English and Music

A joint honours degree allows you to study the same core topics as students on each single honours course, but you’ll take fewer optional and discovery modules so you can fit in both subjects.

You’ll spend your first year developing your academic writing skills and studying texts from across poetry, drama or prose in English. In Music, you’ll choose from optional modules covering the role of music in history and culture, composition, theory, research skills, performance or the sciences of music.

Once you’ve established a good knowledge base, you’ll deepen your understanding over the next two years. In English, you’ll take core modules focusing on literature in your choice of time periods and choose from a wide range of optional modules, from medieval Scandinavian literature to creative writing and post-Apartheid narratives.

At the same time, you’ll choose from modules covering topics like editing and source studies, aesthetics or music psychology, or you can choose to focus on composition or performance. Our world-leading research staff offer specialist topics in Music in Context modules, or you can experiment with Music in Practice.

You’ll complete an independent research project in your final year, to demonstrate the research, critical and analytical skills you’ve developed.

Course structure

These are typical modules/components studied and may change from time to time. Read more in our Terms and conditions.

Modules Year 1

Compulsory modules

• Studying and Researching English 5 credits
• Foundations of English Studies 20 credits

Optional modules

• Prose: Reading and Interpretation 20 credits
• Poetry: Reading and Interpretation 20 credits
• Drama: Reading and Interpretation 20 credits
• Understanding Music 20 credits
• Music in History and Culture 20 credits
• Music Research Skills 20 credits
• Composition 20 credits
• Performance 20 credits
• Ensemble Performance 20 credits
• Sound, Technology, and Music 20 credits
• Introduction to the Psychology of Music 20 credits

Year 2

Optional modules

• Medieval Literature 20 credits
• Eighteenth Century Literature 20 credits
• Literature of the Romantic Period 20 credits
• Renaissance Literature 20 credits
• Refugee Narratives 20 credits
• Crime Fiction Stylistics: Crossing Languages, Cultures, Media 20 credits
• Forensic Approaches to Language 20 credits
• Creative Writing 20 credits
• Transformations 20 credits
• Victorian Literature 20 credits
• American Words, American Worlds, 1900-Present 20 credits
• Interpreting Music 20 credits