COURSE IN DEPTH
Year one
In order to complete this course you must successfully complete all the following CORE modules (totalling 100 credits):
Literature, Drama and Origin
20 credits
This module introduces you to various aspects of literature and drama. We will examine a range of important concepts to the study of literature and drama, including authorship, form, genre, intertextuality, as well as various historical contexts. To develop skills in analyzing drama, we will study the principles of dramaturgy and engage in practical explorations of a range of plays.
Foundations of Language
20 credits
This module will introduce you to some of the key topics in contemporary linguistics and language studies, such as pragmatics, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics. You will learn to apply linguistic concepts and terminology to real-life examples of spoken and written language in use. You will study a wide range of analytical frameworks which will deepen your understanding of the structural characteristics of English, and will be introduced to the role language plays in other areas of English studies and the humanities. The module will help you develop your skills in critical thinking, in analysing different forms of data, in identifying and synthesising information from a variety of sources, and in presenting your findings in a coherent and well-organised way.
Foundations of Creative Writing
20 credits
In this module, you will develop a rigorous and inventive writing practice by experimenting with different ways of gathering source material and generating new writing, and then with shaping and crafting that writing in prose and in poetry. You will also develop strategies for building a sustainable writing practice, reflecting on what helps and hinders you in regularly making new work. You will explore the tenet that creative writing does not emerge solely from abstract ideas and the blank page, but from a regular writing practice that engages imaginatively and playfully with stimuli and constraint.
Literature and Conflict
20 credits
This module seeks to engage you with a focused analysis of poetry, drama, the novella and the novel as specific forms and to equip you with the scholarly tools used to investigate them. We will examine a range of genres and periods, exploring the concept of conflict from war and revolution to social class and gender, as well as at a psychological level. Conflict creates dramatic interest in narrative, but many forms of criticism assume that conflict should ideally be resolved. We will query this and consider how more overtly ideological criticism might explore the contradictions within a text and disclose what the text itself cannot say. This may lead to questioning of conflict, resolution and even how a historical understanding of conflict is important in our contemporary world.
Key Critical Concepts
20 credits
This module will introduce you to how theoretical texts and literary criticism can improve the tools with which we carry out close reading. Each week we will read a theoretical text that covers a different concept and learn how to apply that knowledge to literary writing. You will develop the skills to close read and analyse both primary texts (literature) and secondary texts (criticism and theory). This module will help you to critically reflect on both types of text, as well as on what we bring to a text when we read it, and to pay careful attention to literary form, style, and genre.
In order to complete this course you must successfully complete at least 20 credits from the following list of OPTIONAL modules:
Language in Action
20 credits
This module will introduce you to a number of advanced topics in contemporary linguistics and language studies, such as phonetics, grammar, and corpus linguistics. You will expand your knowledge of linguistic concepts and terminology and develop your ability to apply this knowledge in the analysis of real-life examples of spoken and written language in use. You will be introduced to the phonetic and grammatical characteristics of English and you will analyse these phenomena in context. The module will help you develop your skills in critical thinking, in analysing different forms of data, in identifying and synthesising information from a variety of sources, and in presenting your findings in a coherent and well-organised way.
Modern Drama
20 credits
This module focuses on a period of theatre history characterised by formal innovation and revolutionary ideas. You will learn about the intersection between notions of ‘modernity’ and dramaturgical styles associated with ‘modernism’. You will engage with the artistic movements that developed in Europe from the late nineteenth century and identify key playwrights and practitioners that brought significant changes to the stage, on the continent and in Britain. You will examine seminal works from this era, both as written texts and in performance, concluding the process with your own practical interpretation of a chosen play, which will be informed by historical and critical research.
Craft of Writing
20 credits
In this module, you will explore key elements of effective writing, such as character, setting, action and dialogue, and the techniques used to create and control style on the page, such as showing and telling, detail and description, imagery and viewpoint. You will examine each element or technique in a given text and then apply what you have learned in your own writing. Each lecture and workshop will inform a different element of your writing technique, feeding into three new pieces of writing to be submitted for assessment at the end of the semester. This module provides a strong foundation for further study and practice in creative writing in years 2 and 3.
Core modules are guaranteed to run. Optional modules will vary from year to year and the published list is indicative only.
