Year 1

Compulsory modules

Reading for Meaning

In this module, you’ll develop the tools you need to succeed in university-level literary study. Working through a series of short literary texts and extracts, you’ll develop skills in:

 close reading
 critical analysis
 research
 essay writing

You’ll be taught in small groups, enabling you to get to know your classmates and tutor, and allowing you to explore your ideas and those of others. You’ll also be supported in developing positive study habits and self-management skills.

Reading Wonderland: The Literature of Oxford

In this module, you’ll investigate Oxford’s rich literary life, both past and present. You’ll dive into texts written, performed and set in Oxford, as you think about how the city’s literature is shaped by its geography, population and reputation. You’ll read established texts and writers, as well as literature outside of centres of power and privilege. You’ll think critically about yourself and your own writing and analysis, in relation to the city’s spaces. You'll spend some time getting to know your new home by walking around it, and you'll be asked to create your own guided literary tour of the city.

Shakespeare Now

In this module, you’ll explore Shakespeare’s work not only as a cornerstone of English literary tradition, but as a global phenomenon. You’ll delve into Shakespeare’s language, themes and genres through recent interpretations and adaptations in performance, film and visual art. You’ll enhance your understanding and analytical skills as you explore the cultural context in which Shakespeare wrote. You’ll develop new insight into Shakespeare’s impact in the past and his ongoing relevance across the globe today.

Literature of Travel, Exploration and Exile

In this module, you'll engage with representations of travel, exploration and exile across a wide range of genres. You will explore personal and socio-political motivations for journeying, relationships between places, cross-cultural encounters, identity and ideology. Topics will vary from year to year, but may include:

 The ‘quest’ narrative
 Colonial travel
 Voyages of scientific discovery
 Forced displacement, such as deportation, enslavement, and migration/refugee journeys
 Literature of nomadic peoples/travelling communities
 The ‘road trip’
 Fantasy travel and imaginary voyage

You will also explore formal structures and features of travel writing.

Theory, Writing and Power

In this module, you’ll get to grips with core elements of literary criticism and theory. You’ll debate pressing critical questions, and develop your awareness of issues that are key to understanding literature and society. You’ll build on the knowledge you’ve gained in your other introductory English Literature modules and you'll learn to think carefully about yourself and your place in the world. You’ll develop your knowledge of:

 a range of theoretical and critical concepts
 how these concepts can be applied to literary texts from different periods
 how these theories relate to issues of language, culture, and textuality

You’ll cover one text over two weeks, engaging with a new theory or critical framework each week. You’ll gain skills and insights that you’ll be able to use throughout your whole degree.

Diverse Americas: Modern and Contemporary American Literature

American culture is central to what we read, watch, and buy, but how much of America are we seeing? In this module, you'll engage with a variety of North American literature. You’ll explore work by Latinx, Asian-American, Native American, LGBTQ+ and women writers from the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. You will deepen your awareness of cultural diversity and develop your understanding of the different kinds of values, power, privilege, purposes and cultural capital attributed to different literatures, peoples and literary voices in North America.

Optional modules

Media and Crime

How does the media police our morals as a society, and define our ideas of acceptable behaviour? In this module, you’ll gain the critical skills to analyse popular representations of crime in the media. You’ll examine news reports and other forms of mass-media. And you’ll develop a knowledge of crime as a cultural construct.

Creative Writing 1: Voice and Craft in Poetry and Prose

In this module, you’ll enhance your abilities as a creative writer. You’ll participate in workshops where you’ll learn through reading, writing, discussion and feedback. You’ll practise your own writing, explore the interplay of creativity and craft, and analyse how you work as a writer. You’ll join other students in exploring approaches to crafting poetry and prose, through:

 practical writing exercises
 discussing each other’s work
 critically analysing the work of published writers
 exploring key writing practices.

You’ll produce a portfolio of original creative writing, as well as a study of the aims and processes of your creative work. You’ll develop excellent writing habits, and the ability to reflect on your own writing practices. You’ll also understand the literary and cultural contexts of your own writing.
Contemporary Societies: Structure and Change

In this module, you’ll investigate the changing face of society. You’ll discover how states, economies and societies interact with each other. You’ll explore how markets and welfare states have transformed over time. You’ll also investigate key questions on politics and power, exploring different political systems. You’ll explore pressing global topics, including:

 international migration patterns
 the formation of ethnic minorities
 religion in modern society
 the challenges of climate change

You’ll study a wide range of social issues arising all over the world, and develop insight into how these issues impact individuals and groups.

