What will I study?

Overview

Year 1: You will acquire a broad understanding of literary history through co-ordinated modules that introduce a range of texts and a variety of critical approaches: Approaches to Literature I: Writing Modernity (Autumn) & Approaches to Literature II: Other Worlds (Spring) and A World of Literature I: Classics and Cultural Translations (Autumn) & A World of Literature II: Empire and Aftermaths (Spring). You will also begin to develop research, analysis, and writing skills appropriate to the study of literature at university on Reading Now, and a foundation in critical and philosophical approaches to literature on Theory Now.

Year 2: You will further your understanding of literature’s rich heritage, choosing from our comprehensive period-specific Intermediate Option Modules. You will also have the opportunity to engage with a literary tradition from outside English in our World Literature options (either in translation or with some language study, if you prefer). Our innovative Writing Now and Research Now modules will help you to continue to develop your critical inquiry and writing skills. 

Year 3: Building on the skills and interests you have developed throughout your degree, you will choose from an exciting, wide-ranging list of experimental Advanced Option Modules on a diverse set of topics, allowing you to tailor the final year entirely to your own interests and passions. You will also undertake independent research, supported by an expert supervisor, towards the Dissertation, which will focus on a topic of your choosing.

Now Modules

The English degree at York is underpinned by a series of modules that highlight the challenges and benefits of studying literature now, with a focus on key debates and approaches in the discipline.

Year 1 Now Modules

Reading Now 

Reading Now prepares you for the study of literature at university level, introducing essential skills for reading, analysing, and writing about literature in English and related languages. At the same time, the module provides tools for understanding what it means to study literature now.

The first half of the semester provides you with a 'literary toolkit', honing the essential skills for literary research: interpreting texts, defining an essay topic, developing a thesis statement, discovering and evaluating sources, close reading, finding your voice, referencing effectively, and editing your writing.

The second half of the semester considers the wider challenges and opportunities in studying specific types of literature, with a focus on how to read and write about different genres and forms, including drama, fiction, film, and poetry in English and in translation. Your tutors will guide you through the various stages of critical thinking, close reading, and research so that you may approach advanced literary study with a sense of assurance.

Theory Now

Theory Now offers a foundation in the critical and philosophical approaches we might use to analyse literary texts. It explores a range of theoretical concepts, positions and frameworks, and shows how we can use them to interpret literary texts with close attention to their historicity and form. Topics covered might include: Postcolonialism, Critical Race Theory, Feminism, Queer Theory, Disability Studies, Affect Theory, the Environmental Humanities, and Marxist Literary Theory.

The lectures and workshops give you an entry point into exciting and complex areas of literary analysis and theory, which will be of use throughout your degree programme. The lectures draw on key texts, both historical and current. The workshops focus on clarifying the theory and how, in practice, they help you to understand and explicate the dynamics of texts.

Year 2 Now Modules

Writing Now

Writing Now explores the possibilities of literary criticism in different forms, drawing upon a wide range of examples from a span of historical periods and global contexts. It introduces various written forms and other media that emphasises a more fluid relationship between critical and creative practices. In collaborative, interactive workshops, you will analyse reviews, personal essays, translation projects, hybrid creative-critical writing, film, audio, and other multimedia work to discover engaging and challenging instances of criticality in a range of cultural modes.

In the first half of the semester, you will encounter various forms of critical writing that move beyond the academic essay. Lectures and workshops will explore the ways criticism can reach different audiences through writing and translation practices, the relationship between critical thinking and activism, and the intersections of creative and critical practice.

The second half of the semester focuses on the relationship between literature, criticism, and a variety of multimedia forms, including audio, film, and other artistic modes. Lectures will equip you with the skills and language to engage critically with work in these other forms. The interactive workshops provide space for you to collaborate on developing critical writing skills and multimedia strategies for effective communication of complex critical ideas to new audiences.

Research Now

Research Now gives you the chance to explore a cutting-edge specialist research area, while developing advanced skills for your own independent, extended research in the final stages of your degree.

In the first half, you will choose a ‘deep dive’ research area from a list of options. With all options, you’ll hear from a range of lecturers, while collaborating in team-based workshops, in order to develop a team research project and presentation on the topic’s material.

The second half focuses on skills to take your research further: formulating comprehensive research proposals and questions; developing a clear methodology or research practice; working interdisciplinarily, across languages, and periods; and improving ways of presenting research both orally and in writing. Each week will introduce a new tool for developing your research, and will contribute to a portfolio that will also look ahead to your final-year dissertation project.

