English and Creative Writing BA (Hons)

This module aims to equip you with the tools to understand and explore poetry and songs as a means to develop your own poetic and song writing. You will acquire the knowledge necessary to recognise different genres of poetry and songs and the skills needed to produce a variety of strict and freeform poetic texts, songs and performance poems. There will be a specific focus on modern and contemporary songwriters and performance poets.

Compulsory

This module aims to equip you with the basic tools to understand, explore and write prose in the form of short stories (fiction). You will acquire the general knowledge necessary to identify and study the styles of popular writers. The emphasis will be on modern and contemporary writing, though stories from earlier periods will be studied.

Compulsory

This module introduces you to literature produced during the 'long' eighteenth century (1660-1832), a period which witnessed a growing faith in Enlightenment ideals but was also marked by significant upheaval, The module will consider the relationship between the rise of the novel and the rise of capitalism, the fraught dynamics between women writers and an increasingly commercialised literary marketplace, and literary responses to turbulent historical events.

Compulsory

The aim of this module is to introduce you to the fundamental concepts in the study of language as a social phenomenon. Topics include: language variation in regional and social dialects; identity construction, incorporating gender, ethnicity, and age; social functions of languages and varieties; and the ways in which ideologies, cultural ways, speaking and social attitudes affect patterns of language use and their evaluation within institutions.

Compulsory

In its broadest sense, stylistics is a field of study in which linguistic theories are used to identify and describe the distinguishing features (or style) of a text. The aim of this module is to equip you with an understanding of the linguistic models and analytic techniques that can be used to describe, analyse and interpret a range of literary, as well as non-literary, texts.

Compulsory

This module will consider a range of literature that emerged in the twentieth century from across the Anglophone world. You will gain an understanding and knowledge of both traditional critical conceptions of a modernist period and modernist aesthetic, and alternative modernisms, as well as ideas of ‘late’ modernist work, and modernist inheritance.

Compulsory

This module² provides you with an opportunity to reflect upon and gain experience for an approved placement undertaken during your programme. A placement should usually be at least 26 weeks or equivalent; however, each placement will be considered on its own merits, having regard to the ability to achieve the learning outcomes.

Optional

This module2 provides you with an opportunity to reflect upon and gain experience for an approved international study/work placement undertaken during your programme. A work/study placement should usually be at least 26 weeks or equivalent; however, each placement will be considered on its own merits, having regard to the ability to achieve the learning outcomes.

Optional

This module will explore and analyse storytelling in video games and the way in which a player’s narrative experience is influenced by gameplay. It will explore narrative forms within video games and the role of the player within a story-driven game world. You do not need to own a game console and all materials will be accessible digitally.

Compulsory

This module aims to explore the modern phenomenon of graphic novels and narrative with the rise of new twenty-first century genres within the comics medium while fostering new genres and ways to communicate. Modern comic creators are winning awards and acclaim in the worlds of art and literature as they communicate unique stories and interpretations of the modern world.

Optional

This module surveys Gothic literature and cultural production, from its eighteenth-century origins to the film, television and video games of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It also considers the evolutions of the Gothic, its regional and cultural varieties, as well as concomitant modes including horror, the weird and the eerie. You will gain a lively appreciation of the Gothic’s enduring relevance in times of climate crisis, geopolitical unrest, and rapid technological change.

Optional

This module provides an opportunity for you to exercise independent learning and research skills in the final semester of your degree. The module gives you an opportunity to conceive, plan and carry out an individual programme of discipline-specific research under the supervision of a member of staff, leading to the ultimate submission of a final project in the form of a dissertation, portfolio, or artefact, as appropriate.

Optional

This module takes a sociolinguistic approach to the study of language and globalisation. Topics include: language attitudes and ideologies, bilingualism and multilingualism, identities in a globalised world, the politics of English as a lingua franca, language globalisation and social media, tourism discourse, food and lifestyle discourses, linguistic landscapes and workplace communication.

Optional

This module embraces the great diversity of works of fantasy, gothic and science fiction and will explore their relationship to each other, place them within literary traditions and examine the ways in which such popular writing is essentially intertextual and cross-generic.

Optional

French Existentialism is often dismissed as a product of its time; chain-smoking, polo-neck wearing, coffee-drinking introspection in the wake of two World Wars. Despite this, we see manifestations of its tenets time and again across philosophy, culture, politics and art. This module will cover the main themes of the philosophy, as well as delve into the complexities of its texts and thinkers, before exploring interpretations in culture.

Optional

This module aims to equip you with the essential tools for understanding moving image aesthetics and the specificities of writing for a visual medium to produce a short fictional screenplay. You will analyse screenplay form and structure, and practice writing effective dialogue for newly conceived characters in imaginative situations. Emphasis will be on building dramatic tension and telling a story in a visual medium.

Optional