English Literature BA(Hons)

International equivalencies

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

Why study with us? 

• Our staff are highly regarded writers and award-winning teachers with a commitment to excellence – four members of our team have won Teaching Excellence awards in recent years.
  
  
• Brighton has long been famous for its thriving literary culture and diverse creative scene.
  
  
• We have regular visits from writers to deliver salons and writing workshops – from Man Booker prize winners to local thriller writer Peter James, who sponsors an annual prize for the best Literature student. Our writers-in-residence scheme is built into the course.
  
  
• The Literature in Practice module in year 2 allows you to gain CV-enhancing work experience in a relevant workplace environment, enhance and practise your skills learned on the course, and make connections between your course and your working life.
  
  
• We enable students to share and develop their own voices and views – lecturers both lead and collaborate with students through shared discussions, blogs and individual tutorials.
  
  
• Students have the opportunity to spend a year abroad, undertaking either a study period at a partner university or a teaching assistantship.
  
  
• You will study texts in many different and rewarding ways: generically, within critical disciplines (for instance, sexuality and gender), multi-culturally and historically. And as well as the major landmarks of English literature, your course could cover travel writing, journalism, queer writing, or the contemporary.
  
  
• We share undergraduate and postgraduate learning experiences through the Literature Research Seminar Series and the Literature and Pedagogy Series.
  
  
• You’ll explore a wide range of approaches to reading texts whilst developing your own range of writing and expressive skills, developing a sense of yourself as an autonomous critical and analytical reader and writer.
  
  
• Assessments encompass a range of literary skills – from traditional essays to writing poetry, from journals to project work, from writing a book to writing reviews, from presentations to novel writing.
  
  
• Students are encouraged to produce and practise creative work through community work and volunteering, the student literary journal brightONLINE and societies such as the Literature Society and Brighton University Drama Society.

Year 1 

The content and structure of the course reflects its aims and ethos, providing a core grounding in approaches, theories, genres and periods in the first two years, followed by opportunities for pursuing individual research and practice interests in the third year.

Your degree includes core literature modules and further option modules through which you will be able to forge a personal pathway. For example you might take creative and/or writing modules at each level to provide a distinctive creative strand through the degree, which can then be supplemented in your dissertation. Students may also take one option from outside literature in years 2 and 3, with choice across the fields of linguistics, media and language.

You’ll develop presentation skills through seminar groups, which foster and enable a debating culture.

Modules

• Practices of Reading And Writing
• Literature and Theory
• Poetry in Cultural History
• Drama
• Narrative Literary Texts
• Romanticisms

Year 2 

In the second year you’ll begin developing your own pathway and interests through option choices each semester.

Modules

• The Nineteenth Century in Literature
• Modernisms
• Twentieth Century Literature in History
• Early Modern Literature

One option from:

• Creative Writing
• Travel Writing
• Queer Writing
• Introduction to Journalism

And one option from:

• American Literature 1850-1945
• Literature in Practice

Optional year abroad

Students have the opportunity to spend a year abroad at the end of their second year, undertaking either a study period at a partner university within the ERASMUS exchange programme or a teaching assistantship, working in a school. Approved schemes must normally be for a minimum period equal to the academic year. 

Modules in focus

Literature in practice 
This module offers the opportunity to crystalise, develop and express the skills and experiences arising out of your degree through a placement and group organisation of a public event.

Early Modern Literature 
This module asks you to work as a group on a project to write an e- book through student portfolio, enabling you to develop research and team-working skills at the same time as homing your knowledge and writing. 

Final year 

Your final year of literature study allows you to benefit from the skills you have developed and to demonstrate your academic ability through a major dissertation project. 

Modules

• Dissertation

Four options from:

• Brighton Rocks
• Victorian sexualities
• (Re)viewing Shakespeare
• European Literatures and Film
• Adaptations
• Women’s Writing and Feminist Theory
• Creative writing project
• Community engagement and participation
• Post-war American Literature
• Russian Literature
• Restoration Dramas
• Writing the Contemporary
• Postcolonial Literatures
• Gothic 
• Apocalypse, Utopia, Dystopia
• Literature and Philosophy

Download a table of curriculum and assessment details

Download a Skills Scaffold table 

Staff profile

Dr Kate Aughterson Course leader 

The author of Renaissance Woman, Kate’s teaching and research interests cross disciplinary boundaries, linking scientific, textual, philosophical and political discourses. She has lectured in art history and literature focusing on seventeenth century drama, with regard to gender, sexuality and performance culture.

Meet the rest of the English Literature staff.

Student views

“The best teaching I've ever had and the main reason for loving my course.”

“Lectures and seminars have a relaxed, informal feel about them and are always entertaining and thought-provoking.”

“Modules were taught with an enthusiasm that was infectious. Texts that I initially thought dry and staid were brought to life through historical contexts, quirky insights and emotive readings. The teaching inspired me and I am starting a postgraduate course in literature in October.”

“I felt that the seminars were really useful and engaging, and positively encouraged student participation, really delving into the themes and historical background that shaped the texts we studied.”

Location

Campus information

Maps

Accommodation

University building

Falmer campus and Brighton and Sussex Medical School map