BA (Hons) English & Drama/Drama & English

What you'll study Pathways

The programme can be studied through two pathways: Drama or English. These pathways diverge at the end of the second year. You choose the pathway of the final year by the end of the autumn term of the second year, although you will be asked to give a provisional indication of your choice when enrolling.

Year 1 (credit level 4)

You will study the following modules:

Year 1 modules Module title Credits. Explorations in Literature Explorations in Literature 30 credits

This module introduces a wide range of works covering the major literary genres and embodying significant interventions or influences in the history of literature. The emphasis is on reading primary texts and discovering (or rediscovering) writers and cultures so that you will be able to make informed choices among more specialised modules later in your degree.

30 credits. Introduction to Poetry Introduction to Poetry 15 credits

This module subdivides into two five-week sections, on ‘practice’ and ‘close readings’. The first concentrates on pivotal and innovative figures and movements in poetry from the early modern period to the present day, and the second explores fundamental issues in poetry through the lens of individual poems. Both sections are presented with the support of the department’s creative practitioners.

15 credits. Introduction to Literature of the Victorian Period Introduction to Literature of the Victorian Period 15 credits

This module is based on writing in Britain between 1830 and 1870. Perhaps no period of literary history has been so subject to stereotyping as the Victorian, yet, as its chronological span alone suggests, Victorian literature is marked above all by its diversity. The literature of the Victorian period contains both the legacy of romanticism and the origins of modernism; its aesthetic and moral ideals are powerful, varied, and unstable. Most crucially, it is the site of debate: about morals, politics, religion, science, sexuality, gender, nationhood, empire, and, at its very basis, about the nature and function of literature itself. The texts featured on this module will represent the early Victorian period as well as a range of its genres, including poetry, novels and essays.

15 credits. Analytic Vocabularies A Analytic Vocabularies A 15 credits

This module introduces a range of key theoretical perspectives that can be used to analyse a range of playtexts. The module also examines some of the major interventions in theatre over the centuries in order to assess the creative developments and outcomes in the light of key playwrights and theorists.

You will be asked to engage in textual analysis of individual plays, considering the contextual influences of history and culture as well as genre and form. A variety of approaches are covered, which can be used either individually or in conjunction, with the intention of providing the student with the tools necessary for rigorous critical and conceptual interpretation.

This module will provide the conceptual basis for further and more detailed study in Levels Five and Six of the degree programme.

15 credits. Analytic Vocabularies B Analytic Vocabularies B 15 credits

This module introduces a range of key theoretical perspectives that can be used to analyse a range of playtexts. The module also examines some of the major interventions in theatre over the centuries in order to assess the creative developments and outcomes in the light of key playwrights and theorists. Students will be asked to engage in textual analysis of individual plays, considering the contextual influences of history and culture as well as genre and form. A variety of approaches are covered, which can be used either individually or in conjunction, with the intention of providing the student with the tools necessary for rigorous critical and conceptual interpretation. This module will provide the conceptual basis for further and more detailed study in Levels Five and Six of the degree programme.

15 credits. Introduction to Dramaturgy Introduction to Dramaturgy 15 credits 15 credits.

You also study the following module in the summer term:

Module title Credits. Drama Production: Summer Projects Drama Production: Summer Projects 15 credits

This module runs in the summer term. You will be able to explore your critical skills in a performance practice context, focusing on design, stage management and direction.

15 credits.

You will be able to explore your critical skills in a performance practice context, focusing on design, stage management and direction.

Year 2 (credit level 5) English modules

You choose modules to the value of 60 credits from the recommended list. Modules may vary from year to year, but recent modules have included:

Year 2 English modules Module title Credits. Drama and Transgression: From Prometheus to Faust Drama and Transgression: From Prometheus to Faust 30 credits

This module explores a range of approaches to conflicts between divine or political authority and human claims to self-assertion and freedom; submission to orthodoxy; co-existence of orthodoxy and humanism; reconciliation of autonomy and theonomy; and the demise of divine law. The module introduces you to epoch-specific types of overlaps and tensions between religious and positive law, divine and human reason, feeling and understanding. The module also aims to increase your awareness of issues of gender and power, and investigates the nature of female revolt and violence in the light of the Aristotelian theories and traditional male academic and religious discourses.

