Judged best in the field
The highly regarded Keuzegids Master’s Selection Guide 2017 ranked Utrecht University’s Literature programme as the best in the field in the Netherlands.
Do you wonder how a literary work becomes a classic or bestseller in the Digital Age? Would you like to learn about the steps taken between publishing a manuscript and the media reviews, talk shows, or blogs in which the work is discussed? Then this Master's programme might be for you.
Literature today continues to inspire as a laboratory of ideas, dreams, and narratives, even while facing new challenges. Novels, poems, and short stories now reach their audiences through printed books, e-books, and audiobooks, and through the Internet. Literary texts, including the classics, are being adapted to games and TV dramas, yet a growing numbers of visitors to book fairs shows that literature itself remains a powerful medium.
In the Master’s programme Literature Today, you will learn to identify and critically evaluate the most recent national and international developments in literature, and to situate these from a historical perspective. You will be equipped with the tools to identify and explain the quality of literary works in times of increasing commercialisation. You will learn how literature circulates within the market as part of a creative industry sustained by centuries-old tradition, and you will investigate from theoretical and practical angles how to help to spread literature, explain it to a broader public, and translate academic insights for the reading public.
Critical reflection, building up a repertoire, the consolidation of writing skills, and an understanding of how literary institutions operate in an era of globalisation are central to your studies during this programme. You can also complete an internship with publishing houses, media corporations, libraries, literary foundations, or cultural institutions – the job market and professional field for which this Master’s programme prepares you.
You can choose from among the following tracks to tailor the programme to your interests and desired career path:
1. English and Comparative Literature (entirely in English)
2. Dutch Literature (in Dutch and English)
3a. French Literature (Modern Literature in European Languages)
3b. German Literature (Modern Literature in European Languages)
3d. Hispanic Literature (Modern Literature in European Languages)
3d. Italian Literature (Modern Literature in European Languages)
Read more about these tracks.
As a graduate of the Master in Literature Today, you will be trained to critically engage with the challenges that confront literature in our globalised, digitalised, and commercialised world. The programme content approaches these challenges from both a theoretical and practical perspective so that you will be fully prepared for the job market.
During your studies, the programme will:
During your studies, you will become acquainted with different literary institutions that operate in the field of literature and culture. After finishing the programme, you can use the academic and practical skills acquired during your year of study and begin working at one of these institutions. Read more about possible career prospects.
Visit our website for more information on fees, scholarships, postgraduate loans and other funding options to study English Literature at Swansea University - 'Welsh University of the Year 2017' (Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2017).
The Department of English Language and Literature can offer supervision in most areas of literature from the middle ages to the present. We have particular strengths in gender, Welsh writing in English, American Literature, medieval, Renaissance, eighteenth and nineteenth-century writing and culture, modernism and postmodernism, Irish poetry, contemporary literature and critical and cultural theory.
An MA by Research in English Literature gives you the chance to pursue a project inspired entirely by your own particular enthusiasms in English language and literature. The qualification would be a good preparation for proceeding to doctoral work. Alternatively, the proven ability to conduct independent research in English Literature will boost employment prospects outside academia (for example, in the media, publishing, the Civil Service, or education).
As a student of the MA by Research in English Literature programme, you will be supervised closely by two experienced academics in your field. Typically, you will meet them fortnightly in the first term and at regular intervals thereafter. Meetings are logged and goals agreed each time.
All research students in English Literature are required to attend skills and training courses at College and Institutional level. English Literature students give presentations to other research students and staff at departmental seminars and the annual departmental postgraduate symposium in June and the College of Arts and Humanities conference in October. MA by Research in English Literature degree typically lasts from one year (full-time study) to two years (part-time study).
The MA by Research in English Literature would suit those wanting the freedom to explore a topic of their choosing in English language and literature under the close supervision of two experienced academics but without attending regular classes as required in taught programmes; an MA qualification in niche areas where taught programmes are not offered; the experience of a research degree without committing to a PhD at the outset. Research proposals are invited on any topic in English Literature for which staff can provide supervision.
