Module manager: Dr Sam Durrant
Email: s.r.durrant@leeds.ac.uk
Taught: Semester 1 (Sep to Jan) View Timetable
Year running 2025/26
ENGL5833M - The Magic of Mimesis
This module is not approved as an Elective
This module explores novels and film which ask us to identify across racial and species borders and thereby begin to imagine forms of planetary community. We look at creative works inspired by Indigenous animist cultures which attribute anima (breath, agency, spirit. even personhood) to nonhuman beings such as antelopes, tigers, pterodactyls, forests, rivers and aliens. How can we learn from such cultures how to reanimate our relation to the world without romanticising Indigenous cultures or reinscribing colonial divisions between magical beliefs and scientific knowledge? Engaging with animist artworks (sometimes thought of as magical realism) will also cause us to question the mainstream Western understanding of art as a mimetic (realistic) representation of the world and consider an alternative critical tradition in which mimesis designates an empathetic identification with the world. Please note this is an optional module and runs subject to enrolments. If a low number of students choose this module, then the module may not run and you may be asked to choose another module.
On successful completion of the module, students will be able to:
1. Articulate sophisticated knowledge and understanding of a range of Indigenous literary and filmic texts and their contexts.
2. Evaluate a range of interdisciplinary debates around animism, ecology, Indigeneity and mimesis.
3. Analyse their understanding in dialogue with their peers and in carefully argued academic essays.
4. Locate, interpret, present and synthesise other people's ideas
5. Think reflectively, ethically, and critically
6. Enhance their awareness of cultural diversity
This module seeks to introduce students to Indigenous understandings of the world and their relation to the “planetary” turn in the humanities. Anthropologists, environmental philosophers and political activists have begun to recognise the vital importance of conceiving of the world from ecological, “more than human” perspectives, and many have turned to the example of Indigenous cultures. We will critically explore this turn to cultures once pejoratively described as animist through a carefully curated set of novels, films and theoretical work, to which students are invited
| Delivery type | Number | Length hours | Student hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seminar | 10 | 2 | 20 |
| Private study hours | 280 | ||
| Total Contact hours | 20 | ||
| Total hours (100hr per 10 credits) | 300 | ||
Students write on an online discussion forum in response to detailed prompts. These become the basis for oral feedback in each seminar. Students are also asked to submit a formative assessment, with feedback offered in writing and in person before they embark on their final essay.
| Assessment type | Notes | % of formal assessment |
|---|---|---|
| Coursework | Essay | 100 |
| Total percentage (Assessment Coursework) | 100 | |
Normally resits will be assessed by the same methodology as the first attempt, unless otherwise stated
The reading list is available from the Library website
Last updated: 30/04/2025
Errors, omissions, failed links etc should be notified to the Catalogue Team