MA English Literary Studies

All students graduate with an MA English Literary Studies, but if you elect to specialise, you will have one of the following pathways named in your degree title:

American and Atlantic Studies

This pathway deploys some of the most important turns in American Studies, using a transnational lens to focus on the literature and culture of the United States. Students will explore the institutional contexts out of which US literature is produced, circulated, and consumed, and reflecting staff research interests, substantial space is dedicated to American modernism, African American literature, and the culture of the Cold War. Using archival resources unique to Exeter and online archives, the American and Atlantis Studies Pathway develops the key skills required for researchers working on the United States.

The programme comprises modules of at least 60 credits from these specialist modules and the EASM023: Dissertation module must be relevant to the field of American and Atlantic Studies:

Criticism and Theory

The Criticism and Theory Pathway takes seriously the definition of Critical Theory as “the self-clarification of the wishes and struggles of the age.” It aims to train you in critical methodologies and to clarify and refine your individual position as a critic and theorist. It immerses you in recent and current debates and helps you understand what is at stake in each. The modules prepare students, especially those going on to the Ph.D. or into employment in the culture industries, with critical self-consciousness, sophistication, and confidence, whatever your specialist medium, period, or genre. Recent syllabi include the History of Sexuality and Digital Desire; Biosocial Identities; Neoliberalism; Surveillance Capitalism; Ecocriticism; Capitalist Realism; Gender Recognition Act and Queer Theory; Globalization and World Literatures; Future of Humanities and Universities; Auto-Theory.

The programme comprises modules of at least 60 credits from these specialist modules and the EASM023: Dissertation module must be relevant to the field of Criticism and Theory:

Enlightenment to Romanticism

This pathway allows you to explore the literature and culture of Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It investigates the Augustan, Romantic, and early Victorian eras, with a particular emphasis on the Enlightenment and its long-term cultural and historical consequences. Compulsory modules focus on two key strands within the culture of this period - its understanding of the body, and its relationship with the past - while the dissertation can deal with any aspect of English literature from the late seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries.

The programme comprises modules of at least 60 credits from these specialist modules and the EASM023: Dissertation module must be relevant to the field of Enlightenment to Romanticism:

Film Studies

The Film Studies Pathway will allow you to specialise in key areas of film and television studies, and to explore a wide range of intersections with different forms of cultural production. The pathway offers the exciting opportunity to study film in dialogue with literature, art history, and critical theory. You have the option to study dedicated modules on film sound, the screenplay, consider the relationships between moving pictures, perception, and the human body as they have been addressed by cinema and theorists, and engage with critical conceptual intersections of World Cinema. You will be taught by experts in American, East Asian, European, South Asian, and other world cinemas, film history and archives, and film theory. You will also have unique access to the archival collection of the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum and a rich research culture.

The programme comprises modules of at least 60 credits from these specialist modules and the EASM023: Dissertation module must be relevant to the field of Film Studies:

Medieval Studies

The Medieval Studies Pathway will allows you to specialise in key aspects and genres of medieval literature from Old English to the early sixteenth century. The pathway offers the exciting opportunity to study literature in dialogue with art history, material culture and critical theory. You will study literature written by, for, and about medieval women, explore how medieval texts crossed boundaries of culture, period, and genre, and engage with new approaches to the Global Middle Ages. You will also have unique access to the rich manuscript holdings of Exeter University Special Collections and the Exeter Cathedral Library and Archives.

The programme comprises modules of at least 60 credits from these specialist modules and the EASM023: Dissertation module must be relevant to the field of Medieval Studies:

Modern and Contemporary Studies

The Modern and Contemporary Pathway allows you to specialise in a range of modules focussed on key developments in literature, film, television, and visual cultures of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Modules focus on key trends and issues, and, through a wide range of methodologies, enable you to develop new analytical skills to engage with texts in the contexts of their cultural moment of production. Pathway modules are particularly invested in explorations of material cultures, critical theory, and the intersections of disciplines, such as the medical and environmental humanities.

The programme comprises modules of at least 60 credits from these specialist modules and the EASM023: Dissertation module must be relevant to the field of Modern and Contemporary Studies:

Renaissance Studies

The Renaissance Studies Pathway draws upon the department’s world-leading research in the early modern period, offering expertise in many aspects of literature and culture, such as contexts of dramatic performance, global perspectives, landscape and ecology, and political and religious poetry. Modules attached to this pathway will deepen your understanding of the literary theories and texts at the heart of the most vibrant debates in early modern studies today: global encounters; environmental studies; the body and identity. You will receive specialist guidance in developing a distinctive independent research project for the dissertation, and will have unique access to the rich manuscript and print holdings of Exeter University Special Collections and the Exeter Cathedral Library and Archives.

The programme comprises modules of at least 60 credits from these specialist modules and the EASM023: Dissertation module must be relevant to the field of Renaissance Studies:

Victorian Studies

The Victorian Studies Pathway is constituted by two modules covering the period 1830-1910 and, together with two additional modules covering nineteenth-century culture, students on the pathway benefit from Exeter’s rich archives: the Chris Brooks collection of Victorian books and periodicals, the popular optical entertainments housed in the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, and the papers of relevant authors contained in the University’s Special Collections. The department is at the leading edge of Victorian Studies in the world and students on the pathway will be exposed to the latest discoveries, theories, and methodologies in the field.

The programme comprises modules of at least 60 credits from these specialist modules and the EASM023: Dissertation module must be relevant to the field of Victorian Studies:

You may want to consider the two specialist modules below should you wish to complete 120 credits in Victorian Studies. These two modules are not pathway bearing:

World and Postcolonial Cultures

The World and Postcolonial Cultures pathway gives you the opportunity to specialise in film, literature, and critical theoretical concepts. You will be taught by scholars with expertise in archival studies and material cultures, critical theory, ecocriticism, commodity fictions, film studies, print cultures, and the creative industries. This pathway allows you to explore issues such as anti-colonial nationalism, neo-colonialism, writing Black Britain, trans-nationalism, resource conflicts, Black Power, partition and border conflicts, and world revolutions in film and fiction. This pathway highlights the transformation of research in World and Postcolonial film and literatures in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and encourages you to think in an interdisciplinary way. It will enable you to question the range of stylistic, artistic, and theoretical responses to the dynamic cultural and socio-political changes directly linked to the colonial experience, decolonisation, neo-colonialism, and globalisation across regions as diverse as, but not limited to, Africa, Britain, the Caribbean, and East and South Asia.

The programme comprises modules of at least 60 credits from these specialist modules and the EASM023: Dissertation module must be relevant to the field of World and Postcolonial Cultures: