Classical Studies with English

Course detail Description

Our Classical Studies with English BA is an interdepartmental course that will allow you to develop an in-depth knowledge of the Classics while studying English literature. You will spend most of your time in the Department of Classics. This will allow you to gain skills and experience in Latin and Ancient Greek language and texts, philosophy, history, art and archaeology.

You will also study modules from the Department of English, and this literal combination of subjects will enable you to see echoes of the ancient world as they are picked up, reinvented and transformed over the centuries through to the modern day.

The Classical Studies with English BA comprises of 360 credits in total and is studied over three years. Each year, you will study a set number of optional modules covering different aspects of the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome (including literature, philosophy, history, art and archaeology, and Latin and ancient Greek languages) and English Literature.

Teaching

We use lectures, workshops and group tutorials to deliver most of the modules on the programme. You will also be expected to undertake a significant amount of independent study. You will be assigned a personal tutor who will provide support and guidance for your studies.

Assessment

Your performance will be assessed through a combination of coursework and written/practical examinations. Forms of assessment may typically include coursework essays, written examinations and individual or group presentations. Assessment methods will depend on the modules you have selected to study.

Location

The majority of learning for this degree takes place at the King’s College London Strand Campus. Please note that locations are determined by where each module is taught and may vary depending on the optional modules you select.

Special notes

Greek Play

The King’s Greek Play has been an annual tradition since 1953 and it is the only production in the country to be performed every year in the original Greek. Students (with all levels of Greek) participate in the direction, production and performance of the play, bringing to the stage playwrights from Aeschylus to Aristophanes.

Rumble Fund

In 2013 the Department of Classics created the Rumble Fund following a generous donation by a former student. This fund is used each year to pay for a group of students to visit classical lands as part of their degree programme.

Classics Society

Students run the Classics Society, which publishes the Satyrica newsletter and organizes regular lectures, theatre outings, themed parties, private tours around museums, nights out and trips abroad – in recent years, group expeditions have been made to Italy and Turkey.

Iris Project

The department also promotes teaching Latin in disadvantaged primary schools through the Iris Project; this offers students a highly unusual experience that is both enriching and will impress future employers.

Study abroad

It is easier now than ever before to spend part of your time as a King's student studying abroad. Second year students have the opportunity to study abroad in the second semester of their second year or for the whole of their second year. Partner universities currently include:

• University of Auckland
• University of Melbourne
• University of Toronto (Full year only)
• University of California
• University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (Up to five places exclusively available for Classics students)
• University of Sydney

Find out more about studying abroad

Our students also have opportunities to attend the annual summer schools at the British Schools in Athens and Rome, and participate in archaeological excavations in Greece and Italy, as well as further afield.

Read more

Structure

• Year 1
• Year 2
• Year 3

Year 1

There are no required modules on this course so you can select modules to build a study pathway that reflects your own particular interests.

Required Modules

There are no required modules in Year 1.

Optional Modules

Classics

You are required to take 90 credits from optional Classics modules, which may include up to 30 credits of Greek or Latin language acquisition. The wide range of modules available may typically include:

• Art & Archaeology of Greece & Rome (30 credits)
• Introduction to Ancient History (c 1200 BC– AD 600) (30 credits)
• Greek & Latin Literature: An Introduction (30 credits)
• Introduction to Ancient Philosophy (30 credits)
• Greek Language 1 (30 credits)
• Greek Language 2 (30 credits)
• Greek Language 3 (30 credits)
• Latin Language 1 (30 credits)
• Latin Language 2 (30 credits)
• Latin Language 3 (30 credits)
• Introduction to Byzantium & Modern Greece: The Greek-speaking World from 330 AD to Today (15 credits)
• Receptions of the Past: The Hellenic World from Antiquity to Today (15 credits)

One 15-credit optional module from either the Department of War Studies or from the Faculty of Arts & Humanities

English

You are required to take 30 credits from optional English modules, which may typically include:

• Introducing Literary Theories (15 credits)
• Writing London (15 credits)
• American Literature (15 credits)
• Classical & Biblical Contexts (15 credits)
• Medieval Literary Culture (15 credits)
• Early Modern Literary Culture (15 credits)

Year 2

Second year students take 90 credits of Classics modules and 30 credits of English modules.

Required Modules

There are no required modules in Year 2.

Optional Modules

Classics

You are required to take 90 credits from optional Classics modules, which may typically include:

• Greek Language 1 (30 credits)
• Greek Language 3A (30 credits)
• Latin Language 1 (30 credits)
• Latin Language 3A (30 credits)
• Roman Britain (30 credits)
• Art & Power in the Age of Alexander (Hellenistic Art I) (15 credits)
• Art & Empire: The Legacy of Byzantium (15 credits)
• Introductory Greek Texts III (Prose): Various Texts (15 credits)
• From Sulla to Caesar: the Fall of the Roman Republic (15 credits)
• Early Greece from Troy to Marathon (15 credits)
• Pompeii: History & Society (15 credits)
• Introductory Latin Texts: Prose (15 credits)
• Homer (15 credits)
• Myth & Literature: Ancient Stories, Modern Meanings (15 credits)
• Death in Greek Literature (15 credits)
• Virgil’s Aeneid (15 credits)
• The Art of Acquisition: Conquest, Collection & the Rise of Rome (Hellenistic Art II) (15 credits)
• Building Greece (15 credits)
• Constantinople: Imperial Capital – Medieval Metropolis (15 credits)
• Introductory Greek Texts IV (Verse): Various Texts (15 credits)
• Democracy, Empire & War: Greece 446–338 BC (15 credits)
• The Late Roman World, AD 337–425 (15 credits)
• Introductory Latin Texts: Verse (15 credits)
• Wisdom & the Divine: Ancient Greek Philosophy & Religion (15 credits)
• Ancient Sexuality I (15 credits)
• Ancient Sexuality II (15 credits)
• Latin Lyric Poetry (15 credits)
• The Novels of Nikos Kazantzakis & the Ancient World (15 credits)

You can take up to 30 credits in optional module(s) from either the Department of War Studies or the Faculty of Arts & Humanities.

