Creative Writing and English BA Honours

This module introduces you to creative writing genres, styles and forms such as poetry, prose, life-writing, playwriting, screenwriting, lyric writing and flash fiction.

This module introduces a series of ‘keywords’ that have been historically central to the study of literature, and explores these in relation to specific critical approaches to, and theoretical understandings of, literary works.

Reflective Writing 1 asks you to become analytical about your writing, both from the point of view of process and output. By critiquing your own work, and considering the writing practice of others, it aims to develop your ability to formulate answers to questions such as ‘Why do I write?’, ‘What is the value of storytelling?’, ’What are the stories I am best able to tell?’ It is supported by a year-long lecture and workshop series, delivered by members of the department and outside practitioners. You are required to attend a minimum number of these events, responding in a weekly journal to the insights and inspirations offered here and in your wider studies.

This module introduces you to core elements of creative writing craft. By situating your creative practice in the heart of the city, it offers the opportunity to engage with London as a 'raw material' and a treasure trove from which you are able to draw characters, stories, tones and textures while ensuring that these are underpinned by an understanding of the critical importance of 'place' in writing. The non-fiction components of the course will further examine how different 'ideas' of London might be presented, framed and interpreted for a variety of readers and audiences.

This module gives you the knowledge and skills necessary to start analysing and describing the English language systematically (according to grammar, morphology and phonology) and prepares you for future modules at Level 5. The module develops your theoretical awareness of spoken and written mediums, how they are structured, and how they can be used as linguistic data. It also gives you a thorough understanding of the concepts of style, register and genre, and introduces you to some of the main historical developments of the English language over time.

This module introduces some of the most exciting developments in poetry over the last 200 years. It examines how poetry intervenes in the modern world, exploring the role poetic form plays in the poet’s critique of key social and political issues. Spanning work from William Wordsworth to Frank O’Hara, Emily Dickinson to Nat Raha, the module considers issues such as the role of poetry and the poet, the politics of form, poetry’s engagement with political resistance, social reform, gender, the body, sexuality, class and cultural identity.

This module examines the ways in which writers work with existing and generated texts - shaping, editing or adapting them into new forms or for different purposes. In particular, it explores: working with Gen-AI; cross-form adaptation; instructional/technical/educational writing; writing press releases, blurbs and summary documents; and editorial techniques.

The core value of this module is that of apprenticeship, combining practical skill and critical judgement in the work of progressive re-drafting. There are three strands representing the forms of dramatic writing, poetry and prose fiction and students elect to follow two of the three throughout the year. The module provides an opportunity for the student to work on producing substantial pieces in their chosen forms with guidance and support from the tutor.

This module focuses on the role of the reader to the process of textual interpretation. You will be introduced to topics in cognitive poetics to examine the ways in which readers combine their real-world knowledge and their understanding of characters to create discourse worlds, and how they respond to cues in texts to build an understanding of text worlds.

Reflective Writing 2 is designed to enable you to deepen your understanding of your writing practice as you work through your level 5 studies. The module is supported by the department’s year-long lecture and workshop series, delivered by members of the department and outside practitioners. You are required to attend a minimum number of these events, responding in a weekly journal to the insights and inspirations offered both here and in your wider degree. In addition to working on your year’s writer’s journal, you will also undertake an individual research project in which you compare and contrast the creative practice of two writers of your own choosing.

This module examines the literary, social and political concerns of Romanticism and its legacies across the period c.1790-1865. Centring on the idea of ‘revolution’, the module considers how a range of texts (poetry, the novel, non-fictional prose, and paintings) engage with issues as diverse as the natural world, political upheaval, liberty and the rise of the individual, ‘Englishness’ and the nation, gender and sexuality, the role of the artist, and the idea of modernity.

This module introduces you to the key debates and concepts that have been central to the formation of current understandings of memory, and its relationship to culture, history, and representation. Sample topics include slavery and its contemporary legacies; the Holocaust; and 9/11.

The module introduces you to the skills specific to writing for television and film. It examines contemporary trends in broadcasting and film-making and provides the opportunity for you to develop your own scripts.