Year 2

Compulsory modules

Literature and Environments: Pastoral to Climate Fiction

Students will develop an understanding of the way humans and non-humans shape and are shaped by their environment, and how this is reflected and explored in literature. You’ll study a variety of genres and kinds of writing across different eras and cultures. This may include:

 classical pastoral
 eco-poetry
 climate fiction
 non-fiction nature writing
 speculative fiction

You will explore the historical, social and political issues that influence written representations of relationships with the environment, and consider the formal and stylistic features of this writing. You’ll apply and extend this learning through a community engagement project involving literature and environments.

Transgressive Texts: 400 years of breaking the rules

In this module you’ll consider what it means for texts to break the rules. You’ll learn the ways that literature has transgressed social, cultural and formal literary boundaries and conventions. This may include topics such as:

 Censored and banned texts
 Gender, sexuality and transgression
 Literature and protest
 Modernist and avant-garde transgression
 Genre blending and subversion

You’ll examine shifting ideas of transgression in different historical periods, and will explore how these ideas are shaped and altered by cultural, aesthetic, legislative and scientific factors. Through these investigations, you will explore the power of literature to challenge authority and influence today's world.

Research Methods in Literature and the Digital Humanities

In this module, you’ll learn how to use leading and transferable tools and techniques within textual studies and digital humanities. You’ll explore, experiment with, and develop expertise in using different digital archives, tools and software for literary study. You’ll develop skills in:

 research
 creative thinking
 project planning
 digital literacy
 information handling

You’ll apply and extend these skills by designing and undertaking innovative, small-scale research investigations into literature and other cultural artefacts.

Optional modules

Future Visions

In this module, you will study literary and media expressions of future visions of the world. You will examine fictional and theoretical versions of the future from the nineteenth century onwards. You will explore:

 dystopias and utopias
 relationships between humans and technology
 human and nonhuman futures
 diverse and divergent futures

You’ll enhance your capacity to conceptualise different futures. You’ll also develop your understanding of the issues influencing how and why we project different visions of what our world may become.

Angels & Demons in Romantic and Victorian Literature (1789-1901)

This module will introduce you to the Romantic and Victorian periods through the theme of the supernatural. You’ll investigate the radical technological, social and scientific changes during these periods, and the new uncertainties which arose from these changes. You will discover how writers and artists explored the resultant challenges to established certainties and distinctions between faith and doubt, good and evil, and right and wrong, through their portrayal of metaphorical angels and demons. You’ll study a range of novels, short stories, plays and poems, and different kinds of writing, such as Gothic novels and poems and Sensation novels.

Shadow and Substance in Literature and Drama

In this module, you will study literature which considers human experiences of the material and immaterial. You will investigate how people – as individuals and communities – are influenced by both scientific theories and the felt realities of human experience. You will explore how a range of texts, from the mediaeval period to the present day, consider questions around science, emotion, memory, and haunting. Topics may include:

 Haunted spaces
 Other worlds
 Science and technologies
 Place and identity

American Literature: Origins and Legacies

In this module, you will study a range of American literary texts from the nineteenth century to the present day, and consider their historical and cultural contexts. You will develop detailed knowledge of the literature and culture of America, exploring key topics such as:

 race and ethnicity, especially in Black and Native American writing
 slavery and its legacies
 American self-mythologising and national identity
 the effect of the Cold War on American writing
 the Harlem Renaissance

Fairy Tales and Children’s Literature: Archetypes, adaptations and effects.

This module enables you to develop your critical understanding of fairy tales, and of young children’s literature more broadly from its first Golden age in the Victorian period to the present day. You will also explore the formal workings of these stories, with a focus on elements such as:

 retellings and adaptations
 illustrations
 narrative techniques
 formal experimentation

You’ll also consider the ideological and socio-political influences upon how such stories are revised and adapted as they travel across different eras and cultures.

Creative Writing 2: Exploring Genre, Form and Style

In this module, you’ll develop your talent and range as a creative writer. You’ll build on the skills you gained in your Creative Writing 1: Voice and Craft in Poetry and Prose module in Year 1. You’ll experiment with a number of forms and prose styles, including:

 crime writing
 travel writing
 science fiction
 historical fiction

You’ll also explore techniques of writing poetry through forms such as the ballad and the sonnet. You’ll enhance your creativity, and reflect on your creative choices, as you critically examine what you and your fellow students write.

