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English Literature BA (Hons) module descriptions

First year | Second year | Third year

First year

Block 1: Introduction to the Novel

In this module you will learn to read novels critically at undergraduate level. Building on your experience of reading fiction at school, college or for leisure, you will learn to develop deep analytical readings and apply your growing critical skills to the wide range of novels you will encounter on this module and throughout your undergraduate career. This module aims to get you thinking about how novels work and how, as readers, we can understand them from different perspectives. Learn how to recognise subtle changes in narrative position, when to trust or distrust a narrator, how to recognize and read different subgenres (e.g. Realism, Romanticism, Modernism and Postmodernism), and how to use literary criticism to reveal interpretations you never expected or imagined. You will learn to incorporate critical reading into your preparation for workshops and assessments to enhance your understanding of literary texts. This module is designed to provide you with the core academic skills in reading, writing and research necessary to make the most of your time at university and the analytical and communication skills that will, after graduation, make you attractive to future employers.

Assessment: Class Test (40%) and Research Essay (60%)

Block 2: Journeys and Places

This module, with its focus on journeys and places, offers an opportunity for you to explore some of the key concepts underpinning your study of literature in English from around the globe. You will take a post-disciplinary approach to your studies, using techniques from diverse areas to address key questions related to journeys and places in your analysis of literary texts. 

You will attend interactive lectures with students from across the School of Humanities and Performing Arts. You will have opportunities to apply the concepts addressed in these lectures to your study of a diverse range of literature within subject specific workshops and assessments.  

The themes covered during the module may include journeys, spaces and the concept of welcome; (im)mobilities and journeys through time and space; representation and imaginative geographies; gender and placemaking; belonging and place attachment; journeys, places and identities; as well as themes related to sustainability and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.      

Assessment: Coursework (30%) and Essay (70%)

Block 3: Introduction to Drama: Shakespeare

This module will introduce you to the playwright, William Shakespeare. It will explore textual production and the performance of plays in the early modern period. It will also examine Shakespeare’s meaning in contemporary culture by considering the continued adaptation of his work in other media forms such as novels or films. You will use examples of Shakespeare in adaptation to discuss key topics such as gender, social justice and (post)colonialism. In doing so, the module will explore Shakespeare’s significance to British culture, as well as his global legacy. 

Assessment: Coursework (40%) and Essay (60%)

OR you can select to study one route from the list below:

Drama Route – Shifting Stages

Film Studies route - Disney, Warner Bros and the Business of the Film Studio

You will develop your understanding of the historic and current operation of major film studios, by reviewing their releases, changing structures over time, and their practices today. You will explore the history of movie studios and the evolving business practices of studios, focusing on the activities of two studios, the Walt Disney Company and Warner-Discovery. You will discover the key activities carried out by studios, including production, distribution, license sales and marketing.

History route – Global Cities

This module examines the role of cities in global history, particularly the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. You will gain an understanding of the significance of urbanisation in modern history, and the development of cities as key sites of global trade and exchange of ideas. Topics covered may include sanitation processes and hygiene movements, city planning, migration, the slave trade, colonialism, sport and leisure, religion and the arts. You will be introduced to cultural and social history concepts and engage with different types of history, such as urban history, medical history, environmental history, visual and material history and migration history.

Journalism route - Understanding Journalism

This module introduces you to classic and new theories and practice of journalism, and the role the news media have in explaining and shaping society. You will reflect on the evolutions and the current state of the sector and develop your understanding of global news debate and the role of journalism in shaping communities. Theories introduced include journalism and its role in society, theories of news production, content, and audience theories, and digital news theories.  You will also dissect current events in order to understand how journalists have covered and responded to activism and social justice issues in the UK and worldwide both in mainstream media and social media.

Media route - Media, Culture and Society

This module considers a range of approaches to the study of media, culture, and society, particularly focusing on the socio-cultural contexts in which contemporary media operate on a domestic and global scale. You will examine the notion of 'culture' as a range of mediatised practices and explore the everyday significance of contemporary cultural and media forms.

Block 4: Poetry and Society

Through this module you will develop your understanding of poetic form and genre and consolidate your close-reading skills by scrutinising a range of poems and poets from different historical periods. You will explore the historical origins and development of specific poetic genres such as epic and pastoral and learn the conceptual tools and technical vocabulary needed for critical analysis of poetry at undergraduate level.

Second year

Block 1: Exploration and Innovation: Medieval to Early Modern Literature

This module looks at the birth of English literature, offering you an introduction to literature written between the medieval era and the early modern period. Texts will be considered in their national, cultural, and historical contexts. You will explore examples of poetry, drama and prose organised around key themes such as power, faith, love and sexuality. You will also be invited to compare early examples of English literature with some key works of European literature from this time.

