English Studies MA

You will achieve:

• greater confidence in dealing with original research
• a recognition of the huge range of approaches that can be used to address research questions.

We build on the research skills you have already developed during both your undergraduate degree and discipline-specific MA modules. The emphasis is on:

• ensuring you are possessed of a range of practical ways to approach research
• making you think about the nature of your discipline-specific approaches within a context of growing interdisciplinarity.

You will have the chance to consider topics as varied as:

• academic publishing
• digital transformations
• use of illustrations in dissertations.

You will also have the opportunity to hear academics from across the Faculty talk about the problems they have confronted and how they overcame them.

This module is worth 20 credits.

Mastering the Arts introductory video 

We will help you to apply your arts MA across society to enhance your career and contribute to wider society.

We'll demonstrate how the arts can be used to:

• transform society, politics and culture
• enhance the careers of arts and humanities MA students.

You'll be able to explore, explain and then detail how your disciplinary skills can impact upon wider issues to emphasise the applicability of the arts and humanities. From the role of the scholar activist to understanding ‘knowledge transfer’ and ‘public engagement’, you'll develop professional skills in preparation for a career within academia or across a range of sectors.

You will:

• harness the ways in which the arts and humanities enable us to think differently and to innovate
• work on issues of research, networking, grant-writing and cultural exchange
• learn how to engage, communicate and create.

This module is worth 20 credits.

This module explores the use of linguistic frameworks to investigate literary texts. Through a series of practical analyses, students will be introduced to a range of linguistic explorations of poetry, prose, and drama from a wide range of historical periods. The course will invite students to use the analyses as an occasion for the critical evaluation of the various approaches to language and literature, to investigate the notions of literariness and interpretation, and to consider the scope and validity of stylistics in relation to literature and literary studies.

This module further explores the use of linguistic frameworks to investigate literary texts.

The module looks at various approaches to the study of spoken language. These include structural models based on the work of the Birmingham discourse analysts, as well as more sociolinguistically inspired approaches to conversation analysis and recent developments in spoken corpus linguistics. Each learning unit takes a different kind of discourse and progressively builds up a classification of discourse types or genres. Real spoken data are used throughout, for exemplification and practical analysis tasks. The implications for language pedagogy and other branches of applied linguistics (e.g.applications in other professional contexts) are considered, and students are encouraged to consider these in their own written work if appropriate.

The course will explore the relationship between language and gender in spoken interaction and written texts, drawing on key approaches in the areas of discourse analysis, sociolinguistics and pragmatics. The extent to which gender affects the language we produce when interacting with one another in a variety of contexts will be focused on, along with the issue of sexism in language use. Various theoretical paradigms that have been presented to explain language and gender differences will be critically examined, along with gender ideologies which operate in society. Students will be encouraged to combine theoretical thinking with hands-on analyses of data from authentic examples of spoken interaction and from a variety of publications including the popular media. The practical consequences of the discipline in terms of how findings can have a political impact on wider society are also discussed.

This module represents a course in cognitive poetics. It draws on insights developed in cognitive science, especially in psychology and linguistics, in order to develop an understanding of the processes involved in literary reading. The module also develops skills in stylistics and critical theory.

This module surveys key work in narratology, from literary, stylistic and sociolinguistic perspectives, with each unit written by an area specialist. The module introduces key approaches to the study of narratology and offers students insight into the development of narrative from Chaucer to the present day. The emphasis will be on literary narratives, though comparative exploration of non-literary and narratives will also appear.

This module considers twenty-first century historicized readings of a major English literary genre, and demonstrates that medieval English romance texts can be set in complex and profound critical relationship to each other and to other artistic media. Such an approach is possible largely because of the vibrant and privileged international socio-literary milieu in which many romance tracts were first written and received. Students will be encouraged to explore how reading Middle English romance texts can equip us with vocabulary and concepts to discuss the cultural specificities of the literary representations of romance, love and chivalry in this period, the representations of public and private identities, and the questions regarding individuality and selfhood that arise in literature produced in a volatile period of religious and social uncertainty and dissent. These are all issues that now define “the Middle Ages” for modern scholars.