About 70 of the postgraduates currently studying at Swansea University’s Department of English Language and Literature [ELL] are researchers working on an MA, MPhil or PhD thesis. Each is supervised by two members of staff, 60% of whose own research publications were rated ‘internationally excellent’ or ‘world-leading’ in the 2008 REF exercise. We supervise interdisciplinary projects as well as traditional areas of the discipline - in language studies, creative writing, literature (from medieval to the present) and critical and cultural theory. If you have an idea for a research project in English Literature, do get in touch and discuss it with us informally before applying.
Postgraduate students including those of MA by Research in English Literature, often join a research centre, e.g. the Centre for Research into Gender and Culture (GENCAS) or the Centre for Research into Welsh Writing in English (CREW) where they work alongside other students and staff in dedicated research rooms. Students present their work in the friendly environment of our Research Institute’s annual postgraduate conference, Swansea University’s Department of English Language and Literature (ELL)’s fortnightly research seminars, and the monthly workshop of the Creative Writing Programme. Our research environment was judged 100% ‘internationally excellent’ by the 2008 REF, and research students help staff organize a lively programme of conferences, readings and performances on campus and in the city’s arts centres. As well as being inducted into academic research and dissemination, doctoral students have the opportunity to undertake undergraduate teaching to prepare them for an academic career. We provide study stations with computers and postgraduate common-rooms, research training and the services of a research officer and subject librarian.
What the Research Excellence Framework 2014 had to say about Postgraduate research in the Swansea Department of English Language and Literature …
The environment in the Department of English Language and Literature is ‘conducive to producing research of mostly at least internationally excellent and at its best world-leading quality’
‘Arrangements for postgraduates were deemed of world-leading quality’
‘There is clear evidence of the development of a research culture into which research students are fully integrated’
‘Recruitment is strong’
‘There are excellent arrangements for support, training and employability’.
Summing up: ‘The unit makes an outstanding contribution to the health of the discipline’.
Visit our website for more information on fees, scholarships, postgraduate loans and other funding options to study English Literature at Swansea University - 'Welsh University of the Year 2017' (Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2017).
The MA in English Literature offers an exciting array of modules from the traditional core of English studies in the context of contemporary approaches to the subject.
The MA in English Literature allows you to range widely across English studies rather than confine yourself to a narrow field and draws on the individual research expertise of members of staff.
From the student’s point of view the MA in English Literature is openly structured. As a student enrolled in the English Literature programme, you define your own pathway through the Department’s MA provision. This means that as well as choosing modules from the MA in English, you can select modules in any combination from the other specialist MAs offered by the Department, such as the MA in Welsh Writing in English and the MA in Gender and Culture.
As a MA in English Literature student, you develop your dissertation project on a topic of your own choosing in consultation with a supervisor.
The full-time English Literature course comprises three modules taken in each academic semester (a total of six modules) and then a dissertation over the summer. The dissertation component draws on issues and themes developed throughout the year, or emerges from a topic of the student's proposing in English Literature. Part-time study is available for the MA in English Literature.
Students of the MA in English Literature will benefit from the College of Arts and Humanities' Graduate Centre. The Graduate Centre fosters and supports individual and collaborative research activity of international excellence and offers a vibrant and supportive environment for students pursuing postgraduate research and taught masters study. The Centre provides postgraduate training to enhance academic and professional development and facilitates participation in seminar programmes, workshops and international conferences.
