ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZAAABACADAEAFAGAHAIAJAKALAMANAOAPAQARASATAUAVAWAXAYAZBA
1
1. Admissions/ Management Information
2
Title of the programme – including any lower awards
Please provide the titles used for all awards relating to this programme. Note: all programmes are required to have at least a Postgraduate Certificate exit award.

See guidance on programme titles in:
3
Masters MA in Culture and Thought After 1945
4
Postgraduate Diploma Postgraduate Diploma in Culture and Thought After 1945Please indicate if the Postgraduate Diploma is available as an entry point, ie. is a programme on which a student can register, is an exit award, ie. is only available to students exiting the masters programme early, or both.Exit
5
Postgraduate Certificate Postgraduate Certificate in Culture and Thought After 1945Please indicate if the Postgraduate Certificate is available as an entry points, ie. is a programme on which a student can register, is an exit award, ie. is only available to students exiting the masters programme early, or both.Exit
6
Level of qualificationLevel 7
7
This document applies to students who commenced the programme(s) in:2021/22
8
Awarding institutionTeaching institution
9
University of York University of York
10
Department(s):
Where more than one department is involved, indicate the lead department		Board of Studies
11
Lead Department English and Related LiteratureEnglish and Related Literature
12
Other contributing Departments: History, History of Art (as parent departments to centre) plus other departments and centres contributing to CORE module and providing OPTION modules (including, TFTV, Archeology, Music, Sociology, and the Centre for Women's Studies)
13
Route code
(existing programmes only)
PMENGSCUT1
14
Admissions criteria
15
BA 2:1 (with preference for strong academic record and interdisciplinary interests to match MA programme and help ensure successful completion)
16
Length and status of the programme(s) and mode(s) of study
17
ProgrammeLength (years/ months) Status (full-time/ part-time)
Please select		Start dates/months
(if applicable – for programmes that have multiple intakes or start dates that differ from the usual academic year)		Mode
18
19
Face-to-face, campus-basedDistance learningOther
20
MA Culture & Thought After 19451Full-timePlease select Y/NYesPlease select Y/NNo
21
MA Culture & Thought After 19452Part-timePlease select Y/NYesPlease select Y/NNo
22
Language(s) of study
23
English
24
Language(s) of assessment
25
English
26
2. Programme accreditation by Professional, Statutory or Regulatory Bodies (PSRB)
27
2.a. Is the programme recognised or accredited by a PSRB
28
Please Select Y/N: Noif No move to section 3
if Yes complete the following questions
29
3. Additional Professional or Vocational Standards
30
Are there any additional requirements of accrediting bodies or PSRB or pre-requisite professional experience needed to study this programme?
31
Please Select Y/N: Noif Yes, provide details
32
4. Programme leadership and programme team
33
4.a. Please name the programme leader for the year to which the programme design applies and any key members of staff responsible for designing, maintaining and overseeing the programme.
34
Dr JT Welsch is Director of the Centre for Modern Studies and Dr Victoria Coulson is Director of Postgraduate Programmes in the Department of English and Related Literature
35
5. Purpose and learning outcomes of the programme
36
5.a. Statement of purpose for applicants to the Masters programme
Please express succinctly the overall aims of the programme as an applicant facing statement for a prospectus or website. This should clarify to a prospective masters student why they should choose this programme, what it will provide to them and what benefits they will gain from completing it.
37
The MA in ‘Culture and Thought After 1945’, based in the Centre for Modern Studies, offers you a unique chance to study the aesthetic, theoretical, cultural, political and historical developments of "the contemporary" at both an advanced academic level and with a personal focus. The MA programme enables you to simultaneously advance your disciplinary knowledge - pushing you into new intellectual areas - and engage with challenging arguments about “contemporary” societies and ideas. The programme will stretch you intellectually across more than one disciplinary domain, around the globe and into topical debates about the dynamcis of the contemporary world. This depth and flexibility of engagement is possible due to a structure which includes a core conceptual framing module and on-going graduate training, as well as access to modules from eight different departments - English, History, History of Art, Archaeology, Sociology, TFTV, Music and the Centre for Women’s Studies. You can come from any relevant disciplinary background, and find an attractive breadth, depth and vibrancy of the modules across the humanities and social sciences. The result is that you are able to construct your own interest-based programme in an incredibly research-rich and intellectually diverse environment. You will develop a range of important transferable skills: critically analysing textual, visual and aural sources; managing large amounts of information; improving written and oral communication skills; and developing advanced powers of argumentative persuasion. With this emphasis on critical, theoretical and interdisciplinary thinking about the contemporary, the programme lays a strong foundation for future careers in publishing, advertising, the media, teaching, journalism and many other areas of the creative industries. The programme also serves as perfect preparation for doctoral research.
38
5.b.i. Programme Learning Outcomes - Masters
Please provide six to eight statements of what a graduate of the Masters programme will be able to do.
