English Literature MA

The Dissertation is an independent research project equivalent to around 12,000 words on a topic chosen by you, relating to your programme of study on the MA in English Literature or the Creative Writing pathway, and supervised by a member of academic staff. Literature students will produce a piece on a topic of their choosing that develops an argument over a series of chapters, demonstrating an ability to carry out effective research using appropriate methods of enquiry as well as expertise in writing, communication of research, and organisation. Creative writing students will produce both creative work and a research essay on their work, chosen genre, or a relevant literary tradition.

In both semesters, a series of workshop sessions will support academic skills development, inform the researching, preparation and writing of the dissertation, and incorporate employability and transferable skills via work-related learning. Two ungraded but compulsory MySkills development experiences (one reflecting on the writing of the dissertation, the other connected to work-related learning) will form appendices to the submitted dissertation.

This module encourages you to engage with recent developments in world cinema, and to research and interpret films, filmmakers and movements in contemporary film. You will study examples of contemporary international cinema which are currently being researched by academic staff, and be introduced to key critical and theoretical concepts which can be applied to the analysis of film. The films included for study will be actively chosen to reframe national, aesthetic and cultural debates and to foreground the empowerment and relevance of cultural production. As well as being able to view, appraise and discuss diverse and relevant examples of twenty-first century filmmaking, you will be encouraged to select, analyse and critically evaluate films of your choice, using the module's texts, ideas, approaches and debates as points of departure for your own cinematic research. You will gain and develop skills in close analysis, the application of theory, contextual reading, and researching and writing on important, influential and challenging film texts.

Romantic Gothic considers the various manifestations of the Gothic mode, from the middle of the eighteenth century towards the end of the Romantic period in 1830. Looking at how the Gothic became such an enduring and powerful mode of expression in literature, the module will look at Gothic poetry, Gothic novels, Gothic bluebooks, and accounts of supernatural occurrences in the popular magazines and newspapers of the age. By the end of the module, you will have a good knowledge of the rise of the Gothic during the eighteenth century and Romantic periods, and will have examined some of the most popular Gothic works of the age alongside less canonical works.

This module looks at the art and practice of letter writing in twentieth-century American literature. In particular, it considers the relationship between letter writing and other literary genres, investigating the use writers make of their own and other people's correspondence in published novels, poems and stories. Students will read letters by some of the twentieth-century's most controversial and innovative epistolary writers, including Elizabeth Bishop, F.Scott Fitzgerald, Robert Lowell, Marianne Moore, Flannery O'Connor and Sylvia Plath. One of the main aims of the module will be to consider the aesthetics of letter writing and the extent to which it might be seen as a literary genre in its own right. In addition to this, you will be expected to show awareness of the different historical and social contexts in which these artists worked and to contextualise their readings of letters through reference to other biographical and literary sources

This module approaches the literature of Shakespeare's era through the theme of transformation. This theme has multiple dimensions: first, you'll look at how Shakespeare and other Renaissance writers transformed existing literary traditions such as the classical epic, religious scripture, and medieval romance within their own writing. Then, you'll look at examples of transformation in Renaissance writing, such as changing sex, changing religion, and changes between the human and the animal. The module also reflects self-consciously on Shakespeare/Renaissance studies as a discipline and how it has been transformed - and might be transformed in future - in light of changing critical, ethical and social priorities. The module is diverse in its content, covering drama, poetry and prose, reflecting the different specialisms and expertise of staff members. The form of assessment, critical essay, helps you to hone your writing skills at graduate level and to carry out independent research into your chosen topic.

The module will engage with current research and scholarship relating to literature of the 'long modern' period (1930 to 1975), introducing you to the history and contemporary state of criticism and theory in relation to mid twentieth-century cultural production. You will receive a thorough grounding in research methods specific to the period. This is a period of unprecedented violence and transformation, from the momentous impact of totalitarian systems, the rise and impact of the Second World War on global culture, host to the worst events the world has ever experienced with the Holocaust and Bomb, the age of rapid and shifting groups and movements, existentialism through abstract expressionism to confessional, innovative and pop art styles. It is also an era of very deep reflection on the idea of the relations between systems of thought across disciplines. The module will chart that reflection as well as a forum for thinking about art's power in a world under new techno-political compulsions, be they nuclear-apocalyptic, Cold War-propagandized, or transnational, neo-imperial, superpowered or postcolonial.

