MA English Literature

Core module:

• Materiality and Textuality
  Offers students training and guidance in research methods, including using and constructing bibliographies, locating manuscripts, editorial practices, and wider debates of copyright, over editing, and the archive.

Choose one from:

• Early Modern Literature: Texts, Contexts and Methods
  Encourages students to read widely and to develop their own interests in the field of early modern literature and drama, with appropriate historical, literary and critical contexts.

• Modern and Contemporary Literature
  Helps students to develop their own interests within the period from literary modernism to the present day. 

Please note that all modules are subject to change. Please see our modules disclaimer for more information.

Choose two from:

• Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century Literature 
  Explores literature from the eighteenth century to the fin de siècle. 

• Modern Literary Feminisms: Theories/Praxis/Texts
  Explores modern feminist thinking and writing, whilst acknowledging the critical fissures inherent in the contested term ‘feminism’. Introduces aspects of feminist theory and praxis through a range of fictional and non-fictional sources.

• Samuel Beckett
  Provides an in-depth study of the works and intellectual contexts of Samuel Beckett. Looks at a representative selection from his drama, prose, broadcast media, poetry and criticism; encourages students to use the University's extensive Beckett manuscript holdings.

• Diasporas of the Mind: Minority Literature in Britain
  Brings together a diverse group of contemporary literary texts and cultural histories which cross racial, ethnic and national divides in Britain. Authors are read together with an eclectic group of critical theorists and cultural historians who attempt to rethink present-day identity politics.

• Opening Up Medieval English Texts 
  Explores literature in English in and at the end of the Middle Ages. This period sees the revival and, indeed, reinvention of English as a literary vernacular, after several generations of domination by French.

• Project Development
  Provides students with the opportunity to develop and reshape a creative writing project in a genre of their choice, as well as the chance to give and receive feedback within a seminar group. 

• Publishing and the Business of Books
  Explores the place of the writer within the business of modern international publishing. Looks at modern writers’ interactions with publishers, editors, agents, and translators through critical reading, seminars, and practice-based workshops in Reading’s unique archives.

Please note that all modules are subject to change. Please see our modules disclaimer for more information.

Core module:

• Dissertation
  Guides students in the research and writing of a dissertation of up to 15,000 words.

Please note that all modules are subject to change. Please see our modules disclaimer for more information.