PS-Introduction to Cultural Studies: Green and Pleasant: The Politics of the Countryside
Matilda Jones
Kommentar
This module explores the construction of the UK countryside, examining how rural Britain has been idealised and contested from the Romantic period to the present day. Beginning with William Blake’s poetic vision of a ‘green and pleasant land’ (1808) up to Corinne Fowler’s theoretical Green Unpleasant Land (2021), the course interrogates the countryside not simply as a geographical space, but as a symbolic landscape deeply entwined with questions of race, class, colonialism and national identity. We will consider how the rural is constructed in opposition to the urban, and how representations of idyllic pre-industrial landscapes – complete with hedgerows, hay bales, and rolling hills – serve to naturalise particular conceptions of ‘Englishness’. Crucially, the module questions who is conventionally seen to ‘belong’ in countryside spaces, foregrounding the exclusionary politics that underpin nostalgic rural imaginaries.
Topics include: the relationship between rural Britain and the colonial extractions of Empire; the construction of Englishness in contrast to the Celtic peripheries (Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Cornwall); the impact of enclosure and the loss of the commons; cultural revivals from 1970s pagan festivals to 1990s rave; and contemporary questions of environmental concern in the face of climate breakdown.
In this way, through analysis of poetry, novels, televisual culture and theoretical texts, the module offers a critical framework for understanding the countryside as a politically charged and ideologically loaded space. Ultimately, students will become well-versed in central thematic and methodological aspects of Cultural Studies whilst honing key skills in close reading, analysis, argumentation, and academic writing.
16 Termine
Regelmäßige Termine der Lehrveranstaltung