Welsh Writing in English MA

The MA in Welsh Writing in English offers an exciting array of modules from the traditional core of English studies in the context of contemporary approaches to the subject.

Key Features of MA in Welsh Writing in English

The MA in Welsh Writing in English 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 Welsh Writing in English is openly structured. 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.

You develop your dissertation project on a topic of your own choosing in consultation with a supervisor.

The College of Arts and Humanities has a 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.

Welsh Writing in English Programme Aims

• To acquire advanced knowledge and understanding of a range of topics related to Welsh Writing in English.
• To develop theoretical, practical and methodological skills relevant to all aspects of the study of Welsh Writing in English.
• To lay a solid foundation of knowledge and analytical and presentational skills for further research work in the field.

Welsh Writing in English Course Structure

The full-time Welsh Writing in English course comprises three modules taken in each academic semester (a total of six modules) and then a dissertation over the summer. There are three core modules and three optional modules.

The dissertation component draws on issues and themes developed throughout the year, or emerges from a topic of the student's proposing.

Part-time study is also available.

Modules

Modules on the MA in Welsh Writing in English typically include:

• Research Practice in English / Contemporary Writing / Welsh Writing in English
• Practising Ideas: Advanced Research Skills in English / Contemporary Writing / Welsh Writing in English
• Welsh Identities: literature and nationhood
• Gender, Genre and the Nation: Women Writing Modern Wales
• Dylan Thomas and the Rise of Welsh Writing in English
• Being Greek under Rome: Greek literature and culture in the Imperial Period
• Romance Refracted and novels renewed
• Narrative genres and theory
• Explorers, Travel and Geography in the Ancient World
• Saints and Sinners in Christian Late Antiquity
• The Romantic Sublime
• Long Fiction 
• Genre: Writing for the Stage
• Poetry 
• Art of The Short Story
• Writing Radio Drama
• Angela Carter
• Creative Non-Fiction
• James Joyce and Literary Theory
• Neo-Victorian Mutinies: Gender & Racial Trauma in Neo-Victorian Fiction (& Film)
• Discovering Old English
• The Queer Middle Ages: Bodies, Textuality and Objects
• After Macbeth: Stage and Screen Adaptation
• Was Eve Framed? Theorising the Medieval Walled Garden
• Fiction and Power: The European Political Novel from Kafka to Kundera
• Gender and Culture: An introduction
• Gender and Humour in Medieval and Early Modern Europe
• Gender in Contemporary European Culture
• Screenwriting

Careers

Career expectations are excellent for Welsh Writing in English graduates. MA degree holders in Welsh Writing in English may move on to doctoral study or enter employment in such areas as education; publishing; museums, heritage and tourism; marketing, sales and advertising; business, art, design and culture; media and PR; social and welfare professions.

Who should Apply?

Students interested in Welsh Writing in English from an English or related background. Students interested in preparation for postgraduate research, MPhil or PhD, or who wish to develop skills and knowledge related to early modern history.

Research Interests

The Centre for Research into the English Literature and Language of Wales (CREW) is directed by Dr Kirsti Bohata, alongside Professor Daniel Williams who during the past decade has developed comparative approaches to the literatures of Wales. He took over from Professor M.Wynn Thomas OBE, a Fellow of the British Academy and a Fellow of the English Association. Kirsti Bohata’s areas of specialism include Postcolonial Studies, Women’s Writing and the Production History and Culture of the Book. Professor Dai Smith is Raymond Williams Chair of Welsh Cultural History within CREW, Dr John Goodby is a poet, leading scholar of post-war Irish poetry and specialist in Dylan Thomas, while Peter Lord, the leading historian and interpreter of Wales’s visual culture, is the Centre’s Research Fellow who recently published an edition of the Winifred Coombe Tenant Diaries. Regular research seminars and lectures are run through CREW and also through the Research Institute for Arts and Humanities (RIAH) which students are encouraged to attend.

Visit the Welsh Writing in English MA page on the Swansea University website for more details!