BA (Hons) English Literature and Creative Writing

The module encompasses intercultural and boundary spanning skills, professionalwritten and spoken communication and collaboration between students as they areintroduced to workshopping techniques.

The module explores the building blocks of character development and character driven story lines through various forms of writing and requires the student to evidence a variety of research skills and evidence professional written and communication skills, and collaboration between students as they are introduced to workshopping techniques.

As with other Level 4 modules, this module is is designed to encourage consistentengagement, with smaller assessment items that build on each other in terms ofattention to language and form, providing both summative and formative feedback.This module aims to develop student skills in textual analysis and academic writingskills.

The aim of this module is to provide you with an understanding of the basic strands of literary and cultural theories, such as feminism, Marxism, postcolonial theory, and psychoanalysis. It will allow you to explore and evaluate these theoretical perspectives through practical application to literary texts as well as to other primary sources.

This module introduces you to the interdisciplinary study of English at undergraduate degree level through a variety of texts drawn from different historical periods and in different genres. It defines and demonstrates the use of key terms of critical writing, especially in close reading and the formal analysis of texts, and ensures that you understand and use these terms accurately and carefully. It further aims to establish the core studying and writing skills needed for the study of English at degree level, including attentive close reading, reading quickly and efficiently, the use of secondary criticism and research resources, and clear critical prose writing.

This module will introduce you to Liverpool as a global city with a rich literary heritage, tracing the creativity and multiculturalism which has shaped, and continues to shape, our world-famous city. You will read a range of works authored by or about Liverpudlians and consider the historical, social, and geographical contexts for writing in and of the city.

This module speaks to the developing relevance and significance to the Humanities and society more generally of AI tools. It addresses both cultural, critical and creative aspects of AI alongside developing students’ AI skills.

This module focuses on the emergence of a modernist movement in Europe and America at the beginning of the 20th century and lasting until the decades after the close of the Second World War. You will be introduced to the literature, culture and politics of modernity through an engagement with a variety of modernist texts.

This module provides you with an additional year of study at an approved overseas partner. It will complement your programme of study at LJMU. You will demonstrate the acquisition of programme-related learning having followed your approved course of study abroad.

This module provides you with an additional year of study at an approved overseas partner. It will complement your programme of study at LJMU. You will demonstrate the acquisition of programme-related learning having followed your approved course of study abroad.

Students will workshop their writing in tutor-led and peer-led sessions, offering andreceiving constructive criticism, reading and performing key scenes from their scriptsand re-drafting and developing their work. They will also share insights into theirongoing research process with peers. Industry guest speakers will also share theirknowledge and experience in seminars and masterclasses.

This module expands students' understanding of short fiction and fosters independent reading. It supports their short story writing skills, enhancing their creative confidence and critical insights. Students learn to think creatively about the possibilities of short story writing and develop their ability to evaluate both published authors and peers constructively. Through workshops and essays, students gain a strong foundation in narrative craft, preparing them for more advanced prose modules at Level 6.

This module has creativity embedded throughout, with a heightened awareness of written and spoken communication and the power of language. Poems are designed to be heard as well as read. Students will be reading their own draft poetry aloud in class, thus developing self-confidence in their own voices and work.

The module will include a diverse range of texts that promote interculturalunderstanding. Boundary spanning skills will be developed across the many forms ofcreative non-fiction and an exploration of the writerly techniques they value.

Students will workshop their writing in tutor-led and peer-led sessions, offering andreceiving constructive criticism, reading and performing key scenes from their scriptsand re-drafting and developing their work. Industry guest speakers will also share their knowledge and experience in seminars and masterclasses.

In this module, students will learn scriptwriting for radio and stage, focusing on modern techniques. They'll explore these forms through reading and listening, and develop their work collaboratively in a writers' room. Students will also improve their communication skills, refining their scripts through workshops and industry expert input in seminars and masterclasses.

The module embeds key employability skills: leadership and motivational skills, analysis and problem solving, creativity and enterprise, professional written and spoken communication, financial literacy, planning and organization, digital capability and teamworking and collaboration.

The module will engage students in the study of fantasy, horror and science fiction literature and related arts. This has proven the most popular genre amongst undergraduate students and the module provides an opportunity for experimentation with a range of writing styles leading to specialisation in one genre area. Students will produce original, creative work informed by their studies, and present it to their classmates and tutors for formative feedback and further development.

