English MA

The MA English presents students with an exciting range of topics and periods, from the Renaissance stage to minority literatures in contemporary Britain.

We deploy our distinctive research strengths, and our world-leading literary collections, to produce a degree that embodies the best of contemporary, critical and archival work. The department’s research widely supports all the teaching on the MA, from Medieval to Contemporary Literature, including postcolonial and world literatures and creative writing.

You have the freedom to choose your own pathway through bespoke strands, with careful advice at every stage and unique interdisciplinary modules to choose from.

You will receive detailed one-to-one guidance on your dissertation, which might be a creative writing portfolio, an edition of a Beckett manuscript, a fin de siècle project oriented around our Wilde collections, or a theoretically informed reading of diasporic fiction.

Come to the University of Reading to study a master's in English, we are ranked in the top 150 universities in the world for English Language and Literature in the QS World University Rankings by Subject, 2018.

What will you study?

Compulsory modules:

• Modern English Studies
• Materiality and Textuality

Options modules include:

• Beckett
• Creative and Critical Writing
• Diasporas of the Mind – Minority Literature in Britain
• Identity and Otherness in the Early Modern Period
• Literature and the New Science
• Philip Roth
• The Unruly Stage in Shakespeare’s London
• Victorian Innovations
• Wilde

Please note that all modules are subject to change. Please see our modules disclaimer for more information.

What career can you have?

Our students continue on to, or return to, careers in teaching, publishing, the media, the civil service, the charity sector and advertising, as well as going on to do PhD research. Students report that their careers are supported by the skills they have acquired on the MA English in terms of not only subject expertise, but also critical thinking, reading closely and with advanced understanding, and writing well.

View all English Literature courses.

Visit the Department of English Literature website.

Visit the English MA page on the University of Reading website for more details!