English Language and Creative Writing BA(Hons)

Why study with us?

• You’ll study at our Falmer campus with its outstanding modern facilities, easy access to the city centre, and well-established arts and social scene.

• Our talented teaching team create a dynamic and supportive environment where you will be challenged to think critically and creatively, develop detailed methods of analysis and interpretation and precisely communicate your ideas.

• You can enhance your professional and personal development through volunteer placements with community projects and city schools, and through involvement with local events.

• Guest speaker sessions will give you the chance to meet inspirational writers.

• You can submit work to our online journal brightONLINE, join subject-related student societies such as the Literature Society and Brighton University Drama Society (BUDS), and take part in a collaborative anthology and a graduate show.

• You'll gain vital transferable skills including personal organisation, independent research, team working, communication and presentation that you can use throughout your career.

• This joint honours degree provides good grounding for many different industries including publishing and journalism, but equally provides a solid foundation for further study or research.

• There is also the opportunity to study abroad in your third year.

Chloe Price explains how the English Language and Creative Writing BA(Hons) has positively challenged her, the support she’s had from staff and how she has found living in Brighton

Course structure

Full-time students have 10–11 hours contact time a week in lectures, seminars and workshops, but you are also expected to carry out independent study. Part-time study is possible and can be tailored to suit individual needs.

There are placement opportunities available in the second year as well as field trips to theatres, museums, schools, retirement villages and other community organisations. You are also welcome to study abroad after your second year.

Our courses are reviewed and enhanced on an ongoing basis in order to make sure that what you learn with us is relevant and that your course enables you to develop appropriate skills. When you apply to study with us, we will inform you of any new developments in your chosen programme through our applicant portal.

You will study in the modern Checkland building on our Falmer campus.

Year 1

Modules

• Practices of Reading and Writing

  In this module you will build on and identify skills and techniques essential to the study and expression of writing, focusing through close reading on writerly techniques to apply to your own critical and creative practices.

  Practical workshops on reading and writing skills will be supplemented by creative workshops and master classes led by professional writers, enabling you to develop confidence with your reading and writing processes and develop research and presentation skills through individual and collaborative work.

• Narrative and Narratives

  This module acts as a bridge from your earlier experiences of reading narrative texts and will encourage you to reflect on those early experiences. You will be introduced to a variety of narrative texts and genres (including early forms such as fairy-tales and myths) and to key issues in narrative theory. The module offers you an awareness of narrative as central to being human and allows you scope to explore narratives in creative and personal as well as critic always in a journal.

• Storying The Self

  This module will introduce you to practices of storying the self in writing and digital media. Through creating a first person story combining audio script, music and still image, you will engage with the expressive complexities of autobiographical representation. The module will also give you the creative writing tools to experiment with storying the self in a variety of written genre.

• The Structure and Grammar of English

  On this module you'll develop your understanding of the basic structure/grammar of English and develop your awareness of how different choices of forms of spoken and written English might affect meaning.

• Text Design: Genre and Style

  This module will provide you with the tools of analysis required to explore and discuss texts from a stylistic perspective. It will enable you to distinguish text types through an analysis of linguistic features and will allow you to explore the stylistic choices made by authors. It will also help you develop your own ability to construct effective written and spoken texts.

• Perspectives on the History of English Language

  In this module you will trace the development of the English language from the Anglo-Saxon period to the present, by looking selectively at major social and historical influences on language change.

Year 2

Modules

• Creative Writing: Process and Craft
• Research and Practice
• Image and Text: The Language of Comics and Graphic Novels
• Power and Persuasion

Options*

• Studying Travel Writing
• Twentieth-century Literary Experiments
• Queer Writing
• Literature in Practice
• Literature and Art History
• American Literature 1850–1945
• Multilingualism
• Sign Language Linguistics
• Regional Englishes
• Writing for Stage, Radio and Screen
• Media in Practice
• Introduction to Journalism
• Television Studio Production
• Photography: From Painting with Light to Zeros and Ones
• Documentary Filmmaking: Theory and Practice
• Contested Stories

*Option modules are indicative and may change, depending on timetabling and staff availability.

Final year

Modules

• Dissertation
• Final Year Conference

Options*

• Community Engagement in Practice
• Russian Literature and Culture: The Golden Age and Beyond
• (Re)viewing Shakespeare
• Apocalypse, Utopia and Dystopia
• Literature and Philosophy
• Post-war American Literature
• Women's Writing and Feminist Theory
• Restoration Drama
• Adaptations
• Creative Writing Project
• Goths: Texts and Contexts
• Victorian Sexualities
• Brighton Rocks
• Writing the Contemporary
• Postcolonial Literatures
• European Literatures and Film
• Culture Wars: Revisiting the Great Divide
• Language, Culture and Ideology
• World Englishes
• Language of Gender and Sexuality
• Language in the Law
• Policy and Planning
• Conversation Analysis
• Approaches to Analysing Discourse
• English Language Teaching
• Public Journalism
• Popular Culture: Europe and Beyond
• From Script to Screen
• Images of War
• The Autobiography and the Screen
• Media Ethics and Conflict

*Option modules are indicative and may change, depending on timetabling and staff availability.

Watch students talking about their experiences of the Community Placement module.

Staff profile

Jess Moriarty

Jess Moriarty researches in the field of pedagogy in writing practice, especially in auto-ethnographical academic writing and in creative writing with undergraduates.

She graduated from the University of Sussex with a Creative Writing MA in 2002 and joined the University of Brighton soon after. Jess won a Teaching Excellence award for her workshops with undergraduates, in which she aims to ignite inspiration and motivation with the writing process.

Jess is the co-founder of Work Write Live, which provides a range of writing short courses and volunteering opportunities for students across arts and humanities courses to develop the vocational and academic skills they are acquiring on their degree programme. She has been interviewed by the Times Higher Educational Supplement about her workshops and won an Innovation Award for her retreats, where participants are encouraged to develop confidence with writing and speaking. Under the banner of Work Write Live, students are able to run open mic evenings, produce creative writing anthologies and organise an end-of-year graduate show.

Jess's doctorate looked at how to make academic writing more personal and creative and included a play based on her autobiographical and researched experiences with academic life. Her work looks at cross-disciplinary practice, community engagement and linking creative processes with the employability agenda.

International requirements

We can help you meet our English language or academic entry requirements.

Course fees

Info

The fees listed here are for full-time courses beginning in the academic year 2019–20.

Further tuition fees are payable for each subsequent year of study and are subject to an annual increase of no more than 5% or RPI (whichever is the greater). The annual increase for UK/EU students, who are subject to regulated fees, will increase no more than the statutory maximum fee.

You can find out more about our fees in the university's student contract and tuition fee policy (pdf).

The tuition fee you have to pay depends on a number of factors including the kind of course you take, and whether you study full-time or part-time. If you are studying part-time you will normally be charged on a pro rata basis depending on the number of modules you take.

What's included in the fee?

When costs such as health or DBS checks, or use of specialist materials are incurred as a mandatory requirement of the course they are included in your tuition fee.

You may incur additional costs depending on the optional modules or activities you choose. The cost of optional activities is not included in your tuition fee and you will need to meet this cost in addition to your fees. Before you apply check with the school that provides your course using the contact details in the Find out more tab (at the end of this page) for advice about what is included and what optional costs you could face so you can budget accordingly.

See our finance pages for advice about funding and scholarships as well as further information about fees and advice on international and island fee-paying status.

Local area

Campus where this course is taught

Accommodation

Maps

Accommodation

University building

Falmer campus