The MLitt English Studies is a taught Master’s course that does not require you to specialise in a particular area of English Studies. Instead, you will pursue your interests through the study of a range of literary texts from the Early Modern period to the present day. While the two core modules situate students’ reading of primary texts within the most recent thinking concerning the institution of literature, the option modules provide an opportunity to engage in specialised study, and to work with leading researchers in many different aspects of the discipline.
Course objectives
A core element of the course is to examine the elusive category of ‘the literary’: what defines it, and how do we think of the place of literature within the University and the world at large? Students will look critically at a number of key concepts and approaches to text: close reading, genre, historicism, literature and cultural studies, the radical aesthetic, literary value, and the nature of the ‘text’; and they will engage with work by key thinkers such as Derek Attridge, Isobel Armstrong, John Frow, Roland Barthes, J. Hillis Miller, Diane Elam and Stephen Greenblatt.
The MLitt English Studies provides a grounding in key texts and concepts from across the range of English and related literatures, and from various historical periods; provides a firm grounding in the research methodologies and critical practices of English Studies at an advanced level; and caters to individual student’s interests by providing option modules in selected key areas within the discipline.
Entrance requirements
A good upper second class or better single or combined Honours degree in a relevant subject or subjects from a UK university or an equivalent qualification. Applicants with other qualifications or other appropriate experience may be admitted on the recommendation of the Course Director.
English language requirements
If English is not your first language, you must provide evidence of your proficiency such as a minimum IELTS score of 6 (minimum 5.5 in each skill), or TOEFL: Listening 21, Reading 22, Speaking 23, Writing 21.
Funding
information on possible sources of funding
Course start date
September
Structure and content
Our innovative training for graduates enables students to build up a portfolio of skills that prepare them for academic and professional life. All graduate students will work with their supervisors to select what’s right for them from a menu of activities. Each student will build up a portfolio of skills every year. On a taught postgraduate degree, you may be given specific guidance on what activities you need to undertake for those qualifications.
Delivery and assessment
Teaching will take the form of regular tutorials in small groups. Though all the modules will offer close and careful supervision, you are expected to take proper responsibility for your own studies. The aim in all cases is to foster student-led learning in expert, stimulating and congenial company.
Assessment in each semester will be based on coursework and essays. The core modules are assessed by two essays each of 4,000 words each. Methods of assessment for each of the non-core option modules will vary but will often consist of a single essay.
Dissertation
The most significant piece of work on the course will be a dissertation of 15,000 words on a subject of your choosing in consultation with a member of English Studies. You may choose to develop work initiated on one of the modules you have studied. Those who do not embark on the dissertation may be awarded a Diploma.
Preparation
Contact the School for information on your timetable and reading lists.
Career opportunities
The skills of textual criticism and critically informed ‘close reading’ that you will learn on this programme will enable you to recognise ideology and bias, to see through the spin of political and cultural debate, as well as to understand why it is both problematic and necessary to think of literary texts as distinctive.
Completing a Master’s degree as a prelude to further academic research is an increasingly common pattern of study for young scholars, and is a route encouraged by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). Advanced education in the Arts, the practical experience of research and the production of a dissertation are significant transferable skills for many careers in business and the professions.
