UNISA World languages and literatures Course Module 2021 – 2022
NQF Level: 6: WLL2601, WLL2602.
NQF Level: 7: WLL3701, WLL3702, WLL3703, WLL3704, WLL3705.
World Language and Literatures is not offered as a major at undergraduate level. The WLL major is in the process of being phased-out. The first level has been discontinued and the third level (WLL 3701, WLL3702, WLL3703, WLL3704 and WLL3705) will be phasing – out in 2018. However, WLL2601 and WLL2602 modules will continue to be presented.
For Honours please see Modern European Languages and Literatures.
| Cultural Diversity in Literary Contexts – WLL2601 |
| Under Graduate Degree |
Semester module |
NQF level: 6 |
Credits: 12 |
| Module presented in English |
|
| Purpose: This module will be useful to students who want to develop competencies in interacting with different world views on a selection of thematic issues. These competencies include the ability to engage with different cultural views from across the world as expressed through the medium of literature. The ability to discern the origin and nature of, for example, cultural stereotyping aims to develop individual tolerance and respect for cultural differences. A critical awareness of diversity in cultural constructs when related to the learner’s immediate environment will enable the learner to develop further independently. All study material will be in English, but students will also be given access to primary texts in the original language if they wish to further their language skills. |
| Film, Literature and Society – WLL2602 |
| Under Graduate Degree |
Semester module |
NQF level: 6 |
Credits: 12 |
| Module presented in English |
|
| Purpose: This module will be of interest to students who wish to develop their competency in understanding the relationship between textual production and the making of films (i.e. the possibilities and limitations of different genres, problems in transpositions between literature and film in the context of mass media, different audience involvements, as well as the basic elements of reception theory). The acquisition of a critical terminology will aid the student in the art of writing within a multimedia environment. Students will also be encouraged to reflect critically on their own writing practice. The selection of texts and films will be from around the world, from Portuguese-, Spanish-, Italian-, German- and Russian-speaking countries, of which students will be expected to study one combination of text and film in depth. All study material will be in English, but students will also be given access to primary texts in the original language if they wish to further their language skills. |
| Alternative Worlds in Fiction – WLL3702 |
| Under Graduate Degree |
Semester module |
NQF level: 7 |
Credits: 12 |
| Module presented in English |
|
| Purpose: This module follows on the NQF Level 6 module Cultural Diversity, and deals with literature illustrating where diversity and individuality are targeted as harmful to the wellbeing of a collective. Students who complete this module will be able to understand and critically review the nature of Utopia/Dystopia as a literary genre, and identify various strategies which authors use in creating the utopian/dystopian universe in their work. |
| War and Literature – WLL3703 |
| Under Graduate Degree |
Semester module |
NQF level: 7 |
Credits: 12 |
| Module presented in English |
|
| Purpose: In this module students will engage in an interdisciplinary study of the relationship between culture, militarisation, propaganda, resistance, trauma and memory. In the process students will focus on examples of text, photography and film from a variety of genres such as the short story, the historical novel, testimony, journalism, propaganda. Qualifying students will be able to understand and critically review these texts and images and identify various strategies which authors and artists use in creating spaces for contestations around war and visions for peace. |
| Reading Africa – WLL3701 |
| Under Graduate Degree |
Semester module |
NQF level: 7 |
Credits: 12 |
| Module presented in English,Other languages |
Module presented online |
| Purpose: To expose students to multi-faceted experiences of life in Africa and African life abroad in a range of short stories, which have been translated into English from a variety of languages. Themes to be examined include isolation and exclusion; the effects of war and conflict; conflation of the old and the new; cultural clashes in new living environments. |
| The World of Pulp Literature – WLL3704 |
| Under Graduate Degree |
Semester module |
NQF level: 7 |
Credits: 12 |
| Module presented in English |
Module presented online |
| Purpose: The purpose of this module is to enable students to analyze literary texts that identify, evaluate and engage with the fragmented, post modernist writing of the Pulp Fiction genre. Learners analyse texts which focus on the various constructs of postmodern disjunctive societies, engage in critical reading of a different world view as expressed in literary texts as well as engage with the theoretical underpinning of the genre of the short story, specialized language and modes of expression within the literary works to be analysed and develop an understanding of the global environment through their intellectual interaction with a certain range of prescribed literary texts. |
| The World of Adventure in Literature – WLL3705 |
| Under Graduate Degree |
Semester module |
NQF level: 7 |
Credits: 12 |
| Module presented in English |
Module presented online |
| Purpose: The purpose of this module is to equip students with the knowledge and skills required to assimilate the socio-historical context of selected adventure literature from different parts of the world; analyse and differentiate between various types of texts arising from a common genre and consider whether these texts are representative or subversive of the norm; write critical evaluations of the constructions of manliness (in its various forms) and illustrate how these are promoted or marginalised in the texts; assess the current tenets of masculinity studies in Africa and the world and relate these to various contexts; and demonstrate an understanding of the aventure formula and its relation to formulaic adventure writing, as well as the role the given texts played in the emergence of science fiction. |