English BA (Hons)

30 credits

This module, a core module for full-field and half-field English Literature students, is all about developing your own interests and research expertise. Every year, members of staff will offer a range of texts and you will select you own special subject from amongst these, working independently but with close supervision to produce your own set of resources and an extended original essay. In recent years, available texts have included The Lord of the Rings, Never Let Me Go, Great Expectations, and Hamlet. Encouraging independent learning and research, the module develops a range of transferable critical and communication skills that are central to the degree and useful in occupations and professional tasks beyond the university, while also allowing you to develop you own critical voice.

30 credits

What does literature do? How does it shape individual and cultural identities? In what ways does it produce effects, construct otherness and celebrate difference? Studying a range of influential approaches to literature, this module will examine key ideas concerning the creation and interpretation of texts, from the role of language, history and cultural difference to the effects of sexuality, the unconscious, empire and technology. By applying these insights to one important genre of fiction – to works like Frankenstein, Dracula, The Beetle, Rebecca and World War Z – the module will extend practical analytical skills while introducing exciting new ways of thinking about texts.

30 credits

On this module, students will have the opportunity to progress their creative writing skills by exploring the relationship between theory and practice. They will also explore the connection between language, form, creativity, and style. Students will be presented with a range of theoretical and contextual approaches to the production and analysis of imaginative work, and will be invited to respond to these provocations through critical and creative writing.

Students will attend interactive lectures whose themes may include adaptation, narrative techniques for literary authors, history and narrative, identity and aesthetics, and mind style etc. Students will learn more advanced practical techniques for crafting expressive, imaginative work, which will allow them to make more sophisticated use of aspects such as voice, point of view, structure, character, imagery, and tone.

Workshops will draw on the language-based disciplines of linguistics, stylistics and narratology to explore the relation between content, form and creativity. The module will entail the reading, critical analysis and discussion of texts by a variety of classic and contemporary authors, whose work reflects the diverse range of styles, influences and approaches at work today. Students can choose to experiment with writing the novel, short story, script for radio, stage or screen, or poetry.

Students will be asked to provide thoughtful, constructive feedback through peer review. Along with developing their own personal sense of voice and style, students will practise applying skills learned on the module to real-world situations faced by professional authors, such as writing a piece for a commission or for a target audience.

30 credits

In this core module, students will engage critically with the complex relationship between language and society from a range of sociolinguistic perspectives and they will be encouraged to develop their research skills in preparation for the requirements of Level 6.

In the first teaching block, lectures and seminar discussions will focus on sociolinguistics at the macro level to look at language diversity, language endangerment multilingualism and language contact, in addition to the global spread of ideas, identities and discourse through language.

We will also touch upon major debates regarding gender and power in both media and scholarly discourses and use this theme to show how academic theories evolve through research.

Weekly sessions will involve investigating case studies from different countries to showcase how language research can be applied to the study of policy, politics, education and media. A further focus will be on interactional sociolinguistics through the study of the relations between language and gender in mixed and single-sex talk in both private and public spheres.

In the second teaching block, sessions introduce students to key sociolinguistic research and findings that shed light on how and why different speakers systematically vary their language use in relation to a range of social factors, such as class, social status, age, ethnicity, gender. Sessions then move on to explore how and why individual speakers alternate between styles and languages on different occasions, drawing on sociolinguistic models of style and code-switching/code-mixing. In the course of this module, students will be encouraged to explore variation at all levels of language: from phonetics to syntax and pragmatics and will be introduced to key research methods in the field of sociolinguistics as a way of learning to evaluate qualitative and quantitative approaches to the study of language and society. Finally, students will conduct their own sociolinguistic projects, collecting spoken data or analysing existing recordings, taking into account issues of ethics and permission.

30 credits

This module is an optional period module at Level 5. The year-long module provides an introduction to the literary culture of England during the years 1380-1650. This module considers medieval and early modern English texts in relation to influential works from the continent (mostly from Italy, the ‘birthplace of the Renaissance'), and by situating canonical literature in relation to non-canonical writings of the medieval and early modern periods. You will begin by examining poetry and drama written in the late-Medieval period, including some of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The rest of Teaching Block One will focus on medieval drama - from mystery plays to morality plays - highlighting continuity and change with later, Renaissance drama. It will also study English literature and culture in the fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries in relation to continental influences. Because Shakespeare's Richard II is a Renaissance play whose action takes place in the medieval period, this play provides a pivotal middle point between Teaching Blocks One and Two, which resumes in the mid-sixteenth century and continues with plays, poetry, prose and cultural documents framed on one side by the Edwardian Reformation and on the other by the English Civil War.

