School of English at St Andrews

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I'm Dr Kristen Treen and I'm a lecturer in English here at the University of St Andrews St Andrews is one of the first universities in the world to teach English and today the School of English enjoys an international reputation as a centre for academic research, literary creativity and world class teaching.

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Our lecturing staff includes researchers and writers whose work takes in a vast array of topics and interests from older Scots literature Renaissance romance and romantic women writers to Victorian poetry, post-colonial theory and detective fiction.

The School of English is home to award-winning poets, playwrights and novelists - practitioners who teach creative writing across the board.

The English degree at St Andrews is as diverse as it is rigorous.

During their first two years, our undergraduates study a very broad set of authors and time periods our four sub-honours modules are designed to give students an excellent working knowledge of English literature.

Before they go on to specialize at honours level, students can expect to cover texts from the medieval and early modern periods and the long 18th century right the way through to modern and contemporary fiction, poetry and drama.

In the first year we were doing EN1003 so the first broad module that we did.  I think that was Culture and Conflicts: 19th and 20th Century Literature that was, I think, initially just aiming to give us the knowledge of close reading and as many different authors and genres as we possibly could in the space of 12 weeks, and it was definitely beneficial to do such a sort of a broad grounding because I think a lot of the text I just never would have gone there myself like Lonely Londoners – I never would have gone there but…

I absolutely loved it - I think that is probably my favourite books.

That's one of my favourite books now, it's amazing!  I re-read it!  

I first read the list of texts we were going to be studying and there were barely any that I knew.  

I was just waiting for Wuthering Heights week, like this week I’m going to know what I’m doing and actually, I wasn't, you know, that wasn't my favourite text to study, so it was, you know, it was really nice to kind of get out your comfort zone because I'm definitely a bit of a creature of habit - it's Austin and Hardy really.

But I felt like that with Jekyll and Hyde - I studied that a few times before I was like I'm so ready for this and then like when we went into the lecture that took it from a completely different perspective from what we've been taught.

It did it from a sexuality perspective that you don't get in secondary school, that it really challenged my views.

It's really good.

So in the second semester we studied Explorers and Revolutionaries from 1680 to 1830 and I found that really interesting because there were quite a few texts that otherwise, again that you were saying, I wouldn’t really have come across or read.

During the first two years of the English degree our students will also experience a whole range of teaching methods and complete several different forms of assessment, while our small group tutorials and close reading exercises give students the opportunity to find their voices and really hone their critical skills, lectures and set essay tasks introduce them to the big picture and encourage them to ask big questions.

Tutorials is a very intimate group of people of about five or six and in these groups you can take what you learn in lectures and discuss it and it almost becomes like a group of friends because you’re all really interested in it and you can all like have a really in-depth discussion and have a chance to share ideas.

Yeah, I know, I definitely thought after the first couple of sessions and get to know everyone it's a really nice environment to kind of just share your ideas.

I was quite self-conscious about what people think of what I have to say and stuff but, yeah, it's really nice having a small group.

We only do two coursework essays so I um and in the EN1004 module we did a close reading and a more kind of analytical anyway but and in terms of essays what they're really looking for is no flowery language, like to use your words efficiently because you don't get too many words so basically to write kind of really pinpoint the argument referred to, like, the novel or the context of what you're studying but really to pinpoint the questions or use your words wisely.

What I actually really like is the way that their coursework essays and the exam actually went hand in hand during that so we had, as you said, a close reading and then one on the whole text and how that was also the structure for the exam, yeah.

Yeah and lectures were really good because the great thing about the English school is it puts novels much more in a historical context yeah and you feel like you're studying history so I, for the first time, became acquainted with the idea like the novel is a historical source rather just a piece of fiction.

Yeah.

So it's like old literature is, kind of, essentially a reaction to society or humanity so you're kind of really getting a specific perspective of society a certain time and that's really fascinating, you know?

Yeah exactly, I think that the thing that I really like about the English department is it has a really nice community and I genuinely really like the atmosphere itself and I've always felt very comfortable in lectures and in tutorials.

Yes, and it feels like the students and the staff are very much on the same page.

Yeah, exactly.

They get along really well.

It makes you write inspired to learn when you just you just like really enjoy not only, like, what you're studying and the course itself, but just the general environment and they're teaching staff.

By the time they meet honours in the third and fourth years our students are ready to specialize.

Whether they choose to take English as a single or joint honours degree, they have a huge variety of modules to choose from and among them they'll find offerings in old and Middle English, Celtic, American and world literature's, creative writing and the Victorian novel.