This module provides you with the experience of working with an external organisation (for example, a library, gallery, theatre, school) and undertaking a short research project related to that organisation. You will choose a placement from those offered at the start of the academic year and will work on a defined project agreed between the academic co-ordinator and the partner institution. Alongside this project, you will undertake a programme of related reading and research directed by the academic co-ordinator. The module has three aims: (1) to enable you to develop your discipline-specific vocational skills (2) to enable you to gain practical research skills through undertaking research related to your project (3) to promote reflection on the relationship between academic research and external organisations.

This module examines imaginings of the 'human' in relation to machines and animals (and those monsters that are neither one thing nor the other) from the eighteenth century to the twentieth. We will focus mainly on fiction, its cultural contexts and on readings from the period's key thinkers of human being, alongside more recent theories of humans, posthumans and animals. The aim is to encourage critical engagement with this key issue and to facilitate a deeper appreciation of the period's literature, culture and politics, including the relationship of discourses of technology and species to discourses of class, gender and race.

The module explores three related case histories which help to establish how the literary Gothic shaped particular fin de siècle anxieties. To that end the module examines accounts of Joseph Merrick (aka The Elephant Man), newspaper reports of the Whitechapel murders of 1888, and the trials of Oscar Wilde. It is by exploring how the Gothic infiltrated medical, criminological, and legal discourses that we can see how a narrative which centred on the pathologisation of masculinity was elaborated at the time. These case histories will be read alongside Jekyll and Hyde (1886), The Great God Pan (1894) and Dracula (1897) as three of the key literary texts which also examine medicine, the law, and crucially the urban and gender contexts which in turn shape the three case histories.

This module examines representations of memory and trauma in contemporary narrative. The texts range widely both generically (from memoir to fiction andthe graphic novel) and thematically (to include both personal and collective histories, memories and traumas). Texts by Julian Barnes, Kazuo Ishiguro, HertaMuller, Maggie O'Farrell, Arundhati Roy, Viet Thanh Nguyen or Yoko Ogawa will be studied in relation to contemporary and decolonial theories of memory and trauma, such as those of Cathy Caruth, Stef Craps, Michael Rothberg and Walter Mignolo. We will discuss how narrative form is affected by such factors as historical events, memory loss, delayed recovery and childhood recall. You will gain and develop skills in close analysis, the application of theory, contextual reading, and researching and writing on important, influential and challenging texts.

This module can be taken as a standalone module, though it complements all other Creative Writing Modules. In this module we will ask what it means to write from and with the body as archive, as a site at which all that is known and unknown, internal and external, self and other, meet. Reading contemporary fiction alongside hybrid works and theory, we will explore different ways of writing the body with writing landscapes. Through this framework, we will develop a nuanced and experimentally-inclined understanding of how to deploy character, setting, voice, situation, plot, perspective, tone, and atmosphere, in prose fiction. We will expand our understanding of fiction through reading and incorporating into our own practice other forms of writing, including creative non-fiction, prose poetry, creative-critical writing and other hybrid and experimental forms. We will consider the relationship between literary experimentation in the context of the climate crisis and the numerous other structural crises that mark the contemporary moment. This module will encourage you to expand and experiment with your existing fiction-writing practise by producing new work every week, independently seeking out texts and experiences which speak to your own 'body archive', and contributing to critical and creative discussions in seminars.

This module can be taken as a standalone module, though it complements EGH443,EGH440 and EGH441,a practical and theoretical workshop which is designed to look at current methods of creative writing exploring a wide range of forms of poetry and poetics, prose poetry, poetic prose and the hybrid. During the term our core readings and discussions (critical and creative) will be focusing on language itself and within that on concepts of self and selves, complex concepts of identity as fusion of the private and the public, political and personal, the position of the lyric, or fictional, 'fused' and layered I or is, on phenomenological questions in poetry such as the correlation between psyche and world, language and self, inside and outside while exploring notions and structures of memory, trauma, movement, documentation, perception, body (psyche) and place and environment, politics, historicity, constructions and deconstructions of self, identity and gender; we will be focusing on unnameables, hybrid - psychoanalytical, philosophical and other theoretical concepts through the lens of the creative writer; liminalities and boundaries within the contemporary text of (an old and new) genre, as made, found, de-constructed words of selves. During the module you will be given the opportunity to develop your writing in various contemporary formations of more established and currently forming conventions/experimentations; your critical thinking through a wide range of creative samples by current published authors of both poetry and prose and other speculative genres of fusion; and through the weekly workshops to sharpen your editorial skills.

