51Âþ»­

Both in workshops and through independent study, you will explore a wide range of short-form writing, including a variety of modes: international strict form poetry (e.g., sonnet, rondeau, terza rima, ghazal, villanelle, sestina), free verse, flash fiction, and historical flash fiction. Ethical questions about combining fact and fiction are addressed in an introduction to historical fiction. You may also explore review writing in real-world contexts and digital short-form writing on social media platforms, enhancing your transferable employability skills.

The focus on short-form writing across various genres enables you to develop clarity of expression and conciseness while practising redrafting and editing, building your confidence as a writer. A range of exercises will generate new writing. You will give one another formative feedback, and evaluate the responses your work receives, providing structured opportunities to consolidate writing skills for your final submissions.

Assessment: Collaborative Writing (20%) and Short Form Portfolio (80%)

This module focuses on journeys and places, offering the chance to explore key concepts underpinning your studies. You will take a post-disciplinary approach, using techniques from diverse areas to address questions related to journeys and places.

Interactive lectures with students from across the School of Humanities and Performing Arts provide opportunities to apply these concepts in subject-specific workshops and assessments.

Themes may include journeys, spaces, and the concept of welcome; (im)mobilities and journeys through time and space; representation and imaginative geographies; gender and placemaking; belonging and place attachment; and sustainability and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Assessment: Subject-specific Coursework 1 (30%) and Coursework 2 (70%)

This module explores how traditional texts and digital innovations can improve your writing practice. Through core readings, including work from global majority writers and translations, you will develop craft skills in voice, form, structure, and genre. A key aim of the module is to help you optimise your growth as a writer in the digital sphere.

In addition to producing creative work, you will work individually or collaboratively in a ‘writers’ salon’. You will lead discussions, select material, and devise writing activities, consolidating your learning and employability skills, particularly in educational settings.

Assessment: Writers' Salon (20%) and Portfolio (80%)

Through this module you will develop your understanding of poetic form and genre and consolidate your close-reading skills by scrutinising a range of poems and poets from different historical periods. You will explore the historical origins and development of specific poetic genres such as epic and pastoral and learn the conceptual tools and technical vocabulary needed for critical analysis of poetry at undergraduate level.

Assessment: Essay 1 (40%) and Essay 2 (60%)

This module covers the birth of English literature, introducing texts written between the medieval era and the early modern period. You will explore poetry, drama, and prose, comparing early English literature with key European works of the time.

Assessment: Commentary (30%) and Comparative Essay (70%)

This module prepares you for post-degree pathways by focusing on the skills, capabilities, and knowledge needed to thrive in professional environments. Emphasis is placed on core attributes and transferable skills while developing familiarity with the world of work.

You will critically engage with themes such as race, gender, identity, and geopolitical issues in relation to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, conceptualizing a more equitable and sustainable society.

Through subject-specific workshops, lectures, seminars, and independent learning, you will explore work environments related to your discipline. Activities may include responding to real-world briefs, placements, community projects, and creating project proposals tailored to your programme.

Assessment: Written Portfolio or Recorded Presentation (100%)

This module focuses on storytelling in diverse forms, such as poetry, hypertext, and scripted works. Narrative remains a powerful tool across media, marketing, advertising, and fiction. Themes may include narrative structure, characterisation, and story-world building.

You will study how storytelling adapts to contemporary settings, exploring narrative structure and how writers keep readers engaged. Additional topics may include writing for stage and screen, with a focus on structure and narrative.

Assessment: Story Craft Proposal (40%) and Story Craft Creative Work (60%)

You will explore literature from the Romantic and Victorian periods (1780–1901), studying texts by writers like Mary Wollstonecraft, William Wordsworth, and Charles Dickens. Themes will include class conflict, urban poverty, faith, national identity, and gender roles.

Assessment: Coursework (40%) and Essay (60%)

The theme of this module is writing for screens and with screens. You’ll develop skills in writing for various screen genres and platforms, focusing on optimising your writing for the 21st-century context. Genres may include podcasts, poetry films, TV or film scripts, web novels, and social media flash fiction. Collaborative work, such as creating a TV sitcom episode or web novel, is also included.

Assessment: Screentime Reflection (30%) and Screentime Project (70%)

This module explores the Gutenberg and Digital revolutions, focusing on how printing and computing have influenced writing. You will create your own texts using historical and digital technologies.

Assessment: Test (30%) and Report 1 (35%) and Report 2 (35%)

This module examines ‘World Englishes’ from a global perspective, focusing on literature from postcolonial nations. You will explore themes like memory, class, and ethnicity in both written and oral traditions.

Assessment: Blog/Vlog (40%) and Research Essay (60%)

The final-year dissertation provides an opportunity to work on a single form or genre of your choice. You’ll produce a professional creative work, accompanied by a critical reflective essay. This module focuses on redrafting, receiving feedback, and managing a professional writing project from conception to completion.

Assessment: Concept Testing (20%) and Dissertation (80%)

Throughout the year, you will research and write a dissertation on a chosen topic, with guidance from the English Literature team. Workshops will support your project development, introducing key theoretical approaches such as Marxism, feminism, and ecocriticism.

Assessment: Research Portfolio (20%) and Dissertation (80%)

This module provides professional skills and industry knowledge relevant to creative writing. Topics may include international publishing trends, copyright, digital marketing, and self-publishing. You’ll also hear from industry professionals and explore global developments in writing and publishing.

Assessment: Marketing Plan (30%) and Publication Project (70%)

This module challenges the traditional notion of ‘creative writing’ by exploring ‘uncreative writing’ practices. You’ll engage with chance procedures, conceptual writing, found texts, and experiments with artificial constraints. The module emphasises play and experimentation as key elements of creativity, encouraging you to transform everyday materials into artistic works.

Assessment: Uncreative Portfolio (100%)

This module investigates Anglo-American modernism and its publication in 'little magazines.' You will study modernist texts by authors like T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf and explore how these works responded to modernity.

Assessment: Essay (40%) and Research Portfolio (60%)