Modules on the MA in English Literature typically include:
• Practising Ideas: Advnaced Research Skills
• ‘The Unsex’d Females’: Women Writers and the French Revolution
• Women Writing India
• The Romantic Sublime
• Gender and Culture: An Introduction
• The Modernist Novel: James Joyce
• Angela Carter
• Dylan Thomas and the Idea of Welsh Writing in English
• Locating Wales: Comparative Perspectives
• ‘American Wales’: Writing the Transatlantic
• Welsh Identities: Literature and Nationhood
• Saints and Sinners in Christian Late Antiquity
• Fin’Amor and Marriage in the Medieval English Secular Lyric
• Gender and Humour in Medieval and Early Modern Europe
• Lost in Europe: History, Biography, Ideology through the Short twentieth Century (1914-89)
• Neo-Victorian Mutinies: Gender & Racial Trauma in Neo-Victorian Fiction (& Film)
• Writing Poetry
• Writing the Self
Career expectations are excellent for English Literature graduates. Our Graduates enter careers in education, professional and creative writing, publishing, global marketing and advertising, media, international and national recruitment, heritage and tourism, and relief/humanitarian organisations. Some Graduates go on to pursue further postgraduate study leading to a PhD and a career in Academia.
The Department of English Language and Literature is home to three research centres and groupings:
• the Centre for the Research in the English Literature and Language of Wales (CREW)
• the Centre for the Research into Gender in Culture and Society (GENCAS)
• the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Research (MEMO)
All staff in the Department are research active and publish books and articles in their areas of expertise. Books published by staff in recent years include studies of medieval women’s writing, William Blake, Dylan Thomas, American fiction, Walt Whitman, narratives of the European border, Angela Carter, contemporary English language studies and many other areas. Regular research seminars
and lectures are run through these groups and also through the Research Institute for Arts and Humanities (RIAH) which students are encouraged to attend.
"The MA in English Literature at Swansea offers students a unique opportunity to expand their intellectual horizons in an environment that brings people together from across the globe. I've had the chance to study with people from Ireland, England, America, and Germany and the differing views and experiences that each of us bring to our classroom discussions have been an invaluable part of my education here. One of the other enormous benefits of studying in Swansea is its location. In few other places can a student read a poem by Dylan Thomas or William Wordsworth and then walk through the same streets and countryside that inspired that poet. At Swansea University a student can find a learning experience that breaks free of the confines of the classroom and that may lead them out into all the beauty and history of the city and its surrounding areas. To top it off the small class sizes create an intimate and informal atmosphere where passionate professors challenge you to make the most of your love of literature. In all I'd describe my time here at Swansea as an experience that has both deepened my love of literature while allowing me to come to view it from a more global perspective."
Robert Tretin, English Literature, MA
The English Language and Literature MA aims to allow you to explore the interconnections between language and literature. It will provide you with a thorough understanding of the linguistic features of English from a wide range of perspectives (theoretical and applied, synchronic and diachronic), as well as leading you to explore a wide array of texts in connection with the social, historical and political circumstances from which they emerge. Furthermore, the MA will equip you with the intellectual perspectives and the scholarly skills that will prepare you to conduct independent research.
The MA is suitable for students who have taken English language and/or literature modules at undergraduate level, and others who have taken allied disciplines such as TESOL. It is of particular interest to those wishing to pursue further study and those teaching English who wish to gain a further qualification and investigate recent and current developments in the field.
If pursuing the degree full-time, you will study 180 credits in one academic year; if part-time, you will normally complete 180 credits in two academic years. You will study four core modules (including a 60-credit dissertation on a topic of English language and/or literature), as well as two modules from the list of options. The core modules Subjectivities: Modern and Contemporary Fictions and Institutions and Histories examine classic and contemporary critical texts on literature in relation to ideas in larger contexts, such as history, the visual image, gender, psychoanalysis and post- colonialism, while the module English Language in Use will help you acquire the scholarly tools necessary for the stylistic interpretation of literary and non-literary texts.
The teaching is mainly through weekly two or three hour sessions for each module, which include tutorials, seminars, practical sessions and workshops. There is also independent self-directed study, and you will be prepared for the Dissertation via structured sessions in research methodology. Assessment methods include submitted coursework such as essays, reviews and exercises; there are no formal examinations.
The following modules are indicative of what you will study on this course.
Core modules
Option modules
The English Language and Literature MA will provide you with sophisticated analytical skills and a widely applicable knowledge base, which will enable you to study at MPhil or PhD levels with a view to pursuing an academic career. The course is also particularly relevant to teaching English as a first or foreign language, and to a range of professions involving the study and use of language and literary texts.
