• • Home
  • Undergraduate Study
• • Postgrad English
  • Postgrad Creative Writing
• • Research
  • Staff
• • News & Events
  • Contact Us
• • Resources for Current Students

Postgraduate English Menu

Taught MAs in English Literary Studies: Modules and Pathways

MA in English Literary Studies       MA in Early Modern Literature
MA in Romantic and Victorian Literature       MA in Contemporary Literary Studies

MA in English Literary Studies

(Full Time: 12 months/ Part Time 24 Months)

This MA pathway (NEW in 2010) allows a student to take modules from any of the current MA schemes. The course is intended to encourage students to approach literature through a range of genres and forms (poetic, dramatic, novelistic, historical, theoretical, filmic). It is the most flexible pathway and allows you to study a range of periods and subjects at MA level without specialisation.

The course involves a 4+1 modular structure (four choices and a compulsory Research Methods module which is assessed) as well as a dissertation of 15,000 words on a topic agreed with a supervisor.

Full time students, for whom the course usually lasts twelve months, will usually take two units in each of the first two terms, as well as the Research Methodology module (which runs across two terms). Students are then free to undertake supervised research for their dissertation over the summer.

Part-time students, for whom the course lasts twenty-four months, will usually take one unit in each term of the first year as well as the Research Methodology, and one module in the first two terms of the second year, before writing their dissertation. The teaching of each unit will normally take the form of a two-hour seminar for each of the ten weeks of term.

Research Methodology (compulsory)
The research methodology module is intended for all MA students and for new first year PhD student who have not taken an MA at Lancaster. It will run across all three terms, fortnightly, and is designed in accordance with AHRC research training requirements.
The module will include generic sessions on research skills; archival sessions; sessions which address key theoretical questions and positions. Assessment is by tasks related to these sessions. The term by term structure culminates in a final conference for the students at which they each give a paper. Trips and the student conference will be funded by AHRC training money.

Choice of Modules
A full list of modules from across MA pathways is listed below (not all of these will be running in any given year):

ENGL 401 American Fiction
ENGL 403 Film Theory and the Creative Process of Writing for the Screen
ENGL 404 Locating Contemporary Poetry: The Living Tradition
ENGL 405 Regional Writing/Readerly Homes
ENGL 407 The Noir Thriller from 1930 to the ‘Near Future’
ENGL 412 Contemporary British Fiction
ENGL420 Terrorism and Post-modern novel.
ENGL421 Post-colonial Women’s writing and film.
ENGL422 Contemporary Literature and Technology
ENGL423 Contemporary Gothic: Text and Screen.
ENGL424 Romanticism and Literary Theory.
ENGL425 19th Century Literature and Technology
ENGL426 On Location in the Lakes.
ENGL427 The Victorian Novel and Film.
ENGL428 Romance and Realism: The Evolution of 19th Century Fiction
ENGL430 Nineteenth-Century Literary Siblings
ENGL431 Literature and Film
ENGL432 Victorian Extremes: the Coming of Modernity
ENGL433 Fusions: Genres, Critical and Creative
ENGL434 Subcultural Fictions
ENGL435 Writing the Nineteenth-Century City
ENGL436 Rewriting the Victorians
ENGL437 The Byron-Shelley Circle

See full detailed accounts of these modules under the other MA pathways.

Assessment
Four coursework essays for each module will count 11 % towards the final assessment with a further 6 % for the Research Methodology (50% in total). The dissertation will count for the other 50%. There are no examinations. The MA may be taken over one year (full-time) or two years (part-time). You must achieve over 50% overall in both the modules and the dissertation to be awarded the MA.

Entry Requirements
Applicants should hold, or expect to obtain, a 2:1 honours degree or above in English. Applicants must submit an example of written work (approx. 2000 words) with their application. We also welcome overseas applicants with the equivalent qualification from another country.

MA in Early Modern Literature

(Full Time: 12 months/ Part Time 24 Months)

This MA pathway (NEW in 2010) allows a student to pursue the study of Shakespeare and the Early Modern period at taught MA level. You will consider core concepts and ideas of the Renaissance period through two consortial courses.

