Film and Literature (BA) (Full-Time, 2021 Entry)
This course is closed
for Clearing 2023
This course is closed for Clearing 2022
If you would like to study at Warwick, there are other courses available for 2024 entry.
UCAS Code
QW26
Qualification
Bachelor of Arts (BA)
Duration
3 years full-time
Start Date
27 September 2021
Department of Study
Department of Film and Television Studies
Location of Study
University of Warwick
Words and images have been central to the way cultures have communicated ideas about what societies are or should be like, exploring what it is to be human in ways that have a philosophical, ethical and moral dimension, finding particularly eloquent and beautiful forms of expression and inciting varied responses with different degrees of intensity. The study of literature and film at Warwick offers a rigorous means of studying Film and Literature separately and distinctly, respecting the history and form of each, whilst linking both through issues that arise in the adaptation of one medium into another and from the shift in cultural dominance from literature to the film, television, and the audio-visual more broadly.
Course overview
With an equal weighting of both subjects, this course brings together a traditional discipline (literature) with a newer, pervasive and culturally essential one (film and television studies). It will develop your understanding of film, television and literature, their history, aesthetics, and social and cultural significance.
As the course progresses, you’ll have increasing freedom to delve into areas that particularly intrigue you. Our small classes mean you’ll be taught closely by world-leading academics who share your passion for the subject. You’ll also be able to take advantage of our thriving extracurricular culture, perhaps writing, blogging about, making or screening films. You’ll emerge from your course with the highly valued ability to research, structure, argue and write to a very high standard on a breadth of current media and literature-related issues, and with an exceptional level of audio-visual literacy.
Course Structure
Year One
In the first year on the film side of your degree you will delve into the history of cinema, the fundamentals of film and television criticism, film theory and film and television analysis. You will also take a module called Adaptation, taught jointly by Film and Television Studies and English and Comparative Literary Studies, as well as Modes of Reading, also in the English department.
Year Two
In the second year, you will have more flexibility to tailor the course to your own interests, and core modules will focus on Hollywood Cinema and explore the concept of World Cinemas using case studies linked to the expertise of your tutors. You will also be able to select from a range of specialist options in Film and Television Studies and English, with a 50/50 split between subjects.
Year Three
In the third year, you will have the opportunity to apply to write an independent supervised dissertation and the opportunity to apply for a place on a specialist film production module delivered exclusively by the world-renowned London Film School. You can also explore a wide range of specialist topics supported by the research expertise of staff in the department.
How will I learn?
Most core modules in your first year are taught by means of one lecture, one seminar and several screenings per week in terms one and two. In your second and third years, optional modules are more varied and might include lectures, seminars, workshops, student presentations and peer-review sessions. Modules within the English department are taught by means of lectures and seminars.
In terms of assessment, you will write essays, deliver presentations, and take exams—you might also produce a short film or video essay, or design a film festival.
Screenings are an essential part of our teaching and attendance is compulsory.
Lectures are typically 50 minutes long and contain a lot of information about that week’s topic.
Seminars are perhaps the biggest change from school or college. A seminar is a small group discussion led by a tutor. We teach in groups of around 8-11 students to give everyone focused attention and to allow each student plenty of space to speak.
Contact Hours
Degrees in our department are 3-year programmes made up of smaller units called modules. You will take between 4 and 8 modules per year of your degree. Typically there will be 4-6 hours contact time per module per week. For each module you take you can expect to have 1-2 screenings per week, 1 lecture and 1 seminar per week.
Class size
You will take part in seminars with around 8-11 other students.
How will I be assessed?
Assessment varied by modules studied. The second and third year count 50% each towards your final mark.
Study abroad
You also have the option of applying in Year 2 to extend your BA Film Studies degree with a study abroad year. If your application is approved, you will spend your third year at one of Warwick's partner institutions, and return in the fourth year to complete your degree
Places are allocated to the department each year at international institutions, which may include:
- Monash University in Melbourne, Australia
- Monash University in Malaysia
- University of Amsterdam
- Tokyo University
By studying abroad for a year, you will:
- Develop your knowledge by looking at a range of topics from different perspectives
- Gain a specialist understanding of local and national media and film cultures of the area in which you study
- Be taught using different teaching styles
- Have a chance to experience the underlying international nature of film
Find out more about Study Abroad.