While studying the MA, you will also benefit from the careers workshops organised by the departmental employability coordinator.
The English Language and Literature MA aims to allow you to explore the interconnections between language and literature. It will provide you with a thorough understanding of the linguistic features of English from a wide range of perspectives (theoretical and applied, synchronic and diachronic), as well as leading you to explore a wide array of texts in connection with the social, historical and political circumstances from which they emerge. Furthermore, the MA will equip you with the intellectual perspectives and the scholarly skills that will prepare you to conduct independent research.
The MA is suitable for students who have taken English language and/or literature modules at undergraduate level, and others who have taken allied disciplines such as TESOL. It is of particular interest to those wishing to pursue further study and those teaching English who wish to gain a further qualification and investigate recent and current developments in the field.
If pursuing the degree full-time, you will study 180 credits in one academic year; if part-time, you will normally complete 180 credits in two academic years. You will study four core modules (including a 60-credit dissertation on a topic of English language and/or literature), as well as two modules from the list of options. The core modules Subjectivities: Modern and Contemporary Fictions and Institutions and Histories examine classic and contemporary critical texts on literature in relation to ideas in larger contexts, such as history, the visual image, gender, psychoanalysis and post- colonialism, while the module English Language in Use will help you acquire the scholarly tools necessary for the stylistic interpretation of literary and non-literary texts.
The teaching is mainly through weekly two or three hour sessions for each module, which include tutorials, seminars, practical sessions and workshops. There is also independent self-directed study, and you will be prepared for the Dissertation via structured sessions in research methodology. Assessment methods include submitted coursework such as essays, reviews and exercises; there are no formal examinations.
The following modules are indicative of what you will study on this course.
Core modules
Option modules
The English Language and Literature MA will provide you with sophisticated analytical skills and a widely applicable knowledge base, which will enable you to study at MPhil or PhD levels with a view to pursuing an academic career. The course is also particularly relevant to teaching English as a first or foreign language, and to a range of professions involving the study and use of language and literary texts.
While studying the MA, you will also benefit from the careers workshops organised by the departmental employability coordinator.
The Master of Western Literature is a unique initial master's programme aimed at an in-depth, intercultural and comparative study of literature in different Western traditions and epochs. As one of the world's oldest universities, located in a multi-lingual society and at the heart of Europe, KU Leuven is a unique location for a programme that focuses on the dynamic interactions between various literatures, languages, and cultures, as well as on intercultural and international aspects of literature.
This master's programme stands out both nationally and internationally for its advanced degree of specialisation in literary studies and its unique intercultural and multilingual perspective.
Specialists in various national literatures and in literary theory collaborate to ensure the high level and quality of the courses. The programme's broad spectrum of national literatures allows you to combine these according to your own interests and thus to deepen your knowledge, à la carte. At the same time, this advanced level of specialisation is combined with a critical, theoretical and broadly comparative perspective. Finally, the concept of 'Western' literatures is thoroughly examined and questioned against the background of more general social, political, and cultural perspectives, both from historical and contemporary points of view.
This is an initial master's programme and can be followed on a full-time or part-time basis.
The programme does not take for granted the key terms in its title: 'Western' and 'literature.' Rather, it aims to investigate the development of literature, literary systems, and traditions in the West and to address the challenges that these phenomena meet with in our contemporary globalised society.
Notions like the canon, tradition, literary genre, and poetics are critically examined and placed within relevant historical contexts. They are studied in relation to the general concepts that determine them, such as civilization, culture, identity, and alterity. The idea of 'Western' literature is also scrutinized from an ideological perspective: what is the relation between literature, nation, language and territory and how has this relation changed in a context of decolonization, globalization, and changing relations between East and West? Within this general theoretical and comparative perspective, the 'building blocks' of Western literature - the different linguistic or national literary traditions - are not neglected and a wide range of elective courses offer ample opportunities for studying these literatures in more detail.
