MA in English Literature and American Studies

at University of Manchester

Course unit details

Students undertake units totalling 180 credits. Core and optional units combine to make 120 credits, with the remaining 60 credits allocated to the dissertation.
 

Semester 1
 

You will choose two of the three core units on offer. Each core unit is worth 30 credits, and will lay the groundwork for your further coursework, as well as preparing you to think about your dissertation. The current core units are:
 

•    Approaches to Literary Study: Historicism and the Archive

•    Space, Place and Text (Ecocriticism)

•    American Studies: Theory, Methods, Practice
 

These units address questions that are at the heart of literary and cultural studies, and will give you conceptual tools relevant to all of the units offered in the second semester.
 

Semester 2
 

You will choose 60 credits worth of course units. Semester 2 units are primarily weighted at 15 credits, thus allowing you to choose from a wider variety of options and to diversify your engagement with the field. Semester 2 course units explore a range of periods, approaches, and literary cultural productions. Some offer special activities, like the chance to engage with the holdings in the John Rylands Library.
 

When your coursework is complete, you will write a 12-15,000-word dissertation, worth 60 credits, supervised by an academic member of staff.
 

Course unit list

The course unit details given below are subject to change, and are the latest example of the curriculum available on this course of study.
 

Title

• Dissertation (MA)
• American Studies: Theories, Methods, Practice
• Radical Subcultures
• AfroPasts and AfroFutures
• The AIDS Crisis: American Cultural Representation
• Postcolonial Literatures, Genres and Theories
• Shakespeare: Theory and the Archive
• Space, Place and Text
• Wondrous Transformations: Translating the Medieval Past
• Before `Sexuality': Bodies, Desires and Discourses, 1660-1900

Academic entry qualification overview

We normally expect students to have a First or Upper Second class honours degree or its overseas equivalent in a humanities-based subject area.
 

English language

An overall grade of 7.0 in IELTS with 7.0 in writing an no skill below 6.5 is required or 100+ in the TOEFL iBT with a minimum writing score of 25 and no skill below 22.

• MA (full-time)
  
  UK students (per annum): £10,500
  
  International, including EU, students (per annum): £21,000

Upon successful completion of their course, many English postgraduates go on or return to jobs as teachers or librarians, continue their research, or go on to academic jobs.

Career paths are extremely varied, and other English postgraduates go on or return to careers in law, publishing and retailing, as well as into many other fields.