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
Visit our website for more information on fees, scholarships, postgraduate loans and other funding options to study English 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 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 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 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 are required to attend skills and training courses at College and Institutional level. English 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 degree typically lasts from one year (full-time study) to two years (part-time study).
The MA by Research in English 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 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, do get in touch and discuss it with us informally before applying.
Postgraduate students including those of MA by Research in English, 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’.
This intensive programme will enable you to delve deeper into the structure of the English language’s phonology, syntax and semantics and modern and historical development.
The MSc can function either as a stand-alone masters qualification or as a basis for further postgraduate study, typically at PhD level.
Joining an internationally acclaimed centre for research and teaching in the linguistic study of English, you will explore in depth a global language with a rich history and great social and geographical variation.
You will be taught by world-leading experts who will give you a detailed awareness of the ways in which English is used in Britain and around the world.
This programme comprises two semesters of taught courses, followed by a dissertation.
The programme focuses initially on the structure of English, and also offers option courses on aspects of the history of English, on current varieties of the language and on a good number of approaches to the study of the language and English linguistics.
Compulsory courses:
Optional courses:
You can also choose optional courses from a wide range of other areas of linguistic study. You may be able to take a course from other degree programmes in the School of Philosophy, Psychology & Language Sciences, and in some cases, from elsewhere in the University.
The programme has been designed to help you progress your career as an English language specialist in academia. The analytical skills you develop and the research training you receive will be valuable in a wide range of careers.
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 course
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.