The course involves a 4+1 modular structure (four choices and a compulsory Research Methods module which is assessed) as well as a dissertation of 15,000 words on a topic agreed with a supervisor. You must take the two modules in the Early Modern period and can then choose any other two modules.

Full time students, for whom the course usually lasts twelve months, will usually take two units in each of the first two terms, as well as the Research Methodology module (which runs across two terms). Students are then free to undertake supervised research for their dissertation over the summer.

Part-time students, for whom the course lasts twenty-four months, will usually take one unit in each term of the first year as well as the Research Methodology, and one module in the first two terms of the second year, before writing their dissertation. The teaching of each unit will normally take the form of a two-hour seminar for each of the ten weeks of term.

Research Methodology (compulsory)
The research methodology module is intended for all MA students and for new first year PhD student who have not taken an MA at Lancaster. It will run across all three terms, fortnightly, and is designed in accordance with AHRC research training requirements.
The module will include generic sessions on research skills; archival sessions; sessions which address key theoretical questions and positions. Assessment is by tasks related to these sessions. The term by term structure culminates in a final conference for the students at which they each give a paper. Trips and the student conference will be funded by AHRC training money.

You must take the following two modules (and any two from across all schemes):

Bodies and Spirits in Early Modern Literature
This course explores how a sense of self is created in early modern English literature, in an age where bodies and spirits are, arguably, the two fundamental constituents of identity. It is taught consortially to draw on the particular research expertise of staff working across the early modern period and to give a variety of voices and approaches. The course is divided into two sections with each half arranged chronologically. The texts in each engage with both spiritual and corporeal dimensions of early modern identity allowing students to make comparisons from texts across the ten weeks for the essay.
How are bodies and souls configured differently in sixteenth and seventeenth century texts and how do we anatomise them from a twenty-first century perspective? The module shows how corporeal and spiritual identities are contingently constructed in a world of religious and political change, where mortality was tangibly ever-present. What cultural weight do bodies bear when represented as gendered; as icons of nationhood or mortality; as objects of desire, sometimes of violent desire, in literary texts? Is social identity inevitably shaped by corporeality or do the processes of bodily exposure and concealment offer ways of self-fashioning? The first half of the course addresses these questions with reference to a selection plays, poetry, speeches, medical texts and images from across the period. The second part of the course moves on to ask how early modern texts represent the immaterial, spiritual life.

Place and Politics in Early Modern Literature
This course examines how early modern English literature represents place in overtly politicised ways, commenting critically on the cultural practices of the age from the relatively safe haven of fictional writing. The course can be taken as a follow on to Term I’s ‘Bodies and Spirits’ or as a stand-alone module for those interested in developing transhistorical understandings of politics and place. It aims to demonstrate how a range of writings engage with the turbulent environment of early modern England in a period of unprecedented social, religious and political change. The politics of sexual orientation are considered alongside the disruptive effects of desire in a political climate. Rape, incest and piracy are explored as particularly gendered disruptions to the order of government. How did religious belief, political change and gendered identity contribute to literary responses to the new England after King Charles I’s execution? The ‘politics’ section concludes by discussing these questions in the context of the earlier texts read. It also introduces questions of place. Week 7 reviews the previous texts’ settings to introduce theories of spatial practice and create working distinctions between place as physically or socially given and fixed, and space as more fluid, representing possibilities for change.
Assessment

Four coursework essays for each module will count 11 % towards the final assessment with a further 6 % for the Research Methodology (50% in total). The dissertation will count for the other 50%. There are no examinations. The MA may be taken over one year (full-time) or two years (part-time). You must achieve over 50% overall in both the modules and the dissertation to be awarded the MA.

Entry Requirements
Applicants should hold, or expect to obtain, a 2:1 honours degree or above in English. Applicants must submit an example of written work (approx. 2000 words) with their application. We also welcome overseas applicants with the equivalent qualification from another country.


MA in Romantic and Victorian Literature

(Full Time: 12 months/ Part Time 24 Months)

This MA programme is particularly concerned with exploring the Romantic/Victorian interface. The scheme will allow students to maintain their interest in these two key periods of English literature by moving across them rather than being restricted by rigid boundaries. The course is intended to encourage students to make connections and comparisons and to approach literature through a range of genres and forms (poetic, dramatic, novelistic, historical, theoretical, filmic). We will make full use of the university’s regional location, with one module involving a “field trip” to the Lakes.