Work experience
We have embedded employability skills throughout our Film Studies degree. There are also many opportunities for applied learning and assessment across our modules.
In particular, our optional final year modules offer training in:
- Critical writing on film
- Digital editing
- Film production
- Curation and festival design
General entry requirements
A level:
- ABB including English Literature or English Language and Literature combined.
- You will also need to meet the additional requirements below.
IB:
- 34 to include 5 in Higher Level English Literature.
- You will also need to meet the additional requirements below.
BTEC:
We welcome applications from students with other recognised qualifications. Applicants with BTEC qualifications are considered on an individual basis, taking into account both (a) the degree of focus on close analysis of texts, and (b) GCSE qualifications. Our typical BTEC offers are as follows
- BTEC Level 3 Extended Certificate plus 2 A levels: Merit plus AA including English Literature or English Language and Literature (combined) or Distinction plus AB including English Literature or English Language and Literature (combined)
- BTEC Level 3 Diploma plus 1 A level: DD plus grade B in A level English Literature or English Language and Literature (combined) or DM plus grade A in A level English Literature or English Language and Literature (combined)
You will also need to meet the additional requirements below.
Additional requirements for BA Film and Literature:
If your application meets our requirements, you will need to submit a piece of written work and attend an interview. If you are from overseas and unable to attend an interview, alternate arrangements will made.
You will also need to meet our English Language requirements.
International Students
We welcome applications from students with other internationally recognised qualifications.
Find out more about international entry requirements.
Contextual data and differential offers
Warwick may make differential offers to students in a number of circumstances. These include students participating in the Realising Opportunities programme, or who meet two of the contextual data criteria. Differential offers will be one or two grades below Warwick’s standard offer (to a minimum of BBB).
Warwick International Foundation Programme (IFP)
All students who successfully complete the Warwick IFP and apply to Warwick through UCAS will receive a guaranteed offer for a related undergraduate programme (selected courses only). For Film and Literature, applicants on certain streams of the Warwick IFP course are guaranteed an invite to interview, but are not guaranteed an offer.
Find out more about standard offers and conditions for the IFP.
Taking a gap year
Applications for deferred entry welcomed.
Year One
Adaptation
On this module, Adaptation is considered in its broadest sense: from the traditional conception of the printed page to the filmic image, to the multiform texts crossing contemporary multimedia platforms. The module covers key debates, such as the issue of fidelity, the role of heritage cinema and the rise of contemporary multimedia forms.
Students will engage with the work of major theorists in the field, including Robert Stam and Allesandra Raengo, Sarah Cardwell and Linda Hutcheon, contextualising their approaches within the wider movements of post-structuralism and postmodernism. In the second term, students will undertake detailed analyses of a specific case study. One such case study might, for example, encompass the multiple iterations of hardboiled crime fiction – including radio and filmic adaptations – and the many faces of Sherlock Holmes. The case study will be determined by the research expertise of the module leader.
Film and Television Analysis
Look closely. No, closer still. Let’s watch that again.
In this module, we want to give you intensive practice in looking at and listening closely to films and television programmes. Lectures will equip you with the technical and analytical vocabulary of textual analysis. In the discussion-based seminars that follow, you’ll get to practice using and applying these terms yourself in a supportive environment, building up your confidence and command of the terminology that will be your academic language for the next three years. Written work is designed to build you up to a point where you can create your own reasoned and carefully argued interpretations of film texts. We’ll set readings each week that introduce you to the best of critical scholarship, and get you to begin to evaluate and reflect upon other accounts and interpretations of film.