This module considers three fundamental and interrelated questions about psycholinguistics:

1. acquisition, or how language is acquired
2. comprehension, or how words, sentences, and discourse are understood
3. production, or how words, sentences, and conversations are produced. 

Potential topics include, but are not limited to: lexical influences on sentence comprehension and production; first and second language acquisition; reading; language disorders (e.g. dyslexia, aphasia).

This module is intended to introduce students to the rapidly expanding field of health communication. The module focuses on two key areas in the field: narratives of healthcare and healthcare documentation. It will equip students with a high level knowledge of narrative and documentation theory and explore how much of what takes place in healthcare exchanges is governed by the kinds of narratives and documents that are used. Students will also develop and practice skills in identifying and analysing narratives of, and documents relating to, patients, professionals and policy makers. Students will understand how knowledge of healthcare texts can be used to enhance therapeutic interventions and practices across a range of healthcare disciplines. Students will appreciate how healthcare environments, structures and practices are informed by broader, macro-level organisational narratives and policies.

This module will explore the importance of ideas of space and place in literary texts from the eighteenth century to the present day. Students will be introduced to a range of critical perspectives that arise from recent interdisciplinary convergences between literary criticism and cultural geography. Topics for discussion might include: ecocriticism and ecopoetics; maps and cultural cartographies; urbanism and the literature of cities; nature and culture; travel and literary tourism; regional and provincial literature; nationalism and cosmopolitanism; ideas of community and dwelling; the relation between literary and spatial forms. Writers to be considered will range from Alexander Pope and William Wordsworth to Thomas Hardy, Alice Oswald, and Graham Swift.

This module introduces the study of the book as artefact. Students will learn about methods of construction and compilation, handwriting and early printing techniques, reading marginalia as well as text; they will also be introduced to the benefits and applications, as well as the problems, of applying an understanding of the artefact to the texts contained within.

Focussing on the works of Shakespeare, this module pursues a burgeoning interest across the field of early modern studies in ideas of place and location. It will explore the performative and linguistic contexts of productions, past and present, of the plays. In tandem with the general turn in literary studies towards critical cultural geography, 'Shakespeare, Space, and Place' will integrate a range of theories relating to space and place to explore the presence of Shakespeare and his work in place making and place meaning through questions of performance, language and cultural resonance. The module will allow students to work on individual but related units covering encounters with the 'foreign' or 'other', the urban and the pastoral, and notions of linguistic and thematic wildness, allowing for formative textual analyses and small project work en route. Case-studies focussed on individual plays and/or clusters of plays across a range of genres, as well as on specific sites of production such as the early modern playhouses, will encourage a range of geographically and historically informed explorations of different kinds of place-based relationships. Independent projects on Shakespeare and/in place will be encouraged for the assessment.

A knowledge of Old English is crucial to the in-depth study of the history and development of the English language, English place-names, culture and society in pre-modern England. This module offers students the opportunity to explore the literary ideas and culture of Anglo-Saxon England through the study of selected original texts. Using Peter Baker's Introduction to Old English, the module will introduce basic elements of Old English grammar and syntax to prepare students for reading and enjoying the texts. Wide reading of texts in translation, and discussion of poetry and prose in the light of historical and critical scholarship will form an important part of the module.

This module will provide you with a knowledge and understanding of the Gothic as a genre, introducing you to a range of texts from the late eighteenth-century to the present day. The term ‘texts’ is used here in its most expansive sense and you will encounter works in a variety of formats, including poetry, prose, film and a combination of text and image as presented in the illuminated works of William Blake and the contemporary graphic novel. Emphasis will be placed not only on understanding the cultural contexts out of which the texts under investigation emerged, but also on tracing lines of intellectual inheritance and cultural legacies across periods. This two-pronged approach will in turn lead to an appreciation of the way in which Gothic aesthetics, culture and community intersect in a variety of complex and meaningful ways.

