English Literature and History BA(Hons)

This module will develop your skills in investigating archival records and help you to understand and critically analyse how they are used in a range of different sites and formats that include academic scholarship, museums, literature, literary heritage, reportage, digital media and online. The module will be based around materials held in Heritage Quay, the University Archive, and you will have a hands-on introduction to how archives are collected, catalogued and utilised in public-facing environments. It will also develop your independent research, communication and employability skills.

You will be expected either to complete a graduate or professional level work placement – or, as an alternative an enterprise or citizenship project with a tangible end product (e.g. feasibility study for turning hobby/idea into a personal business or setting up campaign group/developing volunteering/charity initiative) plus associated documentation – plus a self-reflective evaluation of the process. In preparation for this you will undertake career planning and placement research, supported by workshops and tutorial meetings.

In this module you will focus on the period 1485-1660, mainly on England, and will examine changes in religious practice and belief, social structure and the development of royal power, especially in terms of central policy and its effects on the localities. You will explore the dramatic religious, social and political changes of the Tudor and Stuart era.

This module deals with the theory and practice of oral history in relation to the history of childhood and youth. You'll conduct at least one interview, and provide all the relevant ethical and archival documentation to accompany it. You'll be introduced to the key problems in oral history of memory, ethics, intersubjectivity and narrative. Finally, in order to write about the experience of childhood and youth in the past, you'll learn the analytical techniques which can be applied to oral history data.

This module examines the history, memory and historiographical controversy surrounding the Nazi era in European History. You will use a broad range of primary and secondary source material to develop a deep historical analysis of the era, rooted in the debates over the consent or coercion of the German population, the limits of the totalitarian model and the nature of victimhood and commemoration. This module falls into the ‘Conflict’ and ‘Communities and Welfare’ research groups.

This module brings you all the benefits, and complexities, of studying the history of another culture and continent, and the specific issues at stake in studying a colonised society. It incorporates an in-depth study of the history of India, c.1860-1950, and the historiographical debates that characterise post-colonial studies. You'll be using historical records from British colonial rule, as well as Indian sources (some in translation). Special attention will be paid to regional differences and to the impossibility of treating either ‘the British’ or Indian subjects as homogeneous groups.

No English degree would be complete without the opportunity to study the greatest writer in the language – Shakespeare. This module is your chance to do just that, both by situating Shakespeare’s plays in relation to their historical and cultural backgrounds, and by considering their rejuvenation in recent film and stage productions. For a greater understanding of Renaissance drama, the module will also compare Shakespeare’s work to some of his contemporaries, such as Marlowe, Jonson, or Webster.

This module focuses on the potential of spoken-word material as a source of data for quantitative and qualitative research in the study of History, English Language and Literature. It aims to improve your skills in data collection through the introduction of the theory and practice of interviewing for research, and aims to enhance your analytical skill set by introducing you to a range of methods from like thematic tagging, concordances, and descriptive and analytical statistics. You will explore the interview as a means of data collection in, for example, sociolinguistics and oral history, conducting your own interviews in line with best practice. You will then use spoken-word data collected by yourself or other scholars as the basis for investigation of textual material using a variety of analytical tools.

This module gives you the chance to study some of the most exciting and experimental novels ever written. Beginning at the start of the twentieth century, with ground breaking works of modernist fiction by the likes of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, you will study innovative new developments in form, style, and technique, as well as the historical context behind these transformative texts. The module then introduces you to the postmodernist experimentation of the later twentieth century. Together, we will explore new departures in narrative, style and language; the relationship between fiction, history and text; and the breakthrough novels that shaped the twentieth century.

The Portfolio Sandwich Year module provides a flexible and tailored approach to professional development. It allows you to create a customised portfolio of graduate-level opportunities if your career aspirations don’t align with a traditional sandwich year placement. This module will help you develop a diverse and adaptable skillset, build professional networks, and enhance your career readiness through a mix of structured and self-directed activities.

This module challenges you to design and develop a project aimed at showcasing the value of the humanities to the general public. You will collaborate with your fellow students to deliver a project that communicates the importance of your disciplines in a non-scholarly, non-academic way. More broadly, you are encouraged to think about the real-world applications of a humanities degree, and about the role of the humanities in challenging and changing society. Taking this module will develop skills enabling you to articulate the value and importance of your studies to a non-specialist audience.

On this module we will study the Holocaust through the words of those who survived and/or bore witness to it. Bringing together both literary and historical perspectives, we will approach this bleak yet defining episode of human history in a unique interdisciplinary fashion, focusing on non-fictional texts such as memoirs, diaries, and verbatim theatre. By studying how those who witnessed the events of the Holocaust chose to put the experience into words, we will attempt to understand these events neither in terms of traditional history textbooks nor in terms of their representation in our culture, but in terms of some of the individual stories behind it. This will allow us better to grasp issues such as trauma, memorialisation, the relationship between testimony and truth, and the difficulties involved in putting the events of the Holocaust into words.

This module examines the history and memory of the French experience of World War II, focusing on the German Occupation, the Vichy Regime, French collaboration, and the development of internal and external resistance. You will use a broad range of primary and secondary source material to develop a cultural historical analysis of the era, rooted in the debates over silence, truth and representation. This module falls into the ‘Conflict’ and ‘Communities and Welfare’ research groups.

This is a specialised module which engages you, through the study of primary and secondary sources, in examining the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603). It aims to develop your understanding of key themes in the early modern era, such as gender, politics, foreign policy and religion.

You will study the origins of the war, the military course of the conflict, its effect on domestic society and reactions to the war through literature, art and memorial architecture. The focus of the module is on the British experience, though it will consider continental European and imperial experiences too. Throughout the module, you will also reflect upon public commemoration across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

This module will develop your understanding of the history of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Britain by examining the relationship between the human body and the urban environment. It addresses the key question - how important is the human body to understanding history? To answer this question we’ll examine a range of different aspects of British social, cultural and health history.

The late nineteenth century witnessed surging interest in the market for popular fiction and the emergence of new genres that responded to and helped to shape public attitudes to empire and criminality through the invention of characters that embodied various forms of heroic and/or demonic masculinity. The ‘Extraordinary Gentlemen’ of this era of popular fiction have retained an appeal that has proved resilient to transformations in attitudes to national identity, class and gender, as well as to the challenging of stigmas associated with ‘otherness’ and queered identities. In this module we will try to understand the basis for the appeal of ‘Extraordinary Gentlemen’ for late-Victorian and Edwardian audiences, and to examine their plasticity and openness to subsequent adaptation.

World Literature is a module that invites you to look beyond the “Englishness” of English Literature. Your reading list will take you on a voyage of discovery around different cultures, countries, and continents, which you will explore through their literary texts. These texts will reflect both the global reach of the English language and the enthralling experience of reading works in translation. Besides embracing the challenges posed by studying works from unfamiliar cultures and traditions, this module will consider some of the important questions raised by the study of world literature, such as the nature of hybridity, the limitations of the canon, and the globalisation of literature.