Diversity in undergraduate modules
The School of English acknowledges calls for reading lists that contain more women, black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) writers, and supports the demand for greater diversity in the curriculum.
Honours modules
Here you will find further details about honours options and diversity. This information has been divided into three groups, reflecting the different degrees to which and ways that individual modules engage with diverse writers and themes of gender or racial equality.
Not every module runs every year, and the School reserves the right to withdraw modules as circumstances dictate. Information about the range of honours options available in a given year will be circulated in the Honours Choices booklet.
Single Honours students complete eight modules in their third and fourth year of study (typically two per semester). To encourage a wide spectrum of view, the School asks single Honours students to take at least one module each from three period specific groupings - Medieval (Group A), Renaissance to Restoration (Group B), and 18th and 19th century literature (Group C) - as well as a compulsory dissertation (Group D). As you explore the modules below you will see a note of the period grouping to which each module belongs. Group E modules cover the period from 1900 to the present.
Joint Honours students will typically take three to five modules across two years of study. Joint Honours students are not required to take the Dissertation module, but must ensure that they take at least one pre-1900 module in English (Group A, B or C).
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The following modules feature a very high proportion of women or BAME writers on the curriculum and may also address issues of gender or race as a central theme.
EN3213 Postcolonial Literature and Theory (Group E)
Focussing on the work of writers drawn from across Africa, the Caribbean, India and Britain, this module is centrally concerned with issues of colonialism, racism and gender inequality. A significant majority of set texts on this module are by writers of colour, including women writers of colour.
EN4350 Women and Authorship in Renaissance England (Group B)
This module examines 16th- and 17th-century writing by or attributed to English and Scottish women.
EN4361 Jane Austen (Group C)
Students on this module will study the major novels of Jane Austen alongside the work of three of her contemporaries, Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria Edgeworth and Ann Radcliffe.
EN4371 Forming Freedom: African American Writing (Group E)
This module will give students a broad grounding in the development of African American writing, from early slave narratives to the novel of 'passing'. Focussing on a range of textual forms and genres which trouble a canonical framing of African-American writing in the nineteenth and early 20th centuries, it will offer students an insight into the diverse and experimental nature of Black literary production.
EN4398 Short Dissertation (Group D)
This module is taken with ID4002 and students can choose to focus on a topic which addresses equality and diversity concerns.
EN4399 Dissertation in English (Group D)
Students can choose to focus entirely or partially on women or BAME writers and issues of diversity and equality.
EN4407 Twentieth-Century Crime Fiction: Gender and Genre (Group E)
The course introduces students to the diversity and complexity of criminal fictions across the century, and encourages an understanding of the importance of gender in contemporary literary studies. The module includes a significant number of women writers and explores popular fiction's engagement with the politics of gender, race and sexuality.
EN4416 Virginia Woolf (Group E)
Students in this module will study a range of Virginia Woolf's fiction and nonfiction, as well as related formal and critical debates.
EN4424 Nationalists and Nomads: Contemporary World Literatures (Group E)
Students on this module will encounter a diverse range of texts drawn from across the world and will explore questions of cultural belonging, nationalism and equality against the context of decolonisation and globalisation. The majority of writers studied on this module are writers of colour, including women writers of colour.
EN4433 Black and Asian British Writing (Group E)
This module is exclusively focused on the poetry and novels of late 20th and 21st century Black British and British Asian writers. Topics discussed include the transatlantic slave trade, Windrush, gender, multiculturalism and the impact of race and racism on British society.
EN4794 Joint Dissertation (Group D)
Students can choose to focus entirely or partially on women or BAME writers and issues of diversity and equality.
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The following modules feature a significant number of women or BAME writers on the curriculum and may also address issues of gender or race as an important concern.
EN3207 Twentieth-Century British and Irish Drama (Group E)
This module introduces students to dramatic texts representing key movements, styles and approaches in post-war British and Irish theatre, including the work of several female playwrights.
EN3214 The Country and the City in Scottish Literature (Group E)
By exploring Scottish novels – and poetry – from the early 19th century to the present day this module examines the literary construction and deconstruction of Scotland through depictions of its rural and urban spaces. Set texts on this module typically feature several works of fiction by Scottish women writers.
EN3215 Atomic cultures: Anglophone Writing and the Global Cold War (Group E)
This module introduces the literature and related culture of the Cold War Anglosphere. Set texts listed for this module include a number of works by women writers.
EN3219 Reading Popular Music (Group E)
This module combines literary and cultural studies approaches in surveying American and British popular music in the postwar era, but especially in the period 1960-1990. Required listening on this module includes a number of female singers and songwriters.
EN4364 The Art of Victorian Poetry (Group C)
This module explores the richness and diversity of poetry written or published in the period 1837-1901, including the work of several women poets. Students on this module will address issues such as gender, class, religion, and nation in relation to Victorian poetry.