If the document only covers a Postgraduate Certificate or Postgraduate Diploma please specify four to six PLO statements in the sections 5.b.ii and 5.b.iii as appropriate.
Taken together, these outcomes should capture the distinctive features of the programme. They should also be outcomes for which progressive achievement through the course of the programme can be articulated, and which will therefore be reflected in the design of the whole programme.
39
PLOOn successful completion of the programme, graduates will be able to:
40
1Analyse and theorise the nature of the 'contemporary' by examining the place of culture within postwar aesthetic, political, historical and philosophical debates.
41
2Understand, evaluate, and deploy key areas of postwar critical thinking, within particular disciplinary modules and via interdisciplinary/trans-disciplinary models.
42
3Critically evaluate methodological tools and approaches across disciplinary boundaries and then draw together approaches based on their own educational needs, academic interests and high-level digital skills within, across and beyond disciplinary lines.
43
4Initiate, conduct, and take responsibility for independent research, drawing on skills honed by graduate-level research training, research-led teaching, and the completion of a substantial dissertation project and several module specific essays across participating departments and centres.
44
5Communicate sophisticated written arguments in a clear, accurate and persuasive fashion, synthesising evidence from multiple sources so as to convey information creatively and convincingly.
45
6Engage in verbal discussion of complex textual material, demonstrating versatility, rigour, and confidence in the reception, appreciation, and articulation of high-level ideas and perspectives.
46
7Direct their own development, bringing new knowledge and transferable skills, such as critical analysis and information management, to bear upon a range of contexts including, but not limited to, further academic study and careers in creative industries.
47
5.c. Explanation of the choice of Programme Learning Outcomes
Please explain your rationale for choosing these PLOs in a statement that can be used for students (such as in a student handbook). Please include brief reference to:
48
i) ... in what way will these PLOs result in an ambitious, challenging programme which stretches the students?
49
The PLOs clearly demonstrate the high standards of intellectual enquiry that underpin the programme, including the complexity of debates about differing approaches to the contemporary and the need to both understand discipline-specific approaches to this category as well as inter-/trans-disciplinary approaches to it. The PLOs convey the centrality of the category of culture to debates and patterns of thought that have developed within and mutated across the contemporary period. They also demonstrate the manner in which students will be required to think in advanced ways about these debates across aesthetic, political, historical and philosophical domains. The PLOs express the elasticity of thinking required to manage information, critical sources, and differing methodological tools and approaches from within and across different disciplinary domains. Simultaneously, they demonstrate how the programme enables such skills to also be used for personal and professional development, including through the use of audience-specific modes of communication, within and beyond academia. Consequently, the PLOs demonstrate and help establish the unique and intellectually advanced requirements for, and outcomes of, a broad yet carefully selected interdisciplinary programme of taught postgraduate study.
50
ii) ... in what way will these PLOs produce a programme which is distinctive and advantageous to the student?
51
The PLOs evidence the unique status and intellectual breadth of the MA in Culture and Thought After 1945. This is a distinctive interdisciplinary programme, operating within an interdisciplinary research centre at a Russell Group university and offering its own intellectually grounding core module – Framing the Contemporary. In this way, it is an exceptional MA programme, with few – if any – direct competitors. The PLOs show the range of subject and disciplinary areas offered via the MA and suggest the variety of routes and interests students can take up. The PLOs also convey the high standards, theoretical precision and analytical versatility that students require for the programme, meaning they convey the manner in which their ability to manage, shape, and mobilise cross-boundary thinking will be substantially advanced, clearly aiding a wide spectrum of future professional journeys.
52
iii) ... how the design of the programme enables students from diverse entry routes to transition successfully into the programme? For example, how does the organisation of the programme ensure solid foundations in disciplinary knowledge and understanding of conventions, language skills, mathematics and statistics skills, writing skills, lab skills, academic integrity
53
As an interdisciplinary programme stretching across a variety of Arts & Humanities disciplines, and also drawing on the Social Sciences, the MA in Culture and Thought enables students from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds to enter into a new style of study programme, and to sit alongside other students whose disciplinary training may come from across a spectrum of relevant (but not necessarily the same) areas. In this way, the MA programme enables entry from across a broad range of disciplinary backgrounds. And, while the entry policy encourages students with particularly strong theoretical interests and advanced modes of critical thinking skills to apply, it makes clear provision for students coming from outside the most common routes into the MA, both in terms of disciplinary training and in terms of educational route.