English

You are required to take 30 credits from optional English modules, which may typically include:

• Cultural Encounters (Medieval) (15 credits)
• History, Politics & the Elizabethan Imagination (15 credits)
• The Rise of the Novel (15 credits)
• Performance in Medieval Culture (Medieval) (15 credits)
• Comedy & Identity (15 credits)
• London Literature 1380–1450 (Medieval) (15 credits)
• The Poetry of Revolution (15 credits)
• Prose Fiction (Creative Writing) (15 credits)
• Literature & Psychoanalysis (15 credits)
• Modern Theatre (15 credits)
• Theatre Capital (15 credits)
• Fin de Siecle (15 credits)
• C19th American Literature (15 credits)
• The Colonial Novel & British India (15 credits)
• Mapping Modernism (15 credits)
• American Popular Culture (15 credits)
• Theory, Culture & Politics after the 1960s (15 credits)
• Creative Writing Drama (15 credits)
• Old English Poems & Modern British Poetry (Medieval) (15 credits)
• Subjects of Desire (Medieval) (15 credits)
• Eighteenth Century Travel Writing (15 credits)
• A Mad World, My Masters: Performing Culture in Jacobean England (15 credits)
• Renaissance Wordplay (15 credits)
• The Film of the Play (15 credits)
• Victorians & Social Change (15 credits)
• First World War Literature (15 credits)
• Modern Poetry & the Place of Writing (15 credits)
• US Slavery & the Literary Imagination (15 credits)
• Contemporary Global Novels (15 credits)
• Gender & Performance (15 credits)
• Twentieth Century American Fiction (15 credits)
• Experimental Theatre (15 credits)

You also have the opportunity to study abroad in the second semester of the second year or for the whole of the second year. Partner universities currently include:

• University of Auckland
• University of Melbourne
• University of Toronto (Full year only)
• University of California
• University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
• University of Sydney

Year 3

Final year students take 90 credits of Classics modules and 30 credits of English modules.

Required Modules

There are no required modules in Year 3.

Optional Modules

Classics

You are required to take 90 credits from optional Classics modules, which may typically include:

• Minoans & Mycenaeans (30 credits)
• The Classical Art of the Body: Greek Sculpture (30 credits)
• The Art of Making: Craft Production from Classical Antiquity to Today (30 credits)
• Augustus: Power & Propaganda (30 credits)
• The History & Theory of Ancient Slavery (30 credits)
• Greek Religion (30 credits)
• Pagans, Christians & Jews in the Roman Empire (30 credits)
• Streetwise: Narrating the City in Classical Literature (30 credits)
• Neronian Literature & Culture (30 credits)
• Plato’s Myths: The Soul, Desire & the Beyond (30 credits)
• Living Forever: Fame & Glory from Homeric Heroes to Roman Emperors (& Beyond) (30 credits)
• An Introduction to Classical Reception Studies in Sixteen Encounters (30 credits)
• Dissertation on a Classical Subject (30 credits)
• Greek Texts: Prose (15 credits)
• Persian Kings & their Territory in the Achaemenid Empire (15 credits)
• Latin Texts: Prose (15 credits)
• Venice: History & Art (15 credits)
• Greek Texts: Poetry (15 credits)
• Latin Texts: Poetry (15 credits)

English

You are required to take 30 credits from optional English modules, which may typically include:

• Autobiography (15 credits)
• Critically Queer (15 credits)
• Jane Austen in Context (15 credits)
• Beowulf (15 credits)
• Postcolonial Perspectives (15 credits)
• Victorians Abroad (15 credits)
• George Eliot: Fiction & Context (15 credits)
• Shakespeare’s London (15 credits)
• Virginia Woolf & the Politics of Reading (15 credits)
• Modernist Short Story (15 credits)
• Poetry in America 1900–1950 (15 credits)
• Imagining Britain: Medieval Places, Journeys, Maps (15 credits)
• The Life of the Sonnet (15 credits)
• American West (15 credits)
• Memory & Time in the Nineteenth Century (15 credits)
• Court Cultures in the Age of Elizabeth I (15 credits)
• James Joyce & Ulysses (15 credits)
• Melancholia & Its Modern Afterlife (15 credits)
• Late Shakespeare (15 credits)
• Waste & Idleness (15 credits)
• Reading Paradise Lost (15 credits)
• Poetry in America 1950–2000 (15 credits)
• Literature & Media (15 credits)
• Medieval/Modern: Text, Culture & the Politics of Time (15 credits)
• Theatre & Politics in the Twentieth & Twenty-First Centuries (15 credits)
• Vernacular Theory (15 credits)
• Alternative Americas: Margins, Minorities & Historical Change in 19th-Century Society (15 credits)
• Conspiracy Fictions in Contemporary America (15 credits)
• Literature, Solidarity & the Humanitarian Turn (15 credits)
• Creative Writing Poetry (15 credits)
• Culture, Gender & Power at the Court Elizabeth I (15 credits)

King’s College London reviews the modules offered on a regular basis in order to provide up-to-date, innovative and relevant programmes of study. The optional modules offered may therefore change.