English And Creative Writing BA (Hons)

Core modules studied are:
Level 4
Introduction to English Studies
Learn about the key forms, genres and developments of modern English literature. Critical debates, terminology and influential theoretical essays will be studied to ensure you are equipped for your degree course.
Introduction to Fiction
Learn a number of writing techniques (journalism, poetry, short stories and plays) through workshops and writing exercises. You will also be given opportunities to practice traditional and more experimental forms of prose, poetry and imaginative writing.
Poetic Writing
Learn the art of writing poetry (poetics) starting with the basic elements of form and structure: traditional verse forms (e.g. sonnets, sestinas) and how they have been developed in modern poetic practice. Through practical workshops you will develop your own poetic writing and discuss the theoretical aspects of poetics. You will also learn a number of writing techniques and be encouraged to use them to write imaginatively.
Conditional core choices include:
British Literature 1945-Present
Explore British writing and cultural forms (including fiction, poetry and drama ) from 1945 to the present. The module will introduce you to a range of literary themes in their cultural contexts (such as the Windrush Generation, Thatcherism, multi-culturalism, urban culture and postcolonialism).
or
Writing for Success
Learn how to produce clear and effective prose for academic and creative writing. The first half of the module focuses on standards of university written English (punctuation, syntax, paragraphing etc.). The second half of the module moves on to the more sophisticated skills of research, essay structure and engaging in academic debate.
Imagining America
Explore some of the main American texts from the 19th and 20th Century, including narrative prose, essay and poetry. Examine how each text deals with the issue of American identity and enquires into its historical context. Themes covered include founding principles, the New Republic and its national literature, race, gender, immigration, class, urbanisation, region and capitalism and the American Dream.
Level 5
Rewriting for Writers
Explore the process of working out ideas through writing and re-writing. Learn how conceptual editing can change the focus and meanings of an original idea. This module will teach you how to turn unexceptional sentences into fine writing, line by line and page by page.
Literature & Modernity
Learn about English literature's involvement in the developing social, economic, cultural and conceptual processes of modernisation in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Authors you will explore include Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Charlotte Bronte and Oscar Wilde.
You will also look at modernity and modernisation in relation to literary and cultural developments in Britain, Ireland and the United States during the 20th Century.
Options
Beat Writing, Magical Realism and Gothic Fiction are just a few of the options also available to study.
Full options list available in the Course Handbook.

While the literary and critical emphasis of the parallel English Literature degree will be to some extent maintained in the Creative Writing award, there will be a more consciously reflective approach to the writing process for those students who choose the Single Honours Creative Writing award. It is the intention to approach writing creatively with the same rigour that is applied to literary analysis: this course in creative writing will seek to promote self-awareness in writing while avoiding self-indulgence. Literary theory has an essential role in the literature awards in English, and has also its place in creative writing, however unobtrusively. Any discussion of a literary text solely in terms of character (for example) is unacceptably simple: a similar stringency will be expected of creative writing students in their approach to their own writing. It will therefore be of benefit to students on this award that some elements of the curriculum will be common to both the literature and creative writing awards. The discipline of close reading is as essential to the creative writing student as it is to the literature student. Introduction to English Studies, a literature module is an example of the kind of module which will provide this kind of reading and writing discipline, or Critical Thinking which has a critical and cultural theory accent. The two awards are richly complementary; the coursework undertaken at Level 4 in English Literature closely parallels the work in Creative Writing, enabling the later divergences in the awards at Levels 5 and 6, to proceed from a secure, substantial base.

Throughout the creative writing degree formative assessment is provided by intensive, writing workshops and craft lectures. Further consultations take place outside workshops in small tutorial groups and also via one-to-one meetings with a tutor.
There are high contact hours throughout Level 4 which are graduated to encourage independent learning and the move towards one-to-one supervision in the final year.

At Level 5, while there is a necessary emphasis on individuals' writing; group responses to presentations by students of their work are an essential part of the learning process. In the Level 5 Creative Writing core modules students will be able to exercise some independence of judgement in the opportunity to write with more confidence with an awareness of literary movements and genres as well as creative writing pedagogy.

Then, at Level 6, the Creative Writing Project module enables students to develop an individual voice at much greater length and depth; most of this module is by one-to-one supervision with 50 contact hours with occasional workshops to support and help sustain the academic rigour referred to in paragraph 1, above.

Level 6 specialist options include Experimental Writing which takes students through advanced experimental writing techniques and Writing Non-Fiction which provides travel writing and memoir among other forms of writing. Other specialist option modules include Gothic Fiction and Magical Realism which are shared with English and allow creative writing students to write a genre piece in place of the second essay. At this level, as well as group cooperation on collaborative presentations and/or assignments, more self-reliance is expected. Guided research topics and tasks are built into Level 6 option modules to ensure that research and independent learning skills are developed in option modules as well as in the project. Individual tutorials provide support in preparation for assessment (especially in the supervision of the creative writing dissertation and writing project).