On the programme, the core module – Framing the Contemporary – underpins the necessary intellectual range required for the MA programme, training students in how to take up disciplinary debates and move them across boundaries, where appropriate, and how to ask probing questions about such intellectual boundary crossing. It enables them to encounter discipline-specific advances or mutations in thinking within the contemporary period and to explore how such changes fit into larger patterns or intellectual trends. The core module also provides methodological templates for approaching inter-/trans-disciplinary study that establish the foundation for the rest of the MA programme and its optionality. In providing an opportunity for formative writing, via Framing the Contemporary, the MA ensures that all students – from all entries routes and disciplinary backgrounds – receive early and constructive feedback about how to shape their research and writing approaches for the MA. And this is accompanied by instruction about the Academic Integrity tutorial and a wide range of training activities coming from, and also as linked to, the MA programme. The new graduate training module in English is strongly oriented toward developing writing skills at MA level, which will be of particular help to students transitioning into the programme from diverse entry routes. The opportunity to participate in History department graduate training enables students to further engage, under staff supervision, with issues in using digital resouces for humanities research, for example online databases and online repositories.

Across the MA as a whole, the variety of option modules means that students can select specific topics and methodological approaches that interest them, or that they feel will benefit them directly in terms of skill acquisition. The specifications for all modules offered are reviewed before being made available to students to ensure: that all MA students on the programme will be eligible for the module; that they will intellectually gain in relation to the overall ambitions and PLOs of the MA programme; and that the module works as part of the inter-changeable range of options that constitute an effective and challenging interdisciplinary MA programme.

The design of the dissertation, and the supervision and training pattern provided to accompany it, including support from staff with inter-/trans-disciplinary interests and/or training, also ensures that students from all backgrounds will gain support across the full stretch of research and writing tasks required of them for successful completion of the programme.
54
iv) ... how the programme is designed to enable students to progress successfully - in a limited time frame - through to the end of the award? For example, the development of higher level research skills; enabling students to complete an independent study module; developing competence and confidence in practical skills/ professional skills. See QAA masters characteristics doument http://www.qaa.ac.uk/en/Publications/Documents/Masters-Degree-Characteristics-15.pdf
55
The programme is designed to ensure that the students receive the grounding they need, intellectually and in terms of specific study and related skills, at a pace that is commensurate with their programme progress and supports their movements through the developing challenges of the MA.

At the outset, the core module, Framing the Contemporary, provides the intellectual training and methodological example-setting that students require to lay the foundations for the rest of the programme. Via this module, all MA in Culture and Thought After 1945 students complete an essay and receive feedback from their individual supervisors in a constructive and supportive manner. This ensures: that they understand the broad requirements – specifically in terms of research, writing and argumentation – required at masters level; that they receive feedback that helps them understand how to begin to approach inter-/trans-disciplinary thinking and writing, including how to tackle and/or mobilise complex theoretical debates about the contemporary; and that they benefit from individualized feedback on how to improve their own study approach, including their strategies for research, writing and scholarly presentation.

Across the option modules, students receive expert- and research-led teaching, and this key facet of the programme ensures that the methods and materials they encounter and the materials they use are sufficiently challenging, field defining, and recent for them to approach as an example of how to proceed in the undertaking of advanced academic and scholarly work.