The course involves a 4+1 modular structure (four choices and a compulsory Research Methods module which is assessed) as well as a dissertation of 15,000 words on a topic agreed with a supervisor.

Full time students, for whom the course usually lasts twelve months, will usually take two units in each of the first two terms, as well as the Research Methodology module (which runs across two terms). Students are then free to undertake supervised research for their dissertation over the summer.

Part-time students, for whom the course lasts twenty-four months, will usually take one unit in each term of the first year as well as the Research Methodology, and one module in the first two terms of the second year, before writing their dissertation. The teaching of each unit will normally take the form of a two-hour seminar for each of the ten weeks of term.

Research Methodology (compulsory)
The research methodology module is intended for all MA students and for new first year PhD student who have not taken an MA at Lancaster. It will run across all three terms, fortnightly, and is designed in accordance with AHRC research training requirements.
The module will include generic sessions on research skills; archival sessions; sessions which address key theoretical questions and positions. Assessment is by tasks related to these sessions. The term by term structure culminates in a final conference for the students at which they each give a paper. Trips and the student conference will be funded by AHRC training money.

Choice of Modules

Modules on the course may change depending on staff availability, but are expected to include:

Romanticism and Literary Theory (Professor Simon Bainbridge)
Over the past few decades, the writing of the Romantic period has provided one of the crucial areas of focus for developments in literary theory. This course aims to explore the various theoretical accounts of Romanticism and of the writing of the Romantic period and will cover the following topics: changing constructions of Romanticism; theories of literature in the Romantic period; the Wellek Vs. Lovejoy debate; New Criticism; The Yale School and Deconstruction; Marxism; Old and New Historicism; Feminism and Gender; Postmodernism; Orientalism and Post-Colonial Criticism; and Ecocriticism. The key primary texts that will acts as a focus are Wordsworth's poetry (esp. The Prelude), James Hogg's Confessions of a Justified Sinner, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The module will complement the MA’s research training module and provide a foundation for students who wish to progress beyond MA level.

Victorian Extremes: The Coming of Modernity (Professor John Schad)
The module seeks to challenge the conventional tendency to think of the Victorian era as an age of moderation, as 'a land / In which it seemed always the afternoon' (to quote Tennyson). We shall, therefore, be paying close attention to the many extremes and extremist energies within Victorian culture: extreme faith, extreme doubt, extreme chauvinism, extreme feminism, extreme desire, extreme loathing, extreme sense, extreme nonsense, etc. etc. Throughout we shall be exploring the ways in which these extremes represent the beginning, or coming of Modernity. This exploration will conclude through attention to writing beyond the chronological extreme of what we normally think of as the Victorian period - namely, to writing of the first twenty years of the twentieth century.

19th Century Literature and Technology (Dr Arthur Bradley)
This course analyses how Romantic and early Victorian writers and thinkers explored the promise and threat of technological innovation. From the Romantic valorisation of a pre-technological state of nature through to the early Marxian attempt to define the human as a tool-using animal, we will examine how 19th century writers and thinkers analysed the changing nature of the relation between the human and the technological. What are the opportunities and dangers posed by technology? How do thinkers as diverse as Rousseau, Wordsworth, Carlyle and Marx respond to them?

On Location in the Lakes (Dr Sally Bushell)
10 weeks in Term 2 + Field Trip in Summer Term
This course is about enjoying and understanding poetry in relation to place. We will be combining close study of texts and ideas of how landscape was (and is) viewed, with use of actual locations and a strong sense of place on the summer term field trip. The course aims to provide participants with a strong sense of Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth Century perceptions of place, through close study of key concepts such as the Picturesque and the Sublime and travel writings about the Lake District. It will then go on to focus on a range of Romantic authors looking at poetic texts in relation to issues of place and space. The course will consider key issues in relation to texts: the representation of real places and people in literature; different ways of "dwelling"; the value and importance of place names; imaginative appropriation of the actual. At the same time it will also place such ideas within a wider context in terms of current methodologies, particularly links between Romanticism and the conservation movement ("Romantic Ecology") and phenomenology of place.

