Course summary

Our BA English degree gives you the opportunity to develop the critical and verbal skills needed for confident, effective reading of literary texts and criticism.

• Bold, flexible, and richly diverse, the BA in English offers you a world of literature and language. You will be taken on a thrilling intellectual and imaginative journey from the Caribbean, New York, and Victorian London, to the American South via 1980s Northern Ireland, South Korea, Zimbabwe, Belarus, India, and Algeria. Along the way, we encourage you to ask big, complex, and often challenging questions about how to read literature in all its cultural, artistic, and political contexts ranging from the analysis of bear-baiting in Early Modern drama, the role of the British Empire in the 18th and 19th century novel to the impact of the #metoo and Black Lives Matter movements on 21st-century literature, film, and culture.

• You will travel across histories, cultures, and languages and be encouraged to engage in a huge variety of debates around, for example, gender and sexual identity, the Transatlantic slave trade, climate change, feminism, Caribbean writing, indigenous literature and philosophical ideas about what it means to be human across time.

• With a focus on both creative and analytical thinking as well as on rigorous communication and research skills, your degree in English is full of choice, offering you the opportunity to design your own curriculum. You could specialise in the study of language and communication, or in ‘world literature’, or in American literature and culture. You’ll also have a chance to take up one of our Work Placements, two of which are with Poetry London, and take a Creative Writing module specifically designed for BA English students.

• Diversity of texts – Read both traditional and non-traditional texts alongside other cultural works such as films, photography, museums, and visual arts.

• Work placements – you’ll have the option to do a work placement as part of your course.

• Transferable skills & Careers Support – our degree prepares you for a range of careers by developing your communication, analytical, and research skills.

• Intensive pastoral care and academic support – we offer three years of support for your essay writing and research skills as well as a dedicated pastoral care system tailored to your individual needs.

• Experience London – our location allows you access to the wealth of cultural institutions and opportunities that London offers right on your doorstep.