Southampton Solent University

Faculty of Media, Arts and Society

BA (Hons) Screenwriting/BA (Hons) Writing Contemporary Fiction

Authors &
AudiencesYear 2, Teaching Period Two, 2011

Tuesdays 11-12 RM323, and 12-2 SM213 (Screenwriting)

Wednesdays 11-1 SMZ01 (WCF)
 Unit Leader: Dr Tom Masters

Email: tom.masters@solent.ac.uk

Office: JM209 by appointment

Welcome to Authors & Audiences !

Unit Description:

This is one of the core theoretical and contextual units at Level 2. Over the next
thirteen scintillating weeks we’ll be examining the relationship between those who
create texts (i.e. the authors of books, films, and other assorted cultural products) and
those who consume them (i.e. their audiences, who consist of readers, listeners and
viewers). This unit seeks to build upon the understanding of the theories and methods
you’ve established at Level 1, particularly in the area of analysing signifying
practices.

This unit will enable you to make a sophisticated examination of representation and
identity by investigating the roles of author/producer intentionality, social, historical

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and cultural contexts, and reader/viewer positions in the production of meaning.
Notions of authorial autonomy will be critiqued using the ideas of key theorists
within the field of authorship and audience studies.

During the course of the unit you will deepen your understanding of Marxist,
feminist, postcolonial, queer, and psychoanalytical theoretical approaches (amongst
others) in relation to texts in a range of media, including advertising, film, gallery art,
and prose fiction.

This unit will inform your practice on many levels: as readers, as writers and as
cultural producers, thus contributing to your degree’s aim of helping you develop into
reflexive practitioners whose critical, analytical skills will ultimately enhance and
strengthen your skills in creative writing.

Learning Outcomes:

On successful completion of the unit you should be able to:

• Identify, explain and discuss key concepts studied on the unit, including
authorship, authority, discourse, identification, objectification, voyeurism,
fetishism, and otherness.

• Analyse and evaluate the principle theories studied on the unit, including
postmodern ideas of authorship and power, psychoanalytical views of
subjectivity, feminist theories of spectatorship, and postcolonial perspectives
of representation.

• Apply concepts, theories and methods studied to examine and interpret

possible meanings of written and visual examples and their effects.

• Reference sources using correct academic protocols.

• Reliably source data using basic research skills.

• Work independently and communicate relevant information and ideas in

coherent written form.

• Communicate knowledge, understanding and evaluative skills by producing

lucid, evidenced, written accounts and arguments using proper academic
citations.

Key Areas of Study:

• The Death of the Author

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 • The Author as Producer
• Power and Discourse
• The Subject and Language
• Psychoanalysis and the Text
• Spectatorship and Gender
• Race and Representation
• Queer Appropriations
• Testimony, Autobiography and Authority

Learning and Teaching Strategy:

Weekly lectures will include both Writing Contemporary Fiction and Screenwriting
students, and will be used to outline the theories, concepts and methods to be
examined in each segment of the unit, and to indicate their contexts and the issues
they raise/address. Lectures will also consider areas of debate, and will show
linkages between this unit and other units on the degree course. Finally, they will
offer the opportunity to practically demonstrate how these ideas of critical analysis
can be used to interpret a variety of cultural products.

For the weekly seminars, each subject group will have its own timetabled seminar.
Seminars will be used to: discuss/clarify student understanding of theories and
concepts; debate issues; examine and discuss theoretical texts and positions in detail
and to use these to interpret both tutor and student-selected visual and written texts.
This will allow you to present your findings informally and to exchange and debate
ideas with your peers.

During the course of the unit, you will each be offered two individual tutorials. One
will be used to aid preparation of the coursework essay; the other will provide
feedback on the essay and evaluate your progress on the unit.

This unit demands that you eagerly engage in a structured and concerted way with a
range of challenging ideas, and that you learn to apply these ideas to analysing a
range of ‘objects’. Consequently, you will be expected to read extensively, to
assimilate ideas and to study written and visual examples carefully. While class
contact is important in aiding your learning, this unit has been designed to allow
increased time for your own study.

Please note: attendance is compulsory if you are to complete this

unit. All absences must be satisfactorily explained. If you fail to do
so you will be…

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 EXTERMINATED!!!

List of Weekly
Adventures…
Week One – 18/01/11

• Lecture: Introduction to Authors and Audiences.

• Seminar: Reading/Activities/Discussion.

Week Two – 25/01/11

• Lecture: The Author as Producer.

