Explore literary criticism as it is now and what it may yet become. You will have the opportunity to consider a whole range of major theoretical and philosophical concepts, such as:

• The body
• Race
• Gender
• Violence
• Ecology
• God
• Time
• Death
• War
• Self
• The animal

You will study a range of fascinating modern thinkers, ranging from Marx, Freud and Nietzsche, through to more recent figures such as Simone Weil, Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, Fred Moten, Cornel West and Sara Ahmed.

Develop the art of creative writing in this multi-genre workshop. Taught through a mix of lectures and tutor-led workshops the focus is on the development of your own portfolio. This could take any form and be devoted to any genre (poetry, prose, drama, screenplay etc). Working at university level, you will develop your understanding of various forms, the graft involved in editing your own work and the art of responding to the work of fellow students.

What we call ‘American Literature’ and how we define America and ‘the American experience’ depends on who is writing and to whom. In this module you will encounter many different voices, many conflicting and contrasting views, a diversity of complex experience and a great range of writing in form and style.

You will explore such questions as: What role do different literary forms play in narrating the self? How does American writing seek to establish a new way of looking at the world? And how and why does literature help shape forms of protest and new critiques of modernity?

Learn to write drama for the theatre and audio, and develop your awareness of the processes by which a written script makes its way to live performance and recorded production.

You will be taught through weekly seminars/workshops in which you will explore the effects that different staging/recording approaches and performance strategies have on your scripts.

Over the course of the module, you will develop your own writing styles and gain an awareness of the professional requirements of playwriting for the stage and for radio and podcasts.

The years of Queen Victoria’s reign (1837-1901) saw great social, political and cultural transformation. Changing social conditions, extraordinary scientific breakthroughs and the emergence of new technologies all altered the ways in which Victorians thought about themselves and their environment. The literature of the period responded resourcefully to the turbulent circumstances from which it emerged.

In this module, you will examine a wide range of Victorian writing, including novels, short fiction, poetry, drama and non-fictional prose and will explore and interrogate all the complexities of the Victorian age.

Develop key techniques for writing fiction and hone the skills you need to write short stories and/or novels.

Through workshops, discussions, set reading from a range of contemporary writers and generative writing prompts, you’ll develop confidence in creating character, worldbuilding, establishing narrative voice, experimenting with point of view and constructing engaging structures and plot.

You will draw on a range of techniques according to your own interests. In your reflective essay you will consider the various ways short fiction and the novel uniquely deploy these techniques.

How does our lived experience translate into poetry? And how does poetry crystallize or transform experience through language and form? These and many other questions are explored in this module as you will read as well as write poetry; for the writing of poetry is dependent not only your experience but also your abilities as a reader and interpreter of poems.

You will study the base structures of poetry – from the line-ending to more complex forms like sonnets and sestinas; and you will be encouraged to seek out new reading as a result of class discussion.

In your third year you will study at one of our international partner universities. This will help you to expand your global outlook and professional network, as well as developing your cultural and personal skills. It is also an opportunity to gain a different perspective on your subject through studying it in another country.

You will choose specialist modules relating to your degree and potentially modules from other subjects offered by the host university that are specific to that university and country.

The availability of places at overseas partners varies each year. In previous years destinations for students in the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences have included Australia, USA, Canada, Europe and Asia.

In this multi-genre writing workshop you will develop your writing toward professional levels. Taught through a mix of lectures and tutor-led workshops, the focus is on the development of your own portfolio.

This portfolio could take any form and be devoted to any genre (poetry, prose, drama, screenplay etc). The lectures will include expert guidance from our author-tutors on how to develop your writing professionally and towards publication.

Explore postcolonial literature across a wide historical span. Your study will move from the explosion of new national literatures in the era of decolonisation through to contemporary writing that interrogates the legacies of racism and imperialism in our globalised world.

You’ll read exciting major writers who defined the emergence of African, South Asian and Caribbean literature in English in the middle of the twentieth century. You’ll also encounter today’s new voices, grappling with the afterlives of empire.

Cutting through all our thinking will be the question of how literature serves, in Ngugi wa Thiongo’s phrase, as a means of 'decolonising the mind'.

The final-year Dissertation is your opportunity to devise, research and explore a topic of your own choice through a programme of directed independent study. You will be helped to begin your thinking at the end of your second year and then, through your final year, you will develop your research, thinking and writing, as you build toward a substantial, self-directed project.

Almost anything is possible; for example, you could choose to explore famous literary names or themes, or research obscure figures and unusual topics. You might draw on the University Library’s special collections, or venture way beyond Lancaster to develop your research. Perhaps you will be inspired by the medievalism of historic Lancaster or the Romanticism of nearby Lake District or be drawn to the far textual shores of the digital world.

You can focus your work towards a professional career or build towards postgraduate study at master’s level. Finally, you can opt to write in classic literary critical styles or push the boundaries of literary study in new and startling ways.

Both the Gothic and science fiction emerged in response to the 18th century ‘age of reason’ and the Western world’s investment in logic and progress. The Gothic explores the terrors of the past and its return while science fiction imagines alternative futures; in doing so, both voice the concerns of the present.

You will study both classic literary texts and contemporary film and other media. Exploring what the Gothic and science fiction each do, rather than what they each are, you will consider how these genres address some of the most pressing questions facing contemporary Western culture.

This module enables you to both explore and learn to write graphic novels, including digital forms such as web comics.

You will investigate the graphic novel from the point of view of the writer, looking at the very many considerations required to create stories for this specific medium. Particular attention will be paid to writing a script for a graphic novel and how words work with both images and the space(s) of the page.

Through regular workshops, you will be introduced to a wide array of genres such as:

• The realism of Craig Thompson
• The space opera of Brian K. Vaughan
• The investigative journalism of Joe Sacco
• The surreal horror of Emily Carroll
• The queer science fiction of Tillie Walden

Study and produce writing for games of all kinds, both digital and physical, in this exciting module.

We will explore the basic principles of collaborative narrative experience as we seek to engage both critically and creatively with this new and extremely popular branch of contemporary writing.

The weekly workshops are currently supplemented by a weekly, evening Games Study Night in the University Library to explore existing games, play-test your own and enjoy the library’s rich collection of board games.

What are the constraints and opportunities of writing for children and young adults? By reading, analysing and responding creatively to a range of texts, you will become more familiar with:

• Contemporary practitioners of writing for young people
• The expectations of the audience
• And the opportunities for innovation

The module begins with picture books and concludes with Young Adult novels.

You will come to appreciate the complexities of writing fiction for young people, exploring everything from the constraints of paper engineering to the opportunities of a multi-modal narrative in picture books. You will also explore the constraints of coming-of-age tropes and the opportunities for fresh, inventive language in YA fiction. You will be asked to engage in a close reading of the texts studied and to respond creatively to them.