This module will explore the use of language in interactions between speakers of different cultural and linguistic backgrounds from three different perspectives: Description, Development, and Assessment. With a growing proportion of interactions in the world today taking place between people of diverse cultural backgrounds, it is important to identify and describe language use which may lead to misunderstanding and communicative breakdown. This module will look at ways in which language barriers might be overcome in such interactions, and at the key factors in this process. We will examine intercultural interactions in a variety of contexts, e.g. business and other professional encounters, the language of the media, the foreign language classroom, etc.

English place-names are short texts, coined as transparent descriptions in the languages spoken in Britain over the past millennia. Many of them originated in the speech of everyday people, and therefore record perspectives unrecoverable from early texts which emanate from centres of power or learning. They therefore provide valuable evidence of all sorts – about early language(s) (British, Latin, English, Scandinavian, and French), history, historical geography, and landscape. This module will provide a background in onomastic research methodology and the ways in which place-names can be used to explore questions about the past. Students will complete assessments to demonstrate that they are able to take a sound historical-linguistic approach to place-name evidence, and undertake a project which will assess the value of that evidence for research into the past.

Develop your writing practice by exploring a range of creative techniques and media as they apply to both prose and poetry. You will be encouraged to reflect on your writing output and incorporate the critiques of others when editing and developing your work.

This module will introduce students to the range, practice and history of performance cultures in the medieval and early modern period. Students will be encouraged to understand extant texts within their historical conditions of production and circulation. The module will introduce theatrical performance from mystery cycles to professional playhouses; civic performance from provincial rituals to courtly masques; and oral cultures ranging from mumming to sermons. With close attention to the relationship between the manuscript and print traces of performance and the events to which they allude, students will develop an understanding of the physical conditions of textual and theatrical performance in their historical, cultural and political contexts. Students will be encouraged to relate texts to wider significant issues in the period such as national and religious identity, ideas of social, cultural, and geographical space and place, gender politics and generic experimentation.

Examine the process of novel writing by exploring various structures, techniques, and methodologies and engaging with an international body of work in genres such as fiction, creative non-fiction, and autofiction.

Explore a range of poetic conventions and the contexts in which poetry is produced whilst developing your own poetic style. Through the ‘practitioner’ approach, students are not only supported in their craft but encouraged to work towards submitting their work for publication. The reading list includes poetry magazines; new writers’ anthologies; debut poetry collections; poetry in performance.

This module introduces key contexts and frameworks for performance in order to enable critical exploration of central questions about the relationships between the making and reception of drama, theatre and performance. What is performance? Why do we perform? How does performance make meaning? And who for? The module draws on a range of theoretical frameworks for analysing performance, engaging with key critical thinkers such as Brecht, Bakhtin, Carlson and Schechner to consider a range of performances from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries from both conventional and radical stages. The focus throughout is on the multiple potential relationships between performance and audience in a variety of contexts of performance on and beyond the stage: Students will encounter performance that engages directly with politics, history and place and have the opportunity to develop appropriate critical vocabulary and frameworks to analyse these interactions. As well as working with a wide variety of material contained within the module, students will be encouraged to draw upon their own encounters with performance.

This module offers students the opportunity to explore the fluidity and interpretive possibilities of the Shakespeare work and text across multiple genres. Built around three theatre trips, this module will go into depth on three plays, looking at their literary interest (from textual history and sources to thematic concerns and characterisation) and their performative possibilities, including at least one stage and one screen adaptation of each play. By approaching the plays from multiple angles, students will be able to consider the varied potential for reinterpretation and recreation that each text offers. Students will build on seminar explorations (taught by a team of tutors) to develop their own project question about the interpretive possibilities opened up by different versions, and the choices made by specific interpreters of the text. Projects will be developed in consultation with tutors to take into account the interplay of performance and text.