• Seminar: Reading/Discussion.

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Week Three – 01/02/11

• Screening: Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005).

• Seminar: Discussion of the film.

Week Four – 08/02/11

• Lecture: The Plural Self: The Unifying Signifier?

• Seminar: Reading/Discussion.

Week Five – 15/02/11

• Lecture: Hyper-Reality: Distance and Desire.

• Seminar: Signs in Southampton: Field Study.

Week Six – 22/02/11

• Lecture: Postcolonial Subjects: Assimilation and Transformation.

• Seminar: Reading/Discussion.

Week Seven – 01/03/11

• Lecture: But Is It Art? Experimental vs. Commercial Textuality.

• Seminar: Reading/Discussion.

Week Eight – 08/03/11

• Screening: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988).

• Seminar: Discussion of the film.

Week Nine – 15/03/11

• Lecture: Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.

• Seminar: Reading/Discussion.

Week Ten – 22/03/11

• Lecture: Censorship vs. Free Expression

• Seminar: Debate.
• Essay Hand In (Friday 25/03/11).

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Week Eleven – 29/03/11

• Lecture: Telling Tales: ‘Truth’ and Autobiography.

• Seminar: Reading/Discussion/Activities.

Easter Break

Week Twelve – 26/04/11

• In Class Timed Assessment.

Week Thirteen – 03/05/11

• Tutorials.

[Please note that the above may be subject to change]

Required Reading:

You MUST buy a copy of Peter Barry’s Beginning Theory (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 2009)

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Indicative Reading:

• Barthes, Roland, ‘The Death of the Author’ (essay)

• Baudrillard, Jean, Simulations (New York: Semiotext[e], 1983)
• Benjamin, Walter, Illuminations (London: Fontana, 1992)
• Bloor, Meriel and Thomas Bloor, The Practice of Critical Discourse Analysis:
An Introduction (London: Hodder Arnold, 2007)
• Burke, Sean, The Death and Return of the Author (Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 1998)
• Butler, Judith, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
(London: Routledge, 2006)
• Culler, Jonathan, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2000) Eagleton, Terry, Marxism and Literary Criticism
(London: Routledge, 2002)
• Eagleton, Terry, The Idea of Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000)
• Fanon, Franz, Black Skin, White Masks (London: Pluto, 1986)
• Fish, Stanley, Is There a Text in This Class? (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1990)
• Foucault, Michel, The Archaeology of Knowledge (London: Routledge, 2002)
• Lacan, Jacques, Ecrits (New York: W W Norton, 2007)
• Loomba, Ania, Colonialism/Postcolonialism (London: Routledge, 2005)
• McLeod, John, Beginning Postcolonialism (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 2000)
• Moi, Toril, Sexual/Textual Politics (London: Routledge, 2002)
• Marks, Elaine and Isabelle de Courtivton (eds), New French Feminisms
(Amherst: UMP, 1980)
• Shklovsky, Viktor, ‘Art as Technique’ (essay)
• Wilson, Scott, Cultural Materialism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995)

This list is by no means exhaustive; it is simply meant to indicate the

possibilities!

Assessment
Briefs
Assessment 1 Details:
Unit Title: Authors and Audiences

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Unit Code: CAC201
Unit Leader: Dr Tom Masters
Level: 2
Assessment Title: Critical Essay
Assessment Number: 1
Assessment Type: Critical Essay
Restrictions on Time/Length : 2000 words
Individual/Group: Individual
Assessment Weighting: 60%
Issue Date: Week beginning 17th January 2011
Hand In Date: Week 10 (teaching period two) – 25/03/11
Planned Feedback Date: Week 13 (teaching period two) – 03/05/11
Number of copies to be submitted: 1

Assessment Task

You will write a 2000 word essay answering the following question:

Compare and contrast the representation of ONE or more of the following:

• Gender
• Sexuality
• Race
• Class
• Religion
• The physical body

with regards to at least TWO texts of YOUR CHOICE. Indicative texts include:

• Milan Kundera’s novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

• The film version of The Unbearable Lightness of Being
• Zadie Smith’s novel, White Teeth
• The film My Beautiful Laundrette
• The film Mansfield Park
• Jane Austen’s novel, Mansfield Park
• The film, Wings of Desire

(You can also discuss paintings, sculptures, advertisements, poems, video games, etc.)

You must use AT LEAST ONE of the following essays/articles to underpin your
work:

• Roland Barthes’ essay: ‘The Death of the Author’.

