MA in English

at University of Reading

Autumn term

Core module:

• Materiality and Textuality
  Offers students training and guidance in research methods, including using and constructing bibliographies, locating manuscripts, editorial practices, and wider debates of copyright, over editing, and the archive.

Choose one from:

• Early Modern Literature: Texts, Contexts and Methods
  Encourages students to read widely and to develop their own interests in the field of early modern literature and drama, with appropriate historical, literary and critical contexts.

• Modern and Contemporary Literature
  Helps students to develop their own interests within the period from literary modernism to the present day. 

Spring term

Choose two from:

• Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century Literature 
  Explores literature from the eighteenth century to the fin de siècle. 

• Modern Literary Feminisms: Theories/Praxis/Texts
  Explores modern feminist thinking and writing, whilst acknowledging the critical fissures inherent in the contested term ‘feminism’. Introduces aspects of feminist theory and praxis through a range of fictional and non-fictional sources.

• Samuel Beckett
  Provides an in-depth study of the works and intellectual contexts of Samuel Beckett. Looks at a representative selection from his drama, prose, broadcast media, poetry and criticism; encourages students to use the University's extensive Beckett manuscript holdings.

• Diasporas of the Mind: Minority Literature in Britain
  Brings together a diverse group of contemporary literary texts and cultural histories which cross racial, ethnic and national divides in Britain. Authors are read together with an eclectic group of critical theorists and cultural historians who attempt to rethink present-day identity politics.

• Opening Up Medieval English Texts 
  Explores literature in English in and at the end of the Middle Ages. This period sees the revival and, indeed, reinvention of English as a literary vernacular, after several generations of domination by French.

• Project Development
  Provides students with the opportunity to develop and reshape a creative writing project in a genre of their choice, as well as the chance to give and receive feedback within a seminar group. 

• Publishing and the Business of Books
  Explores the place of the writer within the business of modern international publishing. Looks at modern writers’ interactions with publishers, editors, agents, and translators through critical reading, seminars, and practice-based workshops in Reading’s unique archives.

Summer term​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

​​​​​​​Core module:

• Dissertation
  Guides students in the research and writing of a dissertation of up to 15,000 words.

IELTS: ​6.5 overall with no element less than 6.0 (or equivalent)

Entry requirements: Normally a good undergraduate honours degree (2:1 or above), or equivalent from a university outside the UK, in an appropriate subject.

New UK/Republic of Ireland students: £9,250 per year

New international students: £18,650 per year

Our students continue on to, or return to, careers in teaching, publishing, the media, the civil service, the charity sector and advertising, as well as going on to do PhD research. Students report that their careers are supported by the skills they have acquired on the MA English in terms of not only subject expertise, but also critical thinking, reading closely and with advanced understanding, and writing well.