In this module, students will learn how to propose novels effectively, understand their target market, and master the art of crafting compelling opening chapters. They'll also explore various novel genres and develop essential narrative skills. Through peer workshops and hands-on practice, students will prepare work suitable for the publishing industry, all while gaining valuable insights into genre, market, and narrative craft.

The aim of this module is to introduce you to a range of seventeenth-century writings in their historical and cultural context to enable you to recognise different forms and genres used in the period. This module will also facilitate an understanding the concept of the Early Modern and issues of historical change and continuity.

This module enables you to develop a critical vocabulary to enhance your understanding of poetry. You will be introduced to a range of poetry from different periods, in different forms and from different cultural locations. Alongside this, you will learn to identify the aesthetic qualities of different poetic traditions.

This module will introduce you to the field of postcolonial studies through a selection of literary and critical works. It will introduce the debates on the relationship between art, politics and culture at the heart of postcolonial literary criticism.

In this module, you will develop an understanding of the manifestations of Romanticism in nineteenth-century literature to assess the cultural afterlife and importance of Romanticism and its modes. You will explore the connections between politics, social history, and literary culture in Britain during a period of social instability and intense and rapid changes in many areas of life at home and abroad.

The aim of this module is to analyse a wide variety of short writing from the post-Second World War era to develop skills of close reading and textual analysis. You will also explore the relationship between short writing and modernity/contemporary culture.

Within this module, you will extend your familiarity with a range of Victorian texts including novels, poetry and essays. You will explore how the Victorian age was characterized by rapidly developing scientific discourses and popular interest in them and understand how contemporary understanding of genre and cultural prestige were inherited from the Victorian period.

This module will enable you to develop a range of professional and transferable skills relevant to the world of work. You will be able to critically reflect on your self-development and acquisition of skills and attributes through experience of work in conjunction with their academic studies.

This module promotes independent learning activities to give you an opportunity to pursue their own research-informed projects. This module promotes key skills relating to Level 5 work identifying a set of aims or key questions exploring a body of published literature relevant to the project, and effectively communicating information, arguments and analysis.

The aim of this module is to introduce you to the diversity of auto/biographical writing. It will equip you with the critical vocabulary and analytical tools to explore and analyse modern life-writing. You will understand key critical topics relating to life-writing, including the relations of subjectivity and form; the intersections of gender, race, class and embodiment; the role of memory and nostalgia; narrative strategies of confession and secrecy.

This module examines slavery from a long historical interdisciplinary and transnational perspective. It will analyse a range of 'slave texts' such as autobiographies, novels about slavery, abolitionist poetry, and contemporary film, to interrogate the diverse ways in which slavery has been represented historically, and contemporary debates around that history.

This module will develop your understanding of the relationships between gender, sexuality, and literature. Building on the feminist theory you will encounter in your first year, you will explore literature’s role in the developments of the sexual politics and gender norms of Western society and culture since the nineteenth century and up to the present day.

This module focuses on post-1948 literature about ethnic diversity in Britain. You will explore a tradition of writing by and about post-colonial migrants and their British-born children, including works of prose, poetry, and drama, and read these texts in relation to contemporary debates about multiculturalism, race and (anti-)racism, and British identity and society.

This module helps to gain a deeper understanding of poetic form and how it relates to musical form. It also helps to understand how politics and poetics inform lyrics. You will also gain knowledge of how gender, race, intertextuality, and acculturation processes can influence musical production.

This module covers a range of working-class literary traditions and genres from the nineteenth century to the present. You will examine the relationship between literary form and social class, consider how working-class writers have appropriated and developed particular genres, and explore the intersections between class and other markers of identity.

Building on your encounters with key strands of critical theory in your first year, this module offers you the opportunity to further explore contemporary theoretical concepts and ideas, including postmodernism, posthumanism, gender and queer theory, and critical race theory.

In this module, students are encouraged to advance the work-shopping skills that they have developed over the previous four semesters to give and receive constructive criticism in peer-led sessions as well as tutor-led work groups. Key employability skills are embedded throughout. These include: Analysis, problem solving & decision making, communication, ICT, numeracy & financial literacy, planning & organisation and team work and collaboration, as well as creativity and enterprise. 