As a graduate of the Master of Western Literature programme, you will have acquired a wide range of skills that you will be able to use in a large number of professional contexts. Your strengths will mainly be your ability to reflect on complex cultural phenomena, your insight into and facility with plurilingualism and interculturality, and your ability to bring those insights across in the media and/or in educational contexts.
Through your advanced insight in intercultural relations, you will be exceptionally well placed to work in an international context (e.g., embassies, European institutions, translating services, and international companies). In addition, you will have acquired an extensive knowledge of literature and the skills for reporting on it. The publishing world, the media, and journalism will therefore offer more possibilities.
After taking a teacher training programme, you will also be able to start teaching.
Now running for over twenty five years, the MA in Children’s Literature is recognised internationally as a benchmark programme in the field and is delivered by the award-winning National Centre of Research in Children’s Literature.
On this acclaimed MA/PG Dip in Children’s Literature you will explore landmark books such as The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or The Railway Children, alongside the contemporary innovations of Patrick Ness or Emily Gravett.
You will work alongside staff with international reputations in areas such as adolescence, critical theory, landscape, and philosophy. Plus, many of you will have the chance of working with Roehampton's Chancellor and renowned author Professor Dame Jacqueline Wilson.
As a Children’s Literature student you will become a member of the National Centre for Research in Children’s Literature (NCRCL), regarded as the premier institution for children’s literature research in Britain. NCRCL has close links with organisations that work to further the study and teaching of children's literature, including The International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY), Seven Stories (The National Centre for Children’s Books) and Booktrust. The centre also hosts and co-organises an annual one-day British IBBY/NCRCL MA Conference and runs a biennial NCRCL Conference, showcasing themes from members' research interests. Keynote speakers have included Michael Rosen, Matthew Grenby, Emer O’Sullivan, Neil Gaiman, and Julia Eccleshare.
The University is the exclusive Creative Partner of Barnes Children’s Literature Festival, London’s largest event dedicated to children’s writing. The partnership provides paid and voluntary work experience opportunities for students at the festival, as well as opportunities to attend events for free.
Roehampton also hosts a number of Children’s' Literature collections in our library containing 3,000 critical, theoretical, bibliographical and reference works and approximately 40 specialist children's literature journals. We are also home to the Richmal Crompton Collection. This includes her personal library, editions and translations of her famous Just William stories and scripts including short stories and radio plays.
This stimulating programme allows for the exploration of a range of literary texts from medieval learning materials, through landmark books such as Treasure Island, The Tale of Peter Rabbit or The Eagle of the Ninth, to the contemporary innovations of Mark Haddon, Shaun Tan or Jackie Kay.
Although this is a literature programme, study is not limited to children’s books. You will also examine the relationship (both historical and ongoing) between children’s books and social constructions of childhood.
The creative writing modules, which currently include ‘Writing for a Child Audience’ and ‘Creative Dissertation’, represent exciting additions to the programme, recognising the fact that many of our students have ambitions to write for children.
MA students will complete the course by undertaking either a dissertation or creative dissertation. The dissertation is a supervised research project involving an in-depth study of an aspect of children’s literature that interests you. For the creative dissertation, you will produce a creative portfolio that could include short stories, picturebook scripts, poems, or a novella, alongside a critical reflections of your work.
Modules
Here is some of the varied range of modules we currently offer:
Teaching, children’s publishing and arts management.
Modern English Literature begins in the extraordinary developments of the 16th and early 17th centuries. Under the influence of social, religious and political transformations, and through engagement with classical and continental European culture, new theories and practices of literature appeared that have influenced generations of writers since.
Studying the literature of this period allows us both to enter a world that is not our own, and to see the origins of modern western perspectives and predicaments. This programme offer you the opportunity to undertake a substantial piece of supervised independent research in this field.
We are the oldest department of English Literature in the world, and at the last Research Assessment Exercise were awarded the highest research rating possible, of 5*A. We have one of the largest graduate programmes in this area in the country and a rich research culture covering all aspects of literatures in English.