Year two
In order to complete this course you must successfully complete all the following CORE modules (totalling 60 credits):
Writing and the Environment
20 credits
This module examines different forms of writing that engage critically and creatively with ‘nature’ and the ‘environment’. This module will enhance your understanding of reading and writing as practices through which people develop and debate their understanding of the world, and the place of people within it.
The Romantics
40 credits
This module introduces you to some of the principal works of one of the most dynamic and exhilarating periods in English literature, the cultural legacy of which has influenced the creative arts and the history of ideas ever since. The texts studied on this module raise profound and lasting questions, and you should approach them in a spirit of adventure and enquiry. Can literature act as an agent of revolution? What is the creative imagination? What is liberty? How should we conceive of the natural world? What is the significance of feeling and empathy? What is the relationship between language, society and authority? What do we mean by ‘Romanticism’? Of what is humankind capable? As such, the module also requires you to think about the relationship between literature and history, and how literary texts in any era respond both to the present and the past. Authors and their works are examined in their social, political and economic context, as well as the intellectual, religious and spiritual traditions in which they participate.
In order to complete this course you must successfully complete at least 60 credits from the following list of OPTIONAL modules.
Collaborative Practice
20 credits
The ability to work collaboratively in a team is a vital employability skill within the Creative Industries. This module is an opportunity to learn and critically reflect on the skills of collaboration by enabling you to create a group project with students from complementary disciplines.
Work Placement
20 credits
The purpose of this module is to enable you to develop professional attributes and subject skills through experience in the work place, and to critically reflect upon your learning in that context. You will normally be expected to arrange your own placement, with support from academic staff and ADM Careers+.
Gender, Sexuality and Culture
20 credits
This module explores two concepts central to our understanding of what makes us ‘modern’: gender and sexuality. We will challenge ‘common sense’ understandings of gender and sexuality by interrogating cultural identities, such as queer, heterosexual, homosexual, gay, lesbian, straight and trans. It will introduce you to gender studies and sexuality studies as theoretical, social, cultural, political and historical fields of investigation. There will be a broadly chronological approach to texts and theoretical approaches, moving between examples of twentieth-century fiction, popular culture and theory. You will be given an introduction to literature, culture, and theory as a dynamic field in which issues of gender and sexuality are debated and explored. We will begin by considering where studies of gender and sexuality stood at the start of the twentieth century, and then consider how a number of literary and theoretical texts explore and investigate gender and sexuality. Through these texts we will consider topics such as desire, identity, sexual classification, repression and liberation, the body, transgression, and normality and deviance.
Literature and the Child
20 credits
This module will provide you with the knowledge and skills to critically evaluate the representation and function of the child and childhood in both literature for the child and that for an adult audience. You will study a range of texts which will provide you with a broad historical knowledge of the changing role and function of the child in literature and which you will read alongside sociological, philosophical or educational treatise on childhood. In doing so you will gain a broad historical knowledge of the development of ‘theories of childhood’ from the eighteenth century to the present day and examine how these are engaged with in the literature of the day. You will be able to identify and evaluate how literature has conversely figured childhood as a space of discipline, regulation, play, innocence, higher moral purity, and lived social experience. You will be able to apply these ideas to theoretically informed, critically evaluative readings of a range of texts.
The Victorians
20 credits
This module covers the poetry and prose of the Victorian period, through which you will learn about the formal properties and trends of literature of the period and the innovations which arose, as well as the historical context including social change, gender roles and religion. You will be encouraged to read widely, and to look backwards and forwards through literary history to enable you to situate the literature of the period in context. There will be a strong emphasis on the close reading of texts and on the importance of research and reading relevant works of criticism; you will be encouraged to develop your research and writing skills and to work independently, which will support your work across this and other modules. We'll also think about Victorian culture and how this remains an important determining factor within modern society.
