Department of English Studies | BA English Literature (with Year Abroad)

BA English Literature (with Year Abroad) at Durham University

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If you have a love of reading and a sense of intellectual adventure, English Literature could be the perfect degree for you.

Not only does English Studies provide a thorough grounding in the ‘great tradition’ of English Literature – from Chaucer and Shakespeare through to Plays, Poems and Novels written in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries and in Literary Theory, but it also offers a wide range of imaginative and research-led modules.

The comprehensive syllabus combines traditional areas of literary study with new and developing areas of the discipline. It aims to develop your conceptual abilities and analytical skills by exposing you to a variety of literary-critical approaches. This will promote and develop the clarity and persuasiveness of your argument and expression, enabling you to develop, to a high degree of competence, a range of skills which are both subject-specific and transferable.

You can also apply to add a placement year or a year abroad to your degree; this would increase the course from three years to four.

The first year will focus on advancing skills of critical analysis and argument you have already acquired at in your education to date. This includes close reading and analysis of texts, such as the Awareness of Formal & Aesthetic Dimensions of Literature and of the Affective Power of Language, alongside the introduction of more advanced concepts and theories relating to literature.

In the second year, you will build on the knowledge and skills developed in your first year by broadening the range of literary texts and periods with which you will engage. You will study a substantial number of authors, topics and texts and gain awareness of the range and variety of approaches to literary study.

The final year includes a dissertation on a subject of your choice related to English Literature. The dissertation involves guided research on a self-formulated question, the gathering and processing of relevant information and materials, and results in a work of sustained argumentative and analytic power.

Academically, we inspire our students to develop as analytic, sensitive and creative readers and writers, yet an English Studies degree is worth so much more. We aim to transform students into independent thinkers with the ability to communicate their ideas clearly and effectively. It’s this skill set, coupled with effective organisational and research skills, that makes them so highly valued across a range of work environments. Outside of the classroom, we offer regular lectures and workshops that focus on personal development and key employability skills.

Graduates progress into a diverse range of careers and sectors, including roles in arts and theatre management, broadcasting, publishing and journalism, technical writing, business, marketing and advertising, teaching, higher education, law, the third sector and government.

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