BA (Hons) English Bachelor's degree at Keele University

How do you craft a compelling university essay, analyse a literary text, and put criticism to use? How can you interpret a work within its historical context, or apply literary theory to it? Through studying a wide range of texts, from novels such as Wuthering Heights, to Renaissance tragedy, to the poetry of Toni Morrison, you'll develop essential skills for academic reading and writing. This module will enhance your appreciation of literature and prepare you for advanced study throughout your

What makes a work of literature 'classic'? What do we mean when we call something an example of 'popular culture'? This module invites you to compare 'classic' texts (such as Hamlet, The Great Gatsby, and The Color Purple) with adaptations that share their themes or challenge their values. You'll learn new ways to think about why some texts are called 'classics' and some are not, and enrich your understanding of the way that texts interact with one another across genres.

Gothic Nightmares introduces you to the representation of spooks, automatons, monsters and supernatural horrors in literature, film, and TV from the late eighteenth century to the present day. Each week you will read a short story and a critical text, and watch an example of the gothic genre from film or TV. Why has the gothic persisted as it has? Why do we need (or want) to be scared? What are we afraid of anyway?

This module introduces you to the many ways that your literary knowledge and communication skills will be useful in future employment. Studying a range of poems, speeches, and plays, you will learn how to employ effective rhetorical strategies to communicate professionally with different audiences, enabling you to give speeches, design lesson plans or exhibitions, or run social media campaigns. The module includes masterclasses from professionals working in, for example, museums, theatres, and s

The module starts at a surprise location. You receive a blank book and start to write. It's a journal: you submit it later, alongside your creative or critical piece. Back in Keele you look at children's writing from different periods and cultures. You consider imagination and myth, the politics of representation, the construction and subversion of gender roles. You think about voice and vision. Your expressive skills flower as you explore storytelling techniques and the transformative power of

This module introduces you to key characteristics of fiction. You will gain an understanding of how these can be employed to explore the meaning of a text. Engaging with fiction by writers from all over the world, you will learn how to analyse core elements such as narrative voice, structure and the evocation of place, and develop your own ability to write short, creative prose pieces. Guided by Keele's award-winning novelists, you will attain a solid foundation for writing longer prose pieces i

The 1500s to the 1830s was a period of rapid historical change, including shifts in cultural norms, new debates about gender, class, empire, and race, and the questioning of traditional religious beliefs. You will explore how English poetry, drama, and fiction responded to these transformations, and develop your understanding of how texts relate to their wider social and cultural contexts. You will acquire the advanced critical skills you will need to draw on in the final year of your degree.

Building on your first year, in this second-year module you will extend your knowledge of different literary approaches and theories, exploring topics such as feminism, race studies, ecocriticism, and the history of emotions. You will explore how literature reflects and influences social issues, both those contemporary to the literature you study and those relevant in today's society. You will deepen your skills in critical analysis as you apply your literary understanding to real-world debates

This module expands your understanding of literature's relation to History. You will study novels, poems, and plays from the Victorian period to the present, relating them to social, political and cultural contexts including class, race, gender and sexuality. You will be exposed to a range of literary styles and genres including realism, modernism, postmodernism and the postcolonial, extending your knowledge of different types of literature in preparation for the final year of your degree.

This module broadens your knowledge of the variety of career pathways open to you, enabling you to identify, analyse, and showcase your degree skills and experiences effectively. Through completing and reflecting on problem-based tasks relating to different sectors, such as telling the story of a business, or writing a funding proposal to support a literary festival, you will build your creative and collaborative skills and learn how to articulate them in ways that will be attractive to employer

This module offers you the chance to contribute to the world outside the University through completing a work placement, a project for a client (or a series of projects for different clients), or working as a team to deliver a successful festival or event. You will be trained to showcase your creative and collaborative skills and abilities effectively before applying for an opportunity advertised through the module (or you can source your own, subject to it meeting the module's requirements). Pl

This module builds on L4 introductions to cultural platforms/industries and to adaptation/script-writing, enabling a focused study of how the New Vic Theatre adapts texts for the stage; you will explore how the theatre as cultural industry produces social value through programmes of research and creativity; you will use this knowledge to reflect on societal impacts of cultural industries more widely, for example music, film, creative writing. You will be assessed in ways that enable you to refle

Building on your understanding of genre fiction, 'popular' literature, and questions of value developed in year 1, on 'Brave New Worlds?' you'll examine the connections between two types of 'speculative fiction': sci-fi and fantasy. As you explore how their strange fictional worlds critique the real world, you'll think further about the relationship between 'popular' genres and the literary establishment, consolidating your skills in independent critical analysis. Why are such genres still often

Radical Writing looks at twentieth-century experimental writing, from Modernism's rallying call of 'Make it New!' to the mid and late twentieth century's experiments with poetry, narrative forms, film, and revolutionary counter-politics. Why did this impulse towards radical politics and disruption of literary form occur in tandem at this time? What do we mean when we call something 'experimental'? What were these writers trying to do or to rebel against?

As you are introduced to place-writing skills, you will reflect on what writing can do in the world. You will be supported to create vivid settings that are close to home (Stoke or elsewhere). As you think about form, genre, and voice, you will explore writing's capacity to shape and re-shape people's lived experiences of cities, towns and regions, and explore the concept of regional and/or global Englishes. You will receive practical training in working with communities outside the University.

Youth culture has had profound influences on society. On 'Teenage Dreams' you will examine the historical development