Welcome to "Themes in Popular Literature" at Dalarna University

In this course, you will explore a ideas and themes in a selection of contemporary popular novels from the English-speaking world along with a selection of critical and theoretical approaches to popular literature.   American writer Walter Mosley is quoted as saying "All great popular literature today one day will be seen as great literature and will not longer be seen as popular literature".    An example of this is William Shakespeare whose plays were popular entertainment in the 1600s and over the last five centuries are considered great literary works.     Therefore,  the term "popular literature" is difficult to define as what is popular now may not be popular in the near future. One reason is that literature reflects changing times. 

So the literature chosen in this course have either been included in the Times Magazine as the 100 popular literature lists for the last two years,  New York Times 100 most popular literature list, or the Guardian news agency 50 most popular lists.  

In the course, you will analyse and interpret the texts from several different popular genres, as well as develop the ability to apply relevant literary terminology and theoretical perspectives in their study of the chosen literature. In addition, a selection of literary theories are discussed in order to broaden the critical analysis. 

Seminars 

This course is offered as a campus course as well as a distance course. 

• Students who are enrolled on the campus must attend the scheduled campus seminars. 
• Students who are enrolled on the distance course will attend seminars via a zoom link. 

The seminar format is hybrid which means that distance students will join through a zoom link the campus seminars. 

Note:  if there are not enough campus students to form a campus groups then the campus seminars will be cancelled and all seminars will only be on distance 

You can access the course schedule (which is  also in Modules) here. updated 20 Jan _Themes in Popular Literature preliminary schedule(1-1.xlsx

Duration of course

This course runs from Week 5 (27-31 January)  to Week 23 (9-13 June).  Therefore this is a rather intense course as the study rate is at 50% which is half  the term.   This course assumes that you have already take some English literature courses, at least 7.5 credits. 

Learning Outcomes  

• demonstrate a good understanding of common themes in contemporary popular literature in English
• critically analyse popular literature in relation to common conventions of genre and a selection of basic ideas of contemporary literary theory
• effectively communicate and argue for their interpretation of texts, orally and in writing
• independently write an academic essay, based on the guidelines given, which uses formatting conventions.

Literature for the Course