This module allows you to engage with a range of modern drama, all themed around the idea of riot.This module explores the phenomenon of the riot, examining both how such a notion is defined and how it might relate to other kinds of western performance event. In particular, the module asks students to analyse the way that riots have both been triggered by, and represented in, an assortment of other performances, and students will be encouraged to compare and contrast material from a range of different chronological periods and across a range of different genres. Although the module is largely focused upon dramatic texts, it will allow students the opportunity to consider an assortment of other performance events, as we analyse the drama of Synge and O’Casey, the ballet of Stravinsky and Nijinsky, and the performance poetry of Linton Kwesi Johnson.

This module embraces literature in Britain since the Second World War, taking 1950 as the starting point, after which distinctive post-war cultural and social trends began to emerge. The critical trend to divide the period into two, with 1979 as a watershed, will be subjected to critical scrutiny: continuities as well as discontinuities in the literature written before and after 1979 will be considered. Key practitioners will be discussed, but the aim is not to provide an exhaustive overview of the period, but rather to present a developed account of important topics and debates, using an appropriate combination of teaching blocks. We aim to offer a level of study that is appropriate for MA level, whilst clearly giving prospective doctoral students the opportunity to begin important work in the study of contemporary writing.The module concentrates on the novel.

It has often been suggested that the very idea of literary history of a narrative that understands, classifies, and explains, the English literary past is an inherent impossibility. The relationship between literature and the history of the time of its creation is an equally vexed and productive question. This module will look at the various ways in which literature in the last few centuries has combined with the study of history, with significant changes in the ways in which works of the past are viewed, and also how histories of literature began to be constructed (a history of literary histories, so to speak) paying attention to such questions as the development of the literary canon, periodicity, inclusions and exclusions, rediscoveries, and lack of representation. It will also look at the ways in which literary biography, autobiography and life-writing relate to the creation of literary histories. This will be a team-taught module, introducing key topics in the area and apply them to a variety of types of literature from different historical periods, and the myriad critical ways in which such literature has been viewed, retrospectively.

This module will investigate radical strategies of aesthetic presentation and the challenge they offered to prevailing limits of personal, gender and national identity between 1890 and 1960. Through a selection of key literary, dramatic, cultural, and critical texts, the module will examine ways that modernist and avant-garde writings draw their formal, generic and political borders, how they reconfigure ideas of the self, and what the political consequences of that reconfiguration are. The module will also consider the multiple meanings of 'radicalism' in an aesthetic and literary context, relating those meanings to questions of taste, community, and the market. This will be a team-taught module which examines a wide spectrum of literature and drama, including as well the era's cultural criticism and more recent critical and theoretical studies. Some of the texts are difficult; students will be expected to have read material thoroughly before each seminar, and to come prepared to discuss its theoretical, aesthetic and political implications.

This module will explore the relationship between literary texts and cultural concepts of place. Students will be introduced to a selection of texts that can range from the 16C to the present, and a range of approaches deriving from recent interdisciplinary convergences between disciplines including literary criticism, cultural geography, literary history and theories of nationalism and postcolonialism. Topics for discussion might include: maps and cultural cartographies; urbanism and the literature of cities; travel and literary tourism; regional and provincial literature; nationalism and cosmopolitanism; colonialism and the postcolonial; the literature of empire; ideas of community and dwelling; the relation between literary and spatial forms. Writers to be considered will vary from year to year.

This module will introduce students to the study of speculative fiction from across a broad historical spectrum ranging from the Medieval period to the present, including an awareness of the historical contexts out of which speculative genres emerge and of their ongoing cultural relevance. Not only is speculative fiction an area of ongoing scholarly and popular interest, but also it allows for the theoretical discussion of, and critical reflection on, key contemporary issues, such as the problem of evil, identity, alterity, freedom and terror. Students will read works by a selection of authors and will choose two particular authors either from the same historical period or from different periods  to study in depth. The module will engage with a variety of genres and media, such as prose, poetry, film, the graphic novel and the illuminated manuscript(the exact selection of texts and type of text will vary).