30 credits

This module is an optional period module at Level 5. We will study key texts from the nineteenth to early twentieth centuries that register the ways in which Britain is transformed by the Industrial Revolution, and which give expression to fears about technology, social mobility and urban culture. We will consider literature of the period that questions and resists established theories of gendered identity, and which challenges the literary representation of sexuality, defying censorship in the process. We will be introduced to writers who engage with contemporary debates about science, religion, the empire, and racial and national identity. And we will encounter a range of consciously modern texts which dislocate and make new the reader's experience by technical innovation and experiment. In recent years, writers studied have included Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, George Eliot, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf.

30 credits

This module is an optional period module at Level 5. It will begin by exploring literature published from the 1930s through to the present day, and will examine the strategies writers have used in response to a changing Britain and wider world. We will consider how twentieth and twenty-first-century texts adapt realist, modernist and postmodern techniques to engage with issues such as the rise of mass culture, the threat of totalitarianism, the establishment of the Welfare State, post-war immigration, and sexual liberation. To enhance your perspective on these issues, you will be introduced to non-fiction material by other contemporary writers, such as J.B. Priestley, Erich Fromm, Iris Murdoch, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Richard Hoggart, and George Lamming, as well as more recent critical and theoretical material.  The module also examines the development and continuing popularity of realist drama in the twentieth century. We will pay particular attention to the ways in which realist drama is used as a tool of social and political examination in the various contexts of pre-Revolutionary Russia, Dublin in the aftermath of the First World War, and the establishment of the welfare state in Britain after 1945. Secondly, we will examine the developments in non-realist forms of drama and the experiments which gave rise to what is, somewhat controversially, called the 'Theatre of the Absurd'. The module culminates with the study of a selection of texts chosen to illustrate the great variety of genres and styles in contemporary British literature and to exemplify literature written by different nationalities and social groups. Underpinned by relevant theoretical perspectives, questions will be raised about the relation between literature and contemporary events, with relation to issues pertinent to literature, such as social mobility, hybridity, democracy and technology. In recent years, authors studied have included Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, George Orwell, Sylvia Plath, Harold Pinter, Alan Hollinghurst, and Zadie Smith.

30 credits

Film is often seen as a director's medium, rather than a writer's. This course doesn't debate the relative claims of either - it retains a strong commitment to the visual - but its primary focus is on the construction of script and, in particular, the screenplay of the mainstream narrative film. The cornerstone of the module is an exploration of what makes an effective screen story through analysis of dramatic structure. The tutors on this module, both experienced screenwriters, contend that all genres of screen narrative use essentially the same core principles of storytelling and that an understanding of how these principles work is a creative tool: we can use them to create our own stories and adapt them to different forms. First, through close study of several successful films - focusing in particular on structure and character - you will be taught the contribution of the screenplay to how a film is constructed and why it succeeds. Second, with particular emphasis on dialogue and the craft of visual storytelling, we will guide you to the creation and completion of your own short screenplay, providing you with models (in both film and script form) from a selection of short films, and teaching you how to present and format your script.

In your final year, you'll take the Dissertation module, enabling you to work in-depth on a topic of your choice under the supervision of a subject specialist.

Seminars provide a more intimate forum for the detailed exploration of texts, with student presentations and discussion.

30 credits

The dissertation is a core module for all full-field literature students. Under guidance from an allocated specialist member of staff, and supported by interactive workshops, you will produce a sustained piece of research, either in the form of a traditional 10,000-word dissertation or in the form of creative project and accompanying 3,000-word rationale. The module culminates in a student conference. You will work with your peers to organise this, and your contribution to it will also be assessed. An initial dissertation proposal must be submitted in September before the module begins. At the end of the module, you will have produced a critically engaged and fully developed piece of independent research.

30 credits

This module covers a broad range of topics to engage students in different genres of communication to develop both spoken and written skills necessary for employability. The topics include analysing interaction in the professional setting, preparing professional documents, writing to a specific brief and presenting a professional brief. Through interactive lectures, guest talks, personal tutorials, and a workplace option where students have the opportunity to experience working practices, students are encouraged to develop skills and reflect on their own practices as a way of gaining an understanding of communication in real life and work contexts. The module's focus on professional interactional and writing skills as well as its links to Kingston's Careers and Employability Service activities and events guides students in planning their careers and developing their employability skills.

30 credits

This module looks at narrative story telling in both fictional and real-life stories. We explore concepts within narratology to explore the theory of narrative, as a way to understand the nature, form and function of narratives. We will look at the common or universal characteristics of narrative storytelling as well as differences and find out how it is that we are able to comprehend, memorise and produce stories. We will look at narrative structure, characterisation, narration and disnarration, narrative beginnings, the narrator as witness, children's narratives and fairy tales, and narratives in the media (e.g. newspapers, blogs) such as those following major world events.