We offer supervision in all areas of Renaissance literature, and have particular strengths in Renaissance drama and performance, Renaissance poetry, the politics of literature in the Renaissance, religious writing in the Renaissance, Renaissance biographical and autobiographical writing, and the relevance to the study of Renaissance literature of modern and contemporary theory.
The research of staff has made valuable contributions to the areas of literature and philosophy, modernism/postmodernism, medieval and early modern literature, history of the book, romanticism, transatlantic studies and performance studies.
English Literature houses the Centre for the History of the Book and is one of the UK's leading forces in this area. It works closely with the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and with the National Library of Scotland. The latter's recently acquired Murray Archive is crucial for studies in Romanticism, Book History, Bibliography and Archive Studies.
Extensive collections of Renaissance manuscripts and printed books are held in Edinburgh by the University’s own library, the National Library of Scotland, and the National Archives of Scotland. These collections offer excellent research resources and opportunities for graduate study, and are particularly rich in materials relating to Shakespeare and Renaissance drama.
The course includes a 15,000 word dissertation, completed under the supervision of one or more of the course tutors. Students will undertake a seminar based programme of research methods training in core research skills and subject specific methodologies. They will also take two option courses covering areas of Renaissance literature and culture related to their chosen fields and will write two extended essays in relation to these courses.
The academic staff you will be working with are all active researchers or authors, many of them prize winners and leading scholars in their fields. As well as benefiting from their expert supervision, you will undertake a seminar-based programme of training in core research skills and subject-specific methodologies. You will also have the opportunity to develop other transferable skills through the University’s Institute for Academic Development
We encourage you to share your research and learn from the work of others through a vibrant programme of Work-in-Progress seminars, reading groups, visiting speakers and conferences.
Our postgraduate journal, Forum, is a valuable conduit for research findings, and provides an opportunity for editorial experience.
On hand are all the amenities you would expect, such as computing facilities, study areas and a common room and kitchen. Our location gives you easy access to the University’s general facilities, such as the Main Library and our collections, as well as to the National Museum, National Library and National Galleries of Scotland at the heart of the city.
In addition to the impressive range of resources available at the University’s Main Library (more than two million printed volumes and generous online resources) and the nearby National Library of Scotland, we host a number of collections of rare and valuable archival materials, all of which will be readily available to you as a postgraduate student.
Among the literary treasures are the libraries of William Drummond, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Hugh MacDiarmid, Adam Smith, Dugald Stewart and Norman MacCaig, plus the WH Auden collection, the Corson Collection of works by and about Sir Walter Scott and the Ramage collection of poetry pamphlets.
Our cultural collections are highly regarded and include a truly exceptional collection of early Shakespeare quartos and other early modern printed plays, and world-class manuscript and archival collections.
This unique course allows you to study children’s literature in a flexible, part-time format. You’ll engage with staff working in the UK’s leading centre in the field and explore a range of landmark texts for young people, from fairy tales and picturebooks to classics and graphic novels.
This programme invites you to explore the exciting and varied world of children’s literature, and to examine how texts aimed at young people convey and challenge ideas about childhood. You will be taught by a team of staff with international reputations and expertise in areas such as philosophy, popular fiction, adolescence, critical theory, landscape, and memory.
As a distance learner you will have access to specialist services, and a wide range of e-books and digitised items from the Children’s Literature Collection at the University Library which contains 3,000 critical, theoretical, bibliographical and reference works and approximately 40 specialist children's literature journals.
As a Children’s Literature student, you will become a member of the National Centre for Research in Children’s Literature (NCRCL), regarded as the premier institution for children’s literature research in Britain. The NCRCL has close links with organisations that work to further the study and teaching of children's literature, including The International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY), Seven Stories (The National Centre for Children’s Books), and Booktrust. The University is also the exclusive Creative Partner of Barnes Children’s Literature Festival, London’s largest event dedicated to children’s writing. You can stay up-to-date with the NCRCL by following their blog.