This module can be taken as a standalone module, though it complements all other Creative Writing Modules. This module allows you to develop your own creative prose by engaging both creatively and critically with texts which push at, break and spill over the boundaries of genre and form. Through studying a wide range of fiction, hybrid texts, poetry, creative-critical writing, and theory, you will develop a practical and theoretical understanding of the ways in which the creative process can transform texts. We will ask: what does it mean to write the self and the other, or the self as the other? We will consider how texts can function as modes of resistance and repair, or resistance to the idea of 'repair', particularly in the context of racism, ableism, sexism, homophobia, and other structural harms. We will look at different ways of generating material from unusual sources, ranging from other art forms to biographical and historical material, to theory. to dreams, myths and folklore. Through experimenting with different processes of writing, you will challenge your expectations around our own approaches to literary style, genre and form. Through alternating discussion-based seminars and peer workshops, you will produce your own writing that engages creatively and critically with the themes and concerns of the module.

This module can be taken as a standalone module, though it complements all other Creative Writing Modules, a practical and theoretical workshop which is designed to look at current methods of creative writing exploring a wide range of forms experimenting further with genre-fusions, the boundaries of genre conventions exploring forms of writing as re-writing and writing as process and experimentation focussing on through stretching borders and edges of poetic and prose forms contours of self, selves and identity: prose poetry, poetic prose, lyric poetry, hybrid, creative nonfiction, fictional memoir, auto-theoretical prose texts, poetic prose, blog, script and other cross-media. Through a wide range of conventional and cross genres, we will continue to be exploring notions and structures of identity, of perception and consciousness, the construction and re/de/constructions of self and selves in writing, layers of memory, trauma, the correlation between psyche, body, place, movement and environment, politics, historicity, race and gender; we will be focusing on unnameable, the 'difficult' and 'tender tissues' of the writing and writer's material, the abject, the other, the liminal and further hybrid concepts, psychoanalysis, post-modern philosophy, liminalities and boundaries of the contemporary creative text, as made, found, speculated, re-invented, documented, de-constructed words of public and private selves. During the module you will be given the opportunity to develop your writing in various contemporary formations of more established and currently forming conventions/experimentations; your critical thinking through a wide range of creative samples by current published authors of prose, poetry, creative non-fiction, speculative prose, play, radio and performance, cross- and multimedia and the hybrid; and through the weekly workshops to sharpen your editorial skills.  

This module encourages you to engage with recent developments in world cinema, and to research and interpret films, filmmakers and movements in contemporary film. You will study examples of contemporary international cinema which are currently being researched by academic staff, and be introduced to key critical and theoretical concepts which can be applied to the analysis of film. The films included for study will be actively chosen to reframe national, aesthetic and cultural debates and to foreground the empowerment and relevance of cultural production. As well as being able to view, appraise and discuss diverse and relevant examples of twenty-first century filmmaking, you will be encouraged to select, analyse and critically evaluate films of your choice, using the module's texts, ideas, approaches and debates as points of departure for your own cinematic research. You will gain and develop skills in close analysis, the application of theory, contextual reading, and researching and writing on important, influential and challenging film texts.

Romantic Gothic considers the various manifestations of the Gothic mode, from the middle of the eighteenth century towards the end of the Romantic period in 1830. Looking at how the Gothic became such an enduring and powerful mode of expression in literature, the module will look at Gothic poetry, Gothic novels, Gothic bluebooks, and accounts of supernatural occurrences in the popular magazines and newspapers of the age. By the end of the module, you will have a good knowledge of the rise of the Gothic during the eighteenth century and Romantic periods, and will have examined some of the most popular Gothic works of the age alongside less canonical works.