The module is the last step before students either enter the industry or move on to Masters level. In this module, they are encouraged to use the work-shopping skills that they have developed over the previous five semesters to give and receive constructive criticism in peer-led sessions as well as tutor-led work groups. Key employability skills are embedded throughout. These include: Analysis, problem solving & decision making, communication, ICT, numeracy & financial literacy, planning & organisation and team work and collaboration, as well as creativity and enterprise.

The focus on published collections encourages students to focus on how a poet's'voice' is developed and how individual poems are collated to inform the collection asa whole.

Students will be working at an advanced level, demonstrating the skills both critical and creative necessary to succeed in the world of contemporary poetry. Work-based learning will be included in student interaction with guest speakers – poets who are published and viewed as leading writers in their field.

This module is designed to encourage the student to use the technical, cognitive and narrative skills they have acquired to produce a writing portfolio and reflection, using their own strengths and those of the community of writers of which they are a part.
As the workshops are based each week on prepared readings of peer students' draft work, suggestions for wider reading and giving thoughtful and detailed critiques, a student's individual contribution is of great importance. The portfolio may consist of fiction or creative non-fiction. The research portfolio further develops good habits in terms of writing for publication and understanding the market.

This module is designed to encourage the student to use the technical, cognitive andnarrative skills they have acquired to produce a writing portfolio and reflection, usingtheir own strengths and those of the community of writers of which they are a part.As the workshops are based each week on self-chosen areas of writerly concern andprepared readings of peer students' draft work, suggestions for wider reading andgiving thoughtful and detailed critiques, a student's individual contribution is of greatimportance. The students will have the opportunity to work in a team and to take aleadership role. The portfolio may consist of fiction or creative non-fiction. Thereflective essay further develops understanding of writing as a craft, examining boththeory and technique, with application to the student's own creative practice.

This module enables students to develop an understanding of writing for digitalplatforms and skillsets necessary to produce digital content. Over the semesterstudents will not only discover the creative possibilities of writing for online platformsbut also the career opportunities in this field of writing. The module will look atdiverse areas of text and writing online, from media characters portrayed in socialnetworking, bloggers, viral campaigns, podcasts, music production and participatoryprojects to location based storytelling. The module is open to new and emergingpossibilities and platforms.

The module will be a mix of class and group activities, sessions with guest speakers, and independent research and planning. It will draw on the expertise of the university's Student Futures team, alongside the subject-specific knowledge of the module teaching team, and a range of guest speakers from the creative industries, to deepen students' understanding of potential employment opportunities and to help them map and plan their own routes towards this. Through a series of guided activities, students will be enabled to reflect on their existing skills and experience, identify areas for development, and explore ways of presenting themselves as writers and creative-industry professionals. They will also develop their skills in research, analytical writing and clear written communication, through researching case studies in the creative industries and writing these up in a comparative analytical study.

This module builds on key employability skills providing a work-based learningopportunity whilst also continuing to develop students' skill sin research andanalytical writing suitable for postgraduate study.

This module allows students to pursue an individually devised creative project in Creative Writing at an advanced level. Students who wish to take this module will apply in writing and their application may be refused. Students on the module submit a proposal to the module leader who then offers their comments, refining the objectives of the study into an agreed form, at which stage the module leader assigns the student a supervising tutor. The module provides the student with an opportunity to pursue a project which is not accommodated elsewhere in the programme.

This module provides Creative Writing students with the opportunity to widen their direct knowledge of working practices within a field where they can use the skills acquired on their programme, to widen their contacts and to assess their skills within an experiential context. Students negotiate a learning contract with an employer and a tutor and are assessed on their written account of the content and relevance of their work experience to the Creative Writing degree.

This is a year-long module, at the end of which you will have produced a dissertation of 7- 8,000 words. As such, it offers you the opportunity to investigate a topic of personal interest within the field of English Studies: you might wish to revisit something studied on a previous module, with a fresh approach or in greater detail, or choose an area as yet unexplored. You will be given guidance by a supervisor through the different stages of researching and writing, but above all you will be expected to work independently in the formulation of ideas, selection of key texts, and production of the final piece.

