English

Course detail Description

Studying English at King’s you will encounter literature that stretches back through the centuries and reaches out across the globe. We pride ourselves on the range and diversity of the modules we offer, ranging across genre, period and place and including creative writing. We embrace diverse approaches, combining contemporary literary theory, close textual examination and historical scholarship. Our aim is to offer open and imaginative approaches to classic English texts together with newer and less familiar developments in the discipline.

The Department has an international reputation for the quality of its scholarship and all members of staff are actively involved in research. We aim to connect research and teaching, both in the classroom and at the many extra activities and events we offer.

Our effective personal tutor system means you will benefit from individual attention. All modules involve seminars, and on a typical module your time will be divided equally between these and more formal lectures.

Typically, one credit equates to 10 hours of work.

Your performance will be assessed through a combination of coursework and written examinations. Forms of assessment may typically include essays, exams (unseen, open book and prior disclosure), critical commentaries, creative work (e.g. fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction), translations, reports, seminar presentations and reader-response exercises.

London is a city of words and images. We are fortunate to be located at the heart of its arts and media district, and close to historic literary locations, offering exciting possibilities for the study of film, theatre, literature and other art-forms. Within 20 minutes’ walk of the Department of English at King’s Strand Campus are Shakespeare’s Globe and the site of the Tabard Inn, where Chaucer’s pilgrims started out on their journey. Even closer at hand are the Inns of Court, Covent Garden, the Theatre Royal Drury Lane (London’s oldest working theatre) and countless other sites and buildings with literary associations. Just across Waterloo Bridge is the South Bank arts complex, including the IMAX Cinema, as well as the new BFI Southbank (three screens), which contains the BFI Mediatheque, a studio cinema, and a gallery among other facilities.

Please note that locations are determined by where each module is taught and may vary depending on the optional modules you select.

All students are offered the opportunity to study abroad – in North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and other locations – during the second year of their English degree at King’s. Recent popular destinations include the University of California, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, the University of Toronto, Humbolt University, Berlin, and the University of Hong Kong.

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Structure

• Year 1
• Year 2
• Year 3

Year 1

This is a three-year degree course in which you will take a combination of required and optional modules to total 120 credits.

You are required to take the following modules:

• Classical & Biblical Contexts of English Literature (15 credits)
• Early Modern Literary Culture (15 credits)
• Introducing Literary Theories (15 credits)
• Introduction to American Literature (15 credits)
• Medieval Literary Culture (15 credits)
• Reading Poetry (15 credits)
• Writing London (15 credits)

In addition, you will take sufficient credits to bring your total for the year to 120, from either a list of English Department electives, or from one of the following departments, depending on availability:

• Classics (15 credits)
• Digital Humanities (15 credits)
• French (15 credits)
• Comparative Literature (15 credits)
• Film Studies (15 credits)
• Modern Language Centre (15 credits)
• Spanish, Portuguese & Latin American Studies (15 credits)
• Theology & Religious Studies (15 credits)

Year 2 Required Modules

The department operates a banding system in the second year, to broaden horizons and ensure a balanced programme.

• Band 1: Literature up to 1800
• Band 2: Literature 1800 - present

You are required to take a minimum of four Band 1 modules during your second year. At least one of these must be a Band 1 Medieval option.

You will take sufficient credits to bring your total for the year to 120, from a range of optional modules within these bands which may typically include:

• A Mad World, My Masters: Performing Culture in Jacobean England (15 credits)
• Comedy and Identity (15 credits)
• Cultural Encounters: Literature and Language in the Anglo-Saxon Period (15 credits)
• Early American Literature (15 credits)
• Family, Authorship and Romanticism (15 Credits)
• The Film of the Play (15 credits)
• History, Politics and the Elizabethan Imagination (15 credits)
• Introduction to Eighteenth-Century Literature: Gothic (15 credits)
• Language on the Edge (15 credits)
• London Literature 1380-1450 (15 credits)
• Medieval Science Fiction (15 credits)
• Performance in Medieval Culture (15 credits)
• The Poetry of Revolution (15 credits)
• The Rise of the Novel (15 Credits)
• Renaissance Wordplay (15 credits)
• Subjects of Desire in Medieval Literature (15 credits)

• American Popular Culture (15 credits)
• Australian Literature and Film (15 credits)
• The Colonial Novel and British India (15 credits)
• Contemporary Global Novels (15 credits)
• Creative Non-Fiction (Creative Writing) (15 credits)
• Experimental Theatre (15 credits)
• Fin de Siècle (15 credits)
• Forms of Engagement: Poetic Learning and Poetic Making
• Gender and Performance (15 credits)
• Mapping Modernism (15 credits)
• The Mind of the Novel (15 credits)
• Modern Poetry and the Place of Writing (15 credits)
• Modern Theatre (15 credits)
• Moments of Culture (15 credits)
• Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture (15 credits)
• Post/colonial Pirates (15 credits)
• Prose Fiction (Creative Writing) (15 credits)
• Shocks of the New (15 credits)
• Theatre Capital (15 credits)
• Theory, Culture and Politics After the 1960s (15 credits)
• US Slavery and the Literary Imagination (15 credits)
• Twentieth-Century American Fiction (15 credits)
• Victorians and Social Change (15 credits)
• Writing Africa (15 credits)

You also have the opportunity to study abroad in the second semester of the second year. Our partner universities currently include:

• Humboldt zu Berlin (basic German language required despite teaching in English)
• National University of Singapore
• University of California
• University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
• University of Pennsylvania
• Hong Kong University
• University of Sydney
• University of British Columbia

Year 3 Required Modules

There are no required modules in Year 3.

You are required to choose either eight 15-credit modules or six 15-credit modules plus a dissertation from a wide range of optional English modules which may typically include:

• Activist Texts: Literature and Politics, 1910-1938 (15 credits)
• Alternative Americas: The Other Nineteenth Century (15 credits)
• Austen in Context (15 credits)
• Autobiography (15 credits)
• Beowulf (15 credits)
• Chaucer’s Books (15 credits)
• Critically Queer (15 credits)
• Figurations of Conspiracy (15 credits)
• Gender, Culture and Power at the Court of Elizabeth I (15 credits)
• Identity in Contemporary Britain (15 credits)
• Imagining Britain: Medieval Places, Journeys, Maps (15 credits)
• James Joyce and Ulysses (15 credits)
• Late Shakespeare (15 credits)
• Literature and Media (15 credits)
• The Life of the Sonnet (15 credits)
• Multi-Ethnic American Modernisms (15 credits)
• Performance Philosophy (15 credits)
• Romantic Lyric, Philosophy and The Senses (15 credits)
• Shakespeare’s London (15 credits)
• Science, Nature and Performance (15 credits)
• Testimony: The Holocaust and Rwanda (15 credits)
• Vernacular Theory (15 credits)
• Virginia Woolf and the Politics of Reading (15 credits)

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