30 credits

This module explores ideas from a wide range of disciplines and introduces students to some of the key concepts in the study of meaning. It begins by considering work in the philosophy of language on what it means to ‘mean' something and moves on to the distinction between the context-dependent meaning inherent in language-in-use – the domain of pragmatics – and context-independent meaning – the domain of linguistic semantics.   Students will consider how different linguistic elements interact with the discourse context to contribute to the communicative act, and we will also consider the role played by extra-linguistic aspects of communication such as facial expression, gesture and body language.

30 credits

This module will explore discourse aspects of social media in our globalising world, drawing on theories and methodologies developed in linguistics, sociolinguistics, critical discourse analysis and linguistic anthropology. Students will have the opportunity to research language and communication in a range of social media, including social networking sites, such as Facebook, media sharing sites like YouTube and Flickr, wikis, and other sites of (micro)blogging, such as Twitter.

30 credits

Salman Rushdie, Mary Wollstonecraft, Geoffrey Chaucer, Audre Lorde, Charlotte Bronte, Chinua Achebe, Mary Shelley, John Milton, Lawrence Sterne, Gertrude Stein, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison...the list is endless. At every point in literary history there are writers who break the mould and challenge the status quo. Whether it is through writing epics that endure through centuries, addressing the injustices of the time or challenging the very notion of what a novel, poem or a play can do, writers can be radical in a number of exciting ways. This module looks at works by radical writers in depth, studying one famous text in detail by a range of writers from different time periods and taught by lecturers who are experts in these writers. We will look at the context of each text as well as the way the text is written, determining why these radical writers have been so successful and looking at the effects their texts have had on the world around them. We will look at the idea of the literary 'canon', made up of writers who have been radical in some way, and consider the way that this idea can be challenged, reinvigorated or refreshed.

30 credits

This optional Level 6 module allows you to pursue Shakespeare studies at an advanced level and is founded upon a detailed and extensive study of the writer and his works. Consideration will be given to a range of critical approaches to Shakespeare as well as the long history and dynamic status of Shakespeare in performance and adaptation, for example in relation to questions of gender, identity and globalisation. You will be encouraged to reflect upon the role of Shakespeare in culture now as well as relevant contemporary contexts such as the nature of early modern theatregoing alongside crucial political and religious conditions. Teaching on the module will be closely aligned with the rich resources available at the Rose Theatre and in particular will afford you the opportunity to participate in the stimulating series of talks and events organised as part of the Kingston Shakespeare Seminar (KiSS).

30 credits

Throughout its history, the American nation has centred its identity upon notions of protest, resistance and dissent: a questioning of authority that has come to define American ideas of democratic freedom and individuality. This module explores how writers of poetry and prose from the 19th century to the present have asserted the American consciousness through literatures of counter-cultural resistance, challenging political ideologies, and questioning established modes of thinking. We will explore movements such as Transcendentalism, the Beats, Black Arts, and the New York School and their production of a counter-cultural aesthetic. Alongside this, we will consider individual writers who have responded to dominant discourses surrounding race, gender, nationalism, capitalism, and war - writers such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Chesnutt, Ernest Hemingway, F Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Leslie Marmon Silko, George Saunders and Thomas Pynchon. How, we ask, have these writers and movements both responded to and shaped the idea of American identity through a politics that is both radical and anti-authoritarian? The module is assessed by a combination of two short essays, discussion posts and a long critical essay.

30 credits

This module examines the rich and dynamic presence of black and Asian writing in English from the mid-17th century to the present. It will explore the ways in which black and Asian writers have produced formally innovative and conceptually challenging responses to questions of race, class, gender and identity, while simultaneously making significant creative contributions to the fields of drama, prose, poetry, and life-writing. In the first half of the module, students will study a range of early texts from the mid-17th century to the 19th century from writers such as Equiano and Mary Seacole, alongside contemporary works that have reflected on black culture during this period, while the second half of the module turns to 20th century and contemporary texts by writers such as Zadie Smith, Andrea Levy, and Salman Rushdie contextualised by appropriate critical and cultural theories from thinkers such as Paul Gilroy and Stuart Hall.

30 credits

What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to post-human? Who are our postmodern monsters? And what is the relationship between these differently-defined subjects and the environments – built, natural, virtual – in which they exist?

In this module we examine literature that has asked these questions, investigating how narratives of modernity have interrogated assumptions about the relationship between living subjects and the physical world, and indeed the way in which both those subjects and that world are conceived. Framed by ecocritical and spatial theory, we will consider how narrative explores the way in which the physical world has been treated in the current age – the age described as the Anthropocene – and how it has played a role in re-shaping our understanding of that world, and the changing idea of what constitutes the human.

Alongside this, we will consider how literature illuminates the ways in which spaces and places are themselves implicated in these definitions, with particular consequences for questions of race, gender, class, and sexuality. The module will include field trips to relevant sites such as urban developments and local wildlife centres, and will be assessed by a combination of essay and critical reflection.

