schools, hostels for homeless people, community libraries, day centres for the elderly,drop-in centres, prisons) by the award-winning charity, The Reader Organisation(www.thereader.org.uk).

Reading in Practice thus offers the following applied and practical opportunities:

Reading expertise in terms of practical criticism the ability to look closely,patiently and attentively at literature of all kinds from all ages, where the power ofanalysis serves to increase, not diminish, the power of excitement

Development of personal reading programmes in pursuit of individual journeys, withopportunities for informal and exploratory writing

Investigation into case-studies in the history of reading Introduction to the uses of the spectrograph in reading aloud, and of brain-imaging in

relation to the mental stimulus of poetry

Introduction to outreach work, reader development, and working with reading-groups, through The Reader Organisation, our partners in what we call The ReadingRevolution.
http://www.thereader.org.uk/http://www.thereader.org.uk/http://www.thereader.org.uk/http://www.thereader.org.uk/


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Join the Reading Revolution

This is notmeant to be a narrowly conventional academic course . It is a coursefor personal explorers in search of meaning in life people who dont want to have to read

loads of secondary lit crit or worry about historical context overmuch but want to usereading to enable them to think their thoughts better and find new ones, with excitementand imagination. It is also a course for people who want to be writers in this sense -namely, that you wont believe what you think or what you say, until you are trying it out onthe page in front of you.

You dont need a first degree in literature and may not need a first degree at all: welook at individuals and individual cases in the light of a variety of evidence including priorexperience. But you do have to be a serious, committed reader intent upon investigating therich specifics, the key moments, of a work.

The people who come to evening classes are only ostensibly after culture. Theirgreat need, their hunger, is for good sense, clarity, trutheven an atom of it.People are dyingit is no metaphorfor lack of something real to carry homewhen the day is done. Saul Bellow, Herzog

Career opportunities

Reader development is a fast-expanding field in libraries, in social regeneration andeducational projects, in psychology, and in health provision. Innovative non-traditionalinterventions, such as encouraging personal development through shared group reading, are

increasingly sought by many agencies: while this Masters is not a qualification for a specificprofession (such as counselling), it will enhance the career prospects of those working orwishing to work in the fields outlined above, as well as offering opportunities for personalgrowth and the acquiring of expertise and confidence. Students may simply want to take thiscourse for its own sake and for their own sake, but it also offers training opportunities forthose involved professionally in library, educational and health work.

Applications Next entry: September 2013.

You should normally have an undergraduate degree or equivalent - though not necessarily inEnglish Literature. But we wish to attract a wide range of lively and committed readers from

diverse educational backgrounds and will consider candidates on an individual basis.

You can apply on-line at:http://www.liv.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/applying/online.htm

Contact:Professor Philip Davis,Director, Centre for Research into Reading, Information and Linguistic Studies (CRILS)Room 213 Whelan BuildingUniversity of LiverpoolLiverpool L69 3GB

Tel: 0151 794 2715Email:[email protected]
http://www.liv.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/applying/online.htmhttp://www.liv.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/applying/online.htmmailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.liv.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/applying/online.htm


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MORE DETAILS

Fees

The standard fee for a two-year part-time Masters course is currently 2,658 per annum

but we are able to offer a number ofbursaries of between 1000 and 1500 p.a. You willautomatically be eligible on application.

Meeting Times

Sessions will consist of one two-hour seminar per week, Thursdays 6.00-8.00 in term, in aninformal and supportive setting.

The Syllabus

This is a two-year course, made up of five modules. There will be one literature module in

each of the first and second semesters of the first year, and a third literature module in thefirst semester of the second year (each comprising 30 credits). Thereafter there will be twoshorter 15 credit modules on research methods, including the preparation for and planningof your dissertation.

You will begin work on your individually chosen dissertation (60 credits) around February ofthe second year, for completion by the end of September. You will have an individualsupervisor to help you throughout.

The first literature module, Therapies, looks at novels and poems in the context of

therapeutic and redemptive purposes. Authors include Dickens, Wordsworth, Byron, DorisLessing and John Berger, with a selection of Elizabethan poetry. There will be opportunitiesto examine manuscript reproductions to see how authors make their choices and changes.

The second literature module, Case Histories, will examine particular historical examples ofindividual dilemmas - existential, philosophical and religious. Authors include Bunyan,George Eliot, Milton and Tennyson. We will range from the ancient question What must I

do to be saved? to modern psychological theories on the relation of pressing thoughts and

receptive thinking.

The third literature module, Practices, will include practical work on Shakespeare in

performance and workshop experiments in reading aloud. You do not have to be a skilledactor or accomplished orator just a willing experimenter unafraid of involvement in afriendly and collaborative group environment. This module will also include a criticalexamination of the practice and theory of reading as potential therapy and in terms of socialhealth.

Assessment

The literature modules will be assessed by means of long essays (5,000 words per module).The dissertation will consist of 15,000 words. You will be given opportunities to practiseyour writing informally, prior to assessment, and will be encouraged to take risks, make

mistakes, and be personally adventurous. Individual feedback sessions will be available toprovide support.


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What our students say:

The most powerful feeling I had was that I was in an atmosphere where I could be honest. I lovedthe notion that what was required was to be what we really all arestruggling thinkers. And that itwas fine for the feeling to come first, and then to work things out from there.

We were encouraged to believe in our own response in its validity, but also in its leading tosomething deeper. Not to be satisfied with surface, but to give time and patience to the smallthings, the difficult things: Difficulty will yield to attention according to one tutor, and thatssomething I shall not forget.

This course has been one of the most important things that I have done, and the most demanding.Both of these things - the demand, the importance - are linked.

I have ended up making a 400 mile round trip every week to get to these seminars and despitethe travel sickness I could easily have travelled double. It has been a complete privilege although not

always a pleasure to be in that room. What was good: Being taken seriously and being made totake myself seriously. Having complicated things that go underneath the surface of the skin to thinkabout. Being part of this shared but also very personal, individual, serious undertaking.

I feel that through my reading and writing on the MA I have consolidated some of the thoughtsand feelings that have been floating in my head for years, finding the words to understand them.

Ive found the MA incredible. As I mentioned in my initial interview, I did not enjoy myundergraduate degree at all and left university in 2008 feeling disconnected with literature,university and the majority of the people Id met along the way. This course has been the antidote.

The course often felt very hard and it should continue to do so. I feel bereft having finished, andwish I could do it over again.

It's like it's the only real education I've ever had.

It's such a personal course, where you must bring so much of yourself.

I definitely think in a different way now: less closed off and with more sensitivity to subtle things Iprobably used to skim over without even noticing. What I'll take away more than anything aremoments from the sessions when something came alive.

Documents

Reading in Practice Masters Degree