Course summary

If you have been out of education or do not have the required A-level qualifications for degree-level study, this four-year course can help you realise your academic potential. Why study BA English (with Integrated Foundation Year) at Goldsmiths

• Goldsmiths is dedicated to widening participation and supporting students from non-traditional backgrounds to transition to university-level study. If you do not have the required qualifications for degree-level study, our BA in English with Integrated Foundation Year offers an alternative entry route

• The Foundation Year is closely aligned with our undergraduate English programmes, teaching you a foundational knowledge of the subject, and helping you develop the academic skills necessary to progress to the first year of the BA

• You will select the undergraduate degree you wish to study at the point of application but can change your choice as you progress through the foundation pathway if your interests change

• In your Foundation Year, you will learn about significant literary movements from distinct periods, including the English Renaissance, literature of World War I, post-war drama and poetry, feminist fiction, and themes of race and class in the late 20th Century

• You will develop your ability to identify characteristics of historical periods and significant developments in literature and be able to explain the relationship of literary works to the relevant historical periods studied

• You will hone vital skills in critical reading, analysis and written communication

• Following the Foundation Year, you will go on to study one of our undergraduate English courses, which include the reading of de-colonised, feminist and multi-cultural writing, as well as classic works of the literary canon

• 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.