BA (Hons) English and Creative Writing

ENG4001
Gods, Monsters, and Heroes: Myths and Legends in Literature 20 credits

This immersive module provides an important grounding for new students studying English and Creative Writing. Based around some of the earliest written texts that underpin Western literature, the module engages with a number of issues to enable students to gain an understanding of the historical development of literature and the ways in which texts relate to each other over the centuries.

ENG4003
The Craft of Writing I: Prose Fiction and Non-Fiction 20 credits

This module introduces students to the key concepts and issues in creative writing through the practise of workshops. We will read classic contemporary works of fiction and nonfiction including autobiography, travel writing, poetry sequences, essays and reportage. We will produce our own works, and critically evaluate and contextualise them.

ENG4007
Rewritings: Contemporary Literature and its Histories 20 credits

This module will examine how and why modern and contemporary authors have rewritten or reworkedinfluential literary texts of the past. Students will engage with a range of different literary forms,including fiction, poetry, drama and, where appropriate, film. By investigating the impulses behind suchintertextual acts, students will explore the ways in which literature engages with the cultural politics ofits times, focusing particularly on issues of gender, ethnicity, sexuality, class and aesthetics. This module will include 2, 2 hour talks that introduce our School and programme level employability related opportunities and support, including details of the optional placement year.

ENG4009
Make it New: Digital Writing 20 credits

This module introduces students to writing digitally for, most notably, the Web, and its various platforms (from blogs to websites to Twitter etc). Students are invited to explore and expand ideas around authorship and audience and the writing (or images) that connects them as ‘content’, in its myriad of possible forms and formats. It will also introduce speculative and theoretical ideas about the relation between the self, writing, and digital forms. The module is taught through lecture, seminars, and workshops where students are asked to submit and feedback to peers and tutors on a regular basis.

ENG4010
Adventures in Criticism: Introduction to Critical Theory 20 credits

This module will introduce some key critical theories relevant to the study of English literature. It will familiarise students with a range of theoretical perspectives and enable them to develop an understanding of different ways of reading literature, and its wider contexts.

ENG4008
The Craft of Writing II: Poetry and Drama 20 credits

This module continues the trajectory of the study of ‘the craft of writing’, emphasising poetry and dramatic writing. We’ll explore how creative writing constitutes a ‘practice-as-research’ discipline, whilst studying relevant writing theory, contextual literature, and literary criticism. Lectures will introduce topics, and subsequent workshops will promote the development of student work through feedback. Students will submit creative work alongside ‘research statements’ twice during the term, in the form of portfolios.

ENG4005
Writing and the Modern World, 1700-1800 20 credits

This module considers the further development of modern ways of writing, thinking, trading, and seeing in the eighteenth century. This period is crucial to understanding literary history and ourselves. The module explores four key themes:- the beginnings of human rights and democracy in the eighteenth century - modern ideas of gender which originate in the eighteenth century - imperialism & the transatlantic world - eighteenth-century reading practices and the development of new genres.

ENG5001
Romanticism 20 credits

In this module literary Romanticism, in its rich and problematic diversity, is introduced and explored through a consideration of imaginative conceptions of the individual in writing between 1790 and 1830. The study ranges through a selection of texts in verse – lyric and narrative – and prose - essayistic, theoretical and fictional.

HEP5000
Preparing for Dissertation Research

This module will prepare students in the History, Art History, ECW, and PIR cluster for Level 6 dissertation research. Lectures and workshops will explore key approaches to sources, and practical and theoretical aspects to research. Students will complete an independent research project. Lectures include some choice, and cover a range of topics including, but not limited to, research in archives / local studies/ digital resources, creative practice, and literary analysis.

ENG5005
Professional Writing for Different Media 20 credits

In the context of this module, Professional Writing refers to commercial content for a variety of media outlets including advertising and marketing, as well as other ‘businesses’ which students have imagined and created themselves. Students will experiment with creative formats such as posters, reviews, reports, ‘copy’, interviews, the op-ed (opinion-editorial). The module is taught through lecture, seminars, and workshops where students are asked to submit and feedback to peers and tutors on a regular basis.

ENG5009
Victorian Literature and Culture 20 credits

This module aims to introduce students to the Victorian period through an examination of literature read in conjunction with a range of other contemporary cultural documents including scientific, sociological, psychological, political economic and aesthetic texts.

ENG5010MX
Writing Creative Nonfiction: Autobiography, Travel Writing, Reportage 20 credits

This module introduces students to the key concepts and issues in contemporary works of creative nonfiction, or 'life writing'. Included in our readings will be works of memoir and autobiography, travel writing, personal essays and reportage. The module is entirely taught in workshops where we experiment with producing our own works of creative nonfiction and learning to refine them, as well as critically evaluate and contextualise them.

ENG5011
Dramatic Writing for Stage, Screen and Beyond 20 credits

This course explores a wide range of dramatic writing and dramatic writing theory, integrating critical reading with creative writing projects. Class time will be spent discussing published authors/texts/productions, writing/reading theories, compositional processes, practical exercises, and student work.

