BA (Hons) Journalism and English

Developing a blog as a journalist and using social media.

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Understanding the law surrounding journalism and ethical boundaries.

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An introduction to the thoughts, ideas and theory behind journalism practice.

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This module examines the history of narrative, from early texts such as Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe, to postmodern writers such as Jeanette Winterson. We trace the development of narrative strategies, and cultural themes such as gender and class.

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You will be introduced to the key concepts relating to the study of popular fiction and develop a knowledge of the main genres and forms of popular literature. You will study of a number of representative texts from key phases in the development of popular forms, including critical attitudes towards them.

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You will be introduced to a range of theoretical approaches to literary and cultural practice. You will gain an understanding of how both literary and cultural texts can be read and analysed, and how different theories can be productively applied to them.

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You will learn to analyse journalism practice and trends emerging within the profession.

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You will write and study stories from court, focusing on the law surrounding court reporting.

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Sports journalists will teach you how to cover anything from football matches to Olympic events - and write profile features on sports stars.

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How to write reviews of the latest releases and live concerts.

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You will learn how to write different types of features for different markets.

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How to operate as an online journalist, including layering and using pictures, audio and video.

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The study of the history and approach to covering conflicts.

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You will learn how to report council meetings, parliamentary committees and understand the relationship between journalists and local and central government.

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You will examine interdisciplinary relationships between literary fiction and its adaptation to the screen, considering the challenges involved in transposing literary works to film and/or television. You will become equipped with the skills to produce a working treatment and step outline for a screen adaptation (TV or film).

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This module offers the opportunity to develop your creative skills, and to deepen your understanding of various genres of writing. Via workshops we will explore genres such as the haiku, short fiction and creative themes such as ‘the city’. You will then have the opportunity to practise these genres in your own work.

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You will become acquainted with the history of children’s literature and twenty-first and twentieth century texts produced for children from pre-reading infants up to early teens. You will be given the opportunity to analyse such texts.

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Classes are focused on helping you to develop your work via discussion with the tutor and classmates, exploration of craft and techniques used by professional writers, and optional sharing of work. You will meet leading theatre professionals during the module, and at its conclusion you will have a play ready to send out to theatres.

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This module introduces you to psychoanalysis by way of cinema and to cinema by way of psychoanalysis. It will ask whether key Freudian methods (such as dream interpretation), concepts (phantasy, fetishism, wish-fulfilment) and narratives (the Oedipus and castration complexes) can illuminate a series of Hollywood and non-Hollywood films.

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Using a range of texts and genres from the 1790s to the 1890s, this module will consider the importance of the physical human body, in health and sickness. Examining the historical context in which these texts were written, we will look at such topics as medical treatments, drug use, pregnancy, disability, physical strength, race, and gender.

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We will analyse the histories and meanings of terms such as ‘culture’, ‘popular culture’, ‘mass culture’, ‘highbrow’ and ‘literary’. These terms will be used to investigate a wide range of novels, essays, poems, television programmes, films and plays; questions around class, gender, sexuality and national identity will be at the forefront of our enquiries.

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You will develop an awareness of the nature and complexity of fourteenth-century English society through The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. We will investigate the principal genres of medieval English literature as exemplified in The Canterbury Tales and study the relationship between society and literature in the second half of the fourteenth century.

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How the media views and reports on the world of celebrity.

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The study of influences shaping the media landscape.

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The study of photojournalism and its historical development.

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You will examine how journalists approach the reporting of political issues and produce your own political stories.

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How PR and journalism interlink, including practical workshops on PR strategies and campaigns.

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You will undertake a dissertation in a journalism-related area with academic support.

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This module explores the various ways in which cultural intertextuality informs and shapes Shakespeare's approach to character and action. To gain a broader understanding of how Shakespearean drama can be seen as “the play of thought,” we will analyse Shakespeare’s work in terms of literary theories including New Historicism, Cognitive Linguistics, and Gender Studies.

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Some of the key themes to be explored will include the impact of virtual realities on questions of body politics, representations of violence and death in contemporary women’s fiction, futurist landscapes and how new feminist utopias and dystopias feed into established traditions of the form.

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This module combines critical and creative study of some of the most exciting poetry written in the last fifty years. The main areas for consideration include: Beat poetry, the New York School and the Language Poets in the USA and Linguistically Innovative Poetry in the UK. Each workshop offers practical exercises to aid understanding of the aesthetic and political decisions being made.

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We will begin by discussing the complexities of the terms ‘working-class’ and ‘working-class fiction’; we will conclude with the fragmented forms and apocalyptic visions of Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting (1993), and debate what, if anything, it means to talk of the ‘working-class novel’ in the context of contemporary British society.

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This module explores constructions of Ireland and Irishness in literary and cultural texts across the last century, tracing how ideas of nationhood, gender and ethnicity, tradition and modernity have been negotiated in often turbulent historical conditions, dealing with issues such as the the Celtic Tiger myth, and Northern culture during the Troubles.

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You will create a full length play over the course of the semester, explore playwriting craft, concept, structure, characterisation, dialogue, theatricality and rewriting and revising techniques in depth, and you will also learn more about the playwriting industry, both in the UK and abroad, and have the opportunity to make connections with industry professionals.

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This module explores the link between literature and environmentalism, examining globalization, consumerism, eco-criticism, apocalypse, landscape, vegetarianism, what it means to be human, urbanization, and the representation of nature. Beginning with Romantic-period literature and visual art, we discuss a range of cultural forms, such as Constable’s paintings, travel writing and guidebooks, poetry, novels and recent films.

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