The completion of substantial written work via assessments at the end of each module, and the individualized and robust feedback provided for each assessment, ensures that students are moving towards the successful completion of a larger dissertation project. The support of their supervisor, as well as individual tutors, through this assessment and feedback process, also helps ensure that they understand how to ask questions about their work and how to implement suggestions for improvement. The new graduate training module in English is built around the idea of progression, and contains a substantial amount of provision oriented towards preparation for the dissertation.

In asking students to select option modules that match their own intellectual interests and/or skill-development requirements, from across a range of disciplines and subject areas, the programme builds in mechanisms that allow for independent and cumulative study gains that feed into the larger dissertation project and show each student, before they start their dissertation, that they have already completed a set of individually chosen modules and assessment tasks, that they have already managed their own intellectual priorities and selection strategies, and that they can draw on the interconnections that they have made across their modules in order to complete their final dissertation project.
56
v) ... how this programme (as outlined in these PLOs) will develop students’ digital literacy skills and how technology-enhanced learning will be used to support active student learning through peer/tutor interaction, collaboration and formative (self) assessment opportunities (reference could be made to such as blogging, flipped classroooms, response 'clickers' in lectures, simulations, etc).
57
Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the MA, including its core module provision, all students will encounter new methods of study, and so they will encounter new methods of argumentation, of data/evidence presentation, of presentation style and requirements etc. The VLE supports the core module programme, and all the option modules provided. The students make use of their existing digital skills in the presentations of written assessments, and through e-submission procedures. More substantially, they can choose to develop new digital skills by: pursuing modules in particularly appropriate disciplinary domains (e.g. sociology); by mobilising digital techniques from one discipline and, where appropriate, redeploying them in another; and through debates, discussions and written work on aspects of digital culture (e.g. social media) that they may not have encountered before as scholarly topics. For example, the core module, Framing the Contemporary, asks students to engage with televisual materials and to select and present examples they choose on specific topics/challenges. This core module also enables students to explore a range of disciplinary research tools that require or can make use of digital technologies (e.g. contemporary art and installations, or contemporary archeology, as well as theatre, film and television). In this way, it helps students gain access to new digital practices in the academic contemporary, and also offers examples from which they can learn about how they might shape and manage their own independent projects later. This approach is enhanced by similarly appropriate teaching and training in the option modules. Students also benefit from the MA programme's close relationship with the Centre for Modern Studies, and they can participate in research events, reading groups and postgraduate forum events that will enable them to practice using their digital skills in an immediate and productive fashion (e.g. setting up their own reading materials online, organising conferences and video guest speakers, ensuring that their own presentations and audio-visual provisions work sucessfully etc).
58
vi) ... how this programme (as outlined in these PLOs) will support and enhance the students’ employability (for example, opportunities for students to apply their learning in a real world setting)?
The programme's employablity objectives should be informed by the University's Employability Strategy:
59
Students gain advanced academic and scholarly skills via the MA; more specifically, via the interdisciplinary nature of the programme they will develop strong and versatile modes of thinking, researching, writing and presenting information. They will be able to communicate in ways that are discipline and audience specific, and manage data, evidence and argument, in ways that are particular to discreet domains and in ways that can transgress boundaries, appealing to wider as well as potentially new audiences. Students gain opportunities to study in areas in which they feel they require additional and/or more advanced training, thereby gaining new intellectual impetus in new areas of thinking and also being able to building on their existing skills and training in new and more advanced ways. Students will select their modules, and thereby their own sense of intellectual focus and/or breadth, in accordance with their own intellectual and potentially professional (or future-oriented) needs. They will practice self-directed study across the programme and particularly in the dissertation, making them well equipped for future independent work.

On the core module, student undertake a gallery trip as part of the seminar programme, and work to bridge their experience of art, including its insitutional positioning and curating, with scholarly debates they have in-class. On this module students also benefit from exposure to academic work and research in different displays and the variety of relationships with non-university partnerships this brings (e.g. via History of Art gallery and museum trips, English's creative writing at York offerings, or Archeology's management of site access for recent research on contemporary archeology).

