English and History BA (Hons)

Built around a core of significant authors writing in English from Elizabethan times to the end of the Twentieth Century, from Shakespeare to Seamus Heaney, this programme also provides the opportunity for you to follow your own interests through a wide range of optional modules. Two thirds of the course is made up these: you can, for example, follow strands on creative and professional writing, women’s writing and gender studies, and American literature; or select from modules on historical fiction, contemporary fiction, modern drama, love poetry, the Victorian novel, or Beat culture, to name just a few. In your final year, you will – guided by a member of the teaching team – write a dissertation on a topic of your own choice. This combination of one-third compulsory historical core and two-thirds specialist optional modules will allow you to develop your own areas of expertise whilst still attaining a solid grounding in the history of English literature.

History supplements your English subject by enabling you to progress from a broad awareness into a more critically-informed appreciation of the past. History as a minor allows you to study a range of periods and geographies and enables you to critically assess relevant sources.

In each of the three years of study students take modules to the value of 120 credit points. By taking History as a joint you will develop a critically-informed knowledge of the history of a variety of time periods, themes and geographies. You will develop a critical awareness of historians’ arguments and an ability to construct you own arguments based on the informed use of sources, both primary and secondary.