This module will extend your understanding of contemporary women's fiction and its relationship to feminist theory, politics, and practice. You will be equipped with an advanced understanding of the complexity and diversity of the history of feminism and feminist theory from the 1960s to the present day.

This module will give you an opportunity to pursue your own intellectual interests to undertake an independent academic study, working on your own initiative and building strong time management skills.

The aim of this module is to analyse domestic space as an important aspect of contemporary culture, to familiarize you with a range of disciplinary and philosophical traditions which have focused upon domestic space.

This module will extend your knowledge of the diversity and range of British writing in the twenty-first century in order to explore key events that shape literary culture in Britain today.

You will learn important critical and theoretical views relating to racial formations, racial identities, and racism in American history to develop cultural and historical understanding of the dynamics of race in post-war America.

This module will reinforce the ability to critically analyse texts in close detail to examine a range of Shakespeare's plays in the context of their original cultural production.

Terrorism and Modern Literature will establish terrorism as a significant and persistent literary, political and cultural preoccupation in modern literature (1880s to present), and examine key instances in which the language and concept of terror is at issue.

This module will examine the genre of Gothic fiction as it has developed over two centuries to explore the cultural, historical and intellectual contexts that shape the moment of its production.

This module will introduce the concept of 'world literature' through a selection of texts from the twentieth to the twenty-first centuries in relation to the rise and expansion of a global modernity. You will examine on-going critical debates around key areas of research in the global humanities: a singular modernity, the politics of translation, the periphery and the world system.

This module examines shifting identities and the intersections of class, sexuality, gender and regionality in British literature of the interwar years. It moves across popular, middlebrow and experimental fiction and looks at poetry, non-fiction and magazine publishing as a means of examining the changing cultural formations of the period.

This module will establish violence as a significant and persistent literary, political and cultural preoccupation in nineteenth-century literature (1800-1900), and examine key works in which the issues of class, empire and gender were explored by authors of this period in relation to conflict and crisis.

This module explores how Victorian writers responded to environmental changes. It examines key historical and intellectual developments shaping debates about the natural world in the Victorian period; you consider links between the historical past and current modes of environmentalism.

This module explores the representation of the mind and mental states in literary texts, with a focus on madness and unconventional states of mind. It introduces students to the interdisciplinary study of literature alongside psycho-sciences, including psychoanalytic literary criticism, the history of psychiatry, medical-model psychology, and cognitive literary studies. Students will question established discourses and modes of representing madness and the mind in contemporary culture, challenging scientific and medical authority. 

This module enhances students' understanding of non-fiction travel literature, encouraging nuanced interpretations and effective long-form writing. It explores travel narratives' reflection of encounters with otherness, reassessment of the familiar, and their link to human identity and the non-human world. Indicative texts range from Mary Wollstonecraft to Robert Macfarlane, spanning from the late-eighteenth to the early 21st century.

This module delves into contemporary literature, covering fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, and explores current debates in the English-speaking publishing world. It emphasizes how production circumstances shape contemporary texts and encourages reflection on the writer's role in modern society. Topics include women's history in the era of #Me Too, climate fiction, diversity in publishing, gender identity, freedom of speech, 'cancel culture,' and pandemic writing. Students will engage with works by various authors such as Hallie Rubenhold, Reni Eddo-Lodge, and Akwaeke Emezi.

This module focuses on modern fiction focused on the urgent environmental crises with which we are now obliged to reckon. Some of the issues you will engage with on this module include climate, the environment as a concept, the non-human, and the alternative approaches to nature represented in indigenous narrative systems.

This module explores writing by and about African Americans from the mid-twentieth century to the present; you will consider how Black writers and artists have contested racial injustices, articulated new identities, and identified grounds for solidarity and alliance.

This module focuses on recent works of transnational fiction that have been adapted for the screen. Drawing on literary studies, film studies, adaptation studies, and postcolonial studies, you will examine novels about migrants alongside their film adaptations, considered as ‘migrants’ from page to screen.

This module explores how extinction on various scales, from the local and national to the planetary, is conceptualized and represented in American environmental and ecocritical texts, including fiction, nature writing, and ecocritical theory.

This module will deepen your understanding of the early modern world (or worlds) through attention to travel writing, early science fiction, early colonialism, and approaches to race and slavery, through topics such as the representation of piracy, and utopian writing.