This module provides an introduction to the presentation of text through editing and anthologising.It considers modes of transmission, both manuscript and print, and modes of representation, including scholarly editions and anthologies, both print and digital. It interrogates editorial theory and practice, including ‘best text’, genetic editing and single witness. Students are encouraged to apply questions of editing to their own areas of interest, and work through the practicalities of producing an edition themselves.

This module will introduce students to the range, practice and history of performance cultures in the medieval and early modern period. Students will be encouraged to understand extant texts within their historical conditions of production and circulation. The module will introduce theatrical performance from mystery cycles to professional playhouses; civic performance from provincial rituals to courtly masques; and oral cultures ranging from mumming to sermons. With close attention to the relationship between the manuscript and print traces of performance and the events to which they allude, students will develop an understanding of the physical conditions of textual and theatrical performance in their historical, cultural and political contexts. Students will be encouraged to relate texts to wider significant issues in the period such as national and religious identity, ideas of social, cultural, and geographical space and place, gender politics and generic experimentation.

This module will look at various authors, movements, and genres in the history of poetry written in English from 1500 to the present, offering both an overview of certain key chronological areas, and cases studies of more specific movements or ideas. Themes and areas of focus may include: late medieval, the 'drab', religious verse, poetry and science, Epicureanism, verse epistles, gender and recovery, 'minor' poets and failure, Empire and Romanticism, the dramatic monologue, modernist poetics, free verse, ecopoetics.

This course provides an intensive introduction to the Old Norse language, taking students through its grammar and through a selection of texts in prose and verse. Each week an aspect of language will be studied through exercises and focussed work on extracts from ‘real’ Old Norse. By the end of the module, students will have an understanding of Old Norse grammar and syntax, and will be familiar with texts from a number of genres, extracts of which they will have translated. Understanding of the language and of the set texts and their literary and cultural context will be tested in the coursework assessment.

This module provides an intensive introduction to the Old English language, taking students through its grammar and through a selection of texts in prose and verse. Each week an aspect of language will be studied through exercises and focussed work on extracts from ‘real’ Old English. By the end of the module, students will have an understanding of the Old English grammar and syntax, and will be familiar with texts from a number of genres, extracts of which they will have translated. Understanding of the language and of the set texts and their literary and cultural context will be tested in the coursework assessment.

The module provides a substantial grounding in the research resources and methods appropriate to interdisciplinary Viking and Anglo-Saxon studies. All teaching takes place through an intensive extended field-trip and a series of workshops. The workshops will introduce you to a variety of approaches to the study of the Vikings and Anglo-Saxons, including runology and name-studies, as well as providing a practical insight to public engagement and museums. You will also be given basic bibliographical training and the field-trip will provide an opportunity for you to discover a range of material and linguistic evidence relevant to the study of the Vikings and Anglo-Saxons, and to understand the importance of interpreting the evidence within its landscape setting. You will produce a portfolio of assessed work to reflect your learning in these areas. Please note that the timing and location of the field-trip are to be decided. As part of this module students will also have the opportunity to learn about public engagement through the well-established 'Vikings/Anglo-Saxons for Schools' project.

This course follows on from Reading Old English, offering students the opportunity to explore the culture of the Anglo-Saxons through the surviving literature in Old English. The focus will be on extensive reading of texts in Old English and discussing themes which may overlap in the different genres. We will cover topics such as history and hagiography, heroic and homiletic writing. Texts to be read will include Beowulf and related narratives.

This course will introduce you to a range of Old Norse texts in both poetry and prose, and to current critical thinking about Old Norse literature in its cultural and historical contexts. The course will equip you with a range of practical and theoretical frameworks for your own study which will be tested in the contextual commentary. Seminars will be student-led: you will present and discuss recent critical approaches and test them against your own reading of texts themselves. You will write an essay similarly combining theoretical, historical or cultural reflection with analysis of a text or texts of your choice. Knowledge of Old Norse is NOT required for this module, though students who have done ENGL4264 Reading Old Norse will be expected to deploy the knowledge gained there.