Multicultural Writing
20 credits
Multicultural Writing focuses on the history of British multiculturalism in literature and criticism from the 1950s up to the present day. Exploring a range of Black, Asian and other multicultural writing, you will develop a critical awareness of how literature and criticism deal with questions of racism, stereotyping, colonial discourse, cultural hybridity, migration and asylum. The overall aim of the module is to develop your aesthetic, critical and historical awareness that will inform your critical thinking about, and imaginative responses to, contemporary multiculturalism. The module spans a diverse set of literary texts (poems, short stories, novels) produced primarily by ‘minority’ writers in Britain since the post-war era (e.g. Black, Asian and other groups who belong to the less established immigrant groups in Britain today). You will study these texts alongside relevant histories of migration, theories of representation, and critical debates about multiculturalism.
Early Modern Literature
20 credits
This module will provide you with knowledge of key social, political, religious and theatrical contexts relating to literature from the Early Modern period. You will combine this knowledge with key critical and textual analysis tools that will give you the skills to examine several historical, dramatic and poetic texts from the late fifteenth to the early eighteenth centuries. You will focus on the vital role of the early modern period in the formation and transformation of an English literary canon, and discuss key concepts such as materiality, versionality, collaboration and authorship. To do so, you will develop an ability to read closely and analyse textually the language and the literary techniques and devices of this key period, as well as formative skills in archive management.
Language in Society
20 credits
This module will introduce you to the different intersections of language and society and outline the ways in which language can vary according to class, gender, and age. You will develop your understanding of how to collect, analyse and present language data and results in an ethically responsible and methodologically sound way. You will also examine how language is used to construct social identities, the role of language in wider contemporary society and how sociolinguistic research can be utilised in a non-academic context. You will develop your skills of visual communication, data analysis and data presentation, alongside a careful understanding of the body of research literature within sociolinguistics and how it informs your own work. This module will ultimately allow you to critically evaluate different approaches to the study of linguistic variation and apply your knowledge in designing a research project to investigate language in society.
Foundations of Screenwriting
20 credits
This module will teach you the essential skills of, and principles behind, the writing of short films. Although these principles apply primarily to screenwriting for film and television, this module will instead be concerned with the writing of short films. You will study a number of freely available short guides to screenplay layout and formatting and be trained in the practical application of screenplay formatting software. You will write three short scripts, given as fortnightly writing exercises, and receive detailed formative feedback on one of the scripts, which you can use to improve and develop your work for your final portfolio. You will focus on visual storytelling, layout conventions, and the issue of writing to scale (budget). You will also be encouraged to analyse, but also critique, dramatic construction in terms of character function, motivation and genre.
Writing Audio Drama
20 credits
The United Kingdom commissions, produces and broadcasts more audio drama – i.e. online, on digital and on radio – than any other country in the world. In this diverse and dynamic medium, writers are able to tell human stories set anywhere in time and space, at a fraction of the cost of television and film production. What’s more – as an old industry saying goes – ‘you see it better on radio’. In this module you will learn how to write compelling audio drama scripts, and engage practically and theoretically with the key principles and techniques involved. You will also be introduced to editorial collaboration, the pitching of projects, and appropriate methods of presentation. Through your workshops, you will learn how to communicate ideas clearly, accurately and effectively both orally and in writing. In devising, developing and writing your own audio drama scripts, you will initiate, manage and complete an independent creative project.
Writing Poetry
20 credits
This module introduces writing contemporary poetry. You will learn from the work of a diverse range of contemporary poets, explore the distinctive characteristics of the form, and experiment with techniques involved in writing both set forms and free verse. You will identify, practise and apply elements of craft such as metaphor, imagery, lexical choice, metre and rhyme and be introduced to editing and rewriting. You will share your work-in-progress with other students for constructive criticism, and explore ways of giving effective feedback, as well as reflecting on how to improve your own work. As contemporary poetry is a means of social communication, we will read poems aloud and use Twitter as an educational tool for the publishing of short poems and for engaging with poetry social networks.
Documentary Drama
20 credits
This module will provide you with knowledge and critical understanding of one of the most enduring forms of socially engaged performance: documentary drama. You will study different styles of factbased drama for stage and television, both historical and contemporary, and will be able to identify associated traditions such as ‘tribunal’, ‘verbatim’ and ‘testimonial’ plays; ‘dramadoc’ and ‘docudrama’. You will discuss the balance between fact and fiction in documentary work, the ethical dilemmas and responsibilities involved in creating drama from real-life stories, and the political and artistic value of this type of performance. You will apply this knowledge to the development of your own documentary project, derived from factual material to be compiled, shaped and delivered as a stage performance.