Students will also gain relevant exposure to non-university settings, debates and socio-political as well as aesthetic, cultural and historical shifts via their option module choices, and they can select to take more or less applied modules as they see fit. The programme provides opportunities for students to undertake modules which expressly bind together academic research and activities and practices in other institutions and public spaces. For example, students can select from a module list that includes: Art Installation/Participation; Themes and Issues in Contemporary Sociology; and Cultural Heritage Management I and 2. They can also apply to take a Public History Placement module. Students have the opportunity to work closely with a range of academics and centres (notably the Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past or History of Art department) who engage in quotidian relationships with practitioners in the heritage and creative sectors, through which relationships can be forged and exploited for the workplace.

In addition to these provisions, students may choose to develop dissertation projects that are more explicitly directed towards a particular career path or one that explores a non-university institution, place, or employment practice. Finally, students are able to engage with the wide training programme offered by English, as well as those coming from History and History of Art, and the HRC, and each of these programmes offers employability-linked sessions and opportunities for skills acquisition.
60
viii) ... how learning and teaching on the programme are informed and led by research in the department/ Centre/ University?
61
The programme was conceived as reflecting the reality that many academic staff undertake research that extends across disciplinary boundaries. In this way the programme is - at its intellectual roots - bound to the research culture and practices of advanced and experienced research scholars. All staff teaching on the core module - Framing the Contemporary - offer sessions that marry questions about how a particular discipline has been altered by larger patterns of intellectual transformation and a research-specific example case of how this has worked for them, or the area within which their research exists. This means that all sessions demonstrate to students how specific disciplines have developed in the postwar period, how they have been challenged and/or changed by large patterns of intellectual and cultural transformation, and also how such issues can manifest in focused and scholarly research activities, projects and arguments.

Across the range of option modules available, teaching staff are typically constructing and teaching their modules from within their own research frame of reference, drawing on disciplinary and inter-/trans-disciplinary debates, as appropriate, setting up broad questions/issues where needed, but also focusing in on research-intensive approaches, methods and questions from which the students can gain specific content insights and also examples of how best to pursue high-standard research. Via their dissertation projects students can also gain support from the research experience and expertise of their supervisor, and this can be in content or methodological terms, and is often across both. Finally, staff contributing to the range of training opportunities available to the MA students also use their research and the experiences they have gained while researching to help the students understand how academic, and other research-activities and employment function.
62
5.d. Progression
For masters programmes where students do not incrementally 'progress' on the completion of a discrete Postgraduate Certificate and Postgraduate Diploma, please summarise students’ progressive development towards the achievement of the PLOs, in terms of the characteristics that you expect students to demonstrate at the end of the set of modules or part thereof. This summary may be particularly helpful to students and the programme team where there is a high proportion of option modules and in circumstances where students registered on a higher award will exit early with a lower one.

Note: it is not expected that a position statement is written for each masters PLO, but this can be done if preferred.
63
On completion of modules sufficient to obtain a Postgraduate Certificate students will be able to:
If the PG Cert is an exit award only please provide information about how students will have progressed towards the diploma/masters PLOs. Please include detail of the module diet that students will have to have completed to gain this qualification as an exit award.
64
The PG Certificate in Culture and Thought offers recognition for their work and achievements to students who have completed taught elements of the degree, without them having to complete a dissertation project or a long essay. Students must obtain 60 credits in order to receive a certificate. Students will thus have completed at least three modules: the core module plus 2 option modules and assessment requirements for each of those modules. They will have passed at least 40 credits outright and received at least a compensatory pass in another 20 credits. Students achieving a certificate will have engaged with Postgraduate Life in Practice but will not have completed the module, so no credits will be awarded to this provision.

In this manner, students will have studied in accordance with the PLOs that are mapped via the core module and option module entries on the Masters Programme Map. They will have engaged in learning towards all seven PLOs, and will have been assessed on the first five PLOs.
65
On completion of modules sufficient to obtain a Postgraduate Diploma students will be able to:
If the PG Diploma is an exit award only please provide information about how students will have progressed towards the masters PLOs. Please include detail of the module diet that students will have to have completed to gain this qualification as an exit award.
66
The PG Diploma in Culture and Thought offers a postgraduate qualification that can be completed in less time than the MA and involves the writing of a 6-7,000-word long essay rather than a 14-16,000-word dissertation. Students must obtain 120 credits in order to receive the diploma. 80 credits are gained for the four taught modules, 10 credits gained from the completion of Postgraduate Life in Practice 1, and the diploma long essay carries 30 credits.