The field trip part of the course aims to make the participants aware of the value of primary and secondary research "in the field" in a way that they might not otherwise encounter. We will be walking, talking and thinking about poems in the place where they were written. You will be given a prior reading pack of relevant poems and articles which we will use during the trip. In an informal way we will think about texts in the places around which they are set. The cost of the field trip is partly subsidised by The Wordsworth Centre.

Victorian Literature and Film (Dr Kamilla Elliott)
This course traces the roots of the novel/film debate in discourses preceding and surrounding the Victorian novel: the poetry and painting debate and the novel illustration debate. It looks at semiotic, generic, cultural, historical, and narrative continuities between the Victorian novel and film, as well as discontinuities and conflicts between them. It asks how film adaptations of Victorian novels complicate, demonstrate, or refute prevailing theories of novels and films. Finally, it examines how film adaptations function as acts of literary criticism and interpretation and how this criticism differs from written criticism.

Romance and Realism: The Evolution of Nineteenth-Century Fiction (Dr Andrew Tate)
This course explores the evolution of prose fiction from the late Romantic era through the first two decades of Victoria’s reign. A defining focus of the course will be on the ways in which the Victorian novel negotiates with Romantic legacies: the primacy of self, the necessity of intellectual and personal liberty and an ambivalence towards the past are crucial to the development of the genre. The historical frame of the course allows us to begin with James Hogg’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824) and conclude with Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1851), one of the first novels of the American ‘Renaissance’. We will consider the shaping presence of other genres in the development of nineteenth-century fiction, including spiritual autobiography and the long poem. Historical contexts will also be emphasised with particular reference to the religious and political debates of the period. We will explore the emergence of the novelist as a major cultural figure and interrogate the ways in which the writers under review both internalise and contest the ethical, spiritual and economic forces of their historical moment.

Literature and Film (Dr Kamilla Elliott)
This module offers a core postgraduate course for the interdisciplinary study of literature and film. It examines their relations in the context of word and image debates, interart discourse, theories of adaptation, theoretical trends in the humanities, and relevant case studies. It can be offered in both Romantic and Victorian Literature and Contemporary Literary Studies MA pathways. Romantic and Victorian Literature students will write their essay on a nineteenth-century adaptation; Contemporary Literary Studies students will write theirs on a contemporary adaptation.

Nineteenth-Century Literary Siblings (Dr Kamilla Elliott)
This module examines the writings of four groups of literary authors whose siblings were also authors: the Wordsworths, the Lambs, the Brontes, and the Rossettis. We read selected writings through the lens of sibling issues and theory, including juvenilia, juvenile audiences, and matricide; gender and genre; incest and intertextuality. We share readings in common until Week 6, when each student selects a group of siblings to research independently and seminar meetings take the form of workshops and presentations.

Writing the Nineteenth-Century City (Dr Catherine Spooner)
This module provides an opportunity to explore in depth textual constructions of the nineteenth century city. It traces historical shifts in representation of the urban environment, and maps nineteenth-century urban geographies, comparing London with Manchester and Paris, London's East End with its West End, the centre with the suburbs, and so on. The importance of gender, class, ethnicity and age within the urban space will be interrogated, as well as shifts in genre and register (realist novel, epic and lyric poetry, memoir, non-fiction, popular fiction). The construction of urban subjectivities according to contemporary theories of space (e.g. Benjamin, Lefebvre, De Certeau) will be a major focus, as will visual representations of the urban environment from maps to paintings and engravings.

Rewriting the Victorians (Dr Catherine Spooner)
This module will encourage Romantic and Victorian Literature students to think reflexively about critical study of the nineteenth century, historicise theoretical readings of the Victorians, and read a combination of canonical nineteenth century texts and twentieth-century rewritings. It will encourage Contemporary Literary Studies students to locate contemporary fiction within a canonical tradition, and introduce important theoretical concepts concerning historiography and life-writing.