• Walter Benjamin’s essay: ‘The Author as Producer’
• Eduardo Nava’s essay ‘The Blogger as Producer’
• Laura Mulvey’s essay: ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’
• Mario Wenning’s essay: ‘The Reality Behind Commodity Fetishism’

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 • Nathan Wolfson’s essay: PoMo Desire: Authorship and Agency in Wim
Wender’s Wings of Desire
• Roger Horrocks, Masculinity in Crisis (extracts to be handed out in class)

You will also need at least FOUR or FIVE other secondary critical sources to
support the arguments you make in your essays!

Please ensure that your work is double-spaced and in a readable font (size 12), and
that it includes page numbers, word count, a FMAS cover sheet, a title page, and a
separate Bibliography (divided into primary and secondary sources). Ensure the
Introduction indicates the following:

1. What the essay question is asking you to do.

2. Which primary texts you will be using.
3. Which of the secondary required essays/articles you will be using.

Your essay should have around three good, solid points that support the main essay
question. You must include critical quotes from secondary resources to support your
arguments (and these must be properly Harvard-referenced). Ensure that there is a
logical flow between paragraphs/ideas, and finally, make sure your Conclusion solidly
ties up all of the points you made within the body of the essay. Do not make any new
points in the Conclusion.

Assessment Criteria

• Demonstrate awareness of academic debates about authorship and audiences.

• Demonstrate the ability to select appropriate primary texts for analysis.
• Demonstrate the ability to select appropriate secondary texts to support the essay’s
argument.
• Show evidence of analysis of text(s).
• Use correct academic protocols of referencing and bibliography.
• Use correct spelling and grammar.

Assessment 2 Details:

Unit Title: Authors and Audiences

Unit Code: CAC201
Unit Leader: Dr Tom Masters
Level: 2

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Assessment Title: Time Constrained Assignment
Assessment Number: 2
Assessment Type: Time Constrained Assignment
Restrictions on Time/Length : 2hrs
Individual/Group: Individual
Assessment Weighting: 40%
Issue Date: Week beginning 17th January 2011
Hand In Date: (assignment done in Week 12 (teaching period two)
class) 26/04/11 or 27/04/11 (WCF)
Planned Feedback Date: Examination week 2
Number of copies to be submitted: 1

Assessment Task
Screenwriting Students will be required to view a 20-minute video clip and to take
notes on this. They will then have a further 10 minutes to organise/plan their analysis
of the clip and 1.5 hours to produce a written critical analysis of this clip in essay
form.

Writing Contemporary Fiction Students will be required to read an extract from a

literary text and to take notes on this to organise/plan an analysis of this extract. They
will be allowed two hours total (including the reading time) to produce a written
critical analysis of this extract in essay form.

Assessment Criteria

• Demonstrate the ability to make a close analysis of a textual extract.

• Demonstrate awareness of academic debates about authorship and audiences.
• Demonstrate the ability to select appropriate secondary texts to support the
essay’s argument.
• Use correct academic protocols of referencing and bibliography.
• Use correct spelling and grammar.

Aggregation and Re-assessment Rules

Both elements of assessment will be aggregated to produce a total unit mark.

Referral for Assessment 1 will involve writing an essay on a different question.
Referral for Assessment 2 will involve answering a question based upon a new film
extract/passage of fiction.

Extenuating Circumstances

The University’s Extenuating Circumstances procedures are in place if there are

genuine circumstances that may have affected your academic performance.
Remember however you need to be ‘fit to study’, this means that you can either

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submit your assessed work or declare extenuating circumstances, but you cannot do
both.

A summary of guidance notes for students is given below:

http://blade2-5.solent.ac.uk/DocMan8/rns?RNSExact=ASQS/PPG/1234570925

Academic Misconduct

Any submissions must be your own work and, where facts or ideas have been used
from other sources, these sources must be appropriately referenced. The University’s
Academic Handbook, includes the definitions of all practices that will be deemed to
constitute academic misconduct. You should check this link before submitting your
work.

Procedures relating to student academic misconduct are given below:

http://blade2-5.solent.ac.uk/DocMan8/rns?RNSExact=ASQS/PPG/1234570157

Ethics Policy

The work being carried out by the student must be in compliance with the Ethics
Policy. Where there is an ethical issue, as specified within the Ethics Policy, then the
student will need an ethics release or an ethical approval prior to the start of the
project.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate

to ask!

Have Fun!!!

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