30 credits. Inventing the Nation: American Literature in the mid-19th Century Inventing the Nation: American Literature in the mid-19th Century 30 credits

This examines a cluster of major American writers from the 1830s to the 1880s, all of which are engaged in shaping, describing, criticising and contesting the emerging American nation. We will examine literature’s role in the definition of national identity by exploring individual writers. We will also address the key ways in which the American literary tradition differs from its English counterpart. The writers of the so-called ‘American Renaissance’ – Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville and Whitman – will be central to the module, as their writings are at the heart of the project of national self invention. However, the module will look at this project from alternative perspectives, including those of region, race and gender. It includes the study of film as well as texts.

30 credits. Literature of the English Renaissance Literature of the English Renaissance 30 credits

You examine the literature and ideas of the 16th and 17th centuries, principally in poetry and drama. The major texts might typically include Marlowe, 'Doctor Faustus'; Shakespeare, 'Henry IV' and 'King Lear'; the poetry of Donne; Spenser, 'The Faerie Queene' (Canto 1); Milton, 'Paradise Lost' (Book 1); Webster, 'The Duchess of Malfi'.

30 credits. Literature of the Later Middle Ages: Society and the Individual Literature of the Later Middle Ages: Society and the Individual 30 credits

This module constitutes a ‘pre-1800’ choice. You study English writing in the 14th and 15th centuries, especially social satire, the comic tale, varieties of romance, and autobiography. You study texts in relation to genre; society and morality; gender; dissent and individual consciousness. Texts might typically include Chaucer, 'The Canterbury Tales' (selection); romances such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and 'The Book of Margery Kempe'; the ‘Lais of Marie de France'.

30 credits. Moderns Moderns 30 credits

You study modernist writing in Britain, Ireland and internationally from the 1920s, including such works as Eliot, 'The Waste Land'; Woolf, 'Mrs Dalloway'; Joyce, 'Ulysses'; Brecht, 'Mother Courage'; poems of Yeats, Auden, Stevens and others.

30 credits. Old English Old English 30 credits

This module constitutes a ‘pre-1800’ choice. An introduction to the language and literature of the Anglo-Saxons, with consideration of a variety of themes and genres, including history, lyric, mythology, poetic elegy and romance. Some texts are read in translation. Major texts might typically include selections such as the 'Anglo-Saxon Chronicle', 'Beowulf', works by King Alfred, Ælfric, and Bede.

30 credits. Post-Victorian English Literature Post-Victorian English Literature 30 credits

This module examines selected literary works across several genres in the period 1901-36, concentrating upon English-based writings in the non-modernist tradition. Topics for consideration include responses to social change and warfare, and new conceptions of Englishness and modern sexuality. Authors typically include Hardy, Shaw, Forster, Strachey, Brooke, Owen, Graves, Mansfield, Lawrence, Waugh, Holtby, and Orwell.

30 credits. Restoration and 18th-Century Literature Restoration and 18th-Century Literature 30 credits

This module constitutes a ‘pre-1800’ choice. You study English verse and prose satire 1660–1760; the Restoration comic stage; the rise of the novel; landscape and poetry. The principal texts might typically include selections from: Paul Hammond (ed.), 'Restoration Literature: An Anthology'; Behn, 'Oroonoko'; Defoe, 'Robinson Crusoe';Swift, 'Gulliver’s Travels'; Richardson, 'Pamela'; Fielding, 'Tom Jones'; Sterne, 'Tristram Shandy'; and works by Burney and Johnson.

30 credits. Sensibility and Romanticism: Revolutions in Writing and Society Sensibility and Romanticism: Revolutions in Writing and Society 30 credits

This module constitutes a ‘pre-1800’ choice. The module covers aspects of mid to late 18th century and early 19th century literature including ‘sensibility’, ‘pre-romanticism’, the Gothic novel and the emergence of the Romantic movement. Principal texts might typically include Sterne, 'A Sentimental Journey'; Goldsmith, 'The Vicar of Wakefield'; Austen, 'Sense and Sensibility' and 'Mansfield Park'; Lewis, 'The Monk'; Scott, 'Waverley'; Brontë, 'Wuthering Heights'; selected poems of Blake, Byron, Coleridge, Keats and Wordsworth.

30 credits. Shakespeare Shakespeare 30 credits

This module constitutes a ‘pre-1800’ choice. The module covers the literary and cultural analysis of Shakespeare’s work in its chronological development; his poetic language and dramatic art. You read most of Shakespeare’s plays and poems.

30 credits. Varieties of English Varieties of English 30 credits

This module explores how and why language is used differently in a range of contexts. We will examine language variation in relation to region, gender, ethnicity, age and social class; we will see that individuals are able to shift their style of speaking from one situation to the next and we will explore the attitudes that people have towards different varieties of English. The topics/issues that will be studied may include the following: Do women and men speak differently? What is slang? How and why do adolescents speak differently from adults? What are the public stereotypes about speakers with 'non-standard' accents? What is Standard English? In our discussion of these issues we will study various examples of spoken and written language and examine the role of literature and the media in representing language variation.