This programme asks you to think about children’s literature in new ways. In your first year you will be introduced to essential critical approaches, from feminist theory, psychoanalysis, and reader-response criticism, to new ideas about the child, power and ethics. Using these tools, you’ll study fairy tales such as 'Snow White' and 'Puss in Boots,' classic children’s literature including Kenneth Graham’s The Wind in the Willows and Judith Kerr’s landmark picturebook The Tiger Who Came to Tea, and the contemporary innovations of authors like Melvin Burgess, Shaun Tan and Jackie Kay.
In optional modules you can study the history of British children’s literature from its origins to the present day, as well as texts in translation, and visual and verse forms. Throughout the course you will gain knowledge of literary works produced for children, and the social, cultural and historical contexts of their production. The eclectic and rigorous nature of the programme allows you to contribute original work from a variety of perspectives, particularly in the extended critical Dissertation. The creative writing modules, ‘Writing for a Child Audience’ and ‘Creative Dissertation’ represent exciting additions to the programme, recognising the fact that many of our students have ambitions to write for children.
The Distance Learning MA is taught through a mixture of independent study, tutor feedback, and peer support. Most modules on offer include a course pack, with digital materials and links to an online learning environment. You will work through the materials, undertake learning activities, and discuss ideas with other students through online discussion boards and online seminars. At the end of each module, you will complete a piece of coursework, usually an essay, to demonstrate your understanding of the subject.
Modules
Here is some of the varied range of modules we currently offer:
Possible careers include teaching and librarianship, children’s publishing and arts management.
The English Literature MA pathway is ideal if you don’t wish to be confined to a specific period or disciplinary area. It asks fundamental questions about our ideas of literature and how these might have changed over time.
The pathway’s compulsory module, ‘The Production of Texts in Contexts’, opens up these questions by looking at a broad array of literature from a variety of historic periods. It considers how innovations in printing and publishing have affected writing, and asks to what extent political and social change conditions and defines authorial identities and practices.
Apart from the compulsory core module briefly described below, students taking the generic English Literature pathway can freely choose their remaining three modules from all the other existing pathways and thus sample different topics from different periods. Below are additional links to those pathways that allow you to see the rich variety of staff research interests and specialisms.
The Production of Texts in Context
The Production of Texts in Context is a trans-historical module that ranges across many different literary periods from the early middle ages to the present day. The module is team-taught so students experience teaching by ten to eleven different staff members, each of whom presents a topic related to their own particular interests and period specialisms. The teaching team and the topics represented vary from year to year according to staff availability, with recent topics including Ballad and Carol (Alfred Hiatt), The Making of Paradise Lost (Joad Raymond), The Eighteenth-Century Newspaper (Chris Reid), Victorian Serialised Fiction (Matt Ingleby), Experimental Writing and Early Twentieth-Century Publishing (Scott McCracken), The Coming of Age Novel in Global Literature (Charlotta Salmi), Book Prizes and Literary Production (Huw Marsh), and Contemporary Graphic Narrative (Sam McBean). For the essay assignment students pick a subject relating to one of the topics and can seek advice from the relevant staff member. There is also a designated member of staff who acts as module convenor, sits in with students on the weekly seminars, and is able to offer general help and guidance.
You also choose one of the following
Researching Modern Culture; London Panoramas: Research, Culture and the Long Eighteenth Century, or The Material Text, 1300-1700
You choose three modules from a wide-ranging list of options that changes from year to year.
In 2017-2018 we hope to offer the following. If members of our specialist research staff win research funding it will mean that their module won’t run, so for that reason this list is indicative only.
Students may also opt to take a cognate elective module offered by the Schools in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and by other Colleges of the University of London.
In addition to taught modules, we run a range of research seminars to which all MA students are invited. Some of these are linked to our interdisciplinary Research Centres, such as the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies, the Centre for Religion and Literature in English and the Centre for the History of the Emotions. Others are collaborations with other institutions, such as the London-Paris Romanticism Seminar. With visiting speakers from across the world, these seminars are an opportunity to meet other postgraduate students and members of staff and to learn about the latest developments in research.
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