This module looks at the art and practice of letter writing in twentieth-century American literature. In particular, it considers the relationship between letter writing and other literary genres, investigating the use writers make of their own and other people's correspondence in published novels, poems and stories. Students will read letters by some of the twentieth-century's most controversial and innovative epistolary writers, including Elizabeth Bishop, F.Scott Fitzgerald, Robert Lowell, Marianne Moore, Flannery O'Connor and Sylvia Plath. One of the main aims of the module will be to consider the aesthetics of letter writing and the extent to which it might be seen as a literary genre in its own right. In addition to this, you will be expected to show awareness of the different historical and social contexts in which these artists worked and to contextualise their readings of letters through reference to other biographical and literary sources

This module approaches the literature of Shakespeare's era through the theme of transformation. This theme has multiple dimensions: first, you'll look at how Shakespeare and other Renaissance writers transformed existing literary traditions such as the classical epic, religious scripture, and medieval romance within their own writing. Then, you'll look at examples of transformation in Renaissance writing, such as changing sex, changing religion, and changes between the human and the animal. The module also reflects self-consciously on Shakespeare/Renaissance studies as a discipline and how it has been transformed - and might be transformed in future - in light of changing critical, ethical and social priorities. The module is diverse in its content, covering drama, poetry and prose, reflecting the different specialisms and expertise of staff members. The form of assessment, critical essay, helps you to hone your writing skills at graduate level and to carry out independent research into your chosen topic.

The module will engage with current research and scholarship relating to literature of the 'long modern' period (1930 to 1975), introducing you to the history and contemporary state of criticism and theory in relation to mid twentieth-century cultural production. You will receive a thorough grounding in research methods specific to the period. This is a period of unprecedented violence and transformation, from the momentous impact of totalitarian systems, the rise and impact of the Second World War on global culture, host to the worst events the world has ever experienced with the Holocaust and Bomb, the age of rapid and shifting groups and movements, existentialism through abstract expressionism to confessional, innovative and pop art styles. It is also an era of very deep reflection on the idea of the relations between systems of thought across disciplines. The module will chart that reflection as well as a forum for thinking about art's power in a world under new techno-political compulsions, be they nuclear-apocalyptic, Cold War-propagandized, or transnational, neo-imperial, superpowered or postcolonial.

This module provides you with the experience of working with an external organisation (for example, a library, gallery, theatre, school) and undertaking a short research project related to that organisation. You will choose a placement from those offered at the start of the academic year and will work on a defined project agreed between the academic co-ordinator and the partner institution. Alongside this project, you will undertake a programme of related reading and research directed by the academic co-ordinator. The module has three aims: (1) to enable you to develop your discipline-specific vocational skills (2) to enable you to gain practical research skills through undertaking research related to your project (3) to promote reflection on the relationship between academic research and external organisations.

This module examines imaginings of the 'human' in relation to machines and animals (and those monsters that are neither one thing nor the other) from the eighteenth century to the twentieth. We will focus mainly on fiction, its cultural contexts and on readings from the period's key thinkers of human being, alongside more recent theories of humans, posthumans and animals. The aim is to encourage critical engagement with this key issue and to facilitate a deeper appreciation of the period's literature, culture and politics, including the relationship of discourses of technology and species to discourses of class, gender and race.

The module explores three related case histories which help to establish how the literary Gothic shaped particular fin de siècle anxieties. To that end the module examines accounts of Joseph Merrick (aka The Elephant Man), newspaper reports of the Whitechapel murders of 1888, and the trials of Oscar Wilde. It is by exploring how the Gothic infiltrated medical, criminological, and legal discourses that we can see how a narrative which centred on the pathologisation of masculinity was elaborated at the time. These case histories will be read alongside Jekyll and Hyde (1886), The Great God Pan (1894) and Dracula (1897) as three of the key literary texts which also examine medicine, the law, and crucially the urban and gender contexts which in turn shape the three case histories.

This module examines representations of memory and trauma in contemporary narrative. The texts range widely both generically (from memoir to fiction andthe graphic novel) and thematically (to include both personal and collective histories, memories and traumas). Texts by Julian Barnes, Kazuo Ishiguro, HertaMuller, Maggie O'Farrell, Arundhati Roy, Viet Thanh Nguyen or Yoko Ogawa will be studied in relation to contemporary and decolonial theories of memory and trauma, such as those of Cathy Caruth, Stef Craps, Michael Rothberg and Walter Mignolo. We will discuss how narrative form is affected by such factors as historical events, memory loss, delayed recovery and childhood recall. You will gain and develop skills in close analysis, the application of theory, contextual reading, and researching and writing on important, influential and challenging texts.