Successfully completing these requirements will mean that students gaining a Diploma will have engaged in learning towards all seven PLOs, and will have been assessed on six of those PLOs (excluding PLO6).
67
6. Reference points and programme regulations
68
6.b. University award regulations
69
The University’s award and assessment regulations apply to all programmes: any exceptions that relate to this programme are approved by University Teaching Committee and are recorded at the end of this document.
70
7. Programme Structure
71
7.a. Module Structure and Summative Assessment Map
Please complete the summary table below which shows the module structure and the pattern of summative assessment through the programme.

IMPORTANT NOTE:
If the structure of your programme does not fit the usual academic year (for instance students start at the beginning of September or in January) please contact your Academic Quality Team contact in the Academic Support Office for guidance on how to represent the structure in an alternative format.

To clearly present the overall programme structure, include the name and details of each invidual CORE module in the rows below. For OPTION modules, ‘Option module’ or 'Option from list x' should be used in place of specifically including all named options. If the programme requires students to select option modules from specific lists by term of delivery or subject theme these lists should be provided in the next section (7.b).

From the drop-down select 'S' to indicate the start of the module, 'A' to indicate the timing of each distinct summative assessment point (eg. essay submission/ exam), and 'E' to indicate the end of teaching delivery for the module (if the end of the module coincides with the summative assessment select 'EA'). It is not expected that each summative task will be listed where an overall module might be assessed cumulatively (for example weekly problem sheets).

Summative assessment by exams should normally be scheduled in the spring week 1 and summer Common Assessment period (weeks 5-7). Where the summer CAP is used, a single ‘A’ can be used within the shaded cells as it is understood that you will not know in which week of the CAP the examination will take place. (NB: An additional resit assessment week is provided in week 10 of the summer term for postgraduate students. See Guide to Assessment, 5.4.a)
72
Full time structure
73
CreditsModuleAutumn TermSpring Term Summer Term Summer Vacation
74
CodeTitle12345678910123456789101234567891012345678910111213
75
20ENG00050MFraming the ContemporarySEA
76
20variousOption ModuleSEA
77
20variousOption ModuleSEA
78
20variousOption ModuleSEA
79
80variousDissertationSEA
80
20
ENG00016M and ENG00107M
Postgraduate Life in Practice 1 & 2SAAAEA
81
Please indicate when the Progression Board and Final Exam board will be held and when any reassessments will be submitted.
NB: You are required to provide at least three weeks notice to students of the need for them to resubmit any required assessments, in accordance with the Guide to Assessment section 4.9
82
Progression BoardSummer Term & Week 6
83
ReassessmentSummer Term & Week 11
84
Exam BoardAutumn Term & Week 6
85
Part time structures
Please indicate the modules undertaken in each year of the part-time version of the programme. Please use the text box below should any further explanation be required regarding structure of part-time study routes.
86
Year 1 (if you offer the programme part-time over either 2 or 3 years, use the toggles to the left to show the hidden rows)
87
CreditsModuleAutumn TermSpring Term Summer Term Summer Vacation
88
CodeTitle12345678910123456789101234567891012345678910111213
89
20
ENG00050M
Framing the ContemporarySEA
90
20variousOption ModuleSEA
91
variousDissertationSE
92
10ENG00016MPostgraduate Life in Practice 1SAAE
93
Please indicate when the Progression Board and Final Exam board will be held and when any reassessments will be submitted.
NB: You are required to provide at least three weeks notice to students of the need for them to resubmit any required assessments, in accordance with the Guide to Assessment section 4.9
94
Progression BoardSummer Term & Week 6
95
ReassessmentSummer Term & Week 11
96
Exam BoardAutumn Term & Week 6
97
Year 2
98
CreditsModuleAutumn TermSpring Term Summer Term Summer Vacation
99
CodeTitle12345678910123456789101234567891012345678910111213
100
20variousOption ModuleSEA