In terms of, sort of, the format, the big difference I think is once you get honours is you're in much smaller classes and the modules get a little more specific than in first and second year and you get a lot more – you get choice in what you're doing whereas in 1st and 2nd year everyone's doing the same things.

Third and fourth year you get to choose from it's like 40 different modules.

Yeah, you can go from Old English, like the very beginnings of the English language, until the 21st century experimental poetry.

Yes, what's so useful at honours is your tutor is an expert in that area so they're able to point you in the direction of all this useful secondary material that they…

Have studied really extensively, yeah.

Yeah, they know inside out.

Yeah, so as well as doing single honours you can do joint honours which I do, so I do English alongside History and I found that really great because they weave so seamlessly into each other.

You can bring knowledge…

Yeah, you can bring a lot of, especially because those subjects are so closely intertwined - you study the periods so extensively in English, yeah, you can bring a lot of knowledge from history into your English modules and vice versa.

Of course, there's no single way of studying English at St Andrews - we offer many different routes into higher study.

All of our students, whether they take the full-time, part-time, or evening degree, enter into their studies as members of the school’s supportive and intellectually stimulating community.

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St Andrews is one of the few universities in Scotland that has such a wide range of ways of coming in to study through its flexible learning program and that's… which is how I choose chose to come in as an evening degree student.

Which gave me the opportunity to work full time, but also study in the evening towards, towards a degree.

To do some of the other subjects perhaps you have to think in terms of the flexible learning’s part time degree offering which is again another way that allows people to, to balance the studies with their other commitments in life, whether that's work or family.

We never fail to be delighted about the lectures in particular. 

The numbers are much smaller in the evening degree course which made that you had this unprecedented opportunity, really, to be sitting in quite quite a small room, in a quite small number with these experts in their fields of knowledge about subjects and almost have a conversation.

It was a lecture but it was very much a conversation and quite often afterwards the, the lecture would finish and the conversation would continue after afterwards, which I don't think there's many students can have that, have that privilege to do. And we did really think of it as a privilege.

Here at St Andrews we're also extremely fortunate to have access to a whole host of rare books and manuscripts - a huge archive which is growing all the time and our collections don't just generate new research.

Many tutors and lecturers use them for teaching too so during their time here, our undergraduates may well encounter some of the most remarkable texts in literary history.

Drawing on our resources here in St Andrews and further afield, we pride ourselves on our unique approach to research-led teaching.

From pretty much day one, our students are taught by some of the leading experts in that area or on in that period.

It also means they're exposed to a wide variety of different topics.

We have colleagues who are researching theatrical performance in Scotland, we have colleagues who are researching mermaids, for example, and all of these variety of topics make their way into the teaching syllabus.

We believe in research-led teaching.

For most of our colleagues our teaching and research is very closely aligned together.

As a result, students in the School of English are not just students in an academic department, they're members of an academic community.

You will be part of a wider project which we all share in and in which we are all passionate about, and that is trying to understand the relationship between literature in the world.

There's a great sense of community, I think, yeah, yeah, that was something that I was worried about as well because, before I decided to come here, I was thinking of going to a small, liberal arts college in the United States and this is definitely bigger than a lot of them.

A lot of them would be like 1,600 students and I was worried that there wouldn't really be that same sense of community but I've definitely found it here.

Also it is cozy, I think this is, um, I think you'd be surprised about the amount of things you could do here because I definitely was a little taken aback by, not even University-related, but it really does become a home away from home.

I consider this my home.

We're studying English and we look out the window and here is the sea.

Yeah, it’s lovely.

It's just, you just don't get that in many places, do you?

We walk out this building and then we've got a castle and then a beach.

It’s quite nice.

It's fantastic!

That’s another reason that St Andrews appealed to me, to be honest, and other than the sense of community, and the sense that everyone kind of knows you, you don't feel lost in the same way that I felt lost on open days for other universities.

Oh yeah.

It's also the sense of magic that I think the St Andrews brings.

Yeah.

One of the really unique things about St Andrews that not many universities have is being able to study and subjects like English and History in, like, historic buildings and, like, all the humanities departments very much occupy old buildings and it very much feels like you're kind of where it's at and at the centre of where the stuff was happening at the time.

Yeah, St Andrews, it just has this really nice feel to it and it just, it's really friendly and it's really welcoming, and I remember thinking, like, once I’d come, like two days in and I was like, I can see myself living here.

To find out more please visit the School of English website. 

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