This module examines the literature, society and politics of the Victorian period, an age of considerable change and upheaval. Through close consideration of a range of texts – including poems, novels and visual material – you'll consider responses to pressing social and political issues such as industrialisation and the ‘Condition of England’, scientific developments, faith and doubt, psychology and the mind, gender, sexuality, imperialism and the empire, and decadence and the fin de siècle.

This module explores more sophisticated methods of manipulating, adapting and transforming texts across platforms, and for different purposes. In particular it explores interview techniques, both in terms of generating material and its subsequent processing for use in a variety of forms. There will be a focus on the ethical questions raised by such work as well as in fields including ghostwriting and working with Gen-AI. The module will also examine, in detail, how texts can be written or re-written to achieve particular goals (writing for influence/writing to persuade, etc.).

The Individual Writing Project is an opportunity for you to embark on a substantial piece of work in a writing genre of your choice. The module is supported by the department’s year-long course of talks and workshops delivered by members of staff and outside practitioners. You are required to attend a minimum number of these events - which will include sessions on making a career as a writer - and comment on them analytically in the writer’s journal.

This module interrogates cultural constructions of the present by putting the contemporary into conversation with the past. The module will historicise current social concerns and aesthetic forms to question how and why particular cultural flashpoints have become so important. In so doing, this module asks students to question the value of literature today.

This single semester module runs in Semester 1. It introduces students to further and more recent theoretical tools for linguistic description and analysis with an equal focus on form and meaning. It deepens students’ knowledge and understanding of theoretical ideas across all levels of linguistic analysis (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics) as well as areas that are informed by and inform the development of linguistic theory including linguistic typology, psycholinguistics, and language documentation.

This module examines contemporary and traditional theory concerning life writing, while introducing students to the skills needed to explore forms such as narrative non-fiction, autobiography, biography, memoir, auto-fiction. The demands of print and on-line platforms will both be addressed.

This module offers you the opportunity to undertake an extended piece of independent research and writing on a topic of your choosing, undertaken with individual supervision. The dissertation’s research questions and approach are developed and refined in consultation with your supervisor and you'll receive feedback on a draft chapter. Over the course of the academic year, you'll produce the final dissertation.

This module will explore the creative possibilities, structures, and conventions relevant to a specific genre (e.g. crime; romance; children’s fiction, graphic novels). Content will vary each year according to the genre selected by the department, and will be based on the specialisms of permanent staff and visiting practitioners. A detailed syllabus and reading list will be made available at the time of module choices.

This module runs in Semester 2 and allows you to consider how linguistic theory and description can be applied in different ways. In doing so, it shows how linguistics can be applied to real-world problems and workplace contexts and uses your knowledge about linguistics to do so. You may apply the expert linguistic knowledge required to determine the authorship of texts, for example, with accompanying theoretical and methodological understanding of the processes that enable you to do so.

The module allows you a high degree of flexibility to select subjects ranging from the practice of translation to forensic linguistics whilst maintaining a solid focus on the theoretical, analytical and critical thinking associated with the systematic study of language.

In this module, you'll examine early 20th century modernism through the lens of intercultural encounters and their influence on formal innovation.

The first half of the module explores how major European modernists engaged with non-European cultures in their quest to create new forms for a new century. The second half of the module examines non-European modernism through the work of postcolonial and African American modernists.

Modernist remaking of form fundamentally rethinks the relation between all forms of representation and the world, and modernism will be examined in terms of its being both a reaction to and a constituent part of global modernity.

This is a work experience placement associated with employment with an appropriate employer that you as a graduate might eventually join, such as a small or large business, an arts organisation or a subject-based placement in a school.

Assessment consists of a portfolio which you'll complete. You'll need to source your own placement. Support is provided via three face-to-face teaching sessions: one introductory session, one session focused on the assessment, and one drop-in session to discuss work towards the assessment. You are also strongly encouraged to make full use of the support offered by discussing your placement and coursework with the module leader during the semester. In cases where you are unable to secure a placement by the end of the first week of the semester, or where a placement has fallen through, the University will support and facilitate a change in module.