Ruskin and the Arts in Victorian England (Professor Steven Wildman and Dr Andrew Tate)
This module will concentrate on Ruskin’s wide engagement with the arts of his time. His most important book on art, Modern Painters (1843-60), will be a central focus, revealing his attitudes to the art of the past as well as his passionate defence of J. M. W. Turner, whom Ruskin was the first to recognise as one of the greatest artists of all time. Also under scrutiny will be Ruskin’s involvement with contemporary art, from the patronage of watercolourists such as Samuel Prout to the active support of the young painters of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, whom Ruskin publicly defended in 1851 and later championed in Academy Notes and The Art of England. His relationships with other artists, such as Edward Burne-Jones and Kate Greenaway, will also be examined, along with his role as an unorthodox pioneer of art education, and of course his own remarkable output of drawings and watercolours. Ruskin’s lifelong love of architecture will provide an additional focus, through the study of such influential writings as The Seven Lamps of Architecture and The Stones of Venice, whose central chapter, ‘On the Nature of Gothic’, became a key text for the Arts and Crafts Movement. Students will be invited to examine much original preliminary material for The Stones of Venice, including some of the daguerreotypes which serve as a reminder of Ruskin’s interest in photography.

Undergraduate Specialist Courses

There is also the possibility of being assessed for certain specialist Half Unit courses which are run for third year undergraduate students. These courses will only run if they have recruited at an undergraduate level but they are designed for both third year and MA participation. You will either attend the same seminars but submit work at an MA level or be taught separately depending on numbers.

The Byron-Shelley Circle (Prof. Simon Bainbridge)
This course examines the work of three of the great writers of the Romantic period, the poets Lord Byron and Percy Shelley, and the novelist, Mary Shelley. Famously, these three writers lived and worked together during the summer of 1816, an episode that produced two of the dominant myths of modern literature-Frankenstein (in Mary Shelley's novel) and The Vampyre (in a story based on Byron by another member of the group, John Polidori)  both of which we will examine. Throughout their careers these writers were engaged in a creative and critical conversation with each other that addressed major themes including: conceptions of the heroic; the possibilities of political change; literary, scientific, and biological creation; the East; transgressive love; gender roles; and the Gothic. The course will provide an opportunity to study in detail these writers' works and to consider them within their historical, cultural and intellectual contexts.

A student is also allowed to “audit” any module if they wish (attending the course informally and out of interest without submitting a piece of coursework).

Assessment

Four coursework essays for each module will count 11 % towards the final assessment with a further 6 % for the Research Methodology (50% in total). The dissertation will count for the other 50%. There are no examinations. The MA may be taken over one year (full-time) or two years (part-time). You must achieve over 50% overall in both the modules and the dissertation to be awarded the MA.

Entry Requirements
Applicants should hold, or expect to obtain, a 2:1 honours degree or above in English. Applicants must submit an example of written work (approx. 2000 words) with their application. We also welcome overseas applicants with the equivalent qualification from another country.


MA in Contemporary Literary Studies

(Full Time: 12 months/ Part Time 24 Months)

This popular and long-running MA has attracted students from all over the world. It gives you a chance to engage with writing from across the twentieth century but also with the most recent writing in English and with contemporary approaches to literary texts and theory.

The course involves a 4+1 modular structure (four choices and a compulsory Research Methods module which is assessed) as well as a dissertation of 15,000 words on a topic agreed with a supervisor.

Full time students, for whom the course usually lasts twelve months, will usually take two units in each of the first two terms, as well as the Research Methodology module (which runs across two terms). Students are then free to undertake supervised research for their dissertation over the summer.

Part-time students, for whom the course lasts twenty-four months, will usually take one unit in each term of the first year as well as the Research Methodology, and one module in the first two terms of the second year, before writing their dissertation. The teaching of each unit will normally take the form of a two-hour seminar for each of the ten weeks of term.

Research Methodology (compulsory)
The research methodology module is intended for all MA students and for new first year PhD student who have not taken an MA at Lancaster. It will run across all three terms, fortnightly, and is designed in accordance with AHRC research training requirements.
The module will include generic sessions on research skills; archival sessions; sessions which address key theoretical questions and positions. Assessment is by tasks related to these sessions. The term by term structure culminates in a final conference for the students at which they each give a paper. Trips and the student conference will be funded by AHRC training money.