As a whole, the module gives you the chance to develop key employability strengths, including teamwork, creative and critical thinking, and problem-solving, while also developing the skills needed to embark on a longer research project by putting together an individual dissertation proposal.

Note: the ‘deep dive’ research area you choose for this module does not have to correspond with the subject area of your final year dissertation — you have the freedom here to explore new, innovative terrain. 

Examples of Research Now modules include:

Film, Culture & Industry

Love & Desire in the Middle Ages

Myth

Romantic Conversations 1785-1845

Shakespeare in Depth 

Business of Books

Intermediate Options

Intermediate Option Modules cover key topics, texts, and genres of a given literary period.

Building on the introduction to different literary periods offered in the first year, Intermediate Option Modules allow you to deepen your understanding of the relationship between literary works and the cultural, historical, and political contexts in which they were produced.  Across Autumn and Spring semesters Single subject English students are required to take at least two asterisked modules.

Autumn Semester Intermediate Option modules

*The Shock of the New: Medieval Literature

*The Renaissance

Victorians: British Literature 1832 - 1901

Age of Extremes: Twentieth Century British and Irish Literature 

Spring Semester Intermediate Option modules

*Inventing Britain, 1700-1830

American Literature: From the First World War to the End of Empire

World Literature Options

World Literature Modules form a crucial part of our commitment to an international curriculum. They run in the Spring semester of your second year.

Some are taught entirely in translation; others partly in the original language. The choice is yours, and will be governed by your experience and interests.

Golden Age of Latin Literature 

European New Cinemas

Modern Latin American Literature

Old Norse Literature  

The World of Beowulf  

Medieval Arabic and Persian  

Introduction to Greek and Roman Literature  

Alternative Queer Histories  

Dante  

Post-War Italian Cinema  

Eros: the Literature and Philosophy of Love  

Modern French and Francophone Literature  
  

Advanced Options

Advanced Option Modules are innovative modules that reflect the wide-ranging and cutting-edge research expertise of the Department. 

You can shape your final year based on your own interests, whether honing in on the work of a single writer or exploring a new field of study. In previouys years, modules have covered topics such as:

Semester One

• 21st Century American Fiction
• AIDS in the 80s and 90s: Film, Prose, Poetry, Art
• Black Writers of the Global Nineteenth Century
• Bodies on the Renaissance Stage
• Borders, Bodies and Bridges
• British Science Fiction and Fantasy
• Charles Dickens
• Creative Writing
• Decoronial Writing: Pandemics, Public Health, Prose 
• Defining Nature in Antiquity and the Middle Ages
• Found in Translation
• Jane Austen
• Kingdoms of the North: Literary Cultures from the Fall of Rome to the Norman Conquest 
• Life and Afterlife of Boccaccio
• Lost in a Book
• Reading Joyce
• Smash the Screen: Cinemas of Protest
• Spices and Spies
• Stories with Pictures: Narrative in Visual Media
• The Stuff of Poetry
• Theatre with a Cause

Semester Two

• American Independent Film
• The Body in Modern American Literature and Culture
• Contemporary African American and Black British Writing
• Feeling the 18th Century
• Green Romanticism: Nature, Ecology, Calamity
• Henry James
• Homer
• Literature and Ecology
• Make Grammar Do
• Modernism’s Queer Spaces
• Modernism and Technology
• Pulp Fictions of Medieval England
• Reading the Post-Human
• So Funny it Hurts: Irish Comic Fiction
• Tragedy Theatre Death
• The Villains of Romantic Gothic
• The Writer's Notebook: A Prose Fiction Workshop
• Writing in the Marketplace
• Writing Revolution
• A Feminist World is Possible

 The options available to you will be confirmed after you begin your course. For further information please get in touch.

Dissertation

The dissertation is your opportunity to write a sustained critical account (7000-8000 words) on a topic of your choosing.  This capstone project is a wonderful opportunity to display your skills in detailed research, elegant writing, and rigorous argument.

You are encouraged to extend and develop ideas which have fascinated you within previous modules or to undertake literary research in an area that you have not previously studied.  You can also choose to undertake a Dissertation with Creative Practice, which might involve producing a portfolio of creative writing; a translation project; a critical edition of a text; a print publication in collaboration with Thin Ice Press; or an external engagement project. 

You will be allocated a dissertation supervisor, and will attend lectures that guide you through the challenges of identifying a topic, structuring your research, and writing an extended piece of critical prose.