Assessment: Commentary (30%) and Comparative Essay (70%)

Block 2: Exploring Work and Society

This module is designed to prepare and support you towards the pursuit of post-degree pathways. It will focus on the specific skills, capabilities and knowledge needed to adapt and flourish in professional environments and contexts. There will be an emphasis on enhancement of core attributes, competencies and transferable skills as well as developing familiarity with the world and politics of work. The module will prepare you for applying for jobs and employment within diverse and dynamic working environments beyond university by introducing reflective practices to support your long-term professional development.   

You will be introduced to the UN Sustainable Development Goals and invited to engage critically around themes including race, gender, identity, and geopolitical issues, to conceptualize a more equitable society, and environmentally sustainable world, as relevant to your career aspirations.  

You will engage with subject-specific workshops to gain greater understanding of worlds of work open to graduates of English literature. You will take part in lectures, seminars, group discussion, independent learning, tutorial support and engagement with your peers.   

Supported independent learning activities may include responding to real-world briefs, placements/shadowing, engagement with community projects or initiatives, creating proposals for projects or initiatives in a professional setting. These activities will be tailored to your English Literature programme.

Assessment: Portfolio (100%)

Block 3: Screen and Literary Adaptations of the Classics

What happens when an iconic literary text is adapted from one genre to another, one medium to another, and one cultural platform to another? What are the processes at work in these transformations? This module explores the practice of the textual transformation of both historic and contemporary literary classics. You will examine the term 'adaptation' in its widest cultural context by engaging with a range of adaptive responses to these texts, tracing their transition from authorised works of 'high art' to products that thrive within popular culture. You will also focus on the ideological, political, and cultural contexts of adaptations via debates focusing on their social, cultural, historical, and industrial production contexts. Issues related to gender, sexuality, race, and class are central to this module.

Assessment: Learning Diary (40%) and Essay (60%)

OR continue with the route selected in the first year:

Drama Route – Revolutions: Acting and Directing

Film Studies route – Professional Practice 2: Preservation, Conservation and Usage

In this module you will learn about the management and usage of screen archives. You will discover how to identify, approach and mitigate the threats that time and space pose to the preservation of film and media heritage for future generations, while also identifying and exploring the various purposes for which this archival material is utilised by a range of external stakeholders. The module’s hands-on practical evaluation of historical material will encourage you to consider: what can we find and study in film archives? How do we present these items to the public? Who is an archivist and who a collector? And what, ultimately, are the purposes and uses of an archive’s holdings and how can they best be served? You will benefit from learning in the ÉëÒ÷Ö®Íõ film archives, where you will observe, evaluate film ephemera and their broad historical and socio-cultural contexts.

History route – Humans and the Natural World

This module will examine how humans have used, adapted, represented, changed and explored the natural world through the sciences and medicine, sport and leisure, industry, religion and visual culture, among others. You will be introduced to a diversity of historical approaches, including the history of science, medicine and technology, environmental history, sport history and visual history.

Journalism route - Beyond News

You will explore innovative and constructive approaches to journalism, such as peace journalism, constructive journalism, and solution journalism, which aim to create opportunities for change through journalism. You will gain an understanding of practical elements of writing an entertaining, interesting and compelling person first-person opinion column, why these columns are more popular today in magazines and newspapers and write your own columns on your own blog. We will also look at review writing and the journalistic similarities here with opinion writing. You will be encouraged to find an area of popular culture they are interested in and review your experience of it, honing your work, practising techniques and styles, until your writing is up to industry standard.

Media route - Public Relations and Strategic Communications

This module introduces you the concepts and debates that underpin both the practice and the academic discipline of public relations. You will learn about the different strands of public relations, the industry structures and the tools used by practitioners to engage with their audiences. You will develop an understanding of mediated communications and the relationship between practitioners and journalists. The ability to practically utilise new media and technology as part of strategic communications will also form a key strand of the modules learning and teaching strategy.

Block 4: Romantic and Victorian Literature

This module introduces you to the exciting and significant range of literature from the Romantic and Victorian periods between 1780 and 1901. You will explore texts by writers such as Mary Wollstonecraft, William Wordsworth, Jane Austen and Byron in relation to the huge social upheavals of the time (including the impact of the French Revolution) and the new and radical ideas about childhood, the rights of man, and of woman, the natural world and the imagination emerging at the time. We then examine how Romantic ideas mutate in the literature of the Victorian period (1837-1901). The primary focus in this part of the course is on the novel, the dominant literary genre of the period, and students study writers like Dickens, Charlotte Bronte and Thomas Hardy, and examine the ways in which they represent issues such as class-conflict, urban poverty, faith, national identity and changing gender-roles. Students also look at the changing forms of Victorian poetry and the emergence of a distinctively female poetic tradition during the period.

Assessment: Coursework (40%) and Essay (60%)

Third year

Block 1 and year-long: Dissertation

During Year Three, you will propose, refine, develop, research and write a dissertation on a topic supervised by a member of the English Literary team. We will support you throughout the year with skills-oriented workshops on devising and planning a project, engaging with scholarship, writing, editing and referencing. This will be complemented by a series of workshops in Block 1 on key theoretical approaches, such as structuralism and poststructuralism, Marxism, feminism, ecocriticism, queer theory or critical race theory. You will also work collaboratively to organise and then present your research topic at a student-led conference in Block 1.