What might you watch? Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, US, 1950), Elephant (Gus Van Sant, US, 2002), La Règle du jeu (Jean Renoir, France, 1939), Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand, 2010), Edge of Heaven (Germany/Turkey, Fatih Akin, 2007), M (Fritz Lang, Germany, 1931), The West Wing (NBC, 1999-2006), Miranda (2009-2015), This Morning (ITV, 1988- present), The Wire (HBO, 2002-2008)
Film and Television Criticism
In this module you will be introduced to key critical debates in Film and Television Studies. You will explore a range of approaches to critical writing about film as well as the key critical turns in the study of television. There will be a historical focus to this work which will think about the development of film and television scholarship over time.
As your skills develop you will be encouraged to make reasoned and carefully argued interpretations, and to reflect upon the validity of other accounts and interpretations, both in group discussion and through reading of critical scholarship on module films and programmes.
What might you watch? The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939), Gun Crazy (Deadly is the Female) (Joseph H. Lewis, 1950), Thelma and Louise (Ridley Scott, 1991), Alice in den Städten (Wim Wenders, 1974), Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974), Gogglebox (Channel 4, 2013-), Ghostwatch (BBC Television, 1992), The Royal Wedding (BBC1, 2011); London 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony: Isles of Wonder (BBC1, 2012); Dallas (Lorimar Productions, CBS, 1978-1991); 24 Hours in A&E (The Garden Productions, Channel 4, 2011-present); CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (Jerry Bruckheimer Television, Alliance Atlantis, CBS, 2000-present); Seinfeld (Castle Rock Entertainment, NBC, 1989-1998).
Film History
You will connect your growing understanding of film’s technological development with its industrial and social history. In exploring the relationship between cinema and society, you will increase your understanding of the role of the state in film production, and the place of cinema in mass culture. These fundamental theoretical approaches will be accompanied by case studies, giving you a firm grounding in film history as well as an enhanced understanding of different ways of analysing the historical record.
Film Theory
Film Theory introduces key theoretical concepts related to film form, spectatorship, and politics. The module will enable you to read film theory as a written text and a historical document, and to use it as a theoretical tool for interpreting screen media. As a theory course, the module will give you the skills needed to approach theoretical texts, and we will be focusing as much on analysing written arguments as discussing the screenings.
By the end of the module you will be familiar with some of the key theoretical frameworks and debates in film scholarship, and their position within broader interdisciplinary contexts. You should be able to read complex critical writing with confidence and precision, and to deploy theoretical arguments in your own writing with similar confidence and rigor. You will be able to apply theoretical frameworks to screen media texts in both oral and written communication.
What might you watch? Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (Jean Renoir, 1939), The Gleaners & I (Agnès Varda, 2000), The Bourne Ultimatum (Paul Greengrass, 2007), Il posto (Ermanno Olmi, 1961), Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk, 1956), Gilda (Vidor, 1956), Mahogany (Berry Gordy, 1975), Starship Troopers (Paul Verhoeven, 1997)
Modes of Reading
What is a reader? How is our understanding and perception of a text formed? What does it mean to think critically when we read? This module allows you to explore these questions by putting a spotlight on the question of critical thinking in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. By studying a series of literary texts in relation to some of the most influential literary and cultural theorists of the last hundred years, you will take your own position on everything from Marxism, queer and feminist theory to ecocriticism and postcolonial critique.
Year Two
Hollywood Cinema
This core module will build on what students have learned about Hollywood in first year modules by expanding their knowledge about Hollywood in what has been deemed its ‘classic’ period. The module will illustrate important aspects about the industrial system that dominated Hollywood filmmaking from the late 1920s to the early 1960s, including style, genre, and stars. By first focusing on Hollywood as an industry, examining the practices and cultures of film production, the module will then consider its ideological influence by promoting specific American values and traditions through political issues, such as race and ethnicity.
World Cinema
Film is a global medium, but different countries are often seen as having specific ‘national’ film cultures. It is not unusual to hear talk of a ‘British film’ or a ‘Japanese film’, but these terms are far more complex than they might initially seem. The very idea of a national cinema is itself an actively constructed category, and this module will draw upon the work on textual analysis and film history that you carried out in Year One to explore issues and concepts related to national and international film cultures.
