School of English
Module manager: Stuart Murray
Email: s.f.murray@leeds.ac.uk
Taught: Semester 2 (Jan to Jun) View Timetable
Year running 2026/27
This module is not approved as a discovery module
Imagining Posthuman Futures will analyse a range of novels and fiction feature films that focus on an idea of the future in which the human has been modified, transgressed or supplanted. It will consider questions of imagining culture in utopian or dystopian forms, and will have specific concentration on questions of scientific/technological innovation and development, body adaptation, genetic modification, AI, and the ideas of the individual and community that result from this. The module will explore these questions through a series of different posthuman relationships: with work, science, the environment, animals, race, gender, and artificial intelligence. It will stress the worth of the creative imagination and the value of the aesthetic in such processes, asking how we think ‘beyond the human’ to imagine future worlds. 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.
The aim of this module is to equip students to be able to understand how ideas of technologized futures are represented in a range of texts of texts published across the 20th and 21st centuries.
The module is structured around weekly explorations of texts that articulate ideas of posthumanism within a different example of social and cultural contexts. Studies will learn how imagined technologized futures tell stories of how (augmented) humans might work, engage with science, AI, and the environment, and how these interactions are inflected through questions of race and gender and the interrelationships between humans, animals and objects.
On successful completion of the module students will be able to:
LO1. Articulate how historical and contemporary cultural narratives depict ideas of the future in which humans are augmented, integrated and supplanted by non-human actors and systems (including animals and technologies).
LO2. Evaluate with knowledge and confidence the ethics of such processes as well as the complexity of literary modes of representation.
LO3. Apply knowledge of literary analysis and critical thinking to the ever-evolving nature of contemporary society and the technological futures it faces.
SLO4. Distinguish how writers over the last century have chosen different narrative forms to represent speculative technological futures.
SLO5. Articulate how texts can be placed within the contexts of theoretical, philosophical and wider cultural ideas about shared human futures.
SLO6. Evaluate the progress of one’s own work through reflection.
| Delivery type | Number | Length hours | Student hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Supervision | 3 | 2 | 6 |
| Lecture | 4 | 1 | 4 |
| Seminar | 10 | 1 | 10 |
| Independent online learning hours | 22 | ||
| Private study hours | 158 | ||
| Total Contact hours | 20 | ||
| Total hours (100hr per 10 credits) | 200 | ||
Students will receive detailed comments on their essay through Minerva. This will include: assessment of the quality of the overall argument; assessment of the use of primary texts and appropriate secondary criticism; assessment of presentation, including written style, expression and referencing.
Additional details of the above will be given in one-to-one in-person feedback consultation meetings where students will be able to ask questions about feedback.
Feedback will also take place in seminar discussion
| Assessment type | Notes | % of formal assessment |
|---|---|---|
| Assignment | Essay | 30 |
| Assignment | Essay | 70 |
| Total percentage (Assessment Coursework) | 100 | |
Normally resits will be assessed by the same methodology as the first attempt, unless otherwise stated
Check the module area in Minerva for your reading list
Last updated: 30/04/2026
Errors, omissions, failed links etc should be notified to the Catalogue Team