Assessment: Research Portfolio (20%) and Dissertation (80%)

Block 2: Print and Digital Revolutions

The two great revolutions in the creation and dissemination of writing are the invention of the printing press in the 15th century (the Gutenberg revolution) and the invention of computing machines and networks in the 20th century (the Digital revolution). This module is concerned with those two revolutions and teaches students about them in chronological order and in a hands-on manner.

In the first half of the module students will learn about the historical conditions of the pre-printing manuscript culture of the late medieval period and how the arrival of printing altered the socio-cultural and economic environment in which writings were created and disseminated. They will create texts of their own using these technologies. In the second half of the module students will learn about how machines store and process texts and what new opportunities for analysing text arise from their being in digital form. Students will create digital texts and computer programs for analysing them. 

Assessment: Test (30%), Report 1 (35%) and Report 2 (35%)

Block 3: World Englishes: On the Page and Beyond

Following a broadly chronological structure, this module explores a diverse range of ‘World Englishes’ or English-language literature from across the globe. The module will equip students with knowledge on the production of English literature in a variety of national, ideological, historical, or social contexts and examine examples both on and off the written page. Connecting these diverse examples will be a recurrent focus on the legacy of colonisation in anglophone and/or postcolonial nations, and the literature thereof. To assist with this, emphasis will be placed on the interactions between text and context, and students will be encouraged to explore a range of concepts such as memory, nationality, class, ethnicity, and gender. 

Assessment: Blog/Vlog (40%) and Research Essay (60%)

OR continue with the route selected in the first year:

Drama Route - Performance, Identity, and Activism

This module explores the ways in which theatre and performance has been, and can be, used as a vehicle to discuss politics, to emancipate individuals and communities, as a tool for intervention and liberation, or as a means of engagement and communication within society.  Exploring politics of personal identity and social relations, the module enables you to make connections between performance and political activism, using intersectional perspectives – race, gender, sexuality, class, and (dis)ability – to create work that pushes beyond pure entertainment. It also considers ways in which drama, theatre and performance functions as a means of engagement and communication within society.

Film Studies route – Film Theory and History 3: British Cinema, Creativity, Independents and Interdependence

This module explores British cinema, its cultural specificity and its remarkable creative and cultural diversity within an industry-grounded framework, with a particular focus on the post-studio period since the late 1960s and developments between the 1980s and the present. You will gain an understanding of some of the creative figures, individual producers and production companies, films, cycles, genres and trends which have shaped post-1960s and contemporary British film. You will also discover the structural and cultural challenges faced by the UK film industry and the strategies UK filmmakers and institutions have deployed to bring ‘culturally British’ films to audiences at home and worldwide.

History route – The World on Display

This module explores the complex histories of collecting and displaying. You will examine the relationship between museums and history by looking at the origins of museum objects and the histories that shaped collecting practices. You will examine these which may include public history and heritage sites, the impact of colonialism and decolonisation processes in the formation of museums, as well as the effects of the emergence of academic disciplines such as archaeology and anthropology in the shaping of collecting and displaying practices.

Journalism route - Music, Film & Entertainment Journalism

This module will develop your understanding of music, film and entertainment journalism, its history and its cultural importance. It is a practical module designed to prepare you for a career as a journalists, PR or promoter. You will produce a varied multi-media journalism portfolio showcasing your ability to preview events and write reviews of gigs/albums/films/theatre/TV/comedy and other arts forms to industry standard on various media platforms, including digital, print and social media. The curriculum will include guest speakers, including musicians, directors, and working music, film, and arts journalists, to enhance the learning experience. Supported where possible with trips to relevant music venues, theatres, to speak to staff about media management and how their venues are reported by the media.

Media route – Gender and TV Fictions

What have women/those who identify as women contributed to the production of television drama and sitcom? How have women been represented within these genres in terms of their gender, class, sexuality, race and age? These are key questions which this module addresses by exploring British feminine-gendered fiction from the 1960s to the contemporary period. Taking an historical approach, this module contextualises key shifts to women’s positioning on both sides of the television screen in relation to broader cultural, economic, social and industrial change. You will feminine forms of British television fictions’ negotiations and responses to feminism, post feminism, neoliberalism, postcolonialism and broadcasting policy.

Block 4: Modernism and Magazines

This module examines the origins of Anglo-American modernism by considering a selection of key authors from 1910 to 1940, such as T. S. Eliot, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, and critically analysing how their experimental texts responded to modernity. You will also examine where modernism was first published, that is, in the pages of the modernist 'little magazine'. This module encourages you to interrogate the relationship between modernism and wider culture through the study of both literary texts and commercial magazines. You will consolidate key employability skills in independent research, digital literacy and report writing and develop your global perspective through study of early-twentieth-century British and American literature and history. 

Assessment: Essay (40%) and Research Portfolio (60%)