Core modules are guaranteed to run. Optional modules will vary from year to year and the published list is indicative only.
Year three
In order to complete this course you must successfully complete all the following CORE modules (totalling 80 credits):
Modernism and its Legacies
40 credits
This module examines the literature of the long twentieth century, from the end of the nineteenth century to the present. Focusing on modernism – the defining artistic movement of the twentieth century – we will analyse a range of literary texts that students will find challenging and rewarding. Central modernist writers who are considered key formal innovators will be discussed, including Joseph Conrad, Ezra Pound, Virginia Woolf, and D. H. Lawrence. We will explore how later writers, such as Samuel Beckett, Jean Rhys, Muriel Spark, J. M. Coetzee, and Tom McCarthy, handle the legacies of the modernist movement, and whether they can be considered postmodern. Students will be encouraged to engage closely with issues of form and style in modernist and postmodern texts. At the same time, we will situate these texts in their historical contexts, considering key themes and categories such as tradition, identity, subjectivity, industrialisation, culture, gender, time, colonialism, imperialism, and technology.
Major Project
40 credits
The purpose of the module is to enable you to undertake a sustained, in-depth and theoretically informed research project exploring an area that is of personal interest to you. It is important that we can support you appropriately, so you will be guided towards choosing a research topic which is relevant to your discipline and in which your lecturers have expertise. The outcome may take the form of a written dissertation or a practice-based portfolio.
In order to complete this course you must successfully complete at least 40 credits from the following list of OPTIONAL modules.
Forensic Linguistics
20 credits
This module will provide you with the knowledge and skills to critically analyse linguistic data and apply the results of the analysis to legal settings, focusing mainly on legal discourse, courtroom discourse, police interviewing, authorship analysis, and plagiarism detection. You will study a wide range of topics which will provide you with a broad understanding of different sub-disciplines of forensic linguistics and language and the law, each with its own methodological approach. You will develop skills necessary for interdisciplinary research at the intersection of linguistics, forensic sciences, legal studies and psychology. You will focus on how to ensure your data is representative, to develop robust methodological approach, and to present your results in a logical way meeting the requirements set by relevant bodies in a range of legal contexts.
Language and Gender
20 credits
This module will introduce you to the main critical debates, concepts, and research approaches in the field of language and gender. You will discuss a variety of key theoretical areas, supported by relevant scholarly research, and you will learn to critically evaluate the role that language plays in gender relations and gender stereotypes. You will carry out independent fieldwork on a topic of your own choice related to language and gender, and you will develop your skills in data collection, analysis, and evaluation. The module makes use of a variety of data sources, including electronic corpora, written, visual and spoken media, questionnaires, and you will learn to apply your knowledge of language and linguistics to investigate and analyse such data. Over the course of the module, you will also acquire a range of skills which will support your long-term personal and professional development, including self direction in problem solving, communication skills (written and verbal), independent critical thought, and effective time management.
Teaching English as a Foreign Language
20 credits
The module is based on experimental and experiential techniques allowing you to encounter TEFL teaching methods, as well as improve your knowledge of phonetics and phonology, grammar and vocabulary, syntax and punctuation. The module will equip you with a solid understanding of TEFL approaches alongside a practical skill set for planning lessons and courses, assessing language proficiency, facilitating the learning process, and managing classroom dynamics. The module will help you utilise skills and linguistic knowledge gained during your first two years of study in the applied settings of teaching English as a second/foreign language. You will also draw on literature, drama and creative writing strands of the programme due to the emphasis on the inherent value of cultural and literary experiences in the foreign language acquisition process. You will focus on developing engaging teaching materials for potential learners and practise completing tasks similar to those required as part of the interview selection process for TEFL jobs. Throughout the module, special emphasis will be placed on continuous professional development as well as identifying career options in the UK and abroad. You will be provided with several voluntary opportunities, including providing language support for international students, teaching English classes for international students within the Faculty, or observing commercial classes in Birmingham.
Writing Creative Nonfiction
20 credits
This module introduces you to writing creative nonfiction. You will investigate the nature of creative nonfiction, exploring the distinctive issues it raises for writers in recent published works and in the original writing you produce during the module; these issues include the ethical considerations involved in drawing from real-life subjects as source material, the nature of truth, the role of research, and the interplay between ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’.
