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English Literature (MA) (2023 Entry)

This image shows and English Literature student reading an assigned piece of text

Explore our English Literature taught Master's degree.

The English Literature MA offers a varied, flexible approach to graduate study within one of the world's leading English departments. Our department offers options ranging from the Gothic and Postcolonial Theory to Petrofiction and the Anthropocene and allows you to explore these topics while working with those at the cutting intellectual edge of literary studies.


Course overview

Our MA will train you in the study of writing and culture across a range of periods, cultures, and genres. It has an open and flexible study route. You will choose from a number of modules that address a range of issues and topics in the field of literatures written in English as well as literary theory and World Literature.

Modules range from Feminist Literary Theory and Queer Studies to Ecopoetics, the Gothic, World Literatures, and Drama. You will study four modules, two in Term One and two in Term Two; and undertake a dissertation project on an (approved) topic of your choice with a specialised supervisor in Term Three.


General entry requirements

Minimum requirements

65% (or equivalent) in an undergraduate degree in English Literature or a related degree. Applicants may be required to provide a writing sample to demonstrate suitability for the course.


English language requirements

You can find out more about our English language requirementsLink opens in a new window. This course requires the following:

  • Band C
  • IELTS overall score of 7.5, minimum component scores of two at 6.5/7.0 and the rest at 7.5 or above.

International qualifications

We welcome applications from students with other internationally recognised qualifications.

For more information, please visit the international entry requirements pageLink opens in a new window.


Additional requirements

There are no additional entry requirements for this course.

Core modules

Dissertation

The Dissertation offers you the opportunity to pursue your own distinct research interests. You can develop any idea you’ve discovered in your modules or write on a completely new topic that has always fascinated you. Our students choose an array of topics within the broadly-conceived boundaries of ‘literary studies’, although we’ll discuss your plans with you to make sure an available member of our teaching staff can support your topic.

Students often use their MA dissertations as springboards to PhD projects and have sometimes gone on to publish parts of their work in scholarly journals.

Choose one Critical Theory module from options including:

Critical Theory Today

Critical and Cultural Theory has never been more vibrant, nor more urgently needed, than today. Work in all areas of the Humanities has long been inextricably intertwined with critical reflection, often drawing from a multiplicity of disciplines, from philosophy and sociology to literary and visual studies. This module charts key developments in the development of critical and cultural theories, charting recent cultural and literary theory in historically and philosophically located ways.

Queer Theory and Praxis

This module aims to familiarise students with current theories of gender and sexuality, with a particular focus on literary and historical methodologies. You will learn about the effect of legal, medical, and moral frameworks on the emergence of forms of sexual identity worldwide and the impact of globalization on local forms of sexuality and sexual practice. You will work with Intersectional approaches to literary and cultural study that involve queer theory.

Feminist Theory

This module will consider some of the most important debates and trends in feminist literary theory over the last few decades. The module will consider the intersections of academic and popular, intellectual and activist dimensions of feminist literary theory; we also place emphasis on the articulation of feminist literary practice with representations of race, sexuality and class. Questions of reading practices, genre and canon-formation, as well as those of artistic expressions in response to the collaboration and conflict engaged between 'western', 'multicultural' and 'third world' feminisms will be some of the key themes that the module will explore.

Petrofiction: Studies in World Literature

This module studies the world literature of energy and natural resources, a critical category in the conjoined fields of the Energy and Environmental Humanities. We explore a range of works about that most combustible of planetary resources: oil. Our lives are saturated in oil – the most significant resource of the post-war capitalist world system. It is everywhere, especially in those places where it often appears abstract, scarce, or unseen.

Oil and its myriad refined products determines how and where we live, move, work and play; what we eat, wear, consume. It is heavily invested in the shaping of our political and physical landscapes. To think about oil is not solely to think about automobiles or derricks or spectacular spills or barrel prices. The computer or the phone (or even the paper!) on which you are reading this blurb could not be made – or brought to you – without this mineral. Oil’s universality makes it as controversial as it is ubiquitous in its apparent vitality and necessity as much as its toxicity. Energy, then, is as social a phenomenon as it is technological or a matter for engineering. Modern culture is a Hydrocarbon culture and recent scholarship has begun to engage with it as such, finding that oil, fossil fuels and other energy forms are deeply embedded in modern literature, art and culture.

World Literature in the Anthropocene

This module investigates the implications of the concept of the Anthropocene for literary-cultural studies on a world scale. Participants will read initially in the history of debates surrounding this term – denoting the advent of a geological era in which human action acquires decisive planetary force – as a way of revisiting conventional interpretive frameworks and categories, including questions of periodisation, comparative methodology and the ‘worlding’ of literary study. We will then take up a series of optics prompted by the Anthropocene and its counter-concepts (Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Growthocene et al.) to further explore the challenges of reading ecological crisis and culture in an era when it is no longer feasible to disarticulate human from so-called natural history. Texts range from literary works to field-specific criticism to theoretical writings, with an emphasis on the latter.

