English Literature

Literature in Time and Space

Literature, Self and Society

Modern British Theatre in Performance

This module aims to introduce students to some of the major developments in British Theatre practice including (but not restricted to) playwriting from 1950 to the present day. It will give students the opportunity to use practical workshops to explore and perform modern and contemporary British theatre in a manner than is informed by critical and socio-political debates.

Special Topics: Genres

Special Topics: Periods

Special Topics: Stylistics

Special Topics: Themes

Creative Writing (Intermediate)

This module offers an intermediate course in developing the writer’s art. It provides students who took the Creative Writing (Introduction) option in Year One with the opportunity to continue their practice working with a published novelist.

English Literature Work Placement and Graduate Skills

This module provides an opportunity for students to develop work-based skills and knowledge by engaging with professionals and organisations that have links to language, literature and the arts more widely. Students evaluate and reflect critically upon this experience, linking theory and practice in a professional context.

Independent Study in English

This module offers students the chance to study a literary topic of their choosing, working independently or in groups under the supervision of a lecturer. Students taking this module design their own study programme and form of assessment (e.g. a long essay, a performance, a report, a video documentary, a blog, etc.).

English Literature Dissertation

In doing a dissertation, you work one-to-one with a specialist lecturer to devise, research, and write a 10000-word project on a topic entirely of your own choosing. The dissertation gives you a degree-ending capstone which tests all the skills of literary research, critical reading, time-management, planning and focused writing that you have learned over the course of your studies. You may use the dissertation as an opportunity to focus on a familiar area, or to address a literary subject not covered by the degree curriculum. Combined honours students have the option of writing a dissertation which embraces both of their chosen subject areas.

Advanced Options Modules

The Advanced Options allow students to develop a deep knowledge of a specialist area by working with experts on research-led topics. Single honours students can choose up to three options; Combined can choose up to two. Options change yearly but may include:

• African-American Avant-Gardes
• The Theatrical City
• The Victorian Supernatural
• Poverty and the Novel
• Utopias
• The Pre-Raphaelites
• Women and Modernism
• Witchcraft and Magic
• Urban Jungle: The American City in Modern and Postmodern Literature and Culture
• Staging Riots, Resistance, and Power
• Spectacular Origins: Theatre, Madness and the Mind

Contemporary Literature

This module engages with literature from the last ten years in order to explore how issues directly relevant to students’ lives, such as globalisation, post-9/11 culture, and digitalisation, are being debated in literary texts. The module also offers students an opportunity to relate this recent material back to other modules they have studied over their degree, to examine the resonances and echoes of recurrent cultural ideas across centuries.

Creative Writing (Advanced)

This module brings together the skills developed in the Creative Writing modules in Years 1 and 2, enabling students to work on a longer piece of writing and to develop an understanding of how a book works as a whole. Through exposure to visits from a literary agent and/or editor, they also learn about the submissions process for publication. The final submission for the module is a large piece of 6000 words (or equivalent in poetry) which shows an awareness of the final publication context within which the submission might exist, for example - chapters from a novel or memoir, or short stories/poems/essays from a proposed anthology.

Independent Study Module

Methodology of Foreign Language Teaching

An introduction to the theory and practical application of the principles of second or foreign language teaching at secondary or adult levels. This module enables candidates to develop an awareness of a range of teaching techniques and apply these to the language classroom.

Opera and Politics

This module introduces the political agendas that have governed the composition and production of opera since its birth to the twentieth century. The course aims to develop skills of argument and debate through the detailed study of two or more repertory operas, in terms of their libretti, music, historical and cultural contexts.

Understanding Communication

Communication is an essential part of social life - the glue binding humans together. From our solitary readings to our computer-mediated social networking, and from our hallway chats to the academic papers we write, we are constantly involved in designing and producing messages that express who we are and allow us to coordinate our thoughts and activities with other people. This module zooms in on communication as a form of social action, and examines how a range of factors - psychological, social, cultural, semiotic, etc.- govern how we engage with one another to achieve our goals.

Work placement

You can explore possible careers in the Work Placement Module and gain valuable work experience while earning credit towards your degree. You will build on the skills and knowledge you have gained to engage with professionals in the fields of publishing, journalism, education, cultural heritage and literary history. Recent placements have included the Oxford Story Museum, the Oxford Literary Festival and Oxfam. Students organise placements themselves, and Oxford Brookes Careers Centre is on hand to provide assistance. Students are responsible for their own travel and associated costs, therefore it is advised that they organise placements bearing this in mind.