30 credits. Contemporary Arab Migrant Writing Contemporary Arab Migrant Writing 15 credits

You’ll examine the transcultural and transnational spaces imaginatively created in the works of Arab writers who are originally from North Africa and the Middle East and migrated to European and North American countries.

The core module texts are novels, memoirs, as well as short stories that cross boundaries spatially but also socio-culturally and linguistically. These works confront the waves of political repression, socio-economic crises, conflicts and geopolitical upheavals in the Arab world, as well as unprecedented rates of illegal migration, especially to Europe. The module texts are mostly Anglophone Arab literature and translations from Arabic and French, since 1999.

We will approach the texts as both specific to particular political and cultural geographies and also reflective of people’s physical and intellectual itineraries in a world where borders are alternately opened and closed. We will mainly look at place, memory, identity, home, diaspora, exile, refugee status, clandestine migration, surveillance, human rights, conflict, resistance, postcolonialism, nationalism, transnationalism, multiculturalism, assimilation dynamics and integration policies, gender, religious diversity and extremism, life-writing, as well as language, translation and the transcultural imagination.

15 credits. Aspects of the Novel Aspects of the Novel 15 credits

You'll explore key developments and trends in the novel form the early eighteenth century to the present day. Beginning with Defoe’s Moll Flanders, the module goes on to look at representative landmarks of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century ‘realism’ and of later modernist and postmodernist fiction.

As well as attending to the distinctive features of the individual novels, we will investigate critical and theoretical accounts of the genre, paying particular attention to debates about mimesis, character, narrative voice and plot.

15 credits. Drama modules

You study the following modules:

Year 2 Drama modules Module title Credits. Elements of Theatre History: Francophone Theatres from Africa, the Caribbean and Canada Elements of Theatre History: Francophone Theatres from Africa, the Caribbean and Canada 15 credits

Students will examine the ways in which playwrights, directors and companies from France and from its former colonies negotiate questions of identity, emancipation, resistance and artistic innovation.

France is currently living through one of the most convulsive periods in its post-war political history. The after burns of its colonial past and the role it played in the bloody Algerian War of Independence (1954-62) are still felt on a daily basis, with tensions running high between the state and police, and what are perceived as ‘immigrants’, even though they have lived in France for three or four generations.

Urban planning and the relegation of the immigrés to the banlieues – huge tower blocks outside city centres – only exacerbate the situation. This module looks at playwrights and other theatre-makers both from France and from Africa, the Caribbean and Canada who tackle France’s colonial past, and its postcolonial present. All the theatre-makers analysed on the module illustrate how today questions of identity and ethnicity in France and in its former colonies, are live, unresolved, and fluid.

15 credits. Modernisms and Postmodernity A Modernisms and Postmodernity A 15 credits

This lecture/ seminar series introduces you to key aspects of modern and postmodern thought, culture and theatre. It aims a) to examine historical and cultural contexts, and b) to explore and analyse the theoretical and culture concerns and practices which have been understood as modernist and postmodern. It is interdisciplinary, considering not only practices in theatre but in other areas of cultural production.

15 credits. Modernisms and Postmodernity B: Options Modernisms and Postmodernity B: Options 15 credits

Students choose from a range of options available within the Department. The modules on offer may differ from year to year as they reflect staff research interests, but some examples of modules recently on offer include:

15 credits. Year 3 (credit level 6) – English Pathway

If you choose to follow the English pathway then you will study the following modules:

You take an interdisciplinary dissertation – a pass in this is compulsory for the award of the degree.

English modules

You choose modules to the value of 60 credits from the recommended list. Modules may vary from year to year, but recent modules have included:

Year 3 English Pathway Module title Credits. Caribbean Women Writers Caribbean Women Writers 30 credits

You explore representative African-Caribbean and Indian-Caribbean women’s writing – prose and poetry – since the 1960s, with comparative study of black women’s writing in non-Caribbean contexts. Principal texts might typically include Gilroy, 'Boy Sandwich'; Collins, 'Angel'; Hodge, 'Crick Crack Monkey'; Riley, 'Waiting in the Twilight'; Senior, 'The Arrival of the Snake Woman'.

30 credits. Creating the Text Creating the Text 30 credits

You explore practical problems of literary convention and technique, including dramatic dialogue, poetic forms, fictional prose and reviewing.

30 credits. Decadence Decadence 30 credits

This module explores the literature of the