Professional Practice

In this module, you will develop your insight into the working world by undertaking work-related learning, such as a work placement or project. You can experience and engage with employment environments and enterprise-related opportunities. This module enables you to undertake personal and professional development challenges beyond the conventional academic setting, and to develop your graduate skills and competencies. Previous placements and projects have been provided by Oxford University Press, Oxfam, the Oxford Literary Festival, and the Story Museum. Students have also worked for magazines, video games companies, schools, and well-known commercial brands.

Independent Project

This module gives you the chance to do independent research on a literary topic that fascinates you. With the supervision and support of a lecturer, you will design your own project, choosing your own topic and approach. You will study your selected topic in depth, and will demonstrate your new critical understanding through an assessment method of your choosing, such as a blog, a video documentary, a long essay, a performance, or a report. You will develop skills in project planning, self-motivation, critical and creative thinking and research.

Year 3

Compulsory modules

Critical Citizenship

In this module, you will explore how literature relates to broader concerns of what it means to be an active citizen in local and global communities. You will explore relationships between literature and citizenship in a range of social, political, cultural and located senses. You will consider:

 what we understand by the term ‘citizenship’
 how literature can forge new social and cultural ways of thinking
 how knowledge of literature might allow us to be more critical citizens

Through this module, you will explore the value of literature in understanding and addressing the global challenges of the 21st century.

Optional modules

Major Research Project

This module gives you the chance to do research on a topic that fascinates you. Over the course of your final year, you’ll work independently on a research project, with the help of an tutor. Whether you’re delving into gothic literature, gaming or the dystopian worlds of George Orwell, your major research project will grow out of your specific passion, and you’ll gain excellent self-discipline and organisational skills for work. You’ll gain core skills for your career, including:

 research
 critical analysis
 time-management
 planned and focused writing.

You can choose the mode of assessment through which you will demonstrate your new expertise. This could be a long piece of writing in the style of a dissertation, or a presentation, podcast, blog, exhibition or something else that suits your project and preferences.

Advanced Options 1

This module gives you the chance to study specialist areas of literature in depth. The topics available are drawn from the research expertise of your tutors, enabling you to engage with leading insights and approaches in the field. Available topics may alter from year to year, but recent topics have included:

 Windrush Stories: British Black and Asian Voices 1948 to the Present
 The American Civil War in Literature, Memory and Myth
 Literature and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

Advanced Options 2

This module gives you the chance to study specialist areas of literature in depth. The topics available are drawn from the research expertise of your tutors, enabling you to engage with leading insights and approaches in the field. Available topics may alter from year to year, but recent topics have included:

 Urban Jungle: the American City in Modern and Postmodern Literature and Culture
 Utopias
 Witchcraft and Madness in Literature

Advanced Options 3

This module gives you the chance to study specialist areas of literature in depth. The topics available are drawn from the research expertise of your tutors, enabling you to engage with leading insights and approaches in the field. Available topics may alter from year to year, but recent topics have included:

 The Victorian Supernatural
 The Theatrical City
 Video Games, Digital Narratives and Interactive Texts

Creative Writing 3: Towards Professionalism and Publication

In this module, you’ll meet literary agents and editors as you explore the submissions process for publication. You will produce a 6000 word piece of writing on a theme or idea that interests you, refining your writing practices. You’ll consider how this piece could work as part of a larger published work, for example as chapters of a novel or memoir, or poems, short stories or essays within an anthology, developing your understanding of how a book works as a whole.

Advanced Independent Project

This module is similar to the Independent Project Module available in Year 2, but requires a higher level of knowledge and more extensive study. This module gives you the chance to do independent research on a literary topic that interests you. With the supervision and support of a lecturer, you will design your own project, choosing your own topic and approach. You will study your selected topic in depth, and will demonstrate your new critical understanding through an assessment method of your choosing. You will develop skills in project planning, self-motivation, critical and creative thinking and research. Unlike the Major Research Project, which is also available in Year 3, this module takes place over the course of just one semester.

Work placements

Optional modules

Professional Practice

In this module, you will develop your insight into the working world by undertaking work-related learning, such as a work placement or project. You can experience and engage with employment environments and enterprise-related opportunities. This module enables you to undertake personal and professional development challenges beyond the conventional academic setting, and to develop your graduate skills and competencies. Previous placements and projects have been provided by Oxford University Press, Oxfam, the Oxford Literary Festival, and the Story Museum. Students have also worked for magazines, video games companies, schools, and well-known commercial brands.