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M.A. Degree: Reading in Practice

Centre for Research into Reading Information and Linguistic Systems (CRILS) University of Liverpool Investigations into the Role of Literature in Bibliotherapy and Health Two-years (part-time) The Course If literature takes life as its subject-matter, what practical relation do books have to the lives of 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 degree in 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 or redundancy. It is concerned, instead, with the wider and deeper ways in which serious creative 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 the country, it invites open-minded investigation into the role of reading in relation to health in the broadest sense of that word. Books of all kinds novels, poetry, drama, essays in philosophy and theology; books from all periods from Shakespeare to the present: you will be helped to develop the ability, the confidence and the enthusiasm to use all literature as a form of personal time-travel and meditation. You will also learn how, in turn, you may re-create this process for others, through the formation of equivalent reading-groups based on the innovative and successful Get Into Reading 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 of analysis serves to increase, not diminish, the power of excitement Development of personal reading programmes in pursuit of individual journeys, with opportunities 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 readinggroups, through The Reader Organisation, our partners in what we call The Reading Revolution.

Join the Reading Revolution This is not meant to be a narrowly conventional academic course. It is a course for 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 use reading to enable them to think their thoughts better and find new ones, with excitement and 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 on the page in front of you. You dont need a first degree in literature and may not need a first degree at all: we look at individuals and individual cases in the light of a variety of evidence including prior experience. But you do have to be a serious, committed reader intent upon investigating the rich specifics, the key moments, of a work. The people who come to evening classes are only ostensibly after culture. Their great need, their hunger, is for good sense, clarity, truth even an atom of it. People are dying it is no metaphor for lack of something real to carry home when the day is done. Saul Bellow, Herzog Career opportunities Reader development is a fast-expanding field in libraries, in social regeneration and educational projects, in psychology, and in health provision. Innovative non-traditional interventions, such as encouraging personal development through shared group reading, are increasingly sought by many agencies: while this Masters is not a qualification for a specific profession (such as counselling), it will enhance the career prospects of those working or wishing to work in the fields outlined above, as well as offering opportunities for personal growth and the acquiring of expertise and confidence. Students may simply want to take this course for its own sake and for their own sake, but it also offers training opportunities for those 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 in English 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 Building University of Liverpool Liverpool L69 3GB Tel: 0151 794 2715 Email: p.m.davis@liv.ac.uk

3 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 of bursaries of between 1000 and 1500 p.a. You will automatically be eligible on application. Meeting Times Sessions will consist of one two-hour seminar per week, Thursdays 6.00-8.00 in term, in an informal 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 the first semester of the second year (each comprising 30 credits). Thereafter there will be two shorter 15 credit modules on research methods, including the preparation for and planning of your dissertation. You will begin work on your individually chosen dissertation (60 credits) around February of the second year, for completion by the end of September. You will have an individual supervisor 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, Doris Lessing and John Berger, with a selection of Elizabethan poetry. There will be opportunities to examine manuscript reproductions to see how authors make their choices and changes. The second literature module, Case Histories, will examine particular historical examples of individual 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 skilled actor or accomplished orator just a willing experimenter unafraid of involvement in a friendly and collaborative group environment. This module will also include a critical examination of the practice and theory of reading as potential therapy and in terms of social health. 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 practise your writing informally, prior to assessment, and will be encouraged to take risks, make mistakes, and be personally adventurous. Individual feedback sessions will be available to provide support.

4 What our students say: The most powerful feeling I had was that I was in an atmosphere where I could be honest. I loved the notion that what was required was to be what we really all are struggling thinkers. And that it was 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 to something deeper. Not to be satisfied with surface, but to give time and patience to the small things, the difficult things: Difficulty will yield to attention according to one tutor, and thats something 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 despite the 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 to take myself seriously. Having complicated things that go underneath the surface of the skin to think about. 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 thoughts and 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 my undergraduate 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, and wish 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 I probably used to skim over without even noticing. What I'll take away more than anything are moments from the sessions when something came alive.