SSC500
Stage 2 Professional Development, Placement Preparation and Identifying Opportunities 0 credits

This module is for students in the School of Society and Culture who are interested in undertaking an optional placement in the third year of their programme. It supports students in their search, application, and preparation for the placement, including developing interview techniques and effective application materials (e.g. CVs , portfolios, and cover letters).

ENG5002MX
Gothic Fictions: Villains, Virgins and Vampires 20 credits

This module looks at eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels to trace the variety and scope of literary contributions to the Gothic. It begins by discussing the origins of the Gothic novel, then moves to the heyday of the genre in the revolutionary 1790s, on to authors writing in the early and mid-nineteenth century, through to the decadence of the 1890s.

ENG5019
Brave New Worlds: Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Politics 20 credits

Science Fiction seems to be a field or mode that is particularly difficult to define, in part because it crosses over with many other forms. But it is also one of the most popular types of literature easily ranging from the highbrow to the low. This module will explore SF writing since 1960, with a particular focus on the hybridity of the field and the ways in which it intersects with fantasy writing, to explore a range of political issues in the contemporary world. SF is ‘a wide-ranging, multivalent and endlessly cross-fertilizing cultural idiom.’ (Roberts, 2006, 2) But is it really concerned with the future, or in fact, driven by nostalgia to engage with the ways in which the past has constructed the present? The module will be thematically structured and will concentrate on Anglophone writing.

ENG5017
Writing Genre Fiction

This module takes students into in-depth engagement with prose fiction writing in various genres, with possibilities including fantasy, science-fiction, period/historical, young adult fiction, horror, comedy, romance, crime, and thriller. The module is taught through lecture, seminars, and workshops where students are asked to submit and feedback to peers and tutors on a regular basis.

ENG5020
World Literatures

This module examines literatures written in English from around the world, explore what literature can tell us about cultural imaginaries of world, globe and planet in an era in which global interactions have increasingly come to shape our lives.

SSC601
School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences Placement Year

Students have the opportunity to gain work experience that will set them apart in the job market when they graduate by undertaking an optional flexible placement year. The placement must be a minimum of 24-weeks (which can be split between a maximum of two different placement providers) and up to a maximum of 48-weeks over the course of the academic year. The placement is flexible and can be undertaken virtually, part or full time and either paid or voluntary. Students will have the option to undertake their placement year abroad. This year allows them to apply and hone the knowledge and skills acquired from the previous years of their programme in the real world.

ENG6001
Dissertation 40 credits

The student will complete, under tutorial supervision, a significant project in critical or creative writing. Maximum length 9,000-10,000 words or equivalent in creative form.

ENG6002
Modern and Contemporary Literature 20 credits

This module will explore a number of themes through an examination of writing published in the approximate period 1910-1930. The themes will include structural and linguistic experimentation, historical and artistic influences, the First World War and literary networks.

ENG6009
Script to Screen: Making Films, Podcasts, and More 20 credits

This final year module asks students to realise an original script of their own making with an on-screen production. In addition to writing their own scripts, students will be introduced to the production side of things, including storyboarding, working with actors, cameras, and using film-making software. We’ll also study some classic examples of page to screen adaptations (albeit most on bigger budgets than you’ll have!). The module is taught through lecture, seminars, and workshops where students are asked to submit and feedback to peers and tutors on a regular basis.

ENG6007
Advanced Poetry Workshop 20 credits

In this final year module we will examine a range of contemporary poetry and poetic theory as a way for students to advance their own composition of poems. Class time will be divided between seminar discussions of published poetry/theory, writing exercises, and workshops of student poetry.

ENG6005MX
American Crime Writing 20 credits

This module considers the development of twentieth-century American crime fiction from hard-boiled detectives, to myths of the mafia, and postmodern reinventions of the genre. This module will explore the cultural contexts of American crime writing, prevailing conventions of the genre, as well as challenges to those conventions.

ENG6008MX
Features Journalism Workshop 20 credits

This module offers students an in-depth experience of professional writing. We will explore technique in features and literary journalism; music reviews, opinion columns and longer immersion features as well as other contemporary works of non-fiction feature writing, both short- and long-form, from sub-genres including profiles and interviews, autobiography and columns, travel writing, and reportage. We will learn to research and produce our own works of professional nonfiction and critically evaluate them.

ENG6003
Advanced Short Story Workshop

In this module we will examine a range of contemporary short story writing and relevant theory as a way for students to learn how to compose their own short fiction. Class time will be divided between discussion of short fiction and theory, writing exercises and peer workshops of student work. The workshops will be substantially informed by staff research practice.

ENG6004
Literatures of The Atlantic World: Race, Resistance, and Revolution

ENG6011
Eco-Dystopia: Literature, Culture and Environmental Crisis

This module explores the ways in which contemporary literature and culture are responding to our current era of ecological emergency with a particular focus on representations of disaster and dystopia. It introduces students to key debates and concepts, from the influence of ideas of utopia and dystopia, to the identity of the Anthropocene and the relation between humans and nonhumans. It traces these ideas across ‘texts’ in range of media, such as fiction, nonfiction, poetry and film.