EN4402 Speeches and Speechwriting (Group E)
This module examines the work of a wide variety of male and female orators. It includes discussion of the US civil rights movement, including speeches by Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. It also considers the barriers that have historically faced women as speechmakers and how women such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Sojourner Truth have overcome them.
EN4406 Contemporary Fiction (Group E)
The aim of this module is to introduce some of the most interesting and innovative work in contemporary fiction, and includes as required reading a significant number of novels by women writers.
EN4413 Reading the 1940s (Group E)
This module offers students the opportunity to study the literature, film and culture of the 1940. Set texts on this module feature a number of women writers and themes discussed on the module include gender roles and the end of empire.
EN4419 American Fiction: Self and Nation, 1865-1939 (Group E)
The module approaches American fiction through the chronological study of ten texts published between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the Second World War. Authors studied on this module include several women writers and writers of colour.
EN4425 Celtic Modernisms (Group E)
By analysing a diverse range of texts from Scottish, Irish and (Anglo-)Welsh writers – from formal as well as socio-political perspectives – students on this module will explore alternative views of the Modernist period through a range of set texts that includes the work of several women writers.
EN4426 Civil Wars on Page and Screen (Group E)
This module explores literary and cinematic representations of different instances of civil war and partition – the Irish Civil War (1922-1923), the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), the conflict around the Indian and Pakistani partition (1947), the conflict between Israel and Palestine (1948-present), the Nigerian Civil War or Biafran War (1967-1970) and the Somali Civil War (1988-present). Set readings and viewings include a significant number of works by women and BAME writers or filmmakers.
EN4435 Writing the Pacific (Group E)
This module focuses on writing in English about the Pacific or Oceania. The texts considered include creative and critical works about the Pacific by Europeans, Americans, Hawai'ian, Samoan, Tongan, Papua New Guinean and Maori writers.
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The following modules address issues of gender or race as an important concern and may also include some women or BAME writers.
EN3111 Beowulf (Group A)
The module includes the study of authors from the Middle East and early racial theory. Classroom discussion focus on gender and religious diversity, and links are made between English and non-English texts, particularly Hebrew, Scandinavian and Celtic material. A variety of socio-political perspectives will be explored; these will include problems linked to social inclusivity and social exclusion, and some ecocritical readings.
EN3201 Critical Theory (Group E)
This module is designed to guide students through fundamental questions in literary theory and introduce them to the writing of canonical critical theorists, including a number of women and BAME theorists. Topics studied on this module include feminist and postcolonial theory.
EN4312 Authorising English: Society, Gender and Religion in Late Medieval English Literature (Group A)
The module examines the literature composed in England during the later Middle Ages. Explored will be the implication in turbulent ideological debate of the use of English in texts many of which are written for laypeople and women.
EN4341 Renaissance Sexualities: Rhetoric and the Body 1580 – 1660 (Group B)
The Reformation and Renaissance in England saw shifts in thinking about the place of sexuality and gender in society. This module will examine the representation of sexuality and gender in poems, prose and drama by men and women between 1580 and 1660, as well as the construction of Renaissance sexualities in modern and postmodern criticism and theory.
EN4365 Literature and Childhood in the Eighteenth Century (Group C)
This module introduces students to some of the key themes and concerns of literature written for and about children in the 18th and early 19th centuries via the study of selected key works, including a number of those by women writers.
EN4367 Romantic Gothic (Group C)
This module explores the Romantics' interest in the macabre by placing it in the context of anxieties about the French Revolution, religion, sexuality, race and nation. Students on this module will read the work of a number of women writers.
EN4370 Voicing America: Colonisation to Civil War (Group C)
This module will give students a broad grounding in the antebellum literature and culture of the United States, from colonial settlement to Civil War. Topics studied on this module include race and racism, and students will read the work of a number of women writers and writers of colour.
EN4372 Labour, Leisure and Luxury in British and Transatlantic Literature of the Eighteenth Century (Group E)
Studying this module, students will see the role literature plays in establishing and contesting the economy of the developing transatlantic world in the 18th century, including the consolidation of global trading networks, the transformation of colonies into monocultural centres of production, and the trade in enslaved people that made the entire system possible. Set texts on this module include a number of works by women writers and writers of colour.
EN4434 Literature and Culture of Sport (Group E)
This module will look at literary and cinematic representations of sport in the 20th and 21st century, and will discuss the connections and intersections between sport and race, gender, nationalism, war and violence, empire and capitalism. This module includes the work of several women and BAME writers or filmmakers.
ME3502 The Medieval Book (Group A)
This module considers the makers and readers of books in the later Middle Ages. Topics covered include the representation of women in Middle English religious poetry, prose romances, and saints’ lives. Texts include instructional works written for nuns and for the medieval household, gynaecological texts, and conduct manuals for children.