Writing Short Films
20 credits
This module will enable you to build upon your current reading and writing of short films, and to develop your range, technique and sophistication as a contemporary screenwriter, applying your knowledge to the writing of a short film script of 10 minutes in length. You will study a guide to writing short films and build on your practical application of screenplay formatting software. You will write one ‘Academy’ short screenplay of 10 pages, on which you will receive detailed formative feedback, enabling you to rewrite towards your portfolio assessment. You will focus on visual storytelling, layout conventions, the issue of writing to scale (budget) and will work collaboratively on writing, planning, shooting and editing a short film of 3-minutes’ length. While a group mark will be given for the collaborative component of the assessment, your moderator reserves the right to mark individually if it is apparent that individuals have contributed more or less than others.
Nature Writing
20 credits
This module will provide you with the knowledge and skills to create focussed observational writing based on personal interaction with the natural world. You will develop the skills to compose poetry and creative non-fiction based on your own research and observations. You will learn how to make precise scientifically-informed and researched description, creating a balance between observation and evaluation and between the presence of the author-narrator as a character in the text and the otherness of what you are describing. Finding an appropriate language for describing the non-human is often a central concern of contemporary nature writing. At the end of this module, you will be able to situate your own practice as a writer of poetry and prose within contemporary nature writing.
Literature, Art and Philosophy
20 credits
This module is concerned with philosophical aesthetics that is the branch of philosophy that deals with questions about the nature of art and beauty. We will take a historical view of aesthetic theory, beginning with Plato and Aristotle and moving through to twentieth-century thinkers such as Collingwood via Kant and the Romantics. Major forms of aesthetic theory – from the mimetic to the mystical – will be considered with reference to individual works of art. The bias is towards literature, but we will also study painting, sculpture and other visual arts. The first part of the module covers a broad history of ideas (indicated above); the second part focuses on notably ‘philosophical’ works of literature by Shakespeare and Shelley. The idea is to study some works of literature in depth to understand how the various theories might be applied to individual works, and also to think about the limitations of this process.
The Gothic
20 credits
This module focuses on literature in the gothic tradition from its inception through to the present day. During the module, the development of the gothic form will be traced from its origins through to recent manifestations of the genre. Gothic literature often reflects social and cultural trends as well as providing a space to manifest cultural anxieties, expressing a society’s suppressed desires and fears in an acceptable literary form. Such texts can therefore be read not only as escapist, but as serious texts which seek to express often radical, socially unacceptable or psychologically-submerged ideas. The module will enable you to identify these undercurrents as well as to explore the major themes and aesthetics of the genre. You will be encouraged to interrogate texts with an eye to these issues, including those of gender, race and class, and to contextualise the texts in order to analyse and understand the changing concept of Gothic.
Psychology in Victorian Literature
20 credits
The module explores the relationship between literature and the development of psychological thought in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries before the advent of laboratory-based experimental work. Ideas about character formation which inform the literary examination of character in nineteenthcentury poetry and prose will be placed in the context of philosophical and scientific descriptions of mental development during the period. The connections between nineteenth-century psychology and "pseudo-scientific" discourses such as phrenology and mesmerism will also come under scrutiny, as will the close relationship between psychology and Victorian medical discourse.
Speculative Fiction
20 credits
What if a book was discovered that revealed an advanced alien civilisation? What if humans could merge with machines? What if the world were slowly crystallising around us? What if humanity had all but destroyed itself? The ‘what if’ in these questions signals a moment of hesitation, a gap that opens up between what is and what could be. This is speculation. Speculation is something we all do. It allows us to reimagine the past, recontextualise the present and consider new futures. It can be a liberating but also a destabilising activity because it asks us to question the ways in which we make sense of who we are and the world around us. In this module you will consider how literature can be a vehicle for speculation. You will be able to identify the formal literary techniques and devices used to enable speculation and then apply them to a series of texts from the late twentieth century and twenty-first century to consider how these can help us think about new pasts, new societies, new identities and new futures.
