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Top reasons to choose this course

• Staff are active researchers and writers who bring their expertise to your learning.

• Option modules in the second and third years enable you to tailor your degree to your specific career ambitions.

• Scrivener talks give you the chance to speak to a professional writer about their work.

• Extracurricular activities such as the Performance and Community Research and Enterprise Group and the student-led Creative Writing Society.

• Our focus on employability, including a placement, ensures you will graduate with a strong skillset.

• Develop valuable transferable skills as a critical thinker, independent researcher with excellent presentation, written and oral communication skills.

• Excellent student support and a warm and encouraging community. 

• Weekly roundup of writing competitions and opportunities to encourage you to promote your work and consider future careers.

• Professional feedback on any aspect of your writing from our resident Royal Literary Fund Fellow.

Year 1 

The content and structure of the course reflects its aims and ethos, providing a core grounding in approaches, theories, genres and periods in the first two years, followed by opportunities for pursuing individual research and practice interests in the third year.

Your degree includes core literature modules and further option modules through which you will be able to forge a personal pathway. For example you might take creative or writing modules at each level to provide a distinctive creative strand through the degree, which can then be supplemented in your dissertation. Students may also take one option from outside literature in years 2 and 3, with choice across the fields of linguistics, media and language.

You’ll develop presentation skills through seminar groups, which foster and enable a debating culture.

Modules

• Textual Encounters: Reading, Writing, Thinking

  How do texts make meaning? How can we understand the relationships between readers, writers, and texts? This module introduces questions crucial to the study of literature and culture through examining reading, writing and thinking as dynamic and dialogic cultural practices. You'll develop the skills necessary to become an effective writer, thinker and critic, enabling you to develop informed responses to texts and ideas in dialogue with others as members of a collaborative intellectual community.

• Stories and Storytelling

  How do stories create and communicate experiences, identities and cultural meaning? How do they work to perpetuate and challenge social structures? On this module you'll study fairy tales, myth, novels, short stories and visual narratives (for example, film, comics and graphic novels, gaming) to discuss these questions. Through reading and guided research you'll identify and pursue your own interests in critical, creative and reflective ways and produce a reading and research journal.

• Poetry-Politics-Protest

  This module explores poetry from a diverse selection of writers, time periods and cultures. Learning how to analyse and interpret poetry and understand poetic forms and techniques, you'll discuss poetry as a political act, form of protest and agent of social change to discover the dynamic possibilities of poetry as a relevant means of communication and connection essential in our changing world. Students co-create this module and you'll develop your own practice through curating a poetry anthology.

• The World, the Text and the Critic

  Taking inspiration from Edward Said’s book The World, the Text, and the Critic (1983), this module enables you to explore some of the key debates in contemporary literary studies. Organised around decolonial, feminist, queer, ecocritical and other approaches to texts, you'll develop critical writing skills and knowledge of social, cultural and political contexts in the interpretation of literary works and the wider world. 

• Staging Politics

  How might theatre engage audiences with the politics of class, race, gender, sexuality and the environment? You'll examine a range of plays in context, exploring how provocative stories develop through characterisation, stage directions, dialogue and dramatic action. Learn to think critically and creatively about theatrical texts and how to write scripts for stage in inclusive collaborations with your peers.

• Enlightenment to Romanticisms

  This module will introduce you to some of the most important literary and social writings of the Enlightenment and Romantic periods. It situates the work of the major Enlightenment thinkers and Romantic writers, between approximately 1680 and 1830, within their historical and discursive contexts, and explores the political and aesthetic concepts that underpin their work.

Our courses are reviewed and enhanced on an ongoing basis in order to make sure that what you learn with us is relevant and that your course enables you to develop appropriate skills. When you apply to study with us, we will inform you of any new developments in your chosen programme through .

Year 2 

In the second year you’ll begin developing your own interests through option choices each semester.

You can also choose option modules from across our humanities and arts subjects. 

At the end of your second year you will have the opportunity to study abroad for a year extending your degree to four years.

Modules

• The Nineteenth Century in Literature
• Early Modern Literature
• Twentieth-century Literary Experiments
• British Literature and Twentieth-century History

Options*

• Writing for Stage, Radio and Screen
• Documentary Filmmaking: Theory and Practice
• Travel Narratives through Time and Space
• Introduction to Journalism
• Stories that Transform: Reading and Writing for Change
• Queer Writing
• Literature and Art History
• Image and Text: The Language of Comics and Graphic Novel
• Early Modern Literature
• British Literature and Twentieth-century History
• Professional Practice and Placement
• American Literature 1850–1960
• Writing for State, Radio and Screen
• Photography: From Painting with Light to Zeros and Ones

*Option modules are indicative and may change, depending on timetabling and staff availability.