30 credits

This module traces how literature from the 19^th century to the present has concerned itself with questions of gender identity and sexuality, often offering a radical voice for those - including both women and LGBTQ+ voices - excluded from dominant and mainstream discourses. Rooted in feminist and queer theory, we will explore how feminist writing has critiqued patriarchy, how literature has challenged normative gender roles, how it has engaged with powerful questions regarding the body and the politics of desire, and how it has represented the debates within different facets of the feminist and queer community. We will also consider how writers have employed literary form and genre - for example the use of experimental writing, dramatic or poetic form, or the romance genre - and to what extent debates surrounding these forms and genre contribute to a gendered politics of cultural production. Explicitly intersectional in its approach, we will frame our discussions with an interrogation of how the politics of gender and sexuality is shaped by its relationship with questions of class, race, disability, and religion. Examples of authors studied might include Jeanette Winterson, Fleur Adock, Carol Ann Duffy, Tony Kushner, Clare Macintyre, Leila Aboulela, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Virginia Woolf.

30 credits

This challenging and interesting special study module aims to provide you with the opportunity to engage with different examples of popular fiction such as crime fiction, romance, the thriller, and science fiction. It will enable you to identify the standard practices of popular genres and understand why they succeed or fail in particular texts. It will encourage you in the critical study of narrative techniques to best learn how to apply them in a work of popular fiction. You will experiment in writing crime, SF, thriller and romance stories before choosing one or two of these genres to take through to your final submission. All this will be put into the context of more general and transferable lessons to be learnt in the art of compelling storytelling.

For each genre studied you will read two core novels, plus a more general theoretical text on narrative construction. The module is lead by a writer of four published crime/thrillers.

30 credits

This year-long module focuses on the study and creative practice of (auto)biography and memoir, some of the most interesting and thriving literary genres. It is aimed at those tempted by the idea of writing about their own and others' lives, wishing to read a variety of life stories and examine the many different ways in which a life story can become a book.

We will explore exciting examples of autobiographical writing, looking at the highly literary and the popular bestsellers alike. Authors will range from Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein to Tracey Emin and Cheryl Cole, or another of your favourite – or most irritating -- celebrities and his or her ghost writer. 

We will sample, and experiment in, some of the many subgenres of life writing, which include childhood narratives, investigations of family secrets, testimony, graphic memoir, illness memoir, stories of trauma and abuse, war memoir, celebrity autobiography, and many others. Conceptual analysis will be reinforced by practical work designed to enable you to understand the issues in relation to your own creative life writing project.

30 credits

This module will cover the study of a number of different kinds of poetry and prose, with a focus on innovations in contemporary literature. It will examine some of the 20th- and 21st-century movements that have informed, and continue to influence, contemporary poetry and prose. These include modernism, dada, surrealism, sound poetry, visual poetry, constraint-based writing, the nouveau roman and "language" poetry, as well as the aesthetic and stylistic theories underpinning them (for instance, in manifestos and essays about poetry written by the poets and writers themselves).

Attention will be given to the contextual aspects of poetry and prose, as well as the content. The course will explore the reasons poets and writers innovate, the reasoning for experimentation and the ways in which poets and writers shape and structure poems and prose, exploring the nature of sound and language itself. The content of such works will be explored, which may involve non-traditional subject matter or interactions with other art forms, such as music or the visual arts, and their theoretical underpinning too (literary, social, theoretical, historical, stylistic). Analysis of the works studied will be reinforced by practical exercises and assignments designed to enable students to understand these concepts in relation to their own creative work, and to offer them the opportunity to experiment with their own writing and poetry.

Students will make poetry and prose portfolios and/or recorded readings which they can use as part of their writing CV, and which may be featured in the end-of-year Awards and Achievement Show.

30 credits

This is the module that can make you rich! On terrestrial and digital platforms, in both drama and comedy, the returning drama series remains TV's holy grail, pulling viewers in for episode after episode, season after season, box set after box set. For producers and writers – and the ‘showrunners' who are both – a returning series can be a goldmine. So how do these TV blockbusters get made? What makes them successful? And could you write one?

Taught by two highly experienced professionals, Box Set Drama is a practical and creative module which explores how a returning drama or comedy series is conceived and constructed – and gives you the tools to write one. Through close study of a few successful shows (and some not so successful), you will learn how to structure a series, build characters and stories, hook an audience, and dramatise action for the screen. Building from concept to treatment to script, with the aid of practical exercises and regular feedback, you will then develop a pitch for your own original show, aimed at the current television market. If you are keen to understand screen narrative and genre, find out how television drama works and explore writing for a visual medium, this module is for you. You will be taught basic principles of scriptwriting and storylining and, after two stimulating and entertaining semesters, will have generated a pitch and supporting portfolio for your own idea, written to industry standards.