Shakespeare Studies
20 credits
This module will consider a range of primary and critical texts relating to Shakespeare’s canon. In general, you will consider the reasons for Shakespeare’s prominent position in the English canon and in wider popular culture and society. You will focus some attention on Shakespeare’s social context, early modern theatrical settings and conventions, and the language of Shakespeare’s works. You will also consider how Shakespeare’s works operate in performance and film. To do the above, you will examine in detail a selection of Shakespeare’s comedies, tragedies, histories and poems, considering textual aspects meticulously, while relating the texts to wider issues of reception and impact. Emphasis will be placed on using a range of critical interpretative methods when approaching the plays, as well as on utilising digital literacy (such as online archives) in order to develop a knowledge of key research skills required by early modern literary scholars as well as basic archival skills.
Moral Philosophy
20 credits
With the study of ethics at its heart, this module draws on the wide range of intellectual disciplines which are used to understand and critique both longstanding and current issues with moral and political dimensions. It seeks to foster the capacity for independent thought, critical awareness of other perspectives, and an ability to think through the wider picture. In doing so the module assists in articulating the value of the humanities in a democracy as well as developing an appreciation of the values of citizenship, especially in terms of the challenges and opportunities which globalisation gives rise to. The module will enable you to write about contemporary moral and political issues for an educated general readership in a way that is both serious and engaging. As such, it forms a crucial link between the experience of academic study and its application to a range of graduate careers.
Milton’s Epic
20 credits
This module will provide you with the knowledge and skills to critically evaluate one of the most important works in English literature: Milton’s major epic poem, Paradise Lost. This module focuses extensively on this poem and its various contexts. You will read the entire epic thoroughly in order to enable you to analyse the themes, characters, settings and language of the work. You will develop an understanding of Milton’s political, religious and literary ambitions in relation to his key works. You will also read and discuss some of his non-epic works.
Film
20 credits
This module allows you to apply your knowledge of existing formal, narratological and historical concepts to the medium of film, and to develop further conceptual frameworks derived from or unique to film. The module will be concerned with the structural and cultural features which can be seen to determine readings of film narrative. Generally, though not exclusively, the module will find its location in the area of popular film. It will take as a starting point the model derived from what David Bordwell calls ‘The Classical Hollywood Cinema’. This will enable you to begin to theorise issues such as Genre and Auteurism as well as the semiotics of film, so that the general formations can be analysed with reference to their subversion by counter-cultural formations. Particular reference will be made to three generic sets: Film Noir, Melodrama and Horror. By referring to these case-studies, you will be encouraged to develop critical/theoretical analyses of films of your choice.
World Literature
20 credits
World Literature explores global dimensions of literature and introduces key debates in Comparative and World Literature. You will widen and deepen your knowledge and understanding of literary movements you have studied on previous modules, especially modules focusing on the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. World Literature will provide new insights into how certain literary trends in Britain were pioneered, paralleled or developed overseas whilst also offering you the opportunity to join up major lines of development in global literary history. Exploring a variety of novels from different parts of the world, the module emphasises what is distinct about literatures from specific geographical areas. You will look at how novels considered as part of ‘World Literature’ have developed in formal terms, from nineteenth-century realism to the contemporary cosmopolitan novel. You will develop a global outlook on literature by tracing how realism as a form has been challenged by and renewed in successive ‘moments’ or ‘turns’ of literary history. You will explore the major debates and theories of World Literature through international literary history, comparative literary analysis, looking at themes, and tracing the recurrence of images and motifs.
The Uncanny
20 credits
This module explores ‘The New Phenomenology’ which deals with experiences of the self. We will read Freud’s classic essay on ‘The Uncanny’ and associated materials bringing contemporary philosophy to bear on some literary and film texts. Place and displacement, anxiety, melancholia and unease feature in this work.
Corpus Linguistics
20 credits
This course will provide a practical introduction to Corpus Linguistics (CL) – a field of linguistics that uses computers to investigate and analyse large collections (corpora) of electronically-encoded language data. The course is conducted in a workshop setting and emphasises practical learning, experience and application of important theory, methods, and tools in CL using appropriate software tools. Your assessment will be equally as applied and will require practical application of your learning to suitable language data.
Core modules are guaranteed to run. Optional modules will vary from year to year and the published list is indicative only.