The module employs the study of place-names to illustrate the various languages - British, Latin, French, Norse and English - that have been spoken in England over the last 2000 years. Students will learn how place-name evidence can be used as a source for the history of English: its interaction with other languages, its regional and dialectal patterns, and its changing vocabulary. They will also undertake a directed self-study project which will assess the value of place-name evidence for some aspect of Anglo-Saxon and/ or Viking settlement-history.

This module will train you in the essential skills of runology: you will learn how to examine, transliterate, transcribe, translate and present runic inscriptions. This includes working with databases, corpus editions and specialist literature. In the workshops you will develop and practise your skills using photographs and other visual materials. You will then be able to apply these skills on a field trip, with hands-on study of inscribed objects. At the end of the semester you will undertake an independent project in which you will study and present a set of inscriptions which are of interest to you.

The Conversion of the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings is a marked watershed in both cultures. Whereas Anglo-Saxon Conversion appears to be straightforward, the Conversion of the Scandinavians seems to have been more complex, or so it seems. This course will introduce the processes that led to the Conversion; it will introduce the major texts and primary sources, but also consider the important research questions and the methods with which we can approach such a complex period of change, with often incomplete or missing sources.Students will be asked to read a range of different text types, including historical and religious sources, as well as poems and sagas, and be guided towards weekly secondary reading. Students will also consider evidence from material culture, such as manuscript illuminations, sculpture and evidence from burial archaeology. At the end of the module students should be familiar with the methods with which a range of divergent and sometimes incomplete pieces of evidence can be analysed, as well as major debates in the field. This knowledge will lead to the development of a research question for their own coursework.The module will be assessed by a) a 1000 word methodology essay (20% of the overall mark) which will be submitted before the Easter break and marked in time to be useful for feedback and the development of the final essay (20% of the overall mark) and b) a 3,000 word project which discusses Conversion processes in either the Viking homelands or Viking Age Britain and Ireland or Anglo-Saxon England (80% of the overall mark).

This module will introduce students to the range, practice and history of performance cultures in the medieval and early modern period. Students will be encouraged to understand extant texts within their historical conditions of production and circulation. The module will introduce theatrical performance from mystery cycles to professional playhouses; civic performance from provincial rituals to courtly masques; and oral cultures ranging from mumming to sermons. With close attention to the relationship between the manuscript and print traces of performance and the events to which they allude, students will develop an understanding of the physical conditions of textual and theatrical performance in their historical, cultural and political contexts. Students will be encouraged to relate texts to wider significant issues in the period such as national and religious identity, ideas of social, cultural, and geographical space and place, gender politics and generic experimentation.

This module introduces the study of the book as artefact. Students will learn about methods of construction and compilation, handwriting and early printing techniques, reading marginalia as well as text; they will also be introduced to the benefits and applications, as well as the problems, of applying an understanding of the artefact to the texts contained within.

This module considers twenty-first century historicized readings of a major English literary genre, and demonstrates that medieval English romance texts can be set in complex and profound critical relationship to each other and to other artistic media. Such an approach is possible largely because of the vibrant and privileged international socio-literary milieu in which many romance tracts were first written and received. Students will be encouraged to explore how reading Middle English romance texts can equip us with vocabulary and concepts to discuss the cultural specificities of the literary representations of romance, love and chivalry in this period, the representations of public and private identities, and the questions regarding individuality and selfhood that arise in literature produced in a volatile period of religious and social uncertainty and dissent. These are all issues that now define the Middle Ages for modern scholars.

Students will choose a topic in consultation with the MA Course Convenor and an appropriate supervisor. The topic will normally be based on interests and skills students have developed in the course of the modules already studied.