English Literature

Entry requirements

Applicants should have a good undergraduate degree at Honours level, or equivalent. Interview You will need to demonstrate through submission of written evidence your aptitude for the subject. A short essay on a topic agreed by the admissions tutor will normally suffice. We also welcome applications from industry professionals interested in the academic study of the subject, or looking to enhance your CV with an academic qualification. If candidates have some distance to travel for interview a telephone or video call can be arranged.

MA

Months of entry

September

Course content

Pursue your own intellectual interests and develop advanced critical thinking and literary analysis skills. Research-active experts in their fields deliver the taught elements, small seminar groups enabling significant individual support and guidance. A thorough knowledge of nineteenth and twentieth-century texts and contexts, and specific units in Readers and Reading, Literary Pilgrimages, and Children's and Young Adult Literature allow you to reflect on significant historical, intellectual and philosophical debates. Research Methods develops further skills necessary at postgraduate level. Building on your interests, a final dissertation project allows you to conduct independent research in a topic of your choosing.

Intermediate qualifications available:

• Postgraduate certificate – 60 credits at Masters level
• Postgraduate diploma – 120 credits at Masters level

Key features
•

• Study in a department with vibrant research culture with regular visiting speakers and literary events, on a course informed by the research expertise of a teaching team widely published in their respective fields and receiving consistently high results in the National Student Survey (NSS)
• Explore the wider cultural scope of your studies with specialist field trips to museums, galleries, libraries and archives, giving you the opportunity to study unique primary materials and meet professionals from these institutions
• Develop skills which are invaluable for careers within the media, culture and knowledge industries, giving you career opportunities in advertising and marketing; arts and heritage management; broadcasting; business; communication and public relations; education, either as a primary or a secondary school teacher; journalism; librarianship or publishing
• Gain access to the Hockliffe and the Cinderella Collections, amongst the most important archives of children’s literature in the UK
• Benefit from acquiring the essential skills to enable you to progress doctoral level studies with an MPhil or PhD research degree.

This course is distinctive for the interdisciplinary and innovative ways in which it allows you to pursue your own intellectual interests and to develop advanced skills of critical thinking and literary analysis.

It is structured so that you acquire a thorough knowledge of nineteenth and twentieth-century texts and contexts, undertaken in two 30 credit units, accompanied by a more thematically focused approach in three 15 credit units: Readers and Reading, Literary Pilgrimages, and Children’s and Young Adult Literature.

• Research Methods
• Feeling Victorian
• Literary Pilgrimages
• Dissertation
• Literature and Modernity in the long twentieth century
• Children’s and Young Adult Literature
• Readers and Reading

Information for international students

Applications will be assessed using UKBA and University of Bedfordshire policy. Check English language requirements at:www.beds.ac.uk/english-language

Fees and funding

For details on the financial support on offer at the University of Bedfordshire please visit our website: www.beds.ac.uk/pgfunding.

Qualification and course duration

MA