English Literature BA (Hons)

In Year two, you will continue to develop the skills and knowledge you’ve learnt. We do this by embedding the following four principles into the curriculum and developing your: 

• Technical skills – digital fluency, backed with the right academic knowledge
• Study skills – to be an adaptive, independent and proactive learner
• Professional skills – to have the behaviour and abilities to succeed in your career
• Global awareness – the beliefs and abilities to be a resilient, confident and motivated global citizen

In Year two, you will develop more advanced knowledge and skills to do with: Shakespeare, gender and sexuality and 21st century literature, amongst others. 

Modules

• Shakespeare’s Renaissance - 20 credits

  This module introduces you in some detail to a broad range of authors, texts, periods and genres from Medieval mystery plays, to later poems and plays that both influenced and were influenced in turn by William Shakespeare. The module will explore and evaluate the reasons both for seeing Shakespeare as being at the heart of the English Renaissance, and for not seeing him as such. 

  Compulsory

• Age of Revolutions: from Milton to Romanticism - 20 credits

  This module introduces you to literature produced during the 'long' eighteenth century (1660-1832). This period witnessed a growing faith in Enlightenment ideals but was also marked by significant upheaval. The module will consider the relationship between the rise of the novel and the rise of capitalism, the fraught dynamics between women writers and an increasingly commercialised literary marketplace, and literary responses to turbulent historical events. 

  Compulsory

• Philosophies of Gender and Sexuality - 20 credits

  This module will introduce you to the most important ideas and debates in gender and sexuality. Covering a wide range of texts, including fiction, poetry, essay, film, and philosophy, you will have the opportunity to engage with key concepts of gender and sexuality, and learn to apply them to other forms of writing. 

  Compulsory

• Victorians and Empire - 20 credits

  This module introduces you to the literature of, and major critical approaches to, the period 1830-1900. As well as considering canonical and non-canonical British poets and novelists, by situating the Victorian era in a global context, this module aims to better understand the effects of empire upon British, Anglophone and indigenous literature. 

  Compulsory

• Modernisms and Postmodernisms - 20 credits

  This module will consider a range of literature that emerged in the twentieth century from across the Anglophone world. You will seek to gain an understanding and knowledge of both traditional critical conceptions of a modernist period and modernist aesthetic, and alternative modernisms, as well as ideas of ‘late’ modernist work, and modernist inheritance. 

  Compulsory

• 21st Century Literature - 20 credits

  This module introduces you to a selection of 21st century fiction from different national cultures and traditions. The module explores the ways in which fiction of the 21st century engages with and addresses issues of the new century; for example environmentalism, decolonisation, and multiculturalism. 

  Compulsory

There’s no better way to find out what you love doing than trying it out for yourself, which is why a work placement² can often be beneficial. Work placements usually occur between your second and final year of study. They’re a great way to help you explore your potential career path and gain valuable work experience, whilst developing transferable skills for the future.

If you choose to do a work placement year, you will pay a reduced tuition fee³ of £1,250. For more information, please go to the fees and funding section. During this time you will receive guidance from your employer or partner institution, along with your assigned academic mentor who will ensure you have the support you need to complete your placement.

Modules

• UK Work Placement– 0 credits

  This module² provides you with an opportunity to reflect upon and gain experience for an approved placement undertaken during your programme. A placement should usually be at least 26 weeks or equivalent; however, each placement will be considered on its own merits, having regard to the ability to achieve the learning outcomes. 

  Optional

• International Study/Work Placement – 0 credits

  This module² provides you with an opportunity to reflect upon and gain experience for an approved international study/work placement undertaken during your programme. A work/study placement should usually be at least 26 weeks or equivalent; however, each placement will be considered on its own merits, having regard to the ability to achieve the learning outcomes. 

  Optional

Year three aims to bring you to the level to enter the world of work by consolidating your knowledge and skills from year one and two. You could also work on a large final project in an area of your interest, with the support of a mentor and your Academic Personal Tutor. 

You will be asked to choose optional modules on top of the compulsory module, ‘Reading #BlackLivesMatter’, to total 120 credits in your final year. 

Modules

• Reading #BlackLivesMatter - 20 credits

  Novelists, poets, and essayists do not merely reflect or represent the current moment; they use their art to shape it, and to change the minds and behaviours of their imagined readers. This module will look at the history of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, and explore how contemporary authors contribute to racial activism through innovations in literary form. 

  Compulsory

• The Existentialist Café: Ethics in a Coffee Cup - 20 credits

  French Existentialism is often dismissed as a product of its time; chain-smoking, polo-neck wearing, coffee-drinking introspection in the wake of two World Wars. Despite this, we see manifestations of its tenets time and again across philosophy, culture, politics and art.  This module will cover the main themes of the philosophy, as well as delve into the complexities of its texts and thinkers, before exploring interpretations in culture. 

  Optional

• The Gothic: Literature, Film and Television - 20 credits

  This module surveys Gothic literature and cultural production, from its eighteenth-century origins to the film, television and video games of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. You will gain a lively appreciation of the Gothic’s enduring relevance in times of climate crisis, geopolitical unrest, and rapid technological change.  

  Optional

• Interactive and Video Game Narratives - 20 credits

  This module will explore and analyse storytelling in video games and the way in which a player’s narrative experience is influenced by gameplay. It will explore narrative forms within video games and the role of the player within a story-driven game world. You do not need to own a game console and all materials will be accessible digitally. 

  Optional

• Enlightenment: Literature, Culture and Modernity - 20 credits

  This module aims to introduce you to the literature, philosophy, and theory of the Enlightenment exploring both  eighteenth-century debates about progress and modernity (and their relationship with conceptions of culture, gender, status, race and nationality) as well as  the contemporary significance of ideas about Enlightenment. 

  Optional

• Speculative Fiction - 20 credits

  This module embraces the great diversity of works of fantasy, gothic and science fiction and will explore their relationship to each other, place them within literary traditions and examine the ways in which such popular writing is essentially intertextual and cross-generic. 

  Optional

• Women Writing the American West - 20 credits

  The module focuses on a selection of female-authored texts set in the American West. Employing different genres, the narratives express Western identities that offer alternative perspectives to the masculinist colonial discourses of the American West. 

  Optional

• Final Project - 40 credits

  This module provides an opportunity for you to exercise independent learning and research skills in the final semester of their degree. You will be able to conceive, plan and carry out an individual programme of discipline-specific research under the supervision of a member of staff, leading to the ultimate submission of a final project in the form of a dissertation, portfolio, or artefact, as appropriate.

  Optional