This module will introduce you to a range of world cinemas, through which you will learn about the critical, theoretical and historical frameworks for approaching and understanding the concept of ‘world cinemas’. Case studies are chosen based on staff research expertise, and in the past have included: African cinemas, Italian cinema, Brazilian cinema, British cinema, post-war German cinema, Japanese cinema, Swedish cinema, amongst others.
Topics might include: the representation of national history; ideas of genre, realism and authorship; transnational circulation; definitions of national identity and questions of cultural specificity
What you might watch? Run Lola Run (Tom Tykwer, 1998); Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Werner Herzog, 1972); Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974); Good Bye Lenin! (Wolfgang Becker, 2003); The Baader Meinhof Complex (Uli Edel, 2008); Stray Dog (Akira Kurosawa, 1949); Sansho Dayu (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1954); Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953); Crazed Fruit (Ko Nakahira, 1956); Face of Another (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1966); Ring (Hideo Nakata, 1998); My Neighbour Totoro (Hiyao Miyazaki, 1988); Still Walking (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2008)
Year Three
Film Aesthetics
You will begin by exploring overarching ideas about aesthetics and how these relate to evaluative, historical and political discourses. The study of film aesthetics will subsequently see you applying these tenets to the evaluation and interpretation of film, particularly in the light of considerations of representation, mode and genre, and social context. By bringing together philosophical and theoretical questions of aesthetics with detailed textual analysis of a range of films, you will learn to apply such concepts to your understanding of contemporary international cinema.
Examples of optional modules/options for current students
- Dissertation
- Film Production
- Practice of Film Criticism
- British Film and Television Fiction
- Choice of modules offered by the English Department and the Faculty of Arts (subject to agreement)
- Film Cultures
- Queer Screens
- Global Visions
- Film Cultures; Queer Screens; Global Visions
- Horror and the Gothic in Film and TV
- Television History and Criticism
- Postwar Japanese Cinema
- Screenwriting
- Issues in Documentary
- Ecocinema
- The Art of Animation
- Science Fiction Theory as Film
- Film and Social Change
Tuition fees
Find out more about fees and funding.
Additional course costs
There may be costs associated with other items or services such as academic texts, course notes, and trips associated with your course. Students who choose to complete a work placement or study abroad will pay reduced tuition fees for their third year.
Warwick Undergraduate Global Excellence Scholarship 2021
We believe there should be no barrier to talent. That's why we are committed to offering a scholarship that makes it easier for gifted, ambitious international learners to pursue their academic interests at one of the UK's most prestigious universities. This new scheme will offer international fee-paying students 250 tuition fee discounts ranging from full fees to awards of £13,000 to £2,000 for the full duration of your Undergraduate degree course.
Find out more about the Warwick Undergraduate Global Excellence Scholarship 2021
Your career
Graduates from these courses have pursued careers such as:
- Programmers
- Curators
- Arts officers
- Producers
- Directors
- Authors
- Writers
- Translators
- Business and related associate professionals
- Journalists, newspaper and periodical editors
- Photographers
- Audio-visual and broadcasting equipment operators
- Public relations professionals
- Educational professionals
Helping you find the right career
Our department has a dedicated professionally qualified Senior Careers Consultant to support you. They offer impartial advice and guidance, together with workshops and events throughout the year. Previous examples of workshops and events include:
- Working in Radio Film and TV
- Discovering Careers in the Creative Industries
- Warwick careers fairs throughout the year
- Creating your Creative Career
"In second year, I took a module on Hollywood Cinema which I absolutely loved. A lot of my early experience of Film came from Hollywood films, so it was fascinating to study Hollywood’s roots and its changing landscape throughout the 20th century to present day. Also, it introduced me to directors that I’d never heard of before but who are now amongst some of my favourite filmmakers!"
Eddie
BA Film and Literature
It all begins with passion
"Film has been the greatest art of the twentieth century, and therefore it deserves the same kind of attention and scrutiny as any great art."
About the information on this page
This information is applicable for 2021 entry. Given the interval between the publication of courses and enrolment, some of the information may change. It is important to check our website before you apply. Please read our terms and conditions to find out more.