Teaching

The MA in English Literature comprises a Research Methods module, a core module from a list of critical theory options, three further optional modules, and a Dissertation of 16,000 words. You can take one of your three optional modules from outside of the department, including from the Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning.


Class sizes

Seminars consist of 5 to 12 students.


Assessment

All essays are marked by two members of staff. The standard length for essays for modules on this course is 6,000 words; the Dissertation is 16,000 words. Marks are given out of 100.

For more information, please visit the English Literature web pageLink opens in a new window on the English website.


Reading lists

Most departments have reading lists available through Warwick Library. If you would like to view reading lists for the current cohort of students, you can visit our Warwick Library web pageLink opens in a new window.


Your timetable

Your personalised timetable will be complete when you are registered for all modules, compulsory and optional, and you have been allocated to your lectures, seminars and other small group classes. Your compulsory modules will be registered for you, and you will be able to choose your optional modules when you join us.

Your career

Graduates from these courses have gone on to work for a range of employers, including: Deloitte; International Institute for Environment and Development; TeachFirst; The Times; V&A Museum; Yale University Press. They have pursued roles such as: arts officers, producers and directors; higher education teaching professionals; journalists, newspaper and periodical editors; management consultants and business analysts and marketing associate professionals.

Our department has a dedicated professionally qualified Senior Careers Consultant offering impartial advice and guidance together with workshops and events throughout the year. Previous examples of workshops and events include:

  • Understanding Assessment Centres
  • Careers following your English and Comparative Literary Studies Degree
  • Discovering Careers in the Creative Industries
  • Careers in Publishing and Journalism
  • Freelancing
  • Careers in the Public Sector
  • Warwick careers fairs throughout the year

English and Comparative Literary Studies at Warwick

Have the freedom to follow your own path.

We’re fond of freedom at Warwick. Freedom to learn, through an enormous array of modules to suit your interests, and through a range of innovative assessment techniques. You’re also free to explore the award-winning Warwick Arts Centre on campus, or you can travel further afield and visit the home of Shakespeare in Stratford or immerse yourself in the poetry scene in Leamington Spa and Birmingham. You can build your skills in public engagement with the Warwick Institute of Engagement and become involved in our exciting international consortia, including EUTOPIA and the Monash Warwick Alliance.

In the 2021 Research Excellence Framework, the Department ranked among the top 10 in the country for research environment: a great place for graduate study.

Find out more about us on our website.Link opens in a new window


Our Postgraduate courses

Tuition fees

Tuition fees are payable for each year of your course at the start of the academic year, or at the start of your course, if later. Academic fees cover the cost of tuition, examinations and registration and some student amenities.

Taught course fees  Research course fees


Fee Status Guidance

We carry out an initial fee status assessment based on the information you provide in your application. Students will be classified as Home or Overseas fee status. Your fee status determines tuition fees, and what financial support and scholarships may be available. If you receive an offer, your fee status will be clearly stated alongside the tuition fee information.

Do you need your fee classification to be reviewed?

If you believe that your fee status has been classified incorrectly, you can complete a fee status assessment questionnaire. Please follow the instructions in your offer information and provide the documents needed to reassess your status.

Find out more about how universities assess fee status

Additional course costs

As well as tuition fees and living expenses, some courses may require you to cover the cost of field trips or costs associated with travel abroad.

For departmental specific costs, please see the Modules tab on the course web page for the list of core and optional core modules with hyperlinks to our Module Catalogue (please visit the Department’s website if the Module Catalogue hyperlinks are not provided).

Associated costs can be found on the Study tab for each module listed in the Module Catalogue (please note most of the module content applies to 2022/23 year of study). Information about module department specific costs should be considered in conjunction with the more general costs below:

  • Core text books
  • Printer credits
  • Dissertation binding
  • Robe hire for your degree ceremony

Scholarships and bursaries

Scholarships and financial support

Find out about the different funding routes available, including; postgraduate loans, scholarships, fee awards and academic department bursaries.

Living costs

Find out more about the cost of living as a postgraduate student at the University of Warwick.

Find out how to apply to us, ask your questions, and find out more.

Taught course applications

Here is our checklist on how to apply for taught postgraduate courses at Warwick.

Research course applications

Here is our checklist on how to apply for research postgraduate degrees at the University of Warwick.

After you’ve applied

Find out how we process your application.

Applicant Portal

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Admissions statement

See Warwick’s postgraduate admissions policy.

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Postgraduate Open Day

Our Postgraduate Virtual Open Day will help you find out more about your course of interest, as well as general topics like applying to Warwick, accommodation, careers and funding.
Please register your interest to be the first to hear when booking opens.

Postgraduate fairs

Throughout the year we attend exhibitions and fairs online and in the UK. These events give you the chance to learn about our Master's and PhD study routes, and the wider context of postgraduate study.

Find out more

Live chats

Every week, you can connect directly with representatives from Warwick, who will be answering your questions on applying to and studying postgraduate studies at Warwick.

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Departmental events

Some academic departments hold events for specific postgraduate programmes, these are fantastic opportunities to learn more about Warwick and your chosen department and course.

See our online departmental events

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