Choice of Modules
Modules on the course may change depending on staff availability, but are expected to include:

Regional Writing/Readerly Homes: Gender, Class, Nation and the Literature of ‘British’ Devolution (Prof Lynne Pearce)
This module derives from recent work on the regional literatures of the British Isles and Ireland in the context of Devolution: in particular, the way in which readers make use of regional/national literatures in their re/negotiations of gender, class and national identity. The module will be concerned with questions of how the reader’s sense of ‘belonging’, ‘exile’ or ‘mobile identity’ is a complex intersection of identities in which ‘nation’ and ‘region’ sit awkwardly alongside factors of gender, race, class and sexuality.

Contemporary British Fiction (Dr Andrew Tate/Dr Michael Greaney)
This module explores the evolving contours of British fiction, focusing on novels published in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The seminar programme will investigate some of the most pressing issues faced by contemporary novelists and readers. Authors studied may include Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, John McGregor and Zadie Smith.

American Fiction (Dr Tony Sharpe)
This module examines three trilogies published from the 1980s by Paul Auster, Cormac McCarthy, and Toni Morrison, and considers the use each makes of the trilogic structure, in an American context; in so doing it offers a deeper engagement with the work of these writers than would be achievable by a more broadly-based study of contemporary American fiction. Although they have not been chosen to be ‘representative’, there are considerable differences between these trilogies in terms of their settings, content, and fictional techniques, and between the writers in terms of race, gender, and regional allegiance.

The Noir Thriller (Dr Lee Horsley)
This module will cover both British and American thrillers, focusing on the politics and poetics of noir. Novels and films will be discussed in relation to their historical contexts (Britain’s entry into World War II, Cold War America, &c.) and in relation to the shared characteristics (motifs, protagonists, narrative techniques) or ‘hard-boiled’ crime fiction and film noir.

Film Theory and the Creative Process of Writing for the Screen (Dr Jayne Steel)
This module will provide a theoretical study of film in addition to a practical and creative introduction to writing for the screen. Students will acquire a comprehensive knowledge of film theories, particularly feminist and psychoanalytical approaches, and learn how to demonstrate their critical understanding of these theories at both an oral and written level.

Locating Contemporary Poetry: The Living Tradition (Dr Sally Bushell)
This module will explore contemporary poetry through consideration of current issues and themes in a range of living poets. It is concerned with questions of locations in terms of physical place as well as with the locating of writing within certain traditions and forms. The difference between hearing the living poet’s voice directly and reading his, or her, work will be central to the course.

Contemporary Literature and Technology (Dr Arthur Bradley)
This course explores the theme of technology in contemporary literary and cultural theory. It analyses how contemporary theory has moved from seeing technology as a simple prosthesis or instrument for human use to something that has an independent – or even originary – relation to the human. We will explore the following questions in the course. Firstly, how does contemporary theory explore scientific or philosophical discussions of technology, artificial intelligence and so on? To what extent do these texts affect our understanding of the relationship between the human and the inhuman? More generally, to what extent does technology impact upon questions of ethics, politics or religion such as the debates surrounding artificial intelligence, human rights, cloning etc.? In addition to exploring key debates within literary and cultural theory, we will also examine how these debates can be grounded within a reading of three paradigmatic literary texts about the impact of technology: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Michel Houellbecq’s Atomised.

Terrorism and the Post-modern Novel (Dr Robert Appelbaum)
Students will acquire an understanding of the history of terrorism since the Middle Ages and the role that terrorist incidents have played in the symbolic life of Western culture. They will become familiar with the theory of terrorism as it has evolved in the last 25 years, and trace changes in theoretical perspectives in the wake of 9/11. They will learn that the representation of terrorism in modern literature has a history, that the genres of terrorist fiction and our ideas about the meaning and causes of terrorism that still prevail originate in the late nineteenth century, but have been subject to continual re-examination and innovation. As students primarily of contemporary literature they will observe changes in the symbolic location and identity of terror from the 1980s to the present, and they will engage in original research and speculation about the meaning and value of those changes. Students will acquire a familiarity with the tools of advanced, independent, multidisciplinary literary research, and begin projects suitable for developing into publishable articles.

Contemporary Gothic: Text and Screen (Dr Catherine Spooner)
This module addresses the ways that contemporary literature and film engages with the Gothic literary tradition. It will be loosely organised around two recurrent themes in contemporary discourses of the Gothic: monstrous bodies and hauntings. The former of these will explore the contemporary fascination with the grotesque, the abject, ‘transgressive’ sexualities, and bodies otherwise deemed excessive or outlandish within contemporary society. The latter will investigate notions of doppelgangers, possession, revenants and returns as they occur in both social and psychic histories. The continuing significance of imprisoning spaces, fragmented documents, unstable protagonists and dysfunctional families to Gothic texts will also be addressed. The course will seek to enquire why Gothic appears to be undergoing a Renaissance at this particular point in history, how meaningful it continues to be as a critical term, and what correspondences can be identified between Gothic discourses and those of postmodernism.

Postcolonial Women’s Writing and Film (Dr Lindsey Moore)
In the past two decades there has been an explosion of women’s creative engagement with the complexities of postcolonial identity. This course will consider recent work by women writers and filmmakers from North and Southern Africa, South Asia, the Caribbean, New Zealand, Ireland, the USA and the UK. The course has an overarching emphasis on connections and tensions between gender and other aspects of identity such as ethnicity, generation, sexuality, religion and class. Through the primary texts, we will explore the following themes: colonialism, education and language; history, memory and trauma; the politics of the female body; space and place; migration, return and cross-cultural communication; and issues in representation and reception. Postcolonial and feminist theory will be used to illuminate the primary material.

Literature and Film (Dr Kamilla Elliott)
This module offers a core postgraduate course for the interdisciplinary study of literature and film. It examines their relations in the context of word and image debates, interart discourse, theories of adaptation, theoretical trends in the humanities, and relevant case studies. It can be offered in both Romantic and Victorian Literature and Contemporary Literary Studies MA schemes. Romantic and Victorian Literature students will write their essay on a nineteenth-century adaptation; Contemporary Literary Studies students will write theirs on a contemporary adaptation.

Fusions: Genres, Critical and Creative (Professor John Schad)
This module explores one of the chief features of modern literature namely, writing that fuses traditional literary genres and, in so doing, calls into question what Jacques Derrida once called that strange institution literature. A key aspect of the module will be its focus on writing that fuses critical and creative writing; much of this writing has only recently been made conspicuous by the experimental or creative turn within contemporary literary theory, or what is sometimes called post-criticism.  Students are free , if they wish, to submit work that that is itself experimental or critical-creative.

Subcultural Fictions (Dr Catherine Spooner)
This module will draw on cultural theory to discuss literary and cinematic texts. It offers an innovative interdisciplinary approach to contemporary literature, using a well-established body of cultural criticism to shed new light on a group of texts that have infrequently been subjected to academic analysis, and is at the cutting-edge of research in the field.

Rewriting the Victorians (Dr Catherine Spooner)
This module will encourage Romantic and Victorian Literature students to think reflexively about critical study of the nineteenth century, historicise theoretical readings of the Victorians, and read a combination of canonical nineteenth century texts and twentieth-century rewritings. It will encourage Contemporary Literary Studies students to locate contemporary fiction within a canonical tradition, and introduce important theoretical concepts concerning historiography and life-writing.

The department will run a minimum of six units each year, but will always hope to offer more than that, to allow for the breadth of interests both of the staff and the students. The choice of units will be as free as possible, dependent upon staff availability. Some of the modules offered with the degree scheme can also be taken within the modular degree schemes for the MA in Women’s Studies, and the MA in Literary and Cultural Studies. A student is also allowed to “audit” a module if they wish (attending the course informally and out of interest without submitting a piece of coursework).

Assessment
Four coursework essays for each module will count 11 % towards the final assessment with a further 6 % for the Research Methodology (50% in total). The dissertation will count for the other 50%. There are no examinations. The MA may be taken over one year (full-time) or two years (part-time). You must achieve over 50% overall in both the modules and the dissertation to be awarded your MA.

Entry Requirements
Applicants should hold, or expect to obtain, a 2:1 honours degree or above in English. Applicants must submit an example of written work (approx. 2000 words) with their application. We also welcome overseas applicants with the equivalent qualification from another country.