Placements 

In year 2 you can choose a placement module which will allow you to gain professional experience in industries such as publishing, broadcasting, social media marketing, PR and the charity sector. 

Recent placement hosts include:

In year 3 you can choose the Community Placement module aimed at further building your professional experience. This is 30 to 50 hours of voluntary work with a not-for-profit or community organisation. The placement is assessed and contributes to your degree.

Mia Kurian, graduate

“My placement was with Metropolitan City Church ÑÇÖÞÂ鶹¾«Æ·ÔÚÏß as their Social Media Manager. I learnt a lot about myself and my interests and the type of career I may want to pursue. I got to try my hand at website design, something I had never done before, and it was a great opportunity for me to expand my creativity. Professionally, I gained a lot of experience that has been extremely useful in my career today. I learnt about creating brand cohesion and creating a brand image from scratch, something I’ve never done before.

"I absolutely loved it. It was an incredible learning experience as well as insightful. It allowed me to learn a lot about myself and the future I want. My placement manager was lovely and supportive and allowed me the freedom to explore my creativity.”

Final year 

Your final year of literature study allows you to benefit from the skills you have developed and to demonstrate your academic ability through a major dissertation project. 

Modules

• Dissertation

Options*

• Community Placement: Theory in Practice
• Russian Literature and Culture: The Golden Age and Beyond
• (Re)viewing Shakespeare
• Apocalypse, Utopia, Dystopia
• Literature and Philosophy
• Postwar American Literature
• Literature and the World Wars
• Women's Writing and Feminist Theory
• Restoration Dramas
• Adaptions
• Citizen Journalism: Theory and Practice

• From Script to Screen
• Creative Writing Project
• Conflict, Migration, Borders
• Gothic Texts and Contexts
• Victorian Sexualities
• ÑÇÖÞÂ鶹¾«Æ·ÔÚÏß Rocks
• Writing the Contemporary
• Postcolonial Literatures
• European Literatures and Film
• World Englishes
• Language, Gender and Sexuality
• Approaches to Analysing Discourse
• Popular Culture: Europe and Beyond
• Autobiography and the Screen

*Option modules are indicative and may change, depending on timetabling and staff availability.

Lab facilities

Mithras House is home to all our School of Humanities and Social Science courses. It has a series of ‘labs’, which may be used for teaching on your course or in your independent research work.

Life lab
A comfortable space with lounge furniture intended for qualitative research with larger groups. Due to its relaxed layout and naturalistic environment, the space is suited to research using focus groups, research using observation-based methods and child research.

The space is also used for teaching on some social science courses, as well as for dissertation research for projects.
 
City lab
A space designed for collaborative student learning. It is used by students and staff involved in the university’s Global Challenges programme, our collective mission to contribute towards solutions to tackling the pressing issues facing our world.

Design lab
A space housing our extensive collection of historic dress and textiles, which are used in some teaching on our History of Art and Design courses. It has the space and equipment to work on textile projects. Displays created by students on these programmes are on view in the social spaces of the building.

Stats lab
A specialist workspace with computing equipment for statistical analysis and projects involving video and audio editing software. The lab is accessible as a study space to students on psychology courses.

It is also available to students studying courses involving video and audio recording and editing, such as politics degrees and our creative writing programmes. The stats lab contains eight soundproof booths for recording or transcribing interviews undertaken as part of dissertation research.

VR and eye tracking lab
This lab is used for psychological research, specifically eye-tracking research and virtual reality research. Equipment includes an electroencephalography (EEG) headset and Electrodermal Activity (EDA) equipment.

Meet the team

Dr Irralie Doel, course leader

Irralie is Senior Lecturer in English literature and leads the literature subject area at the ÑÇÖÞÂ鶹¾«Æ·ÔÚÏß. She researches twentieth and twenty-first century women’s writing and feminist theory, poetry, poetics and politics, and creative writing.

Other staff who teach on the course include:

• Dr Patricia Mcmanus
• .

Course fees

The fees listed here are for the first year of full-time study if you start your course in the academic year 2025–26.

You will pay fees for each year of your course. Some fees may increase each year.

UK undergraduate and some postgraduate fees are regulated by the UK government and increases will not be more than the maximum amount allowed. Course fees that are not regulated may increase each year by up to 5% or RPI (whichever is higher).

If you are studying part-time your fee will usually be calculated based on the number of modules that you take.

Find out more

• ÑÇÖÞÂ鶹¾«Æ·ÔÚÏß Boost – cost of living help for our new undergrad students. Find out about how we can help with your study, accommodation or travel costs and more...
• Fees, bursaries, scholarships and government funding info for UK and international undergraduate students
• Student finance and budgeting while studying
• Read our student contract and (pdf) for more on ÑÇÖÞÂ鶹¾«Æ·ÔÚÏß tuition fees.

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