This module will provide you with an outline of English literary history from the late medieval period to the modern day, introducing you to significant writers and genres and their place within a broad contextual framework. How are ideas of the literary canon formed and perpetuated, and what are the implications of such processes? You’ll have the opportunity to engage in these debates while studying key literary works in their original contexts.

This module offers you an opportunity to explore a range of dramatic forms, modes, and theories. Focusing on primary materials covering a range of periods from the Renaissance to the present day, the module is designed to help you develop a critical awareness of how drama produces meaning on both the page and stage, with a focus on both text and performance. The module will also consider what is involved in analysing live performance, and may include a theatre trip; you will have the opportunity to write creatively, participate in rehearsed readings, and contribute to group presentations.

Writers tell stories in many different forms and many different media. On this module you’ll examine a wide range of forms and media, from period fiction to film and the graphic novel. In doing so, you’ll discuss the features, functions and effects of different types of narrative. The assessment for this module offers you the choice to work creatively using what you’ve learned, or to focus on literary criticism. After this module, you’ll have the skills to continue studying different types of narrative across the rest of your degree.

This module aims to give you the necessary analytical skills to read poetry more closely and critically, in order to understand how it achieves its effects. As well as gaining knowledge of core metrical principles and awareness of their various effects and implications, you will develop an understanding of the principal kinds and forms of poetry in English from the Renaissance to the present day. Working in small groups for the workshops and seminars, you’ll have a chance to study a range of poems in depth, analysing both their forms and their contexts.

This module will introduce you to significant classic and contemporary theoretical approaches and key concepts used in the study of literature today, typically covering topics including gender and sexuality, race and postcoloniality, ideology and capitalism, eco-criticism, and power and protest. Through learning about these influential ideas and debates, you’ll be able to demonstrate how these theories can be used to interpret literary texts.

This module gives you the opportunity to engage with a wide range of African American cultural production (written, cinematic and musical) from 1840 to the present day and to explore the complex social and political questions raised by these primary materials, studying a variety of texts from nineteenth-century slave narratives to contemporary hip-hop lyrics.

A creative title for a creative module. Here you’ll be introduced to techniques for writing poetry and fiction, and be given lots of techniques to try out for yourself. The module is based on the assumption that everyone is starting out as a writer, so you don’t have to have had any experience. You’ll also learn how to give and receive feedback, meaning that you can develop your work and that of your fellow students. By the end of the module you’ll be confident in writing your own material, using skills in plot, imagery, character and a lot more. 

This module provides an opportunity to explore key concepts, approaches, and areas of interest in film studies through offering a critical introduction to the discipline. As well as considering key aspects of film form and style (setting, props, costume, lighting, actor performance, cinematography, editing, and sound and music), you will explore such topics as narrative, genre, the role of the director, star studies, and geographies of film consumption, through detailed study of a number of American films.

One 10-credit module from a list supplied by the Language Centre, levels dependent on candidates’ previous qualifications.  Languages offered are: French, German, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish.